Battle of the Apps

Apple has slammed into Adobe's Flash – generally, though time-wise because of the iPad. Apple has been a favourite of designers since its inception. I've worked on Apple computers for most of my design life – at work and for personal use (except for a period of years when I worked on The Daily Telegraph which switched to PCs). But Apple is, of course, gaining fans well beyond the design world for their iPods, -Phones, -Tunes and, perhaps, -Pads.

Adobe, meanwhile, holds sway over pretty much all the design software that counts (since the self-created "death" of Quark). InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, DreamWeaver  – and Flash. It's Flash that Apple's Jobs hates and yesterday openly criticised and condemned. Experts (ie not me) will explain more about this – though the comments from readers of The Guardian's take reveal more than the journalist's article.

So, as a designer, I use Adobe on Apple. And this confrontation is ugly. It's so plainly a battle of big business to be even bigger business that it leaves me cold. Yet, designers, myself included, used to warm to Apple. Those are the days of old, when Apple's superb user interface and simplicity of use and, of course, design, made it a natural for designers. Now, the company's frontage slips and reveals that it's just as it ever was in business (minus the surface appearance) – one big player making sure it's improving its dominance against another big money-making player where the two overlap. Such is business, of course. But, still, an element of encouraging your audience to "warm" to the product was no bad thing in the rise of Apple. (Adobe went, successfully, more for the hard sell – even sending two representatives, back at the turn of the century, to the small Quark-using magazine I used to work on in Tokyo to talk to us and provide free trial software in an effort to shift us away from Quark. Meanwhile, Quark foundered in its own smugness while Adobe adapted.)

Warming is a thing of the past. Ugly spats between the two companies that, for a designer, "work together" is just another reminder that it's simply about big money. The online world, too, with its users cries of "for the people, by the people" is perhaps too often blind to the massive, old-fashioned crawl-to-the-top capitalism of it all. I guess it's a welcome back to the real world. I'm an established Apple user – it just makes sense for me. But it certainly doesn't make me feel attached to the idea of being an Apple user "naturally".

"We always did see the same, we just saw it from a different point of view"

Curious flickr collection of design "pairs". This is not a snide "gotcha" (of which there's perhaps too many on the internet), more a collection of originals and repeats and an exploration of borrowing, copying, inspiration, homage, theft, chance...

Via me studio
Post heading via Bob Dylan

What's the meaning of all this?

Nice explanation, from within the company, of how the design all Adobe's icons is arrived at and coordinated. In two parts, first here and then here

Using ALL the design space

So you believe Japanese design is subtle, quiet, clean? Think anything from subtle colour shifts in kimono design, to shoji paper windows and tatami floors, to classic scroll-painting with large "empty" spaces or Tanizaki's essay In Praise of Shadows etc. Think again: think most commercial television, those photos of Tokyo or otaku rooms, of course… or the ads in the subways for Shukan Bunshun. Here's one from this week:

(I guess there's a crossover somewhere between the "classic" and the crowded. More on that in future posts…)

I presume the idea behind Shukan Bunshun advertising is a) telling someone as much about what's inside as possible is the best way to get a sale, and b) giving someone on a long train commute into the city something to idly read will also more likely get a sale. It seemingly works: the weekly – a tabloid news, politics, entertainment and gossip magazine – is a big seller.

But is this one of the most unenviable jobs in layout there is? There's quite some work – and both copywriting and design skill – in getting it to hold together. It's a pity it's not used as an intro to the articles on the magazine's website where, in fact, the layout reverts to normal style – and indeed is pretty "quiet" for Japanese web layout. (You can, however, click to see advertising posters for each current issue.)

By the way, it's not a design restricted to Shukan Bunshun, but a favoured design of the weekly tabloid news mags. Below are the Shukan Post, Shukan Shincho, and Shukan Asahi ads all for the same, current, week. (And below them, a layout I did a couple of years back for the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in-house magazine of an interview with the editor of Shukan Shincho in which I made the illustration using the editor's photo in the style of the tabloid Shincho's layout. And here is the interview text.)

Well, I never…

Some album covers stay with you throughout the years: Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs, Dark Side of the Moon, Slade Alive! (inside and out), Tutu, Madhouse (etc…) An impact never to be quite repeated as CDs. And lost completely as a digital download icon. One of my favourites from a favourite artist, Joni Mitchell's Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, sprung a surprise on me just today, even though it was released in 1977 and I've seen it a multitude of times.

