JMQ is a branding consultant with an interest in international Design, Behavioural Economics and Social Activism.
This is the blog for his alter ego, Sr. Atlas Quirke.
This is effectively a Tweet, with the advantage that you can see an image and not get lost. Nice site.
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These include, but are not limited to:
Please feel free to rant or rave about the selection below. Please feel even freer to explore the sites listed if you have not already.
Best designed magazine websites:
Prize for best site ever:
Prize for close fails:
Wired.com (wired.co.uk is better) - What is this site optimised for? Epic-o-vision? Nobody needs headlines that big and the entire layout is confusing for anyone but the most patient iPadder; curate, Wired, curate and categorise - look to your little brother)
Prize for ambiguous still:
Huffington Post - excellent example of sensationalist newspaper design, however, and their NewsGlide innovation is astonishing
Prize for eye-flaw failure:
The (newish) Times - The Sunday Times site is fantastic: neatly categorised, visually appealing, you can always see what you're looking for, or indeed browse what you aren't; I see what they have done with The Times but it's such a shame the layout is so dense and too close to newspaper format to take full advantage of the digital space. Excellent work, but frustrating.
More will come, undoubtedly, and I have missed a few off I'm sure which deserve mention. Please add your own to the comments as would like to make a good list.
Yours with coffee,
MQ / Atlas x
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The video explains all.
It looks like a copyright symbol. It can twirl. It can fit into an .ico. It can be split up into a loading bar. In can be used as a tiny stamp. In sum, it is digital and very good.
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Atlas has been quite busy for the months spanning June to the present. Let's have a little "Previously on..."
Firstly, Glee is no longer part of my viewing schedule. The beautiful, detailed reaction to its return back in April (?) has given way to morose disappointment. What could have been a great mix of barbed fun with ridiculous schmaltzy musical theatre is now a teeny-bopper's moneyspinning sing-along dream. In the words of another TV legend "And it... It was SHAMEFUL!" Hard luck, TV, now I'm on Modern Family like everybody else.
Secondly, I am now gainfully employed. The reason I haven't been on here in a while is in great part due to this, but also because I have had a series of topics I have been waiting to look at in some depth.
Cameron-Twivy's Big Society programme launched back in May-June and I am absolutely behind it. Stored in my phone here is a giant rail against some articles which appeared at the time (maybe 1st August in fact?) from a couple of quite obnoxious, disruptive, glory-seeking journalists. I don't think I'm going to post it but there will definitely be a post along similar lines looking at how BigSoc is developing, why I like it and how I hope it might (/think it could) proceed.
July held a lot of film fun, and there are a few design articles which have popped up and deserve a mention, but mainly I think I'm going to walk slightly towards social activism. The changes possible at the moment which just need nudging on a massive scale are really exciting. Now I'm working in branding I think I'm going to be working out in my spare time how to do this.
In other other news, my pet AdSoc launched for real this Autumn thanks to Franky Athill and Gini Sharvill's hard work - though out of my hands rather now due to time constraints, I will be looking at bits of design behind that while improving the UI of it to be more user-friendly.
For now that is it. I am currently on way back from having gunge poured into my eye for a shell and it's time to work.
Look forward to regular broadcasting soon.
MQx
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Via The Daily Beast
Venture capitalist Arthur Rock talking about Apple circa 1983-5, when Jobs was fired.
Page 56 is where it kicks off: "I met with Steve Jobs and Steve
Wozniak, and they were very unappealing people."
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MAH has just reminded me I adamantly championed this wondrous drink on our trip to Tokyo last year.
Now you can too.
Style? Beautiful.
Taste? Indescribable.
All I know is: to see it is to love it; to try it is to want another.
Bikkle - the thinking man's baby drink of your dreams.
EDIT: Just to clear up any confusion - http://www.suntory.co.jp/softdrink/bikkle/. I'm sure that helps.
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It is revision time chez Atlas, and after a particularly soul-destroying day I thought I might give a little update on here as to what has been going on.
In no particular order:
1. BusinessWeek's Redesign
It was good to see my genuine excitement pay off in the end.
The new design is clean, readable and enticing. The redone site - www.businessweek.com - is still visually over-crowded, and they need a good Style Guide on the Headlines, but otherwise a lot more attractive and easier to dip into than its previous incarnation. Sans serifs are not the coolest thing to be committing oneself to nowadays, making the simple "Bloomberg BusinessWeek" logo surprising, but even this has been turned into a little branding niche for them against the FT, Economist and other, mainstream newspapers, which all distinctly favour serifs.
