Russell Davies

pencil in holder

From. Via.

jony, jobs and stories of selling

Matt is right, the Jony Ives book is useful and interesting about how great product design is done.

I'm always interested in the stories people tell themselves about presenting and it contains some theories about how you present to Steve:

1. Only present good things:

‘When it came to showing models to Steve Jobs, we would select models that we ourselves thought were good,’ said Satzger. ‘Steve would then approve – or not. Many times he said simply “No” to a model design. But we never presented anything to Steve that we didn’t want him to pick.’

2. Present three bad things and then one good one:

Fadell hadn’t met Jobs before, but he’d been coached on how to make sure Jobs picked the right design: present three options and save the best for last.

3. Present one good thing among lots of bad ones:

‘If you give Steve one thing, he’s going to hate it, even if it’s great,’ remembered Wasko. ‘So you have to make some other crap to put on the table.’

4. If it's important, show him in private:

Jony reasoned that he had to show the work in progress to Jobs in private, with no one else around. ‘Because Steve is so quick to give an opinion, I didn’t show him stuff in front of other people,’ Jony said. ‘He might say, “This is shit,” and snuff the idea. I feel that ideas are very fragile, so you have to be tender when they are in development. I realized that if he pissed on this, it would be so sad because I know it was so important.’ Jony followed his instincts and showed Jobs the system in private. The gambit worked, and Jobs loved the idea. ‘This is the future,’ said Jobs.

All these are probably true. They're not all self-contradictory. And presumably Jobs was smart enough to know what was going on, so some of it must just have been ritual and superstition, but this is how people try and find magical methods in organisational madness.

 

 

 

 

 

spatiodynamic, cybernetic, luminographic sculpture

Up the stairs at the ICA thing at Dover Street Market they had (presumably) titles of all the shows that had been there. This was easily the best title and I've just been googling it - I recommend you do that, you get to all the best websites.

(p)

sovinko / reklam

 

This is worth a look if you're passing. Soviet film posters from the 20s, really vivid and interesting and odd looking - inspite and because of the reporgraphic constraints they were operating under.

super 8 and photostats

Went to see a Derek Jarman thing at Somerset House / King's. It was beautiful, concentrating on his days living along the river, his films, the ephemera. It felt truly, appropriately, ancient.

Textures of super 8 and photostats seem now as time-worn and timeless as standing stones.

old piccadilly

We always seemed to end up around Piccadilly Circus when we came down to London in the 80s. We'd meet in the Wimpy when we came down from college. Later, when we lived in London, on special days Anne and I would meet in the Criterion Brasserie after work. I remember it being slightly faded and you could get a croissant and a cappuccino for not too much money. Back when we'd never had them before.

Then we'd drift into Tower Records, which seemed to have every record in the world ever made. I used to love leafing through the jazz records and never buying any.

And we'd wonder past The Wag, though probably not go in.

Maybe we'd head to Leicester Square for the latest, rightest thing.

And we'd, inevitably, end up at the New Piccadilly.

Later in the 90s we'd also include wondering round the Trocadero. I seem to remember pitching for the launch of SegaWorld and suggesting we use 'Visions of Heaven and Hell' as the 'tonal template'. They declined and went with a bouncy Sonic instead. Fair enough.

I ended up there again yesterday. It's a bit rubbish now, in that long sad holding patterrn you get when developers have decided to force something upmarket, just subpar tourist tat filling the spaces while the fancy hotels and Militarised Coffee Boutiques migrate South.

But maybe that's what it was like when we liked it. Maybe it was just better because I was younger. That's normally the case.

telexart

Went to see an ICA thing at the Dover Street Market. It was mostly posters in a shop, the posters were good in that everything-from-the60s-looks-goodish-now way. But this stood out:

The Telexart Annual Award! Mrs Potts! Stafford Technical College!

The internet appears to know nothing about it.

focus

good title

need to get back in the shed