Only here, in an interview with Joni and a drag-queen Joni impersonator in the LA Times, did I learn that the black man pictured on the cover next to (white) singer Joni is a photograph of Joni dressed up. Never having read that much about the album in the intervening years, I'd never heard of this (or, indeed, any "controversy" around it).

Sometimes I have to question my powers of observation, even though as a photographer and designer I shouldn't need to. Enjoyable discovery or salutory lesson in looking closer?

Anyway, classic cover – with, as often, Joni as designer as well.

Manga and the iPad

More on manga and more on the iPad – in combination – here from Japanese popular-culture watcher Roland Kelts.

When I was quoted, in brief, about how designers might use the iPad recently, I thought it's unlikely to be used for designing on, but there's a definite possibility we'll be designing for it. How would manga fit in? In its general line-drawn form, it doesn't necessarily need the full power of, say, Photoshop, should you opt to draw it on an iPad, it doesn't need the variety of fonts and font-sizes coupled with imported pictures etc etc. If the iPad takes off (and it seems likely that it or something very similar will come into play) I guess it's just possible that manga is one field which could also be designed on the iPad if the right app is invented. Or is the pad (can one lowercase the name as a generic description?) also just too small to work on? A work area smaller than the size of A4 would cramp not only their hands but perhaps even an illustrator's style.

Personally, I hope that manga stays largely drawn on paper, however it finally ends up being read. (And as I mentioned before, I don't buy the dead trees argument that paper is wasteful in terms of consumption and product-use – despite my choice of photo above!)

But the way manga is read could alter the way it's drawn, anyway. If the iPad or equivalent takes off as a way of reading, I'd assume there be a "demand", whether conscious from the reader or imagined by the marketers, for add-ons – a sound-effect, some animation, some click-to-reveal, a link to some character's history etc. There's currently a difference in reading manga (comics) and watching anime (animation). Will there be a hybrid (for which the clever, non-native-speaker adapters of the English language will come up with a new term)? Is there a demand for such a hybrid? One of the joys of manga is its frame-by-still-frame story-telling. Not only one of the joys, but one of the genre-specific definitions.

As an only occasional reader, I can't speak for the mass-consumers out there. Nor, yet, can we tell if the iPad will succeed, and people will then enjoy both still-frame manga on either paper or digital device (or both) alongside hybrid, "interactive" comics on an e-reader only.

If we're on the cusp of a change, we also can't tell yet whether it's for the better. (And, to allow me a joke at the expense of otaku – going to the bookstore is one form of human interactivity: taking that away and downloading even still-frame manga at home might not be a change for the better!)

The futurists see the iPad as a device to change things – or business at least. It seems increasingly possible that that is so, but the rest of us without foresight into the future will still have to wait and see.

This fading old sign, warning children about road safety, pulled no punches. It had great impact, if you'll excuse the pun.

Photoshop disaster?

I quite regularly check the Photoshop Disaster blog. It's a collection of "commercial and awful" Photoshop work and it has the occasional howler which makes it worth checking.

The problem is the "democracy" of the web and the necessity that the blog chose frequent images. (It is only the occasional howler which is interesting.) You often find a picture posted that, well… isn't a disaster. Fair enough – the blog is just for entertainment. Except that, should you decide to read them, those leaving comments often follow the web-comment trend of holier-than-thou arrogance and intolerance of difference. "If you don't like it, go away." Someone asking a question as to how worth posting some pictures are just gets a reply from another commenter containing a link to the questioners own blog declaiming how boring her site (unconnected to design) is in an attempt to demean her argument – or is it just demean her?

This is increasingly the democracy of the web, which curiously seems less "free" as time goes on. Agree or go away. As an article in McSweeney's Panorama had it, "slouching towards similarity"

Meanwhile, both those who comment and the owner of the site seem to have a hard time recognising what is a disaster. Frequently, DVD covers are posted, which may be awful, but are rarely intended to be "realistic" looking – especially the comedy covers. And why should they be? Not everything has to conform to a general level of group-created standards. Many of the DVD covers may be "rubbish" (one or two postings may point that out) but frequent posts (the demand of the web) reveal nothing.

