So the news is that the IFC Center  will premiere Eames: Architect and Painter by directors Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey. PBS will air it in December as part of their American Masters series. From this interview (Part 1 and Part 2) I get the impression that the documentary will be really good. Cohn’s devotion to the project (he has spent five years working on it: fundraising, documenting and filming) and his passion for both the Eames’ work and work ethos gives me confidence. The fact that he’s a journalist with a design sensibility and not a designer with a journalist sensibility is also a good sign. It’s a subtle but important difference.

The difference between telling the story of two people that happened to do great design and were able to convey the value of it to non-designers, making “the best for the most for the least” and something more centered on doing an appraisal of their work and the value of their legacy. I’m not saying that a designer wouldn’t have done a great job, I’m just saying it’s a matter of focus.

Sometimes people who are not designers are good at explaining the value of certain design concepts in layman’s terms. Sometimes not. We’ll see.

Until then, here’s the trailer:

Honest design is what we try to pursue by logical thinking. An ideal form is derived naturally through the process of attempting to maximize the potential of client’s demand, material and its function. I realized that it was important to make ‘honest’ design by going back and forth and to be surrounded by different materials to be used in the experimental process. In architecture or interior, product and furniture design the attitude does not change. I try to maintain a similar philosophy.

Keiji Ashizawa

We stand by every single word.

Ashizawa Design Co. is based in Tokyo. For an overview of some of his work in interior design, architecture and furniture take a look at this image search.

Today I came across this knife box made by Keiji Ashizawa Design via Tokyo Art Beat:

In Ashizawa’s own words:

Hirosaki Knives have been around for approximately 1000 years. The cases for the knives are made from paulowina wood and apple tree wood. These woods are used not only for the unique look of the design, but also the efficiency of the protection of the knives. Paulownia is unique to the history and culture of Japan. Finally, the apple tree that is used as the rail and connection comes from the apple tree in Hirosaki which is the most famous producer of apples in Japan.

It seems as though they find –or at least prior to the earthquake they did– great pleasure in portraying themselves that way to the world. “We’re weird, we’re geeky but we’re awesome”. And few people have done as much to get that message accross than Morinosuke Kawaguchi. His first book, Geeky-Girly Innovation: A Japanese Subculturalist’s Guide to Technology and Design is an ode to that.

Happens to be that Mr. Kawaguchi will be in Madrid next week in the third edition of Asia Geek, an event organized by Casa Asia and Fundación Japón. We’ll be there so if you happen to drop by, come on over and say hi.

‘Til then, here’s his conference on TEDx Tokyo on…above all things, Japanese toilets, to keep you entertained.

The expo was huge. We were mostly for the interactive and mobile stuff although you could find many other design areas represented by all sorts of products: cars, domotics, furniture, pottery, home appliances…

After overlooking the whole expo we headed to the mobile design stands. I have to say most of what we saw was not surprising at all: tablets and phones whose only difference was exterior styling (shape and color) but were the same on the inside: android. Perhaps the most interesting was the IIDA infobar, designed by Naoto Fukasawa and Yugo Nakamura. The Infobar has a complete different approach both on UI and exterior design. Also, its marketing campaign is very intense, focusing on the personalization factor. Check the commercial:

I confess I was a bit deceived with the whole thing. Well, I’m an iPhone user, therefore I will judge anything up to those standards. But isn’t IIDA’s Infobar competing with the iPhone after all? There is one thing that really impressed me, though: it’s lightness. It looks heavier than it is. That is a good thing but the counterpart is that It’s not as solid as one might expect.

But the best piece of the whole expo, as seen with interaction design eyes -Eri and I agreed on this- were the vending machines, which happened to be working by the way. A big crisp, colorful touchscreen to chose your favorite beverage. Motion, layers, and directionality all very well applied. Check it by yourself on this video (sorry about the quality, I think I messed up with the frame ratio):

Overall it was a very interesting visit. We are looking forward to come back next year and perhaps display some of the products we’ve designed during this last year at Vostok Studio.

PS: check this post for more info on the Good Design Award and this other post for pics and more info on the expo (in Spanish)

What do you think? We are dying to put our hands on one so we can check by ourselves.

We were hired by Movistar, a high-powered Spanish telecom with important international presence, to envision the best solution for what their online video and television service should be like. We have spent the last few months designing it and collaborating with Movistar’s UX team. And we are incredibly proud of the results.