There is a lightness of tone in the white, serifless and multicoloured section markers which is pleasurable. I recently decided to cancel my Economist subscription, so will be eager to see whether Bloomberg's beast can replace it. For the more digestible tone, certainly, but in terms of content Economist's UK focus and depth of material is still preferable. BBW looks thin and more like another opinion magazine than a concerted information source in comparison. Solid Technology section, though.
2. Minute issue of our revolution in leadership
Since the new Con-Dem-nation is everything the news talks about, little I can add. From a complete wild-card angle, there was an interview on Monocle Weekly podcast a few weeks back which mentioned how the real surprise successes of this election have been old media - it has been terrific fodder for journalists in these cliff-edge times, and the TV debates were really the star of the whole run-up. Cameron's 2010 TV debates were compared to Obama's social networking campaigns in 2008 for innovation. When, aside from Britain's Got Talent final, do you ever get such bankable nationwide water-cooler events these days? Very exciting, very involving.
3. OxAdSoc is finally opening up: http://www.oxadsoc.com
After a long time the minimalist masterpiece should be going live in the next week.
I noted one of my richer friends had bought one of Smythson's tiny, elegant notebooks for her friend. £30. Hotter than Moleskine? Want one.
5. The Cinema
For some reason we have been seeing a lot of films here recently chez JMQ. This could be something to do with a 30-day premium free trial of LoveFilm, but primarily Little Q's directorial ambitions. Shall be roughly working through IMDB's Top 250 films over the summer. Highlights:
... and of course we've been prepping for Red Dead Redemption with:
... with High Noon, For a Few Dollars More, Magnificent Seven and Gran Torino to come. Recommendations?
I'll leave it there.
Good night, sleep well, and should be back after exams (June 20th) if not earlier.
MQx
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In sum: a sociology doctor at LSE has announced that people with more 'erotic capital' do better in the workplace, earning 10-15% more than less erotic counterparts.
I don't usually post on trendy (/sensationalist) news topics, but this seemed worthy of a little open rant.
Erotic capital is not defined fully in the article, but a brief search for the doctor's LSE webpage turns up this:
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2010/03/erotic.aspx
Beyond the allurement of seeing "erotic.aspx" at the end there, the page provides a definition of 'erotic capital' as primarily based on six factors:
Beauty
Sexual attractiveness
Social attractiveness
Liveliness
Presentation
Sexuality (capacity/proficiency)
After a little while it seems a useful term to sum up what we now know as the 'X' factor, but with the advantage of not conjuring associations with Simon Cowell. Beyond i) qualifications and ii) talent / competence, it seems a good third fork of social and professional success.
Dr Hakim comments: "People who possess an above-average amount of erotic capital are more persuasive, are more often perceived as honest and competent. "
Although I remain unconvinced that the one leads to the other (what is the 'erotic capital' except the combined powers of persuasion, confidence and social competence?), the 'honesty' bit is interesting. It is certainly true that we are naturally astonishingly quick to attribute moral or professional fault to someone who seems unfit, unpersuasive or ugly even with a great weight of evidence in their favour.
I'll leave it there and would be interested to hear people's thoughts on the article.
It is satisfying coincidence that I watched both Morena Baccarin's "V" and new Mila Kunis/Jason Bateman film "Extract" last night; the one dealing with Reptilians getting their way through sheer alluring beauty + grace, the other with Mila Kunis surreptitiously wrecking JB's life with the same.
Attributing honesty to a hot bod is a common cultural topos, but it's still something we prefer to accept in ourselves rather than correct, despite from the outside it making us look stupid and weak. The fact is, particularly in a professional context, there is more value in a pretty and persuasive face: in an age where authority, elitism and manly belligerence is increasingly looked down upon, it is exactly these elements of soft power we have to replace them with.
Here's to hotness,
MQx
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Glee is finally back and it is all covered in cream.
First, disclaimers: I am a big fan of the series and want it to stay entertaining. Heroes broke the collective geek heart once. I have no doubt the fans of Glee will only increase this season, but for those of us who enjoyed what it did new in episodes 1-13 I hope it returns to form in the second episode.