Other commenters seem to need to look a little closer at a natural human body and what it can look like – not everything strange about a body has been Photoshopped in.

Recent times have seen two examples of the decidedly questionable post-and-comments. One showed a large-size fashion model. The Photoshopping may have included any amount of skin-smoothing etc but the image was posted because the Photoshopper had allegedly shrunk the woman's head too much. However, another link to other pictures showed that the woman model was plus-size with what seemed a naturally "smaller" head. But the comments kept coming, and despite plenty of resistance the ususal "if you don't like it go away" attitude filtered through. The only ugliness I could perceive was in the post and some comment content.

Then a couple of days ago, a good quality ballet brochure cover from designers at me studio was featured. Oh, the comments – despite the imagery being an intentional expression of movement and dance. I couldn't fault the cover, but if someone else doesn't like it, fine. However, the determined appearance of those who think that there is only one correct way to represent things seems almost worrying. Many people commenting would shiver at Picasso ("wow, that's not where an nose should go! Didn't he have time to finish the job?") and while I'm not comparing the illustrator of the ballet cover with Picasso, it does seem to me that much of comment – on the web generally, in fact – is meaningless and creating some kind of new grouping of you might call the dictatorially normal. Good that someone from me studio replied and then posted his own news about democracy disasters (the April 16 entry).

Maybe the commenters are right, though. Walk away – don't get involved. Perhaps by leaving the group-minded intolerant to their own space, you can keep a head above the banal sarcasm.

Or perhaps I shouldn't write that on a blog.

Update, Oct 5, 2010: A recent post, again on plus-size women, was too prejudiced (even if intended as humour). I won't be checking again, even for the occasional howler.

Overheard in the newsroom – April 16

#4007
Copy editor to page designer: “Bite me.”
Page designer: “Ooh, that’s original. Kind of like your headlines.”

(Hmm, know that situation!)

You can't do this if you're reading on an iPad

More proof that paper printing isn't just "dead trees"! Here's new growth from old. (Not sure what the plants "think" of the ink, however. Well, anyway, there are probably as many chemicals in regular soil in the city.)

A great idea from Koshi Kowachi (who has also carved Buddhas into snacks, for example. See the manga farming on his website here). And a solution – one which might be needed – for those occasional discarded manga you come across. No need to even leave them on the train...

Via Pink Tentacle

A vanished look

Title Unknown, 1931

Pinned on the wall behind my computer is a flyer advertising last year's exhibition of Japanese photographer Yasuzo Nojima (1889–1964) here in Tokyo. Since I look at the portrait on that flyer every day, I thought it about time to feature the photographer on this blog.

Also, this month I'll be laying out a photo-feature for a magazine which is about an amateur photographer's work from the 1930s-60s and in part illustrates something similar in what has changed in Japan since the two photographers were working. (More on the magazine feature when it is published next month.)

That change is one noticeable thing about Nojima's work, whether portraits or nudes: it's the difference in the Japanese "look" – the difference in appearance but also in a way of looking at women. It's probably true across the modern world. Now, pale, slim, often blank-faced women (though the same is partly so for men, too) are too much the norm. Japanese womanhood seems smoothened, whitened – perhaps because of changing tastes in bodies, perhaps also changing priorities, changing diets, changing leisure time. Changes generally.

Nojima's models are rounded, look somewhat like "workers" even when nude, celebrate flesh – not "fat", but filled bodies, rather than the frequently surface-only slimness of today. And they look back at you not with the learnt look of a current professional model – blankly – but with character. Perhaps in Japan, like everywhere, people were just less concerned with presenting a look, less swamped with images all around which suggest how to look.

A couple of years ago, a group of Japanese friends and I were discussing whether the 60s movie Ten Black Women could be made today: whether 10 substantial Japanese actresses – complete with acting chops, impact, character, depth – could be assembled for the cast. We thought perhaps not (at least perhaps not ten), and the thought about these photos touches on a similar topic: what has changed and when?

Of course, this is a generalisation about how pictures are taken today and were then, and there are enough exceptions. But there's something in the photos that means I want to have one of the sitters staring back at me, engaging me, from the wall behind my computer.

Meanwhile, on the image at the top of this post, I love the focus on the toes, neatly captured like a jaw of teeth.

