Joseph Schumpeter argued in 1909 that small companies were more inventive. In 1942 he reversed himself. Big firms have more incentive to invest in new products, he decided, because they can sell them to more people and reap greater rewards more quickly. In a competitive market, inventions are quickly imitated, so a small inventor’s investment often fails to pay off [...]

Politicians should certainly stop demonising big firms and sentimentalising small ones: an economy needs both. But they should not allow their new-found appreciation of big companies to degenerate into a taste for picking national champions. Such firms typically gobble subsidies and crowd out smaller, more creative firms. Nor should they start tolerating monopolies. The key to promoting innovation (and productivity in general) lies in allowing vigorous new companies to grow big, and inefficient old ones to die. On that, Schumpeter never changed his mind.

Schumpeter column, The Economist

But, as with all artificial restraints, temptation always ends up looming in. And following the trace of Murakami through Tokyo in this NYT article is what did it for me. (Side note: it’s great to see what the NYT design team can do when they don’t have to juggle with enormous amounts of content and ads):

Perhaps I will read 1Q84 after all. Just, you know, one more for old times sake.

I suggest reading the entire NYT piece, The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami, and if you’re interested in buying the paper edition of the book, watching this video of Alfred A. Knopf’s cover designer for 1Q84 for a sneak peek of what your money will be worth. Fun fact: “The title of “1Q84” is a joke: an Orwell reference that hinges on a multilingual pun. (In Japanese, the number 9 is pronounced like the English letter Q)”.

UPDATE 31/09/2011:
A beautiful signed and numbered (only 111 copies) limited edition of 1Q84 is now available. This project is a collaboration between Simon Rhodes, Kristen Harrison at The Curved House and designer Stefanie Posavec. Covers printed by Justin Knopp at Typoretum. Photos available here.

There are three ways of funding Japan’s reconstruction (total damage amounts to 7% of country’s GDP): issuing government bonds, increase in taxes or expenditure shifting (spend less on non-essentials and more in affected areas). Much has been debated and the government has decided on government bonds (to be paid in ten years). Economist and former government economic adviser, Takatoshi Ito considers this to be a huge mistake. The main reason: Japan’s working-population is getting smaller and not necessarily richer. The burden of debt will bring about new problems in ten years. His proposal: make the baby-boom generation (today’s highest income profile sector and tomorrow’s retirees) share the burden along with the rest of the population. Don’t wait 10 years, do it today: increase VAT taxes, that way everybody pays.

Unfortunately Mr. Takatoshi Ito’s motion (and that of other economists as well) will remain unaddressed; taxes are infinitely unpopular.

Mr. Ito’s full talk at the Fundación Ramón Areces is available here.

Almost seven months have passed since 3/11. Time enough to erect a barrier separating what was from what will be. And it looks like Japan is making the most out of it.

The bittersweet reality of catastrophes is that, despite everything, they honor you with a precious gift: the opportunity to start over. Funnily enough, what comes across most strongly is their desire to start anew, create something that’s their own and not just an interpretation of other cultures. This documentary grasps a tiny tiny glimpse of that.

You can watch the complete series here.

As ‘Gabriela who works at Vostok‘ this is pretty much what I have to say. But, as ‘Gabriela who loves movies and doesn’t know what she would do without them’, I would like to say a few more things about Filmin:

1. It’s one of the best online video services out there. It’s run by people who love movies, it’s simple, it’s efficient and it has a great catalog. Sure there are a few things I wish they could do better… but hey, I also want my man to be handsome, intelligent, sensitive and understanding…everyday, at all time…so hey, who cares?

2. It’s one of the few bridges between –and I’m gonna be intentionally simplistic here to stress my point– the two sides of the Spanish film industry today: the more “internet is the devil” side Vs. “internet is our savior”. There are millions of caveats, trillions of nuances and loads of things one cannot talk about unless one’s there, working at it and sweating it but, I can say this: we need middle-grounds, we need fresh air, we need companies, people, organizations and production companies that realize film distribution (and exhibition) has changed and that the new change will only bring good things for cinema.

And that’s it.

