A history of Star Wars video games

I have to admit I’m a bit of a sucker for Star Wars video games, though very poor at finishing them. Dark Forces (Mac/PC) is still one of my favourites but I never got past one of the middle levels… Never mind, Dark Forces 2 soon followed! (I got stuck on that, too).

I’ve been disappointed with some of the console-based games (Knights of the Old Republic just doesn’t do it for me) but am intrigued by the upcoming Force Unleashed.

I just found a series of videos over at Gametrailer that give a great rundown of every single Star Wars video game (starting with The Empire Strikes Back – I remember seeing an ad for this when ITV first showed Star Wars and my memory of the game seems to have made it out to be far better than it actually was).

One of the earliest and best games is Death Star Attack, a vector-based game that allowed you to battle Tie Fighters and then recreate the trench run from the first movie. My schoolfriends and I were addicted to this game and every Sunday one summer we’d cycle to York University’s student union and take over the console there. I was actually very good at this game and even though you just repeated the same routines over and over again, it never got dull…

You can see high quality versions of the videos here. Even if you’re not a Star Wars or gaming fan, it’s an intriguing look at the development of video game technology.

How to sell chocolate

Naresh Ramchandani writes in The Guardian:

Call me a choco-Luddite, but isn’t a Twix essentially a Mars with shortbread in the shape of a KitKat? A Nestlé Crunch essentially an Aero with the chewy bits from a Picnic? But if a standard chocolate bar is relatively indistinguishable from other brands, cheap and easy to produce, how on earth do you sell one? Simple. By wrapping it in something that’s more distinct, more valuable and more important than the chocolate bar itself.

1. Wrap it in sex

This is what Cadbury’s Flake has done for years: beautiful women lie in baths or sit thoughtfully on the back of caravans and bite dreamingly and somewhat sexually into their Flakes in silent statements about a loveless world …

Flake advertising is a heady mixture of innuendo, broken hearts, chocolate and, as of last week, fame – as Joss Stone became the first famous Flake girl. Stone is beautiful, has already sung about pesky men in songs like You Had Me plus, like any true Flake girl, it seems she can eat chocolate and stay stick-thin. The ad shows her alone in the studio, singing the words of the famous Flake jingle as if it were a heartbreak anthem.

2. Wrap it in self-sacrifice

Think of the Creme Eggs campaign, where various eggs find ways to top themselves and release their inner goo to the world. The posters are OK, the games on the website are OK too, but the really funny part of the campaign is the television executions – where animated Creme Eggs use everyday objects like egg slicers and garlic crushers to commit goo-liberating hari-kari.

And am I overinterpreting a bit when I say that the ads are very timely? The eggs are here for Easter – according to my old RE teacher Easter is a time when, like the eggs, a famous historical figure gave his life to release goodness into the world. Is Cadbury’s using its new multimedia campaign not just to spread the word – but the word? Let’s see if it resurrects the campaign next year.

3. Wrap it in stimulation

Thanks to one of the country’s longest-lasting jingles, I grew up thinking that ‘a Mars a day helps you work, rest and play’. It is of course a total overclaim – if all these things could be experienced in some time-release sequence, Mars would be sold in capsules over the counter. If they could be experienced simultaneously, why would anyone bother with illegal drugs?

The old jingle is back – albeit with some judicious editing. A balanced diet ruling means that Mars cannot say ‘a Mars a day’ anymore – which may not be a bad thing.

4. Wrap it in nod and a wink

If the choc bar ad formula is to make a chocolate bar mean far more than it does, the perfect subversion of the formula is to mock that. Enter a man playing drums in a gorilla suit in by far the best chocolate bar ad of recent times.

If Flake is the bar of sex, is Dairy Milk the bar of passion and potency? The first time you watch the Dairy Milk ad, you find yourself wondering. Then the gorilla pounds the drums, Phil Collins sings over-earnestly, you giggle and know it isn’t so. It’s just a tasty piece of confectionery wrapped in a playful piece of advertising, just as profound as a bar of mass-produced chocolate should be.

Future brand trends uncovered?

From Design Week:

The shift towards softer, more emotional and intuitive brands and products will be just one of the trends that designers need to be aware of next season, says trend research group The Future Laboratory. ‘Womenomics’ – or ‘soft branding’ – is just one of five trends that will be explored at Future Laboratory’s forthcoming bi-annual Trend Briefing Day in April.

Chris Sanderson, creative director at Future Laboratory and Viewpoint Magazine, says, ‘We don’t want to suggest that designers should be reinventing the wheel every six months. What we are concerned about showing are the ideas and issues that are relevant to design and designers.’

One suggestion is that designers should prepare to welcome ‘soft branding’ with an awareness of the rise of the feminocracy and indulgence decade. Tom Savigar, strategy and insight director at Future Laboratory, says that this does not mean that branding and packaging should be pink, but it is about making products more intuitive – like the ‘feminine’ Apple Mac, in contrast to the more masculine Dell design.

He adds, ‘The Apple iPod introduced an emotional element to its design which men love.’ The Nintendo Wii is another example of design being used in a female way.

