Dan Zambonini Archive

Classic Geeky Objects of the 20th Century

By Dan Zambonini, April 3, 2010, 7:52 pm in Collectables, Design, Past

Ericsson Ericofon Telephone

1954, by Blomberg, Lysell and Thames. Made from ABS plastic. Typical eBay price: from £50.

The “Cobra”, nicknamed after its shape, was the first one-piece telephone. More than just a design gimmick, the innovative ergonomics ensured it was initially a success in hospitals and other environments where peoples’ movement was restricted.

Originally available in 18 colours, the phone also featured one of the first transistor buzzers, giving it a distinctive chirping sound rather than a traditional telephone bell ring.

The button on the base of the telephone depressed as the phone was placed down, hanging up the call. When the phone is picked up, the button is released, picking up the receiver: cleverly building automated functionality into the intended physical use of the object.

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Braun Phonosuper SK4 Record Player

1956, by Gugelot and Rams. Made from sheet steel, wood and perspex. Typical eBay price: from £1000.

Like the Ericofon, which was co-designed by a non-designer (Thames was an engineer), the SK4 was co-designed by an architect, Dieter Rams. Originally designed to be a low-cost entertainment unit, the clever use of modern materials and minimal design ensured that the Sk4 – also known as Snow White’s Coffin – would become a design classic.

The use of sheet steel allowed a single layer to be wrapped around the front, top, and back, with the electrical components inserted from the bottom. This clever design removed the unsightly wiring normally found at the back of the unit, allowing an entertainment system to be positioned in the centre of the room as ‘furniture’ for perhaps the first time.

Standard record players of the time had a wooden or other solid cover that hid the complexities of the turntable when not in use. Although sheet steel was first considered for the SK4 lid, the design team found that it had a negative effect on the quality of the sound. So, for the first time, a transparent perspex lid was used, displaying the beautifully arranged controls in all their glory. This design decision was quickly adopted by other manufacturers.

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Brionvega TS-502 Radio

1965, by Zanuso and Sapper. Made from ABS plastic. Typical eBay price: from £250.

The design duo Zanuso (another architect) and Sapper created many stunning objects, including the first folding telephone (the Siemens Grillo) and the first European transistorized portable television, the gorgeous Brionvega Doney 14.

This stunning radio, measuring about 10 inches tall, folded into a cube and featured a slide-out carrying handle. Dubbed in the marketing materials as “the protagonist of its environment”, the unusual design ensured that people took notice wherever it was placed.

Still available with the same design today, 45 years later, the TS-502 proves that “classic” design is anything but classic: rather than creating something in-keeping with the style of the times, truly “classic” designs are those that break the mould.

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Olivetti Valentine Typewriter

1969, by Sottsass. Made from ABS plastic. Typical eBay price: from £100.

Designed by yet another architect, the Italian Ettore Sottsass set out to create the “anti-machine machine”, in what could be see as the predecessor of the iBook and other Apple products that introduced office objects to the home.

Sottsass described his creation as “a biro among typewriters”, and later as “too obvious, a bit like a girl wearing a very short skirt and too much make-up”. Even so, his simply designed colourful typewriter became popular with many a budding poet and author, and was supported by a marketing campaign with art from Milton Glaser (of “I ♥ New York” fame).

In an attempt to simplify the typewriter as much as possible, it is rumoured that an early prototype of the Valentine only had a single case of letters (i.e. could not switch between upper and lower case), perhaps predicting the informality of modern-day SMS and email messages.

Olivetti are the only company that still manufacture manual typewriters.

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JVC Videosphere Television

1970, by JVC design team. Made from ABS plastic. Typical eBay price: from £70.

Clearly influenced by the space race of its time, the Videosphere seems to embrace every constraint of the technology, and then adds a few more unnecessary ones for the heck of it.

An 8″, black and white television, the videosphere housing accentuates the curved tube screen, and adds unreachable controls at the top/back, together with a chain for hanging the TV from the ceiling.

A stunning, classic object that demonstrates how great design sometimes wins over functionality (though I’m not sure I’d actually like to watch anything on it).

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Polaroid SX-70 Camera

1972, by Dreyfuss. Made from chromium-plated plastic. Typical eBay price: from £40.

The great Henry Dreyfuss, originally a theatrical designer, was asked to design the first camera to use Polaroid instant film.

Not only was it the first camera to use instant film, it was the first folding SLR camera.

And not only was it the first folding SLR camera, it was (in a later model) the first auto-focus SLR camera.

