Intellygent Design
I’ve always been fascinated by how things fit together, how they function: both within themselves, and within the context for which they were designed (and, if not made by humans, how they evolved – just in case there are some deluded lunatics (a.k.a. religionists) reading this).
I do consider myself to be pretty good at putting some things together myself; admittedly just airy-fairy stuff like websites, marketing campaigns, logos and the like. Oh, and cooking. It was pretty obvious pretty quickly at school that, even though I appreciated the idea of woodwork, metalwork and anything to do with manual dexterity, I was pretty bloody useless at coming up with much more than a tie rack that could hold a tie or two. At something approaching horizontal.
Having completely bollocksed my schooling (by failing large in the A-level subjects I’d been crow-barred into: physics as taught by timid bore, maths as taught by an intense Seth Efricen, and geography as taught by a failed socialist activist), I launched myself into the World of Work like an enthusiastic emu: flapping like the clappers, but mostly in a downward direction. Eventually of course, the enthusiasm found other ways of expressing itself: drugs, drumming and much drama followed.
It wasn’t until much later that I discovered a quality within myself that made life a little more meaningful: grim determination. Of course, it might well have served me well back in my teen years… but then most of us have similar thoughts.
It was with grim determination that I set up my first business and learned myself copy writing. And design. And press advertising. And exhibition design. And eventually web design.
Still, all that lot notwithstanding, the reason I’m writing and you’re reading is that I’m an opinionated bugger and you’ve got nothing better to do. So here’s something you can do the next time you see an ‘innovation’ and wonder whether it’s really better than the last version… use the Bendy Bus Test.
You can’t use a bendy bus as a classy souvenir icon: it’s just the wrong shape.
Consider that the streets of London were famous around the world, not least because of the traditional bright red London bus. All through the years, these long, bendy uber-coaches had been snaking their way through the capital, carrying workers, shoppers, drunken louts and school children to and from their daily/nightly place. True, they took up a lot of space, but they took up a lot of passengers too.
Then along comes a bright young designer with a radical idea: dispense with the bendy mechanism, take the back half of the bus… and put it on top of the front half! Absolute bloody genius! Literally half of the road space taken up by the old design freed up at a stroke! A single point of entry/exit, ensuring that all passengers paid their fares! Better views for the people sitting on top! Would the advantages never end? It doesn’t appear so, as the new – let’s call it a ‘double-decker’ – design is far easier, and therefore cheaper, to maintain. Yay! – let’s get rid of the old, stoopid articulated contraptions and replace them with this wiz new design!
See? Easy isn’t it? Plus, you don’t have to waste all that money by introducing an actual bendy bus.
Every time you see a ‘new’ design idea, simply apply the same logic: pretend the new design is the original, present the old design as the innovation, and you’ll get a rather good idea of what crap you’re being sold in the name of progress.
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