It’s the product of months of work but, most importantly, it’s a representation of Vostok’s design principles: it’s simple, it’s elegant, it’s honest.

The premise: An online service for film, TV series and linear TV that could be accessed anytime, anywhere. For clients and non-clients. Our solution: a native grid system that responds to a set pattern of interactions that work across all platforms (PC, TV and mobile phones).

To share our thought process we have uploaded a slideshow that puts together the design premises we kicked off with. And a webpage that shows a selection of the design aspects in the final product we find most interesting.

Last, but not least we release a video made in collaboration with Riot Cinema that is the perfect accompaniment to this product. Don’t forget to check it out :)

Curious to know what you think.

If you want a copy, here’s the PDF.

The World as Design
Otl Aicher

Honesty and design. It’s a book about integrity, about what decisions should be made, when and why. My favorite book about design, it has really changed the way I see my profession.

The book is a series of essays written by Aicher relating to all sorts of things; from how the Eameses designed chairs to the morals behind choosing one color over another to paint a house façade. This book made me understand that there is a reason for everything and every design decision should have a reasoning behind it.

101 Things I Learned in Architecture School
Matthew Frederick

It’s a tiny book about the basics of architecture and therefore, about the basics of the relationship between people and space. It’s very interesting because it gives you good advice for whenever you need to think about information architecture in terms of environments, just as an urbanist would. Not what happens inside a page but how to receive a user, how to guide him, what should the paths look like. When to make “open spaces” and when to make aisles, etc.

Designing for People
Henry Dreyfuss

Dreyfuss designed many iconic objects we still use nowadays. He was also the first one to apply human factors to his designs. He stated that the characteristics of the human body should be taken into account when desiging something for human use. The idea was revolutionary and completely against the design of his time (the 50′s), which was much more worried about forms that would sell well.

On Designing for People he exposes his ideas along with some thoughts on how to run a studio, its processes and methodologies. A classic.

Universal Principles of Design
William Lidwell

A great compliation on design principles (behavioral, mostly). Each principle is carefully explained; on one side of the page with text, on the other with illustrations or diagrams. Perfect to learn the basics and see them in action; it conveys the message clearly using excellent examples.

It touches on many subjects, among them: how appearance influences people, how many options are optimal, how to order stuff… It’s a must for anybody who wants to understand how users make decisions.

The Psychology of Everyday Things
Donald Norman

A great introduction to cognitive psychology applied to design. Very good at helping understand how we relate to the objects that surround us and the things that go on in our minds. Norman introduces the concept of affordance, among many others, one of the few things I try to always keep in mind when designing.

The Industrial Design Reader
Carma Gorman

A compilation of readings (articles, essays, excerpts…) on design, architecture and the like. I’d say 80% is still applicable to interaction design no matter the year the texts were written (some are from 19th century and very valid).

It’s a good book to help remind us that, even before our times, great minds put a lot of time and effort into thinking how things should be made. It helps me keep focus and give foundations to what I do.

The Invisible Computer
Donald Norman

This book by Norman has a few extremely good chapters on how design (as user experience), technology and marketing interrelate in a project and the role each one should play. It provides you with (and helps you understand) the whole picture; how technological products are made and why most of the time we fail.

Information Architects
Richard Saul Wurman

Wurman coined the term “information architecture” and uses it in a slightly different way to what we are used to. We think of it as structures of webpages, he thought of it as what we now call “information design”. The book is a great compilation of examples by excellent designers on how to shape information in a way that conveys the message more efficiently (most of the times that means visually).

Ambient Findability
Peter Morville

Morville, one of the founding fathers of information architecture, wrote this excellent book about how information acquires new dimensions when leaving the realm of the traditional website. He talks about how GPS, RFID, sensors and many other technologies are creating new forms of data that make information more meaningful. To me, this book was a great introduction to the value of metadata, the internet of things and geoeverything.

Being Digital
Nicholas Negroponte

It’s the bible of the digital realm, a book that sheds light on the consequences of converting everything to ones and zeroes. Most of what he says on the book is stuff almost everyone knows now but back then: it was shocking. It should be a mandatory read for some policy makers even today.