A stunning piece of engineering and design, the folding camera was designed to fit in a “gentleman’s pocket”. It rightly won many admirers: Andy Warhol was a fan, Charles and Ray Eames made a short film about it, and Laurence Olivier gave his only product endorsement to it.

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Sinclair Cambridge Calculator

1973, by Sinclair. Made from plastic. Typical eBay price: from £15.

Sir Clive Sinclair, of lapdancing wife fame, named the stunning Cambridge pocket calculator after the original location of the Sinclair offices.

The Apple-esque minimalism on the outside was unfortunately not matched by equally stunning design on the inside. Although the prototype was built with standard gold-flashed nickel contacts on the switch, the production models used a cheaper tin-coated nickel. Switching the calculator on and off a few times smeared the oxidised tin across the contacts of the switch, quickly turning the calculator into an always-on version.

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Photo Credits

  1. Ericsson Ericofon photos by Flickr user mollybob.
  2. Braun SK4 photo by Flickr user withassociates.
  3. Brionvega TS502 photo by Flickr user gentax.
  4. Olivetti Valentine photo by Flickr user Andy Martini.
  5. JVC Videosphere photo by Wikimedia user Wackymacs.
  6. Polaroid SX-70 photo by Flickr user Master of Felix.
  7. Sinclair Cambridge photo by Flickr user Berto Garcia.
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The Design Process Behind Classic Album Artwork

By Dan Zambonini, April 2, 2010, 5:08 pm in Art, Design, Music, Photography, Present

Storm Thorgerson is a British designer and artist responsible for more classic album covers than you can possibly imagine one person could create in a lifetime. From Pink Floyd to Audioslave, The Cranberries to Muse, he has produced the most compelling and memorable album artworks of the last 40 years.

An excellent exhibition of his artwork runs in the east-London Idea Generation Gallery from April 2nd to May 2nd, 2010. Part of the exhibition highlights his creative process for a specific case study. Check out the exhibition yourself to see the process in action and in detail. For now, here’s a quick overview:

  1. The Brief. The designer listens to the music (possibly only demos at this stage), reads the lyrics, and talks to the band. These create a ‘brain soup’, from which ideas can be extracted to form the brief.
  2. Roughs. Over a number of meetings/days, the designer meets the band again for discussions, in an attempt to pin-down a theme or big idea. This stage is creative, with word-play, honest thoughts, and scribblings. The best are converted to more complete illustrations (the ‘roughs’).
  3. Tests. Once a rough is accepted and a budget agreed, a prototype is often created to ensure that the idea works. Depending on the idea, this could involve the creation of scale models from clay or polystyrene. If everything works, the final models are constructed.
  4. Shoot. A location is researched and booked, possibly for a long-time if outdoors and in uncertain weather. Models are erected and positioned, with help from volunteers if the shoot is big and complex. A wide range of photographs are then taken, under varying light/weather conditions and filters.
  5. Editing. This could be called ‘selection’, where the best shot from the shoot is chosen. This can take several days, if hundreds of similar shots need to be compared.
  6. Artwork. Finally, having chosen the perfect shot, any cleaning-up or final computer editing is performed, before handing over the final product.

Written down like this, the process seems so simple. When you consider that some ideas involve 700 or 800 iron beds arranged on a beach with the tide approaching, you begin to appreciate that it might not be so simple after all.

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Why Are Post-it Notes Yellow?

By Dan Zambonini, February 25, 2010, 8:27 pm in Business, Design, History, Present

A thought occurred to me as I stared at the Post-it notes on my desk: why are they yellow? I turned to Google, but could find no answer on the web. On the off-chance, I decided to ask 3M – inventors of the Post-it – via Twitter.

After much effort on their part, I received a detailed response via email, which included a transcription of an interview that had been conducted to specifically answer my question:

