“If you don’t need it, leave it!” said the train conductor in the movie The Taking of Pelham 123 as she led hostages off the train.

I don’t know about you, but for someone who doesn’t actually buy that much stuff (besides books), I still manage to accrete it over time. Worse still, I get attached to them. This makes it that much harder to stay mobile. That much …

Elevator access infographics in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government buildings. The slightly retro look is especially appealing.

We are AIA.
We are here to create a lasting impression for you and your loved ones.
This is the collective force of AIA.
This is the Power of We.

Is the new tagline focused on building employee togetherness? “We can change the world…”

Or is it about creating a sense of oneness with customers? “We are all in this together, lets work together…”

Does the “We” refer to the …

This example of marketers and advertisers misappropriating a foreign culture for shallow ends greeted me when I was collecting my luggage at Copenhagen airport recently.

I find this rather distasteful: alcohol abuse is a significant social problem within the Australian aboriginal community.

In a conversation with Danish wayfinding expert Nicolai Okkels in the same airport a few days later, Häagen-Dazs and Nørdic Mist came up as …

Little tags like these are mounted in Japanese hotels rooms – in room corners, behind the doors or on the ceilings.

What are they? What is their purpose?

My limited deciphering tells me these tags have something to do with the fire department, and they are a form of “definitive identification” useful during the course of disasters.

Like the fire hydrants in Perth, these identity …

The websites of the four public universities in Perth, Western Australia provided only two clear-cut customer experiences.

One appealed to a visionary ideal of tertiary education; providing a strong, personally emotive and aspirational platform for the prospective student.

The remaining three were primarily focused on the universities themselves, their achievements, their aspirations; with no emotive hooks for the prospective student.

Murdoch University

Murdoch University’s website was a surprisingly …

Hypothesis: if a culture does not possess an absolutely fluent command of at least one language, creativity may be impeded.

The two main communication methods in most brainstorming sessions are drawing/writing and talking. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it is often the spoken words that bring life to the drawings, tell the story, engage the participants, and trigger unexpected thoughts.

A strong command of the …

This is one half of a two-page spread Nokia ad in the November issue of Monocle magazine.

What an odd choice of image given the strap-line shown on the phone screen.

Why is the technology actively getting in the way of me making a connection with (I cannot see his face or his eyes) the person?

Is this a deliberate use of reverse-psychology to emphasise the …

I noticed today that I could often tell whether a CD jewel case is empty or not just by picking it up. A CD only weighs around 15g, against the almost 100g of a complete package with booklet.

I think we often take for granted our sensitivity to subtleties in the environment around us. We do it so well we simply don’t pay it much attention. And yet, the …