Another trend under discussion will be the rise of concierge-style services dedicated to wooing consumers. Savigar says, ‘Shoppers enjoy using Net-A-Porter because of the way the products come gift-wrapped.’

One of the shops to embrace this is Liberty where the goods are boxed and the feel of concierge culture is evident in the central atrium’s Liberty of London boutique, designed by Universal Design Studio and Liberty of London creative director Tamara Salman (DW 31 January 2007).

The briefing will also suggest that one of the challenges for branding designers today is that people’s jobs are not for life, a trend that has been termed ‘the slash/slash generation’.

This can make it hard for a designer to know who they are designing for, says Savigar. ‘Brands need to be more flexible in their output and appeal to consumers from different angles,’ he adds. Brands will also be rated according to the criteria of truth, transparency and trust at the trend-briefing event. Savigar explains that when it comes to food and cosmetics, consumers have a deeper relationship with these products and want to feel that they are using a ‘clean brand’ they can trust.

Sanderson also suggests that design is moving away from the playful, and towards a more rational approach. He says that at the Cologne Furniture Fair he noticed student designers’ products seemed to be moving towards the serious and away from frolicsome, baroque design. The point of the day, says Sanderson, is to look at design and examine the reasons behind these things happening, and why they might be relevant.

TREND SETTING

Up-and-coming brand issues:

• Soft branding
• Womenomics
• Concierge culture
• Food futures
• New mass affluents
• The slash/slash generation

One Week’s Worth of Food Around Our Planet | FixingThePlanet.com

One Week’s Worth of Food Around Our Planet:

Excerpts from the book Hungry Planet: what the world eats by Peter Menzel. More here and here.

Questions I’d like to answer (and maybe they are in the book!) How much does each family spend as a proportion of their income? How much does everyone weigh? Calorific intake? Amount of packaging used? Air miles involved? Cooking time? etc…

Japan: The Ukita family of Kodaira City Food expenditure for one week: 37,699 Yen or $317.25

Italy: The Manzo family of Sicily Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11 Favorite foods: fish, pasta with ragu, hot dogs, frozen fish sticks

Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07

United States: The Revis family of North Carolina Food expenditure for one week: $341.98 Favorite foods: spaghetti, potatoes, sesame chicken

Mexico: The Casales family of Cuernavaca Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09 Favorite foods: pizza, crab, pasta, chicken

Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27 Family recipe: Pig’s knuckles with carrots, celery and parsnips

Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53 Family recipe: Okra and mutton

Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo Food expenditure for one week : $31.55 Family recipe : Potato soup with cabbage

Bhutan: The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village Food expenditure for one week: 224.93 ngultrum or $5.03 Family recipe: Mushroom, cheese and pork

Kuwait: The Al Haggan family of Kuwait City Food expenditure for one week: 63.63 dinar or $221.45
Family recipe: Chicken biryani with basmati rice

China: The Dong family of Beijing Food expenditure for one week: 1,233.76 Yuan or $155.06
Favorite foods: fried shredded pork with sweet and sour sauce

United States: The Caven family of California Food expenditure for one week: $159.18
Favorite foods: beef stew, berry yogurt sundae, clam chowder, ice cream

Mongolia: The Batsuuri family of Ulaanbaatar Food expenditure for one week: 41,985.85 togrogs or $40.02 Family recipe: Mutton dumplings

Great Britain: The Bainton family of Cllingbourne Ducis Food expenditure for one week: 155.54 British Pounds or $253.15 Favorite foods: avocado, mayonnaise sandwich, prawn cocktail, chocolate fudge cake with cream

Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23 Favorite foods: soup with fresh sheep meat”

(Via Fixing The Planet.)

Marriage by design

Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers writing on Marriage and the Market comment on how the family has shifted from being a form of insurance and mutual dependency to something far more sociable. The role of designers in this seems indisputable:

So what drives modern marriage? We believe that the answer lies in a shift from the family as a forum for shared production, to shared consumption. In case the language of economic lacks romance, let’s be clearer: modern marriage is about love and companionship. Most things in life are simply better shared with another person: this ranges from the simple pleasures such as enjoying a movie or a hobby together, to shared social ties such as attending the same church, and finally, to the joint project of bringing up children. Returning to the language of economics, the key today is consumption complementarities — activities that are not only enjoyable, but are more enjoyable when shared with a spouse. We call this new model of sharing our lives ‘hedonic marriage’.

(Read the whole piece.)

Why British designers are looking to the east

The Observer reports on London Fashion week, the predicted recession, and the purchasing power of the Far East:

Until the end of last year it looked as though the coming round of London shows would be the most exciting and unmissable in a decade. But with the sudden chill wind blowing through fashion retailing, the massed talent of Hackney, Dalston, Shoreditch and King’s Cross might well feel that, this time, they’re designing for their lives.

