British designer Paul Smith was recently interviewed by Monocle on Design about his recent collaboration with BMW and Mini. If you like Mini cars, you'll probably like the episode. But he also raises two interesting points about his business and about how he approaches design.
The first is that his business is a balancing act. In the front, he wants it to be pioneering, flashy, and self-indulgent. But in the back, he keeps the lights on by selling lots of navy blue suits and polo shirts. Both are important, because if you stop pioneering then you stop being relevant.
The second point he makes is about how he approaches design. Paul Smith's London studio is famously cluttered. He likes to collect a lot of stuff. Some might call it hoarding. But for him, the space helps him think laterally and also remain "childlike." (Where we work apparently matters.)
Children, as we know, are honest, curious, and free in a way that adults aren't. They don't have the same reference points and that can be very empowering. Forget the way that things are currently done and challenge yourself: "What if?" I like that a lot.
To listen to the Monocle on Design episode, click here.
With every passing year, the Matrix feels less and less like science fiction. With the continued rise of the metaverse -- Zuckerberg is betting all of Facebook on it -- we are increasingly living our lives between two worlds: one is offline and one is online. What this will ultimately mean (for us and for our cities) is of course up for debate. But what is clear is that the traditional trappings of real life have quickly made their way online into the metaverse. Arthur Hayes recently penned this fantastic article about the future of the world (it's the metaverse) and the role of art (including NFT art). In it, he makes the argument that to "flex" is integral to the human experience. Here's what he means by that:
As social beings, the sole purpose of many activities and purchases is to publicly display how much energy you can waste. The nightclub economy is extremely a propos to this concept. Individuals walk into a dark room, listen to loud music (art), dance (a waste of energy akin to a mating call), and pay exorbitant amounts of money to drink liquid. Everyone gets dressed up real nice in articles of clothing that serve no useful purpose other than to demonstrate that the wearer spent a lot of money to display their social status to the rest of the clubbers present.
People go to clubs to flex. In the words of the late Clayton Christensen, that is the "job" to be done.
Why this matters is that many of us are now doing the same kind of things online. Buying a CryptoPunk (an OG NFT) for a large sum of money and posting it as your social media profile pic is a flex. Is this rational or irrational behaviour? Whatever your answer, it is akin to paying several hundred dollars for a t-shirt from some cool streetwear brand. The real job to be done is not that you desperately need a t-shirt to cover your upper torso. It is the signalling that goes along with owning something scarce and valuable. One of the things that is so special about NFT-permissioned stuff is that there's now a simple way to prove and enforce all of these things: ownership, scarcity, and so on.
What's equally fascinating to me is how offline and online will end up interacting with each other. (Arthur refers to our offline world as the meatspace. I don't know if he coined the term, but I'm going to rolling with it for the purposes of this post.) If people end up preferring to flex online instead of offline (and I'm sure many already do), what does that do to our meatspace(s)? And what does it do to our cities and how we build? I have no doubt that these questions are coming.
Photo by Richard Horvath on Unsplash
British designer Paul Smith was recently interviewed by Monocle on Design about his recent collaboration with BMW and Mini. If you like Mini cars, you'll probably like the episode. But he also raises two interesting points about his business and about how he approaches design.
The first is that his business is a balancing act. In the front, he wants it to be pioneering, flashy, and self-indulgent. But in the back, he keeps the lights on by selling lots of navy blue suits and polo shirts. Both are important, because if you stop pioneering then you stop being relevant.
The second point he makes is about how he approaches design. Paul Smith's London studio is famously cluttered. He likes to collect a lot of stuff. Some might call it hoarding. But for him, the space helps him think laterally and also remain "childlike." (Where we work apparently matters.)
Children, as we know, are honest, curious, and free in a way that adults aren't. They don't have the same reference points and that can be very empowering. Forget the way that things are currently done and challenge yourself: "What if?" I like that a lot.
To listen to the Monocle on Design episode, click here.
