I haven't seen…

…anyone walking around with one of these. But then, perhaps I thought they were having lunch. Food-themed covers for iPhones from Strapya in Japan.

Thanks to Lena in Greece for the tip. Obviously, news of Japanese quirks spread gloabally faster than I get to know them here. Or, more likely, I'm just out of touch.

Bill Viola

Superb

Photography and a reason

Having struggled with my "reason" to take photos – and the swampland of photography on the internet making me wonder why I should add to it – I found great photographer Nan Goldin's tips for budding photographers interesting:

"Top tip: Don't do it. There are way too many photographers. Try to draw or get politically involved in something that matters. And unless you need to make art to stay alive, you shouldn't be making art."

I see that as a warning to myself 

Interesting interview over on The Guardian

Portraits 18

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, film-maker, on a roof in New York, 1992
Jeunet was in New York promoting his first film as director Delicatessen. On the roof of the promotion company, a playful Jean-Pierre mimicked the listening through air-ducts that played a part in the film. For The Village Voice.

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

Kenneth Grange

To tie in with an exhibition at the Design Museum (starting July 20), an article in the Guardian about now-82-year-old, still-working designer Kenneth Grange, whose work has ranged from the Kodak instamatic (on the exhibition poster, above) to the iconic InterCity 125 trains (which I always liked). Iconic and impressive work.

Update, 20 July: more here in The Guardian, including mentions of designs which are part of the fabric of my life, from razors I used (and admired) to food mixers that defined my idea of a kitchen when young

Logo let go

When is a logo plagiarism – or simply a copy – and when does it just stem from the same idea? Japan's Consumer Affairs Agency got a new logo just a couple of months ago, but it's already withdrawn (removed from the website yesterday) after the discovery of its similarity to the logo for WorldCat (a web-based searchable database of hundreds of libraries worldwide). They are almost the same – with a star being formed by the white space at the centre of 5 swirling (very similarly coloured) lines.

The design seemed much to close for accident – or, with a limited use of stars and swirls (often favoured logo iconography) and some helpfully built-in Illustrator colours, could it have been pure coincidence??

via Japanprobe

Time for the news

With either very neat timing, or just missing a small crucial addition to the subject (viz. Murdoch's trials), The Economist has a very good special edition on the future of news. It has a couple of takes on the idea that "news" is actually "returning" to the more socially-oriented media from which it originated, and the mould for current mass-media news could be seen as just a "a phase" rather than a truly established method. The special report also looks at the "Foxification" of news – ie introducing, or re-introducing, opinionated news. (Here, in an otherwise interesting piece, it does seem momentarily to get lost between introducing opinion but combined with "fairness". But I'm not sure how "fair" and opinionated piece can be!)

Of course, social media is justifiably central to the coverage of the report. But I do think there is a slight sense of "scrambling" in general in analysis of news to get at what is and isn't relevant about social media to news. The section uses the social media reports around the death of Osama bin Laden. Yet the guy who tweeted the events as they happened did so accidentally (he didn't know what was going on and only his followers would have been aware that anything was happening even if not knowing what) and so the "news" aspect of the tweets was retrospective. And as Obama scheduled a presentation to the nation, twitterers wondered if it was to announce the death/capture of Ghaddafi or bin Laden. Hardly "news", it seems to me, just speculation before the news happened.

Not that I want to deny the impact of social- and new media in news – here in Japan after the tsunami, I got my news about radiation from sources all over the web, being unable to rely on old media, and got updates on others' status, reports and well-being via Facebook. (But many a tweet seemed too insignificant when I read them with a retrospective eye – not actually being an immediate follower of anyone. And the lauded Quakebook, for example – quickly assembled, first-person accounts of the quake from mostly non-professional writers – just isn't a good read however good its cause.)

It's just that I think credit is due social media in the news where it is due – random speculation about what Obama may be going to say in an hour's time surely can't be called news, while behind-the-lines mobile-phone videos and tweeted reports during, say, the Arab spring uprisings most definitely can.

But those are just thoughts on reading a coherent and worthwhile section. (Available online, though without its "special section" feel, of course.)

Semiotic singularity

Japan likes to dot English phrases in design. Here "Polyphonic microcosm" has a fortunate arrowed translation into Japanese. Now I only need one for English.

Photos and pixels

Here's a curiosity: 100 pixelated camera illustrations. All free for use as you like as long as you credit their creator, Billy Brown. Thank you, Billy.

via mestudio

Paintwork drying up?

Nice little piece on the dying art of painting Fuji and other scenery on the walls of sento (public bathhouses) in Japan, by Justin McCurry in The Guardian.

Portraits: 17

James Ivory, film director, at home, London, 1991.
Half of the Merchant/Ivory film-making team, Ivory had the calm presence you might expect from the director of Room With a View etc. This shot though – in an apartment he shared with Ismail Merchant, his film and life partner who died in 2005 – was probably for an interview in promotion of Mr and Mrs Bridge.

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

July issue

My cover for the July issue of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in-house magazine. Four prominent Japan-based journalists/writers/pundits look at the future of various media in Japan.

The fourth issue after the quake and tsunami also still has a section on the aftermath – including one member's visit to two mass-funerals in one day. And these photos by Everett Kennedy Brown, taken in the affected areas with a 150-year-old camera and developed in a tent on the spot.

Non-mono

I haven't seen this in use on the street as yet, but thankfully someone is showing that not all smartphone handsets have to be so… similar. Product designer Naoto Fukasawa's update of this pre-smartphone infobar design (also for iida and mobile phone provider au) includes not only the handset design but the UI. Pity I'm with Softbank and their push of the iPhone – although Softbank's hybrid clamshell-and-touchscreen Aquos looks good too.