insights, ironies and idiosyncrasies in communication and design

from the wide, wide world and the world wide web

Monday 30 November 2009

Obey the lure.


While the police mannequins that have popped up on Bangkok street corners over the past few months have not really posed a serious deterrent – as the boys in brown, in their last, permanent inactive posts, are far too easy to detect as being the dummies they are from a distance of even a block away – there is one theory that this is all part of a bigger, less innocuous ploy.


Eventually, so familiar with seeing the plastic patrol cops all over town, Bangkok drivers may be lured into a false sense of security and naturally begin to speed by every intersection, confident that the only eyes upon them are resin; though the real police meanwhile may just take advantage of this lax attitude and reappear on duty, keeping as still as the dummies themselves (something that shouldn't prove to difficult for some considering their lack of manoeuvrability) thus catching out the lackadaisical motorists and fining them (all very fairly) on the spot.


Photography by Asit Prueangwet.

Sunday 29 November 2009

Downside up.



Thailand has long demonstrated true creative innovation in the fields of graphic, interior and product design but has, quite understandably, never been famed for its inventive use of English copy – not for want of trying – though the corner now might have been turned.


Either error has played the mother of invention and a poor parking lot signage order (double the amount of 'up' signs needed and no 'downs') forced Bumrungrad hospital into a resourceful rethink, or the signs are part of a deliberate design choice with an intentional economy of words. Either way it's a playful inversion and a sign that the craft of copywriting is on the, er, up.

Photography by Asit Prueangwet.

Friday 27 November 2009

Plane Stupid.



In spite of rising scepticism – specifically the exposure of the conspiracy behind the 'anthropogenic warming myth' – climate change propaganda is continuing to get stronger it seems with agencies like Mother London creating hard-hitting commercials for the anti-aviation expansion group Plane Stupid featuring dead polar bears falling from the sky.

And whether or not you buy into the stat that there are more bears now than in 19XX, if you think shorthaul flights are, er, a bare necessity then in my opinion you are plane stupid. Our earth needs looking after whether it's getting dangerously hot or not right now and filling the atmosphere with CO2 is never (ever) going to make the world a better place to live.

Directed by Rattling Stick's Danny Kleinman.

Sunday 1 November 2009

The unfairest of them all.


Having spent too much in the hands of Apple Care recently, I'm starting to feel like duped Snow White. Despite the fact that I put my Mac through daily processor-heavy full-HD FCP rendering it still doesn't really seem fair.

Nothing though would sway me to switch to the world of PC.

Stencil by Banksy.