It’s easy to lose track of your childhood goals and dreams, but usually it only takes something small to remind you of them. My kick back to reality was buying a stack of 25 year old National Geographic magazines and discovering this article:

“From milkman to millionaire, Roger Hardesty travels in a Rolls-Royce Silver Spur and a Boeing 727 – and drives both, having had his pilot’s license since age 16. He calls Tulsa “a city that’s willing to give somebody a chance.” After moving here in 1958, he leaped into the construction business with a determination that built the Hardesty Company. Worth about 150 million dollars, he has developed a passion for Alaska, where he bagged a brown bear, walrus, Dall sheep, and musk-ox. But, says he, ‘I still enjoy the simple things in life’, such as playing Pac-Man with grandson Paul.”

It’s a very long way to the top :(

I’m fascinated by analysing design in places where design is not usually required to be analysed.

During a recent trip to London, we had some time to spare before a meeting and found ourselves drinking coffee in a typical greasy spoon café. While rummaging through the supplied sugars and sweeteners, I came across Sweet’N Low and its garishly pink coloured sachets.

What really caught my eye was the licensed use of the Pink Panther in four collectible illustrations. The process and decision making involved with this bizarre association has been troubling me for days. I’m genuinely intrigued by brand promotion in specialist markets (such as tiny, disposable packaging you’d consider to be overlooked by everyone who used it).

Upon our return to Copenhagen, I finally found their reasoning on an official FAQ, along with a number of recipes utilising the aspartame compound.

What does the Pink Panther have to do with Sweet’N Low?
The Pink Panther is a very popular character, well known and beloved by generations of people all over the world. And so is Sweet’N Low!

I can’t help it. I love consumer technology and I love to waste valuable hours attempting to understand what makes it worth my time.

I also love buttons. I think there’s something honest about a button. It does just one thing. One simple thing for every push you thrust upon it. Well, in principle it does, sometimes hardware limitations (or faulty programming) mean the software fails to respond fast (or slow) enough for the system to magically “take your order”. But it’s not the button’s fault. It is never the button’s fault. Not even in the unlikely event of excessive dirt from your pocket jamming its way in between the button and its neighbouring component. It might stick, but still, it’s not the button’s fault. You should clean your jacket or write a letter to the designer who left that gap between our faithful button and its surrounding environment.

So, where am I going with this?

Touchpads! Touchscreens! The lovable iPhone, the new LG phones and the latest PMP’s (portable media players) all have one. Why are devices suddenly being dressed up in this, so far, inferior technology called touch sensitivity? I don’t get it. I despise, dislike and fear touch capable surfaces and software.

Firstly, I hate fingerprints more than I hate “Gilmore Girls”. Fingerprints are nasty, on CD’s, on DVD’s, on glass, on paper… everywhere! Fingerprints are bad and I cannot see a reason for giving them more room to breed.

Secondly, touch technology is still in its infancy and I simply don’t believe the hype yet. Despite the smudges, it still seems far too unpredictable. If you think there’s bad software out there now, believe me, there’s a lot worse to come when companies with less prowess than Apple try and keep up.

Why cant simple things just get a chance to survive? Does everything have to be “sensitive” and “magical”?

Technology and its evil spawn of gadgets are supposed to be our slaves, so why should we suddenly learn to caress them as if they were pets? Can we just retain the simple pleasure of pushing buttons for a little longer? Please?

Humans have seemingly evolved to find beauty in nature and their environment (or possibly more accurately, in the golden ratio). It is easily observed, that when surrounded by an organic habitat, people are generally happier, calmer and more at ease. On the other hand, dangerous locations and organisms tend to have non-conforming, “grotesque” appearances, making us feel uncomfortable and on edge.

Cities have rapidly taken the place of nature in providing a surrounding for our lives, but evolution hasn’t had time to catch up and so the replication of what we naturally find gratifying becomes important. It is obvious that town planning and architecture originally played the biggest role in achieving this, but as our lives continue to get busier and more reliant on automation, it becomes vital that we integrate new systems into our existing worlds in an intelligent fashion.

Community-dividing roads that can only be crossed by dangerous underpasses, steps that force us into unnatural strides, buttons on cabin lights with a two second response time, superfluous repetition of information in public announcements, signage that constantly nags us to behave in a certain way, colour schemes with a purpose to hide dirt rather than visually please, and anything using Comic Sans are all examples of distress-causing aesthetics.

At the very least, these annoyances result in feelings of discomfort and disbelief that people capable of making such glaring errors have so much control over our well-being. However, at their most extreme, the abundance of ugly and uncooperative ergonomics can be so great that forming a cohesive society around them seems like an impossibility.

It’s nothing new to highlight the importance of functional design, which is why it’s so sad that many places are still completely devoid of it.

Photo from Warrington Cycle Campaign

Welcome to the brand new website and also to our official blog.

We intend this to function not only as an informal Spoiled Milk news commentary, but also as an open documentation of the issues involved in running a small company, as well as a general discussion of what’s interesting us in the science and art world right now.

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