Inside Steve’s Brain
Leander Kahney

Learn marketing, design, communication and product strategy from Steve Jobs. Who else could teach it better? The book is half biography half chronicle about Jobs and Apple. It goes deep into many issues in a very entertaining style. Some chapters are worth their weight in caviar. The book was last year’s Vostok present to our clients.

Designing Pleasurable Products
Patrick Jordan

Forget Donald Norman’s “Emotional Design”. If you want to know about emotional design then get this book. It’s entertaining and rigorous and it has everything you need to know about how emotions play a role in the way we choose and use products.

In Praise of Shadows
Junichiro Tanizaki

It’s japanese aesthetics in prose poetry. It speaks about organic materials, objects that age gracefully and the beauty of imperfection. It describes the secret pleasure of wabi-sabi.

Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
Leonard Koren

A great essay on wabi-sabi, that side of Japanese aesthetics that looks into the graceful decadence of materials, seductive imperfection, shadows, organic materials, wood, ceramics and beautiful rusty colors. To me, modernism is great but sometimes you just need a break, a good break, not one of those breaks that postmo hipster boys have in store.

Braun: 50 Jahre Produktinnovationen
Bernd Polster

Braun is the Apple of the 20th century. This book is a catalog of all the stuff produced by Braun during the past 50 years. You can see the influence of the Ulm School of Design, Dieter Rams, Hans Gugelot, Otl Aicher… And also learn through colorful examples how Oral-B ruined the best design driven company that’s ever existed. The book was a gift from my students some years ago and I go back to it when I need inspiration for use of color, layout, etc. Full disclosure: Dieter Rams is one of my prophets.

Digital Diagrams
Trevor Bounford

I lend this book to whoever asks me to recommend a book on information design that’s not just theory. Edward Tufte is fine but it may leave you clueless about how to start. This book will give you many examples and even Illustrator tips on how to visually display data. A great book to have around.

The Kitchen is for Cooking
Otl Aicher

Aicher had to redesign a kitchen. In the process he learnt so much about how everything works inside, an entire microuniverse, that he decided to write a book about all his findings. I consider it a great example on how to understand contexts of use, which are often wider and more complex than expected.

Typography
Otl Aicher

There are many books on typography and I confess that I’ve only read a few but, boy is this one good. It makes you feel a complete ingnorant. What’s wonderful about is that it makes you understand how people read so you can make design decisions on how to display your type. You have to read a good book on typography before you design anything intended to be read and this is probably one of the top books to aide you.

From Bauhaus to Our House
Tom Wolfe

Good modernists sometimes get so fed up with ourselves that we need a break. Wolfe’s book is a satirical essay on the modernist madness and all those “white shoe boxes” derived from the first Bauhaus buildings. Is there a modernist aesthetic and you just used it without being it a derivation of function? Perhaps you are modernist-sick. Go get the book.

Conversations with Jean Prouvé
Armelle Lavalou

A tiny but marvelous book on how an industrial designer thinks and works. In this book Prouvé is extremely honest and modest, a quality difficult to find in today’s designers. He was also a real innovator in materials, form and structure. The way the book is written is like having the master talking about himself in front of you.

Sistemas de Signos en la Comunicación Visual / Zeichensysteme Der Visuellen Kommunikation: Handbuch Fur Designer, Architekten, Planer, Organisatoren
Martin Krampen and Otl Aicher

The book is worth its price just for one chapter, the one where Aicher explains the difference between analytical and synthetic information. It’s the first thing I teach to my students every year. When you know that, you know 30% of everything a designer that works with information needs.

The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell

It’s a great collection of stories about how people behave unexpectedly in certain situations. Gladwell is very good at pop psychology facts that sometimes are good for understanding user patterns or for provoking them.

Designing Web Usability
Jakob Nielsen

An introductory classic. One of the books that started it all. Nielsen is not the guru he used to be but he deserves credit for this great compendium of applied human-computer interaction that kicked our profession in its initial days. The book was also great for convincing clients and “evangelizing”, if you ever want to use that word.

Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Steve Krugg

Krugg’s book is also an introductory classic; if Nielsen’s was about principles this one is about techniques. How to run a usability test without a white coat, how to report usability issues effectively, etc. Many examples and cartoons, easy to read (it took me less than 2 hours!). Very good for superbeginners who need to do usability tasks at their products. Also very good for those who’s job is not on the usability/design trench but need notions.