TRANSCRIPT OF DISCUSSION BETWEEN HUGH MURPHY (BUSINESS MANAGER, E-CHANNELS) AND DR GEOFF NICHOLSON (RETIRED, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT TECHNICAL OPERATIONS), 3M RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
(23rd February 2010)
HM: Why were Post-it Notes originally yellow?
GN: “Great question – fantastic question. “
“Guess what – we were in the labs and if you imagine, this is my lab here, and then there’s a corridor, and then there’s another lab. They happened to have some scrap yellow paper – laughs – it’s absolutely true. “
“Now afterwards we had a lot of people who said well it’s got a good emotional connection or…” (pauses) “that’s a load of … whatever.”
“They had some scrap yellow paper – that’s why they were yellow; and when we went back and said ‘hey guys, you got any more scrap yellow paper?’ they said ‘you want any more go buy it yourself’, and that’s what we did, and that’s why they were yellow.”
“To me it was another one of those incredible accidents. It was not thought out; nobody said they’d better be yellow rather than white because they would blend in - it was a pure accident.”
“Just like the adhesive was a pure accident. They are the best kinds of accidents to have, but you have to recognise it – which we did.”
HM: “So who actually invented the Post-it note?”
GN: “There were three people. Spence Silver invented the adhesive by accident. He was trying to make – he was in the business of trying to make stronger better adhesives to stick aeroplanes together –  and we do stick aeroplanes together.”
“He came to my office about 48 hours after I joined the commercial tapes division from the overhead projectors part of the business.”
“I’d been made the new products laboratory manager, and they hadn’t had any new products in about 15 years. They hadn’t had a new product since magic tape, and magic tape was about 15 years old.”
“So he knocked on my door. There were two guys – Spence Silver and another guy called Bob Oliveira. They had discovered this adhesive in 1968 – that’s when the patent was filed – and here we are five years later in 1973.”
“He’s saying ‘Geoff would you be interested in this adhesive?’ And I said yes. Why? Because I’m naïve – I’m naïve about adhesives. I don’t know much about it. And I also believe a certain naivety is important. He asked me if I was interested.”
“He had been trying for 5 years to get any business unit interested in this adhesive so he gave me samples and we started playing with things and we started making bulletin boards. “
“As we were making bulletin boards, and tapes and things like that, another guy who worked for me was Art Fry. He was making tapes for skis – ski tape – things like book arranging tape- Things that you’d put on a bookshelf and it would hold books in place”.
“And he said ‘why are you putting the adhesive on a bulletin board. Why don’t you put it on a piece of paper and then we can stick it to anything.’”
“You know – and that was the three of us that came good. And I was in a management role primarily to defend and go fighting for it”.
“When you get down to it with innovation – a lot of people are required to make it successful. Marketing sales, even the accountants.”
“But you sometimes have to fight for it – and that’s inevitable in something that changes the basis of competition. People resist change.”

So there you have it. Not just a fascinating piece of history, but evidence of a company that are willing to go above-and-beyond for no immediate profit or benefit to themselves. 3M (and Hugh in particular), you rock.

Post-it image by Flickr user zarprey

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Where’s The Love? Comparing Lyrics from 2010 and 1960

By Dan Zambonini, February 21, 2010, 10:26 pm in Culture, Language, Music, Present

The two images above (click for larger versions; created with Wordle) show the most popular words used in the US Billboard Top 10 songs from February 21, 1960 and February 21, 2010. I’m sure you can work out which is which.

(Note that this includes repetitions within the same song, hence the Imma.)

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Unorthodox Ships of War

By Dan Zambonini, February 14, 2010, 4:21 pm in History, Past

Concrete Ships forming the Kiptopeke Breakwater

During the First World War, steel shortages forced President Wilson to commission the construction of 24 cement war ships. The war ended less than a year later, at which time the first 12 ships were still under construction. These were eventually completed and sold to private companies. Many of them can now be seen slowly decaying off the coast of the U.S., and one has even been converted to a 10 room hotel off the coast of Cuba.

Almost 25 years later, Geoffrey Pyke recommended the construction of a huge aircraft carrier – the equivalent of a floating island – made from ice and wood pulp, during the Second World War. The material, dubbed Pykrete, possesses incredible tensile strength – more than concrete – at less than half the density. The project, named Habakkuk after a biblical quote (“I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe“), underwent a number of prototypes and tests, from secret lairs under Smithfield Market in London, to Lake Louise in Canada, but was never fully realised due to a number of engineering and cost concerns.

Wikipedia recounts an entertaining anecdote about a demonstration of Pykrete’s strength:

… at the Quebec Conference of 1943, Lord Mountbatten brought a block of Pykrete along to demonstrate its potential to the bevy of admirals and generals who had come along with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mountbatten entered the project meeting with two blocks and placed them on the ground. One was a normal ice block and the other was Pykrete. He then drew his service pistol and shot at the first block. It shattered and splintered. Next, he fired at the Pykrete to give an idea of the resistance of that kind of ice to projectiles. The bullet ricocheted off the block, grazing the trouser leg of Admiral Ernest King and ended up in the wall.

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