This is a very funny example of what can happen when designers work without sufficient awareness of the complete context of its use.

Surely someone must have supplied some sort of measurements during the briefing stage? Surely the designers would have visited the site?

This must be particularly embarrassing given the nature of the business. Assuming of course that people do notice these things. I have …

In a departure from the conservative norm, recent TV ads for the Honda Accord Euro showed almost no visuals of the car.

Instead it focused on the value proposition for the customer. The sense of freedom and joy of driving. Most of the ad showed a man with arms out-stretched flying across the rolling countryside.

Nice.

I spotted a rather nice looking simple desk clock in a local homeware store over the weekend. It was a rectangular white box with a square cross section. The face was made up of numerals formed by a matrix of bright white LED bulbs. All rather understated and nice looking.

The problem was on the back. There was a sticker which said: “Do not turn on …

A display-window-sized poster scaring shoppers in front of a shop in Singapore.

Take the gentrified DIY that is Ikea, combine/reuse/rethink how the bits fit together, combine kits, turn things upside down/inside out… and you have Ikea Hacker!

Love it!

Here’s a great collection of various aircraft livery designs, appropriately categorised as Airplane porn.

Talk about desperation. LG obviously had to really go low this time to get noticed. What is the message here? LG - the phone for peeping toms?

Yet another example of “ground breaking creativity” by some ad agency no doubt.

Fail.

Here is an example of a design solution to a non-problem:

It is an electronic version of the white stick used by the blind. It senses obstacles and provides feedback to the user through buzzing.

It is a worthy exploration of an idea for sure. But is it viable? Is it really an improvement over the existing solution? The comments on Gizmodo (where I spotted …

Does anyone know how much power the big backlit apple logo on MacBooks chew up?

Is it the tech equivalent of wearing a t-shirt with Armani Exchange or some other brand name printed big cross it?

What is the psychology behind this desire to overtly broadcast your association with a brand name?

(I for one will never buy something with a big logo on it. I only wear t-shirts with logos …

The HP ScanJet N8420 document scanner (below right) reminded me of the original DeskJet 500 (below left).

It is always nice to see the development of a design language over time, when a new thing echoes and builds upon conversations started from a while back.

As a bonus, Google turned up this little beauty - the DeskJet 310.