Cultural Cartography

Simple and complex signs

Brillian post (as usual) on Russell Davies's site about his theory on how we like to think planning and communication works and how it actually works, particularly nowadays. To his mind and Iagree with him, communication should be about entertainment, about communicating with all the bits of the brain that you can and not trying to send a bullet through one bit of it, the rational bit which buys products (say that last bit in a serious stentorian tov)

Two images in particular stood out to me:

This is the image that is often used to describe how the creative process works best. I think it's safe to say that this is like the London Undergound Tube Map, a diagrammatic representation which attempts to explain how it can work but bears no reality to the real thing.

The real thing as Russell points out, looks more like this:

When I used to write academic papers (and actually still now) I had two favorite metaphors for the creative process: the first was fog, and the other was the birth of Athena from Zeus's head. The first is obvious. That's what it's all about but the second is about things that appear fully formed. Because that's actually what comes out of the fog.

http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2006/09/my_schtick.html

the traffic light man

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the story of the East German traffic light man? When Germany was (re-)unified, West Germany wanted to impose their systems everywhere in East Germany including on the semiotic landscape of traffic. They wanted to get rid of East German signage and introduce a standardised sign. However the old East Germans protested ... and won!! They got to keep their little man.

For me this says something powerful about signs. Traffic signs in particular are about more than just literal navigation, they say something about who we are in the way they say what they have to say. (if you see what I mean). The East German Ampelmaennchen has more humanity than his West German counterpart and I can't help feeling that this is what a lot of people from former East Germany would say about the society they lived in before the Wall came down, despite the inequities of the actual system. So no wonder they fought for their man.

http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=53&story_id=21927

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1888653,00.html

Smells

I am hyper sensitive to smells and realise that I often judge people on the way they smell. The smell of sweat means someone who doesn't notice detail. But brands often don't notice the detail of their brands either. I remember someone once being astonished that I could smell the difference between Fosters and Carlsberg. Does anyone at Carlsberg know that their lager smells different, more hoppy and less sugary.

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Big Hairy Audacious Goals

On the tube today there was a guy without any hair. He must have had alopecia (sp?). It made everyone around him look very hairy and strikingly, very individual. I realised that hair is one thing of the few things that we can actually change about our physical appearance and have real control over. It's permanent but also temporary at the same time. And as all theoreticians now, any kind of juxtaposition like that is really interesting and fruitful.

I also noticed how hair covers up and hides a lot of the things that make us human, so our eyes and our brain.  Often in sci-film films those characters who have extra sensory perception have no hair - almost as if they are super human because they are not covering up their humanity. 

Consumer navigation

I want to use this space to think about how we navigate our world via signs, pictures, codes and things and concepts in general.

One thing I've been thinking a lot about recently is about the consistency and colour of items like shampoo and conditioner. We still think that shampoo is about taking things off your hair i.e. dirt, grease and grime and  it is most often clear or transparent. Conditioner by reverse is about adding stuff, providing nurishment and nutrition (although that's strictly speaking not true) and it is most often creamy. What is about the codes associated with transparency and creaminess that makes fits with these modes of action? It's the same for liquid soap and hand cream by the way.

I think it must be to do with water and fats, if you go back to the basics. Water washes stuff away and fats add things, like the original furniture polish and cream in food.

The reason I thought about this is I recently washed my hands with handcream!! The container wasn't see through so I couldn't see what was in it and the labelling wasn't immediately clear. It made me start to wonder about how you could shift the paradigm? By making a really clear conditioner? What claims could you make for it? Or are we fundamentally doomed to always have conditioner that is creamy and shampoo that is clear