Printed Antimatter

"Loony Zune?" Ouch!

I've done my share of kvetching about the Zune's packaging, and about how Microsoft (MSFT) tried to emulate the iPod but missed the mark. But since I don't have a Windows machine, I had little to say about the Zune itself (except that brown was a strange choice). But tech writer Andy Ihnatko has plenty to say about it-- and none of it is good:

The setup process stands among the very worst experiences I've ever had with digital music players. The installer app failed, and an hour into the ordeal, I found myself asking my office goldfish, "Has it really come to this? Am I really about to manually create and install a .dll file?"...

...Zune is incompatible with Windows Media Player, the familiar hub of the Windows desktop media experience...

...It's incompatible with Microsoft's own PlaysForSure standard, too...

...the Zune's sole wireless feature is "squirting" -- I know, I know, it's Microsoft's term, not mine -- music and pictures to any other Zune device within direct Wi-Fi range. Even if the track is inherently free (like a podcast) the Zune wraps it in a DRM scheme that causes the track to self-destruct after three days or three plays, whichever comes first...

Go read the whole thing. It is a laundry list of design flaws, each as horrid as the last. And even though Andy used to write for MacWorld, from what he says I think even the most dyed-in-the-wool MS fan will have problems with the Zune.

There's just one thing I'd like to add: Why must MS (and other companies) make products that LOOK like they have  clickwheels even though they really don't? You're not fooling anyone-- except the people you ARE fooling, who will then be pissed off.

Rock out with your Croc out

My mag Business 2.0 recently ran an article on Crocs. If you're one of the fifty people left in the world who are not wearing them, they're a colorful species of rubber/plastic clog that all your neighbors and their kids have on their feet. The consensus seems to be that they're hideously ugly. Strangely enough, this opinion seems to be shared by the people who wear them. In fact, the last two Croc'ed people I talked to admitted they were ugly, but added they were oh so comfortable. Apparently, wearing Crocs is like having a baby: It seems horrible to those who haven't done it, but those who have are smitten.

The design leader for next-gen game consoles: Apple?

In the wake of last weekend's console madness, it must be noted:

• Nintendo Wii: White.
• Microsoft Xbox 360: White.*
• Sony PlayStation 3: Black. But promo photos also showed it in silver and white.

Looks like Apple's aesthetic is driving design even in market spaces it hasn't occupied in years (and even then only briefly).

* Has replaceable faceplates that can presumably be any color. I wonder if they've sold a lot of brown?

Edward Scissorhands cuts a rug on Broadway, accompanied by sharp poster design

When I learned that one of my favoritest movies of all time-- Edward Scissorhands-- had become a Broadway musical, I was (as you can imagine) less than thrilled. And mind you, I'm one of the fifty people who went to the Broadway version of Stephen King's Carrie. But having checked the video clips on the musical's site, I think I can safely say that-- how to put this?-- I am not its intended audience. But I will give it props for two things: The dancing topiary costumes (how do the dancers see out of those things?), and this beautiful and evocative poster.

The cut-paper idea is so obvious and so perfect that one wonders why the original movie poster went for its pseudo-gothic Tim-Burtony style. Oh wait, that's why. Also, having the figure of Edward be the missing part of the paper says so much about how the character is himself missing so much (both physically and emotionally), and how he is so removed from society. It just goes to show how poster artists are really freed up when they aren't required to design around Johnny Depp.

Zune packaging update-- the Zune's about-face on the shelves

Since the Zune has hit stores, we've gotten a couple of comments about my Zune packaging post way back. To wit, ikyouCrow writes:

the back of the box actually has a picture of the zune with some media playing on it. maybe that should've been on the front, eh?

And enjoi writes on the Next Net:

What you forgot to mention was, THERE IS A PICTURE OF THE ZUNE ON THE BOX. Turn it aroumnd you dult.every single store ive been to has the zune imagine on the box facing tword the customers. Its funny how people will ignore certain parts of a story to help their argument.

Dult?

Anyway, this brings up an interesting point. Namely, that the back of the Zune box is a million times more interesting and engaging than the front. So why not make the front of the box the back? Because the front is where they put the Zune logo.

Of course, there's no reason that a package has to have a specific front or back, unless it is a book or a cereal box. But either way, the Zune's box has one side that has a lovely attention-attracting photo, and another side that is almost completely blank.

This all just feeds into my previous point that Microsoft (MSFT) missed the mark with the Zune's packaging. Perhaps their intent was for retailers to have half or all of the packages ass-backward on the shelves. In that case, why not make the back the front, and do something more interesting with what is now the back? And if this wasn't MS's intention, then what does it say that retailers are spurning MS's attempt at minimalism?

So, enjoi, please share a little more detail. At these stores, are all the Zunes backwards? Or just half? Or just a couple? And in which of these cases was it smart for MS to have one side of the package be a near-featureless brown expanse?

(Photo courtesy of swiped from Engadget.)

Little People, Big World and the tyranny of the average

This weekend I watched a couple of episodes of a reality show on The Learning Channel called Little People, Big World. If you haven't seen it, it's about the Roloff family, in which the two parents and one of the sons are little people (there are also two sons and one daughter of average height.)