With every passing year, the Matrix feels less and less like science fiction. With the continued rise of the metaverse -- Zuckerberg is betting all of Facebook on it -- we are increasingly living our lives between two worlds: one is offline and one is online. What this will ultimately mean (for us and for our cities) is of course up for debate. But what is clear is that the traditional trappings of real life have quickly made their way online into the metaverse. Arthur Hayes recently penned this fantastic article about the future of the world (it's the metaverse) and the role of art (including NFT art). In it, he makes the argument that to "flex" is integral to the human experience. Here's what he means by that:
As social beings, the sole purpose of many activities and purchases is to publicly display how much energy you can waste. The nightclub economy is extremely a propos to this concept. Individuals walk into a dark room, listen to loud music (art), dance (a waste of energy akin to a mating call), and pay exorbitant amounts of money to drink liquid. Everyone gets dressed up real nice in articles of clothing that serve no useful purpose other than to demonstrate that the wearer spent a lot of money to display their social status to the rest of the clubbers present.
People go to clubs to flex. In the words of the late Clayton Christensen, that is the "job" to be done.
Why this matters is that many of us are now doing the same kind of things online. Buying a CryptoPunk (an OG NFT) for a large sum of money and posting it as your social media profile pic is a flex. Is this rational or irrational behaviour? Whatever your answer, it is akin to paying several hundred dollars for a t-shirt from some cool streetwear brand. The real job to be done is not that you desperately need a t-shirt to cover your upper torso. It is the signalling that goes along with owning something scarce and valuable. One of the things that is so special about NFT-permissioned stuff is that there's now a simple way to prove and enforce all of these things: ownership, scarcity, and so on.
What's equally fascinating to me is how offline and online will end up interacting with each other. (Arthur refers to our offline world as the meatspace. I don't know if he coined the term, but I'm going to rolling with it for the purposes of this post.) If people end up preferring to flex online instead of offline (and I'm sure many already do), what does that do to our meatspace(s)? And what does it do to our cities and how we build? I have no doubt that these questions are coming.
Photo by Richard Horvath on Unsplash
One of the biggest challenges with living through this pandemic has been finding a good public toilet. Drinking in the park is all fine and dandy, but at some point you're going to need to find a place to pee. From experience, I can tell you that this can be a challenge in places like Toronto and Vancouver. But from the looks of it, the situation is a bit different in Tokyo. Japan, apparently, views its toilets as a symbol of its world-renowned hospitality culture. And so it takes great pride in the design of its public toilets. Last year, Tokyo invited 16 creators from around the world to redesign 17 of its public toilets throughout Shibuya. The list of creators includes big names like Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, Shigeru Ban, Toyo Ito, and many others. And the result is probably the nicest collection of public toilets that you have ever seen (somewhere around 9 of them are already operational with the balance expected to open sometime this year). The uniforms worn by the maintenance staff were even designed by Nigo (creator of the fashion brand A Bathine Ape). That's attention to detail.
For more about The Tokyo Toilet project and to check out the completed toilets, click here.
Image: The Tokyo Toilet
One of the biggest challenges with living through this pandemic has been finding a good public toilet. Drinking in the park is all fine and dandy, but at some point you're going to need to find a place to pee. From experience, I can tell you that this can be a challenge in places like Toronto and Vancouver. But from the looks of it, the situation is a bit different in Tokyo. Japan, apparently, views its toilets as a symbol of its world-renowned hospitality culture. And so it takes great pride in the design of its public toilets. Last year, Tokyo invited 16 creators from around the world to redesign 17 of its public toilets throughout Shibuya. The list of creators includes big names like Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, Shigeru Ban, Toyo Ito, and many others. And the result is probably the nicest collection of public toilets that you have ever seen (somewhere around 9 of them are already operational with the balance expected to open sometime this year). The uniforms worn by the maintenance staff were even designed by Nigo (creator of the fashion brand A Bathine Ape). That's attention to detail.
For more about The Tokyo Toilet project and to check out the completed toilets, click here.
Image: The Tokyo Toilet
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