So congratulations and in Monsieur Tarantino’s own words:

The Madrid electoral board is pushing to have the protest banned before the elections. To defy the ban people must get together and sign a petition. And they are. From all over the world. And a map is registering it all live.

There are only two things I have to say:

• You would never ever find this kind of map coming from traditional spanish mainstream media. And that says something.
• It’s a great example of a simple but powerful mesh between mapping, information design and political awareness.

Kudos to Vizzuality and Actuable for documenting and sharing this real time. Not only for Spain but for the world.

Unlike advertising agencies, we are not in the business of selling. We love our work and we love showing off the diversity of work we’ve done (please ask to see our portfolio!) but that’s because every project is crafted with thought and research, and with respect for our clients. We put all our resources into every client that engages us because we don’t need to save our best ideas to sell ourselves to potential new clients.

Supernicestudio.com

Something unique that you’ll remember, but hard for others to guess.

Should contain a minimum of 7 characters and maximum of 12 characters.
Should contain at least one numeric character.
The same character cannot appear more than twice in the password.
The same character should not repeat more than twice in a row.
There should be no spaces in the password.
The password cannot contain the characters Q,q,Z,z.

There’s gotta be some kind of reward to those who make it. Yeah, that’s probably it.

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.

Truth is: I would like to work for The New York Times

http://sixrevisions.com/infographs/web-designers-vs-web-developers/

This is what’s wrong with flickr and why we made BlackVostok (among other reasons).

I’d sell my soul to Lucifer to be on that team.

In some of my recent talks I’ve mentioned the story behind USA Today. I think it’s one of the best examples to learn about information consumption and adaptation.

USA Today launched almost 30 years ago built on a premise: that most Americans didn’t read, that they mostly got news from television (color television) and that they spent a lot of time in front of the tube.

Al Neuharth, USA Today’s founder, understood the new context and decided to design a newspaper from scratch, one based on these premises where:

• there was color all over (for pictures, for sections) just like on TV
• photos drove the stories and not the opposite
• articles were short
• news didn’t need a follow-up, there was no incremental coverage

This was the result, the fresh design of the USA Today in 1982:

And here is what the New York Times looked like in the early 80′s (see how big the change was?):

In short, USA Today wasn’t targeted to newspaper readers but to TV watchers. The critics called it the McPaper, the junk news, the fast food of information. But despite that they ended up being the most read paper in the USA. They understood their new readers and the new context. They won.

And that is why most old newspapers redesign for the internet or for the ipad and they fail miserably. Why? They don’t pay attention to new users and their new contexts of use.

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino on innovation hubs (and coffee)

UPDATE: Michael Flarup has taken down the VV2 icons that were a ripoff and claims to have contacted Helveticons.ch in the hope of have the issue straightened out.

Some dude at iconpark.net is ripping off the excellent work of Maximilian Larsson on Helveticons. Check it out:

Click to see the whole comparison

This guy (who happens to be Michael Flarup @flarup) is on top of the Vostok’s Pyramid of Suckytude ^TM:

1. Appropiating the work of others (this totally sucks)
2. Just bitching (this sucks)
3. Just bullsitting (this kinda sucks)
4. Just theorizing (this doesn’t suck but doesn’t rock)
5. Doing, building (this doesn’t suck at all, it rocks)

Shame on you iconpark!!

I write novels. And I work everyday as well as I can. This is a job, not a gift from God. I’m not an artist. I have a moral obligation to myself and to those who read me. I have to focus on that and not going around theorizing on literature, which I don’t give a damn about.

Arturo Pérez Reverte at El Cultural

And the original quote, in Spanish:

Yo escribo novelas. Y trabajo todos los días y lo mejor que puedo. Esto es un trabajo, no un don divino. No soy un artista. Tengo una obligación moral conmigo mismo y con la gente que me lee. Tengo que concentrarme en eso y no ir por ahí teorizando sobre literatura, que me importa un carajo.

Arturo Pérez Reverte en El Cultural

FFFFOUND!

The images correspond to El País, El Mundo and ABC.