This show is interesting from a design standpoint, because it shows the ways in which people at one extreme end of height's bell curve make things work in a society built for people of average height. For instance, the fixtures in the Roloff house are lower, step stools are always at hand, and cars have pedal extensions.

But one of the episodes I watched showed how dwarfs* can run up against problems that are not just dimensional, but legal. The Roloffs installed a deck, and its railings were the perfect height for the shorter members of the family. Unfortunately, local building codes dictated taller railings to protect people of average height, such as the three average-height children in the family.

This was pretty disturbing, because the show is all about how little people have to adapt to a world built for the average-sized person. For them to have to construct their own home to accommodate average-sized people was too much.

Car and Driver releases sexy '07 model

I love cars. I love them as design objects, and as technological wonders, and as expressions of their drivers' ids and egos. I don't really care about luxe toys for millionaires like Ferraris or Formula 1 or Panoz supercars-- I'm more interested in the everyday cars that regular people drive. That's why I love Car and Driver magazine. Sure, they love their supercars, but they'll more often talk about family sedans or cheap subcompacts or sport-utility-brat-haulers, and they always approach them with the same perspective: How much fun is it?

Apparently they've been having a little too much fun flogging those borrowed wheels around tracks, twisties, and town, because ed-in-chief Csaba Csere says they haven't gotten around to a major design overhaul of the mag in 20 years. They've been cruising for a long time, but with the December '06 issue, their art team has finally put the pedal to the metal and switched on the nitrous.

Design goes out to sea

I hope everyone who visits this blog takes some time to check out the links in the sidebar to the other B2 blogs. Many of them post on topics of interest to lovers of design-- f'rinstance the Utility Belt's gadgets, Third Screen's wireless devices, and 128 Hours's random cool stuff. But one that I want to highlight specifically is Jeff Davis's Waterlog, which covers "ocean tech, sail tech, and all things in the marine layer." This includes some of the neatest and strangest new inventions you'll probably never see, since they'll all be in the middle of the ocean or underwater.

Here are some links to get you started:

• A Benz shaped like a boxfish
• Robotic kelp that generates electricity from wave motions
• An inflatable catamaran that looks like a spaceship (follow-up)
• A propellor that looks like a seashell
• A ferry that uses a solar panel as a sail
• A trimaran that runs on biodiesel (and also looks like a spaceship)

Visa meets Looney Tunes

Okay, I feel like a total shill asking you to watch a commercial, but I swear I'm not on Visa's payroll. I just found this 60-second spot called "Lunch," apparently by TBWA/Chiat/Day, to be entertaining and effective, and worthy of a shout-out.

Viewers of my generation will have an instinctive affinity to it due to its use of a section of Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse," aka that song from the Bugs Bunny cartoons.

If you want to make sure people don't fast-forward through your ad, make it this much fun!

Election time means bad information design

Hello, all, sorry that I haven't posted in a little bit. Finishing off an issue and ELECTION FEVER occupied all my mental space. I spent all of Tuesday night glued to the web, checking results, watching the electoral maps fill in with red and blue. Which reminded me of how much electoral maps tend to suck as an infographic.

Here, let me quickly show you the problem of electoral maps. Here is CNN's map for the results in the House of Representatives:

Wow, check out all that red! Looks like the Republicans won big!

Wait, what? They got trounced? Lost 29 seats and didn't gain a single one?

A congressional district represents an average of 600,000 people. In the sparsely populated states out west, that means that one district can cover an entire state, as in the case of Montana or Wyoming. In denser urban areas, a district can be much smaller, such as incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district, which covers just three-quarters of a single city. Which means that a single red district can take up a hundred times the space of a dozen blue districts on an electoral map .

In addition to being bad in terms of showing data, poorly designed electoral maps are bad in terms of the modes of thinking they promote. More on that in a later post.

The New York Times was smarter with its information design. Check out their map of the House districts, which I ganked off the Skeptical Optimist:

Each equally-sized square represents one district. And the color-coding system works well too: A pale red or blue represents a district that did not change hands, while a bright red or blue is one that did. So you can clearly see at a glance that there were Democratic gains across the country, and not a single Republican one.

Maps are often used when the geographical location of the subject matter is significant, but all too often they are used in the wrong way. For instance, any map that purports to show information about the states, when that information does not have anything to do with the actual acreage of the states.

A while back some guy at some university created a map of the US in which all the states were re-sized to be of equal area, so that Rhode Island took up the same amount of space as Texas. It was brilliant, and I used it (with his permission) for an Infoporn in Wired magazine (for whom I worked at the time). I couldn't find it again with some blind googling, but if anyone out there knows what I'm talking about, could you drop me a line? Thanks!

Check back later when I'll talk about why electoral maps did as much to contribute to divisiveness in this country as any person's deliberate actions.

Disclosure: CNNMoney.com pays for Seen And Not Seen's webhosting. Although I suppose a disclosure would be more important if I were actually saying good things about CNN.