Le Corbusier Talks with Students
Le Corbusier

Designers usually pretend to know a lot about Le Corbusier but they usually know little more than a few modern-design villas with beautiful horizontal shapes without understanding the reasons behind such decisions on form. This book summarizes many of his thoughts on design and architecture. Since the book is a transcript from his talks, it feels very natural and close. You end up learning a few things about systems and contexts from a discipline that has many things in common with interaction design.

UPDATE (31 Jan, 2011)

The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand

Yes, a novel. Setting aside Rand’s political views, The Fountainhead is clearly a good story about honesty and values in creative work. The book is about an architect who fights the world to stay true to his beliefs on what a building should be. There is much about his views on architecture that matches what I consider good design. Also, all the character’s struggle to stay true to himself is a great teaching in a field where clients, peers and fashions have so much influence.

Read it when you feel you are senior enough, not too soon. And stay away from work when reading it. A summer vacation would be ideal.

Javier Cañada leads Vostok, a design and strategy studio that creates smart interactive products. You can follow him on twitter @javiercanada or at Vostok’s blog.

What started as a functional need later became a styling trend. Thousands of objects were designed in aerodynamic shapes even though they were supposed to be still. In this flickr gallery there are a few great examples:

The greatest advocate of streamline as a styling aesthetic were Norman Bel Geddes and Raymond Loewy”>Raymond Loewy who believed that curves were great, especially for making a product more appealing to the public. One of his most famous designs is a pencil sharpener that, although it was supposed to be screwed to a table, its shape was as streamlined as a supersonic rocket:

This quote of the streamline godfather explains everything:

The most beautiful curve is a rising sales graph

Raymond Loewy

It’s easy to spot the switch from honest appearance to styling, the gratuitious use of color and shapes that are not meant to serve function but to convey things different than the product purpose.

Some time ago we made a short video in homage to Dieter Rams and those beautifully designed products:

We also paid homage to Braun in in our recent “To me, design is…” video. How many Braun products can you spot in it?

“A stop motion film? What do you mean, you don’t know what a stop motion film is?!  Jeez, man, I learned how to do one of those when I was 3!!  What kinda of stone-aged retarded world have you been living in?”

Pas a Pas is an interactive tool that helps children learn the concepts behind geometry, motion and interactivity. We post this video because it’s got ‘danish design’ (in the line of Bang&Olufsen 1970s Beomasters) written all over it. Funny how if you combine high-tech design with wood, the product immediately speaks scandinavian, no?

If you want to understand how the product works watch the whole video but if you just want the meat then forward to 2:25 min. Beware of these children ’cause they’re sure to take over the world!

hat tip: Ricardo Fernández

Among the many enchanting stories, there is one in particular that caught our eye: a design consultant/ adviser/ counsellor/guide personified in a wedding wardrober. Mr. Kramer- Metraux talks about certain aspects of life that are particularly close to our hearts: elegance, beauty, timeless design.

The series received a Silver award in the Best of Multimedia Design 2009 competition organized by The Society of News Design.

Take a minute to browse through the rest of the stories, they’re certainly worth your time.

It’s a pity certain things don’t last forever. We’re happy to announce though, our Vostok sleeves are all sold out :)

Some designers like to say they create “organic designs” when their stuff is curvy, flowy and transparent lie flowing water or maybe rugged and imperfect like wood bark. But then you see these pictures of snow flakes under the microscope and think these designers are just bullshitting you to sell their stuff under a good looking label.

We’d like to thank our clients and Riot Cinema for this video.

(this one goes right to our information design category)

Want to help?

Here’s the problem: Hardware Rules at Nokia. The software is written by the software groups inside of Nokia, and it is then given to the hardware group, which gets to decide what software goes on the device, and the environment in which it runs. All schedules are driven by the hardware timelines. It was not uncommon for us to give them code that ran perfectly by their own test, only to have them do things like reduce the available memory for the software to 25% the specified allocation, and then point the finger back at software when things failed in the field.

In addition, I read their “competitive analysis” of the iPhone. It was a short powerpoint deck that proceeded to lay out all of the reasons why Nokia did not have to change what they were doing at all. They even included “developer annoyance at the App Store submission process” as a reason why the iPhone would ultimately fail (this was around the time that the 3GS was released, so they had no excuse).

