Today’s XKCD image made me smile. It also made me think of Help Remedies, and the recent minimalist packaging design experiment by Turkish designer Mehmet Gozetlik. Sometimes I do think our world is over-designed, and going back to the basics will actually make a brand stand out.
I also thought of what Mike said in his post about Black Mirror yesterday. (If you haven’t watched Black Mirror, go and catch it on 4OD now. The last episode, titled ‘The Entire History of You’ was particularly gripping and unsettling at the same time). Basically the episode is about the future, and yet we see retro objects in it. Classic cars, for example. I did notice it as I watched the episode but Mike puts it beautifully:
Perhaps the 3D printers of the future can knock out a shiny new VW Karmann Ghias as easily as today’s 3D printers churn out blobby grey trinkets. The presence of classic cars felt like a nod to our present obsession with polaroid filters a la Instagram and Hipstamatic, a kind of borrowed sentimentalism.
I think this is a trend that we are going to see more of in the next year.
The past becomes the future.
The simplest becomes the loudest.
One Size Fits One 