These structures bleed consensus and politics from every pixel. I’ve been in a couple of these projects and I understand the politics behind a newspaper redesign. All the “we cannot harm our current readers” and “we need to find a spot for this and that” only leads to having the same again and again.

And the constant increase of screen resolution is not helping but increasing the damage. Remember when most newspapers went from 800×600 to 1024? Instead of using those extra pixels to make everything bigger and give some white space they came up with an extra column for junk.

Much has been said about how to renew online journalism. If they just started by questioning these obsolete structures… Jeez… I am so looking for the day when a big exec has the guts to get rid of commitees, consensus and departmental presence to make something different, some design where you see a strategy, a point, a purpose.

A few months ago I wrote an article expressing my displeasure with American Airlines‘ hideous online presence. I also spent some time mocking up a redesigned version of their website. To my surprise, a user experience designer at AA.com emailed me an amazing response describing some of the design problems faced in large corporations. You should read my original article here and the response from Mr. X here.

An hour after I posted the response, American Airlines fired Mr. X.

Dustin Curtis at The Incompetence of American Airlines & the Fate of Mr. X

(Thanks Bastian)

Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned.

Derek Powazek at Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists

This article is so clear, so well explained and so aligned with us that I am seriously thinking of translating it into Spanish.

Design strategy, post-it notes, ethnography, cocreation, design thinking, iteration, methodology, big boards, flowcharts, innovation, moodcharts, multidisciplinary, cardboard prototyping, deliverables, ideas, process.

instead of…

Portfolio. Results. Ratios. Agile. Deliver. Design. Product.

Sounds to me like a late echo of what we used to hear from IDEO back in the late nineties. It was amazing to most of us: new and interesting methodologies for designing smart products. You could be a sociologist and end up designing cool sunglasses or high-tech medical equipment. What a promise… huh? Apparently many design consultancies (and I say “consultancies” with a bit of sarcasm) kept the methodology part but forgot about the delivery/product part.

I am not saying that methodology, etnography and all that doesn´t matter. It does. We do so at Vostok (sometimes, only if necessary). What I am trying to say is that it’s the result that matters, not the methods, not the concepts. It’s the product of your work, not the work itself. Show me what you’ve done, not how you do it.

All the crafty wadus-wadus is cool, the fancy videos, the whiteboards, the multidisciplinary meetings in rooms with pencils, paper and all… But that doesn’t make you a designer. It’s the product that makes you a designer. And if the result is good (both for client and user) who cares about how you got there… It’s not what you say what matters, not what you blog or what you tweet, not what you report or what you put on a 99 slide powerpoint. It’s what you do, what you finally create what matters.

Here’s the picture of Renfe’s stand at FITUR, stolen from Realidad Aparte’s website:

For those unfamiliar, Renfe is the Spanish railway company, well known on the internets for having the crappiest, never-working site ever seen. It doesn’t work on mac, it doesn’t work on Firefox and sometimes it just doesn’t work on anything. It’s been like that for months (perhaps years) and nothing seems to happen. Shame on them, shame on our politicians.

Check it out, please:

How could they dare extracting usability conclusions based on first usage? How can they say things like “One participant actually thought that…

These kind of tests make me feel that either…

a) most users are stupid
b) most of the so called “usability engineers” are stupid
c) most u-tests are totally useless and worthless

I know, this is a total rant but… jesus!! I am so getting tired of the usual “usability thing”…

SEO is using deodorant instead of washing. SEO is masking bad coffee with sugar. SEO is cramming instead of studying. SEO is using pain killers instead of going to the dentist. SEO is taking weight loss pills instead of exercising. SEO is a comb-over. SEO is Scientology. SEO is Paris Hilton. SEO is the Zune. SEO is the morning-after pill. SEO is astroturf. SEO is not the real thing. SEO is cutting corners. SEO is not the solution. SEO is bullshit.

Ehogan McCabe from Contrast

Voxan, by the great Philippe Starck
More pictures here

(thanks, Agus)

Seen here

Totally wrong.

But today I found something unbelievable:

In order to complete registration, you must provide a valid credit card and billing adress to indicate you are over 18.

Way beyond stupidity.