Hilary Riva, chief executive of the British Fashion Council, has been monitoring the likely attendees at fashion week for a month. ‘We have a load of publications coming in from China, Russia and other emerging markets,’ she says. ‘And buyers from Europe and the Middle East. But on the Monday the stock market dropped, we were taking calls from American buyers cancelling their trips. It’s that issue of London just being too expensive.’

The fear in any downturn is that the youngest, weakest and most dispensable designers may go to the wall, a repeat performance of the culls that took place in previous economic bad patches. Time and again, London’s hyped hopefuls have flared in the media limelight, only to sink to obscurity in a welter of shoddy quality, poor deliveries and debt.

Yet this time around, it’s possible that the new tranche of designers have a fighting chance with buyers who are betting on what, if anything, will entice women to part with money in the next six months. ‘Going into a recession, what do you do: play safe, go classic?’ asks Averyl Oates, fashion director of Harvey Nichols. ‘If you do, you end up with a sea of black and you lose the pop. Women are not going to buy something they already have in their wardrobes. We stock Giles Deacon, Jonathan Saunders, Christopher Kane, Marios Schwab – London gives us that standout creativity. My advice to them is to be careful about prices, but they’re listening. You hear more about the £120 dress now than the £200 dress a year ago. I think they’re very responsible, this generation.’

What may set these designers apart from their predecessors is that, from the start, they’ve had to be super-careful as well as creative. What made them attractive was the way they threw off the timid lady-pleasing malaise that had cramped the mentality of young designers in other cities. They started using their own formative references, drawn (and some elder commentators could hardly take it at the time) from the glam early Nineties, Gianni Versace, Azzedine Alaia, MTV.

[...]

The good news, from the risk-limitation point of view, is that they are not wholly dependent on the fluctuating American economy. The ‘emerging markets’ have, in the past two years, zoomed ahead in both wealth and fashion. Russians, Chinese, Koreans, Greeks and shops from the Middle East are turning up to place orders – and they’re not looking for anything wishy-washy.

‘Russians are quite experimental,’ says Aliona Doletskaya, editor in chief of Russian Vogue. ‘There’s a lot of optimism around, a crowd who are young and happy, who do not have 75 years of Soviet rule on their back. When they earn money, they spend. There’s something very special and quirky about the English they like, that you can’t find with a Chanel or Louis Vuitton.’

As a representative of the market potential of the new China, Sarah Rutson, fashion director of Lane Crawford (which has branches in Hong Kong and Beijing), is flying in to visit designers in their showrooms with a large budget at her disposal. ‘I feel very strongly that the creativity from London needs to be supported. The talent pool is incredible and over the years I’ve seen many designers develop unique looks women find approachable. Our clients are incredibly knowledgable and nuanced in what they want to buy.’

Full article

New inquiry in to children’s advertising

The BBC reveals:

(A government inquiry will) look at issues such as advertising’s impact on children. It will look at evidence of links between adverts and dissatisfaction, anxiety, eating disorders and drinking.

Children see some 10,000 TV adverts a year and recognise 400 brands by age 10, Mr Ed Balls says. He said many parents were concerned about youngsters being bombarded with adverts and media images that encouraged the “sexualisation” of girls.

Mr Balls said the inquiry would be carried out by leading child psychologists and academics. They would see whether commercial pressure had a “negative impact”. “We need to look at the evidence around commercialisation before we jump to any conclusions,” he said.

Mr Balls said he would not rule out introducing new regulations, but stopped short of suggesting a ban on alcohol advertising before the 9pm watershed.

The inquiry will also look at the design of schools.

Worst Interiors of 1974

In my first job I occasionally had to spec up interiors for photo shoots for bathrooms and kitchens. It was an interesting process, especially if I got to go to the shoot (though we had a ban on the use of models, so no fun there I’m afraid!)

When cleaning out an old filing cabinet I found an ancient catalogue from the late 70s, full of brown and ‘avocado’ bathroom suites (and, much to my annoyance, the occasional half naked model – why were the 90s so prudish??). The interiors and the kitchen and bathroom suites were awful, much like those presented on Eurobad ’74 “an exhibition of Europe’s worst interiors of 1974″.

Some of these, if you still have them in your home, are probably fashionably dated now. I think I developed my hatred of brown and orange from having to grow up in the 70s. Never mind, the 80s would bring rescue in the form of… grey.

Incidentally, one little snippet of info I can bring you from my experience in the plumbing trade is this: the most popular choice of bathroom suite colour is… white.

Via It’s nice that. (a site run by two of my former students, incidentally!)

Talk to your daughter before the fashion industry does

Here’s an interesting campaign from Dove, though as David Airey points out, Dove are owned by Unilever who also sell SlimFast slimming aids…

Perhaps you had the same response to that that I did, but as David points out, is it any worse to want to lighten your skin than to darken it through tanning products and treatments? That’s a tough one and I don’t know enough about the cultural issues to venture an educated opinion. Is skin lightening an attempt to beat racism (and therefore a result of racism) or simply a cosmetic desire?

Teaching kids financial responsibility with Barbie

Seriously – does anyone think this is a good idea? “I love shopping with a credit card – you never run out of money!”