Bottom Line: Nokia is a hardware company that hates software.

Sad.

To me, methodology and techniques are very important for a designer but nothing great comes out if there isn’t personal involvement in it. Feelings are indispensable. Values are a must (honesty, truth, beauty…) are the drivers of our work. That’s why I respect so much Ale Muñoz’s approach when he talks about love and design all in the same sentence:

I really wish every web developer out there poured so much love into every form as we did with this one.

Ale Muñoz

Go check his forms for BeBanjo and you’ll understand.

It’s a first edition of Design This Day by Walter Dorwin Teague, one of the first industrial designers and founder of a design firm that’s still out there after 80 years keeping a no-nonsense approach focused on creating quality products.

the concept is to reuse your furniture…we see recycling as a defeat

Modularity and no-aesthetics as design is my big obsession when designing interactive products (mostly websites). It’s not about designing a good website, it’s about designing a system of elements that can be arranged in certain ways and that can fulfill the company needs over time and for different reasons. If done well, when there is a need for some module that’s not designed, its shape, look and behavior comes out of intuition, it’s evident. My goal is to leave something in the hands of my client that will be there in 4 years, probably rearranged, perhaps with more pieces but within the same system.

When I fist read the Ten Principles for Good Design (that was back in 2004) I was shocked. It was like a revelation that made reconsider all I knew about information architecture and HCI. Here are the ones that hit me harder:

4. Good Design helps a product be understood
6. Good Design is honest
7. Good Design is durable
10. Good Design is as little design as possible

In Dieter Rams’ words: less but better.

There is something subduing in the creation of structures we humans inhabit or use in any way, something about those structures condioning our moves and behaviors. Architecture and (even more) urbanism have that powerful quality.

Architects project their structures to influence in the way we feel and behave. They manage flows of people, they regulate our exposition to daylight to condition our feelings or they make us feel free and empowered through space and height. They make structures that manipulate us.

Architecture and urbanism could be the use of power though means of space. That could explain why politicians have always flirted with architecture, and dictators love to have scale models of their dreamt cities.

Designers instead, have never been that interesting for the powerful (with some interesting exceptions). Their work is usually not that influencing. Designers make things that tend to be smaller than humans. Their structures may condition but don’t force us to do anything. It’s not the space which conditions the individual but the individual who manipulates the object.

Their original post is here.

And if you believe (as I do) that Back to the Future is one true source of innovation and inspiration, check this delightful poster by Justin van Genderen:

For those of you who don’t know, Eskup is a kind of social network, twitter-like, microblogging plattform which merges Elpais.com content with user generated microposts. Kind of like the dull answer to “how do we, newspaper, take advantage of social media?”

El Pais seems pretty excited about this. Their excitement is directly proportional to my skepticism. They’ve done a great deal of programming for this and they’ve taken risks, which is good. But they URGENTLY need to rework the design and functionality so the product is more understandable and easy to use. Otherwise it will be another missed atempt at redefining online journalism in Spain.

We also have a promo code for a premium account at Filmin (any movie, any time anywhere) which we’ll give to the person who makes the best list (it’s ok to repeat some movie suggested by someone else). Easy peasy japanesey. A neat gift for little effort.

These are the movies/docs we have so far:

Kitchen Stories (Bent Hamer, 2003)

The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949)

Tucker: The Man and his Dream (Francis Ford Coppola, 1988)

Helvetica (Gary Hustwit, 2007)

Powers of 10 (and other films by Ray y Charles Eames, 1977)

The RTVE series ‘Elogio de la luz‘, each episode covering an architect

The Belly of an Architect (Peter Greenaway, 1987)

Sketches of Frank Gehry (Sydney Pollack, 2005)

Play Time (Jacques Tati, 1967)

Full disclosure: We’ve done Filmin’s web redesign and we love it (the service, not the redesign. Well… both). We’ll go into details in a future post.

Marco, who also happens to be the lead developer at Tumblr, dealt with several issues when designing the iPad version of his product:

• Placement of the controls: follow Apple’s lead or do what he finds it’s better (standarisation over effectivity).
• Placement of the action buttons (not where they fit but at the specific spot where you are when you may need them).
• Text margins and line readability.
• Single column vs. multicolumn layouts.
• Color and brightness for legibility (pure black on pure white on a screen is an aberration, don’t get fooled).
• Pagination tap zones (and differences between iPhone and iPad).
• Tipographies.

