The day we are born is the last day we are truly free.
Before you know it, we are boxed in, held back, constrained;
facing a lifetime of walls…

You get the drift.

Lovely sentiment. Great setup. To sell… a %#$@&% television!

What a let down. What a sham. How dreadfully insipid.

This is authenticity-washing, meaningfulness-washing, as in green-washing, …

“A German magazine has taken the ‘brave’ decision to use real women as models. … a ‘revolution’ going on in fashion. A ‘new era’ has dawned …”

This is so laughable and when compared to the other design sectors – it really shows how out of touch with reality many fashion “designers” are, and how the whole industry, including customers, participate in this grand denial.

Imagine these headlines:
“Architects specify …

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 …

Is VISA and MasterCard as internationally accepted as they both claim?

In Japan last week, neither of these cards were what I would call widely accepted. Cash was still the only usable currency.

In Denmark today, none of my three cards (two VISA, one MasterCard, from three different banks in two different countries) worked at the industrial design museum; an institution that presumably entertained the odd international traveller. And one …

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 …

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 …

Spotted in Wired magazine recently:

A particularly nice congruent ad I thought. Plus a great tagline that immediately repositions the competition and states a clearly understandable value proposition. Plus featuring one of their customers as the heroes of the ad. Very straightforward, no-nonsense, no overt marketing spin.

Now for the acid test: are there any Allybank customers …

I posted a comment in response to T.OC’s post Secret Chinese Medicine for Fevers recently.

Basically it is a fever remedy that involved making a rice flour, egg white and water dough to wrap around, and thereby cool, a fevered child. (Presumably you simply scale up the volume to deal with an adult.)

My guess is it will be as effective in cooling the child as towelling down …

Urinal-based advertising for Sasha Baron Cohen’s Brüno, snapped in The Cathay in Singapore. Very apt. Very clever. Can’t wait to see it.

I wonder if they had to use special glue given the challenges of the deployment environment?