Distracted #15
Patterns: Hardware Gets Circular, Our Time of Silence, Nature As Our Ally, Alt-Job Listings, Immersive Immersion, IoT Returns
Patterns can be so much more interesting than one-off pings and posts. Here are a few:
Not quite what it was intended for….
Money printing and trading makes Animal Crossing “more like it’s Wall Street” WSJ
How Fortnite might evolve into the future internet.
How private label products (made by 3rd parties??) are changing the Amazon experience. (Term to memorize: Fulfillment by Amazon, or FBA business)
How Instagram (and the pandemic) is giving rise to the memorialization of the dead. (Connected: opinion on why we need to wait before we build memorials of the ones we lost in the pandemic).
Dispo photo app recreates the disposable camera experience and aesthetic to counter your phone’s lens tech.
NFT reinvented already: news articles, news ‘moments’, art exhibitions, creative concepts
Related: 2009 US movie beats up super-hero flicks for record theatrical sales in China in 2021
Hardware Gets Circular
Circular sounds: New personal speaker uses upcycled e-bike batteries.
Next gen BMW Neue Klasse cars will avoid the extraction of primary raw materials and use secondary materials “wherever quality and availability factors allow.” Lots of AI functionality will be built into these cars to keep them super efficient across all markets and geographies
I talked repair in the last email : now UK citizens get a ‘right to repair’ (more here in the Guardian)
A solar-powered light for your window that “harvests energy by day to light your home at night.”
How Braun partnered with design lead Virgil Abloh to rework a design classic “with purpose.”
Nature As Our Ally
“The beauty of gardening and nature is it’s always here…. It’s a reminder that life goes on.” Useful meditation on engaging audiences with style and content - and plants: How a British Gardening Show got people everywhere through the pandemic.
Fascinating conceptual book on plant design including the theme of Plants as Allies: speculative designs that look at “future alliances or future cooperations with plants.”
Planted disposable mask will sprout
If no one is going to come by and see it, why bother cutting it: the end of lawn.
Mushrooms will save us and are the answer to everything.
New word: Waldeinsamkeit - German: searching for the solitude of the forest.
Our Time of Silence
Empty: Berlin clubs, London Tube, Toronto cannabis store.
How a year of dangerous decisions has upended our lives and relationships - and changed “how we relate to other Americans.” (538)
Data on dating, one year into COVID
Also, Maisie Cowell’s illustrations are a quiet reflection of frustration and loneliness in lockdown.
A Whimsical List of Your Brand’s Future Values
Practical Elegance “Practical elegance… means that the thing we built was worth building, and it left the user feeling better, not worse, about their choice.” Seth Godin
Visual Poetry (to sell whiskey)
Intentionally Incorrect - making mistakes that can be discovered like easter eggs.
Vulnerability for brands
People just helping each other out, just because…
The rise of food-sharing apps: “It’s such a small thing, but it makes me feel good and my neighbor feel good. And a lot of small acts can end up making a big difference,” one user says in this piece.
Love this project from SF artist that I follow, Tucker Nichols: He takes free requests on his website and sends painted cards to people who need flowers.
How London teenagers hack street signs to get their environmental message across.
Official Emotional Support Beer
Reframing Retail
Out of Hong Kong and launched on the new moon in Scorpio: a design-led, spirituality store.
Repositioning the parlor as an Ice Cream Social
Here’s a possible retail trend… “I specialize in plants that don’t sell very well.” Ha! Plenty of gems in this NYT piece on the way retailers are describing their niche retail outlet: “unrepentant ornamentalists”, sellers of “woodland treasures”…. Dig in.
Pop up gives a taster of new burger joint in Oakland.
Why department stores like Nordstrom are betting on livestreaming. Plug: PSFK research paper on Livestreaming
Alt places to find freelance-work
There’s something bubbling around how creative professionals find employment - or at least revenue streams…. I should have bookmarked more of these as I saw them but here are two examples for now:
Giphy becomes job marketplace with ‘hire me’
Facebook rewards content makers with a new set of video formats
Not a pattern, it’s just interesting how luxury brands pursue radically different strategies
Chanel unveils Global Culture Fund to support “Pioneering” artists
Hermes creates a bag out of mushroom.
How Macintosh collaborated with Jeep to create a high end in-car sound system. (Compare with Braun above too)
Dolce & Gabbana taps DJ Khaled for eye-catching collection
Food Adventures (a bit of a bucket of links)
Bloomberg reports that to becoming a truly adventurous eater—ask what’s on your plate after you’ve tried it.
36% of fish is mislabeled so time to try some alt-fish.
Polaroid pen writes candy - also check: Laser etching food.
Via Neal U: Eating through Iran
Rooftop igloos for outdoor dining. Check my Future of Home 2030 report for more on this concept of parasitic architecture.
FastCo takes a bite into the livestreaming classes by Jenn Nicken, the founder of The Chef & The Dish. “By the end of your class… you feel like you’ve taken a virtual trip to a different part of the world. My goal is to make the computer distant… That’s what I aim to do. I want the computer to disappear.”
Immersive Immersion
Ear, ear; not 1 but 2 immersive, sound & video-mapped Van Gogh exhibitions coming to London this year.
Adventure.Lab - join 8 friends in VR and party. Mashable review
Kaws retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum - expansive and immersive too.
Klein Dytham Architecture in Japan create a fairytale building in a clearing of the forest.
We’ve all heard about 3D printed houses but here’s another angle on them from the people who now live in them.
The City of Arles is southern France gets a cathedral-style art center from Gehry.
An immersive art exhibition features 400 trees.
TikTok seems to be having a Facebook 2008 Moment
How BookTok videos on TikTok influence publishers and best-seller lists.
“Why Real Estate brokers should be on TikTok”
Rough drafts: The NYT looks at how music performers are testing out ideas on TikTok to see if they catch on.
Glossy interviews Walmart CMO about the retailer’s use of TikTok: “Our overall social strategy is centered around engaging with customers on their terms, on channels they love. We want to show that we ‘get’ them and understand how to fit into their lives.”
Kinda seems like there are some weak signals for a new wave of innovation in Consumer IoT…
Remember the XBox Kinect camera. A lack of open-source innovation and the rising sophistication of the mobile phone camera kinda tidied that tech away - until now: an electronics maker is releasing a camera that’s going to help electronics - and robots - recognize things.
What possibilities if all your IoT electronics were given free data on their network plan.
Circular rhythms: researchers transform smart speaker into a contactless heart rhythm monitor.
Useful Resources
Social Impact provider database.
Branding Style Guidelines database
PSFK report on Embracing the Diverse Consumer
**** That’s it ****
Piers Fawkes
PSFK | Papa Tees (new/sneak peek) | Co-Live Costa Rica | Wallkit | Retail Innovation Week
And Yes. This newsletter is on Substack. I don’t know what to say or do about that yet. For now, if we want to look at sustained corporate misbehavior, let’s watch the trailer for WeWork together:
*I use Feedly for bookmarking and for news-tracking, fyi