I wonder why Mr. Arment decided to let the user chose between 6 different fonts instead of chosing himself the one or two he thinks it works better on that context. What do you guys think about this one?

UPDATE:

Marco just answered my enquiry through twitter:

Marco: Because the people who care about fonts REALLY care about them, and appreciate the choice.

I think Hoefler Text works best, so I made it the default. I take the default settings VERY seriously.

The iPad is not a big iPhone. The iPhone is a pocket iPad.

Julio Loayza

I think of UCD (User-Centered Design) a little as I think of Christianism. The fact I’m an atheist today does not stop me from recognizing that some Christian values have shaped my worldview and my belief system in very positive ways.

César Astudillo

User-centered innovation is perfect to drive incremental innovation, but hardly generates breakthroughs. In fact, it does not question existing needs, but rather reinforces them, thanks to its powerful methods.

Firms that create radical innovations make proposals. They put forward a vision. In doing that, of course, they take greater risks.

Thanks to this process these companies are serial radical innovators. Their non-user-centered proposals are not dreams without a foundation. Sometimes they fail. But when they work, people love them even more than products that have been developed by scrutinizing their needs.

User centered-design (observation, interviews, user testing, etc. ) is for those who want to improve something existing, not for those who want to create something new. Those need to understand human nature but don’t need to microscope every little behavior and take it as a starting point.

Designing Design – Kenya Hara — The Designer’s Review of Books

Japanese cooks who have special skills prefer knives without any ergonomic shape. A flat handle is not seen as raw or poorly crafted. On the contrary, its perfect plainness is meant to say, “You can use me whichever way suits your skills.” The Japanese knife adapts to the cook’s skill (not to the cook’s thumb). This is, in a nutshell, Japanese simplicity.

The piece, translated by Oliver Reichenstein is also part of a larger article about Japanese aesthetics published at the NYTimes under the title Beauty and the Bento Box where also John Maeda, Nick Currie and Denis Dutton go through the subject.

Worth reading.

(thanks denegro)

Since 1954, I.D. has served as one of America’s leading critical magazines covering the art, business, and culture of design. Today it is with regret that we announce its closure. The January/February issue of I.D. will be its last; subscribers to I.D. will receive Print magazine for the balance of their subscription.

Image ©Fast Company

I used to buy every number of it when I was a junior interaction designer. It was fascinating to see those amazing projects and prototypes where technology met real atoms. You couldn’t (and still can not) see that in Spain. I even dreamt of working for the companies mentioned there: Pentagram, IDEO, Teague… After some time I felt that the interaction side of it was weak and form + firm was somehow more important for the Magazine than real life projects and I quitted buying it.

I don’t buy design magazines any more. Well, somtimes I pick Metropolis at a press kiosk in some internationa airport (it’s hard to find in Spain) but I mostly read about design on the web. I feel kind of sad, though. It was part of my professional life for some time.

Minube.com is a traveller community where everyone shares their experiences, photos and videos. So you can plan a trip based on the experience of travellers along with minube’s flight and hotel search engine.

We’ve used a modular design that uses the entire width. Modules are easily interchangable, so adaptations can be done by adding, removing, and reordering whatever you want. Modules are also very comfortable to read on an iphone.

The users’ expriences of minube have been given prominence on the first shadowed module, which includes the destination search and all the relevant stats (users, experiences, photos and places). Minube is now pretty much self-explanatory, with a glance you know what is it about.

The new homepage is not only clean and lightweight on the visuals: thanks to minube’s stellar programming team, it’s now lightning-speed fast, loading in 1.2 seconds using our homebrewed tests. A very significant improvement over the 4 seconds of the previous version.

Our favourite detail is the realtime display of travellers’ experiences. we wanted to display a thriving community with user participation on the homepage.

Raúl (CEO of minube) has a great post on the redesign and evolution of their hompage.

The funny thing is that this vid is a response to a ShamWow infomercial)

Nearness explores interacting without touching.
With RFID it’s proximity that matters and physical contact isn’t necessary.

(thanks mort)

Now pray for this to be sold in stores before Xmass.