A fashion label that has music in it’s Brand DNA, a Designer that targets female audiophiles with a new accessory that combines industrial design and expert tailoring. Fashion meets Music meets Design: two examples.
John Varvatos and Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin is the model of a new campaign video from John Varvatos, the the brand that has rock and roll in it’s Brand DNA.
In selected John Varvatos boutiques they carry a unique assortment of McIntosh audio equipment, vintage vinyl records, vintage audio equipment and collectible music books for the rock enthusiast.
Molami headphones are designed with the contemporary individual in mind. Instead of focussing on the product ‘as a gadget’ and the technical specifications Molani works through the fashion industry to convey how their product ‘frames and enhances the feminine face’. A good example of user centered design.
Can folk music be a model for setting up a co-creation culture?
In his book We-think: The power of mass creativity the author Charles Leadbeater is talking about a relation of co-creation and the habit of folk music that people borrow musical structures from a shared tradition and taking ideas from a shared pool of multipliers without concern for ownership. A climate of sharing and giving leads to mass innovation often with an individual touch and not mass production.
With this in mind it is interesting to watch the development of the new Global Jukebox project, a tremendous collection of field recordings, of Alan Lomax. The folklorist’s archive of 17.000 field recordings will begin to stream for free very soon, including music from Britain, Ireland, the US, the Caribbean and the former USSR.
Global Jukebox - Alan Lomax
Although Lomax’s name is not as well known as some of the musicians he helped discover, e.g. Woody Guthrie, his work continues to have an enormous influence. For example the soundtrack of the film O Brother, where art thou? is using samples from Lomax. He introduced Pete Seeger to The Lion Sleeps Tonight, recorded Vera Hall’s Trouble So Hard (made famous by Moby), and his recordings will even be featured on Bruce Springsteen’s forthcoming album, Wrecking Ball.
Besides the popularity to use this material for other musical inspiration it is also interesting to get more information on the system and categorization of the material. Lomax is talking about ‘cantometrics’, the term refers to a system for the measurement of singing style, like blue notes and sounds of animals. The system was also applicable for pop music and he also developed ‘choreometrics’ for dancing and ‘parlametrics’ for speech.
The principles of ‘cantometrics’ are used in the Music Genome Project of Pandora.com a new automated music recommendation service comparable to last.fm and spotify.com
User centered design, service design and persona thinking is thinking of our time and getting more popular. A current example is now in the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (Netherlands), here a short description from their website:
The fourth and final part of the exhbition programme Play Van Abbe is called The Pilgrim, the Tourist, the Flaneur (and the Worker). The exhibition presents a selection of important works from the museum’s collection together with several special guest artists. You are invited to play a role whilst visiting the museum; the roles are the pilgrim, the tourist, the flaneur and the worker. The pilgrim is focused on the object of art; the tourist on stories; the flaneur on time and the overall museum experience. Finally, the workers are the roles that seek an active confrontation with art and produces new ideas for themselves and others. You can change roles during your visit and experience how artworks appear different.
So if you want to experience persona thinking in a museum context you can do this until august 2011 in Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (see the website)
If you want more inspiration in how personas work in business and design, how you can make and use personas for your company or project you can do a one day workshop to start with. At the moment I am organizing two dutch workshops in Den Bosch (Steedelijk museum) and Amstelveen (Cobra museum). This workshop can also be done as an in-house workshop in english, german or dutch.
CREATIVE COMPANION
CREATIVE COMPANION for online brand strategy, creative direction and design thinking
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Music Thinking
Music Thinking is an innovative approach to transforming business, society and self.
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Persona-Workshop
We offer persona Knowledge, Skills & Facilitation on three levels: Awareness masterclass (2 hours), Hands-on work session (2 days), Long term programme (some month).
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A diverging and converging blog by Christof Zürn 