Tag: design

Skull Logs

now i really want a fire pit!

Even though it’s spring, it’s still chilly outside at night and a human skull ‘log’ might be just what the witch doctor ordered to keep you warm. It’s definitely a conversation piece, I’ll give it that. The human skull ‘log’ is for gas or liquid propane pits only.

Engineering Luck

If play is the way in which human beings rehearse life, it follows that we require our games to be filled with uncertainties, moments of caprice to which we must adapt our position and strategy. But we’ve grown more demanding about the luck that games serve to us—not too much, not too little. What remains constant is our interest in the nature of the luck that we experience. “When we experience luck in a game we feel a deep sense of attunement and alignment, almost like we’ve found the pattern, and predicted it”.

Studio D retrospective

This year we published a number of foundational research reports including Isa Pa EcoCash on mobile money adoption in Zimbabwe. It’s a good example of a project that required an experienced team and a nuanced appreciation of the political swirl that can occur. It also revealed the distortions between official quant data and what was happening on the ground.

AirSpace

We could call this strange geography created by technology “AirSpace.” It’s the realm of coffee shops, bars, startup offices, and co-live / work spaces that share the same hallmarks everywhere you go: a profusion of symbols of comfort and quality, at least to a certain connoisseurial mindset. Minimalist furniture. Craft beer and avocado toast. Reclaimed wood. Industrial lighting. Cortados. Fast internet. The homogeneity of these spaces means that traveling between them is frictionless, a value that Silicon Valley prizes and cultural influencers like Schwarzmann take advantage of. Changing places can be as painless as reloading a website. You might not even realize you’re not where you started…

The profusion of generic cafes and Eames chairs and reclaimed wood tables might be a superficial meme of millennial interior decorating that will fade with time. But the anesthetized aesthetic of International Airbnb Style is the symptom of a deeper condition, I think.

on the homogenization of space: sameness worldwide, reclaimed wood, craft beer etc.

Blandly

so good.

BLANDLY IS A FULL-SERVICE BLANDING AGENCY. We specialize in bland identity, bland development, bland strategy, blandbuilding, bland positioning, digital blanding, fully integrated blanding campaigns, bland UI/UX design, and bland environments.