Apple Design Influenced by Dieter Rams… Allegedly…

There has been a small explosion in the design world as people try to draw parallels between the current design direction of Apple under Jonathan Ive and the work by Dieter Rams for Braun during the ’50s and ’60s. This ranges from the iMac, to the iPod and even to the calculator used on the iPhone.

You can read (lots) more here and here but what is beyond doubt is the Ram’s work for Braun is some of the most beautifully understated industrial design that I have seen and was years ahead of its time.

Braun T1000 radio vrs PowerMac G5 / Mac Pro:

Perforated aluminium surface:

Braun T3 Pocket Radio vrs iPod:

Braun LE1 Speaker vrs iMac:

Images from gizmondo.com

Update 22 May 2008: More images of some of Rams’ designs can be seen on flickr.

An ‘Obvious’ Promotional Angle…

Clever use of an ‘obvious’ viewpoint to promote… well, let’s not spoil it…

Congestion Graphically Illustrated

The press office for the city of Münster in Germany produced this poster to simply and effectively show the amount of space required to transport the same number of people by car, bus or bicycle.

You don’t need to be a genius to see how much better off we’d be travelling by public transport or by bike, not just from a space point of view but also in terms of pollution.

The Virtual Water Project

German designer Timm Kekeritz has created an interesting Virtual Water poster which on one side shows the freshwater used in creating / producing basic commodities such as a pot of coffee or 500g of cheese, and on the other side, the water ‘footprint’ of various nations around the world. What I found interesting (apart from the concise, clear and impactful graphics of course) was the sheer volume of water required to sustain what we have come to accept as ‘everyday life’.

You can buy the poster here.

One take trampoline pop video

I read about this in Creative Review – it is a one take video by Rouel Wouters for a band called zZz with trampoline gymnasts ‘simulating’ video effects. Although the music is not to my taste (!) it is another example of of what you can do with a small budget and your imagination. And I just love the guy roller painting the progress bar and the bottom of the screen… As my boss Will King says, the devil is in the detail…