MyView on the iPad

This week I'm quoted in Tokyo's English-language magazine Metropolis about what designers might think of the iPad. Well, what I might think of the iPad – designers will have differing opinions, of course.

Basically, I put forward that it's not, initially, a product for design, but for general consumption. And whether designers want it or not will not differ much from anyone else's desire (or not) to have one. Whether we will be designing for the iPad is as yet an open question. People are already designing magazines etc to be read on it, but whether that will take off will depend on-yet-to-be-discovered general sales, not something designers will be in charge of.

Perhaps I'm a bit cautious – but, like everyone, I can't see the future! Personally, I like the idea but can't think of a use to warrant my buying one as yet. After all, firstly, I have to update my (Mac) work computer, a computer which I will be designing on not for.

Someone got out the wrong side of bed

It's always entertaining to see how people see things Japanese from the "outside" (which I guess often includes us who live here as foreigners). Here a New Yorker illustrator and designer gets angry with Hello Kitty.

Funny how Kitty brings out the bad in people – or rather people want to bring out the bad in her. One man even has a blog in rebellion at her cute overload – kittyhell.com

When she's bad, people tend to give her an angry expression, though since she has no expression, perhaps she's already feeling angry. Do we need to add it – she'd be perhaps more scary in calm-faced anger? Anyway, meanwhile, officially, (most obviously) Hello Kitty will never be evil, but she can be a punk. Her site says: "Hello Kitty proved to us that she can be anything we wanted her to be, and that includes being wild, adventurous and... punk."

Now you know.

Via Watashi to Tokyo

McSweeney's – issue 33

The issue unfurled

I was excited to receive issue 33 of McSweeney's (a literary journal). A little late – it was last December's issue – but I just spotted it here in Tokyo. I've occasionally seen the journal before but never bought it. It usually comes in a one-off design format, but this issue caught my eye and interest as a designer who has formerly worked on a newspaper – as a "celebration of the newspaper" the issue is like a multi-section paper complete with two magazines. And all in print.

Firstly, I liked the idea, so I spent the ¥1,300 yen (via Amazon, that's cheaper than the cover price at today's exchange rate, even though it's imported here in Japan. Hmm, a celebration of print bought cheaper via the web. OK, we'll gloss over that!)

Secondly, I'll now sit down to read it, when I have the time and taking my time. But the lead in the "Opinion and Analysis" section caught my eye as a starter: at last, some coverage of the use of energy of print vs web in an article on closing print mills in Maine. That print is "dead trees" argument which I've felt must be spurious. According to Don Carli, quoted in the article, from the Institute for Sustainable Communication, it is. "If the marketplace for timber, harvested sustainably from Maine's forests, collapses because of the propagation of a myth – which some might say is a fraud – that says that using the newspaper is killing trees … Then [the forest land] really is deforested." while, as our online use increases, he adds, "the rate of growth in server and data-center energy consumption is 'metastasizing'."

Interesting. I'm a consumer of the online as much as many. But as a designer, I've always hated the "dead trees" argument for getting people enthused about the online rather than print. Interesting to get some information. And entertaining to find it out reading from this design.

Boys Keep Swinging

Metropolis magazine have a feature (in English translation) in which female manga artists pick their favourite male manga depictions. (All taken from the Japanese book Moe Danshi Gatari)

What can you do with Spam?

Some answers are in the ad currently playing on Japanese TV.

It takes me back to school dinners, where we may not have had Spam "sushi" (as promoted on the can label and in the TV commercial here in Japan) but we did have the Spam fritters as also suggested in the ad. But we had added batter and, even at 11 years old, I sort of had the feeling that if I ate deep fried Spam fritters in batter too often I could be dead from furred arteries. At least it's just fried plain in the Japanese ad.

Spam is surprisingly popular in Japan. I'm never sure which imported foods would be successful. (I always that from the UK Marmite would be, but Japanese friends so far haven't liked it.) Spam's an American food, of course, but it's English connections are not only in the fact that I liked it when I was a child (and perhaps still now) but, of course, in the Monty Python song, whose lyrics "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam..." gave rise to the naming of spam email.

There's a Okinawan restaurant near me that has Spam as the pork ingredient in many dishes. Life can be strange – as is this Spam ad.