design, innovation, mobile, social and emerging tech links for you
How did it take civilization this long to come up with something that makes SO MUCH SENSE? Sadly, you can’t go out and buy one yet but hopefully someday soon you will be able to.
Speaking of economy, it unfortunately looks like you can’t buy these yet, but now that the idea is out there someone will be marketing them soon. Nothing that’s invented ever dies. Especially not when it’s this cute and immediately useful.
Read more here.
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My friend Abhishek shared this photo of a smartly-designed lock & key system. What makes the lock special isn’t the result of groundbreaking technology but rather a desire to make it easier for those using it to be successful.
What kind of subtle changes could you make to your product/website/application/service/business that would discretely help your customers succeed, thereby feeling better about themselves, and in turn, your brand?
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Both of these are a few weeks old but I still wanted to call them out because I like them so much, for different reasons.
Chiquita Bananas: A Beautiful Brand Refresh
What I love about this was that they took branding that was already iconic and took it in a new, playful, and ultimately really memorable, direction.
Chiquita will always remind me sharing an office with Dennis, who’d eat a banana a day and cover his laptop with the Chiquita stickers from said bananas. Clearly he’s not alone in that endeavor and Chiquita is showcasing that behavior on the new site in support of this new campaign.
Just look at these things. They’re so f*cking cute I want to collect them all and nom the crap out of them.
Think rebranding bananas isn’t exciting? Here’s a great quote on finding that angle to build on when helping brands rebuild their identities:
Many times as designers we are tasked to help brands build or rebuild their identities. We may initially think that a clean slate is required to achieve a better identity, and in some cases that can be true if the existing brand identity has little to no value. But in most cases, there is always something that can be built on, discovered, or championed with any brand. It really just requires spending as much time as you can with the product, immersing yourself in it. Like method designing, you just have to live it and the work will flow through you.
The Heinz ketchup packet : A User-centered product redesign
Heinz’s effort is impressive because it improved both form and function, making the brand feel newer visually as well as functionally, addressing their major use cases, referred to as the “dippers” and the “squeezers.”
This is a redesign that just makes so much sense you wonder how it took so long to get here. Technology wasn’t holding it back. It was a matter of really looking at the problem from a user’s point of view and then making a change. Bravo.
+ The Art Director responsible for the Chiquita redesign process did a great interview about the process.
+ Read more about the Heinz redesign here.
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Amazing it took so long to design a flashlight this way.
If you’re still not convinced you need one, watch the demo video (I watched it once and had to order one):
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I’ve always been fascinated by things that we, as a generation of designers, figure out how to improve upon, not because of some advance in technology that wasn’t available to a previous generation, but because of approaching the problem with an eye towards design.
I’d been thinking of collecting these examples for a long time (in a way they’re a different take on my Design in the Wild series) and recently got the inspiration when I was pumping gas into our car. I’m going to start posting those in a new feature called Evolution by Design.
While doing so, I noticed the attached gas tank cap and remembered my mother’s old Honda Civic and how we occasionally would start to drive away from the gas station when we’d hear the cap roll down and fall off the roof of the car. Tethering the cap to the car is a simple solution to the problem.
As an aside, check out the unintended use of the “older” tech by my friend Brian:
Love it.
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