Episode 14 deals with the aftermath of Sectionals. Finn and Rachel are together, Will and Emma are together, Sue is Sue, Quinn and Puck have disappeared, and all the other glee-clubbers (let's call them PMFs - Patronised Minority Figures) are just as 2-dimensional and inconsequential as ever.
First half of the series had several running highlights:
1. Sue MF Sylvester's barbs (a gimme)
2. Ken Tanaka's diseases
3. Brittany's quiet one-line-clangers + her implied lesbianism with BFF cheerleader Santana
4. The sheer number of things they got away with: terrible, knowing exploitation of token minorities; Finn's premature e-car-crash-ulations;
5. Standard soap themes (the pregnant wife, girlfriend pregnant by another boy, thwarted teenage love) made interesting by the characters striking a great balance between charm and horrific obnoxiousness ("the star is a metaphor", "It's not WRONG to want things, Will!", "Rachel was a hot Jew, and the Good Lord wanted me to get into her pants").
The new episode suffers from noticing these (at least 1+3) and labouring them. It was feared, and now unfortunately it's true. Brittany was given 3 terrific moments in the whole of episodes 1-13 - "I find recipes confusing...", admitting to spying for Sue, and "That would mean Santana and I were dating". In 14 alone she has 3 more, the camera shifts focus and they are overdone. 'Audience Laugh moment'. I can't remember any of Sue's quotes from this episode - a bad sign, surely? - apart from a quick 'outstanding' for fan service. Mildly bitchy lines are piled on top of her one after another, like a desperate glowing hand pointing saying "Look! It's Sue Sylvester! She's really funny for your ratings!!" Please, Glee, don't become Chandler Bing.
All in all, the episode felt rushed and artificial when it needn't have been. It seems to be turning into standard soap-opera fare. Girl-gets-boy, boy-betrays-girl, girl-moves-on. Sue doesn't seem to know what she's doing, but carries on as a sidelined one-woman Dastardly + Muttley anyway. Her blackmail of Principal Figgins was funny but again rushed to fit in the mindless barrage of events that fill the episode.For the most part the decisions and reactions of Rachel and Will seemed out of character. Rachel is more irritating than usual and Will loses all credibility. It seems likely the writers worried about his story arc going stale with Emma.
Finn is still endearingly dopey, but in this episode his teen angst did not set it off well. And why oh why are the slushies back? The contrast of their deserved victory at Sectionals and their unchanged infamy at school is repeatedly mentioned but isn't integrated well into the drama. This could again be because this first episode concentrates on establishing too many character arcs at once, but since all of them seem petty dramatic developments (no real shock to Emma and Shu's wife being at odds) one wonders why they bothered at all. There was a great chance to revolutionise the whole thing in preparation for what they know to be a long and successful few series. Why not grab that by the trebles and run with it? Having Finn and Rachel get together but have problems is such a classic delaying tactic that the rest of the series starts to look painful.
Thankfully there were a few good lines which I hope will be bettered as the writers cycle through the next few episodes.
The new introduction, 'Jesse St James', who has landed in Rachel's world as star of rival group Vocal Adrenaline, is an arrogant, shifty pretty-boy who insists the two perform together in the middle of a library. Rachel questions whether the general public around them would appreciate that: "Don't worry, I do it all the time," he replies off-hand. "I like to give impromptu concerts for the homeless".
Of course.
Brittany and Santana were great to watch, as always, and their use in Sue's plot was inspired but again their characters are limited. For some reason, their joining 'pinkies' made me laugh, but perhaps that is just me. It was a nice touch in an otherwise cricket bat of an episode: fan service, fan service, fan service, little originality, poorly integrated songs for moolah, fan service. Overall very lazy. Shame on you!
The fact that this is one of the geekiest posts I have ever put up is testament to how desirable it is that Glee should get back on track with the writing.
They will gain and gain money from the extended number of songs/episode, and all the HSMs, Hannah Montanas, geeks and Christians will continue flocking in. But I sincerely hope that somewhere in the process they manage to retain their USP - the consistent bite of the first half - which made Glee a show for adults as well as kiddies, made the songs fun and occasionally worthwhile, and made Miss Jane-Sue-MotherF***ing-Sylvester-Lynch, at last, "outstanding".
Alternative opinions welcome.
Now sumo wrestlers:
Yours turning back to AD,
MQ
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