Saturday, March 29, 2008

A friend of mine showed me her new hard drive.


No. No. No, you pervert. There's nothing sexual in that title. She actually showed me her new hard drive. Get your mind out of the fucking gutter.

You could argue that hard drives are the most utilitarian of all of the accoutrement of the digital age, yet this one was so sleek and beautiful, I immediately wanted it. It looked like something designed by a 21st Century Raymond Loewy.

When I opened up this contraption (which was roughly the size of a pack of fancy European cigarettes) I noticed it said in small print, "designed by Sam Hecht." That's Sam Hecht of the design studio Industrial Facility. They design some pretty fab stuff, you can check out their work at http://www.industrialfacility.co.uk/if.html

I bring design up because so few clients and agencies seem to give a hoot about it, while so many consumers do. One look at a Verizon logo and ad and you know exactly what I mean. Good design in product development, corporate identity and/or advertising is merely a way of a company saying, "We care." Do you?

1 comment:

Tore Claesson said...

That is so true.
Furthermore, I think of lousy design as littering.
I personally like to be surrounded by a lot of billboards and poster and signs. It makes me feel that there;s life out there. I'm not much of a lonely on the ocean type of person.
However, I get depressed when all this stuff is badly designed, ugly, cheesy, messy, tacky, stupid, etc.
I want it to be artful and respectful of my intelligence.