Yale Fox is a DJ and nightclub sociologist living and working between Las Vegas and New York City. In 2010, while working towards his PhD at the University of Toronto, Yale was contacted by a prominent Las Vegas nightclub – one of the highest rated in the world. So began Yale Fox’s transition from professional student to nightclub experience guru. This year, Yale received a TED Fellowship for his research on how a customer’s behaviors within a system (the nightclub) are influenced by the DJ’s repertoire of song selection – as well as other factors (flashing lights, wait times, architecture, the staff, other patrons and the unholy alchemy of Red Bull and vodka).

Yale Fox

His company, the 194 Group, is part research lab, part experiential branding firm and part talent agency – representing an impressive roster of DJs and party hosts. For Yale, the live booking aspects of the business are more a networking tool and a signifier of their coolness equity, “when (a potential client) asks, ‘how do we know that you guys know what’s hot in music?’ Well our DJs are playing the hottest nightclubs in the world.” The talent agency maintains their presence in the nightclubs, and Yale’s thesis papers provide a theoretical grounding for their services, but “we’re a marketing firm,” he asserts, “enhancing brand experience through music.” The 194 Group refers to 194 dB, the loudest sound pressure level a human ear can perceive without being damaged – and a double entendre suggesting the Group’s ability to amplify a brand through music.

Yale’s business partner Shez Mehra (DJ Wristpect), is a world-class DJ with a b-school vernacular and sensibility, who throws around phrases like “end-user-focused party-rocking.” Shez explains that there is often a conflict between what the client wants and what the customer wants, “A lot of times, the executives from a brand, the promoters or the venue owner, will want to dictate how we should play.” For Shez, mixing songs for the owner of the club, or for the client, would be the DJ equivalent of designing your customer experience around the disposition of the share- holder. It may please him in the short-term, but ultimately goes against his best interests. Of course, both the relationship with end-user and with the client needs to be managed. The latter requires a certain level of trust. “The client has one goal,” says Shez. “It’s either to sell alcohol or to spread the message about their product or service to the people in the venue. We do what we do to resonate with the end-user. Once they trust us to do that, they see it unfold in front of their eyes. They see the vibe. They see the sales and they see people leaving happily with their merch and talking about their experience.”

DJ Wristpect

For Research in Motion, 194 collaborated with Maritz to architect “BBM the DJ,” a series of experiential events to launch the BlackBerry Torch. The parties, exclusively for influencers – celebrities, athletes, bloggers and executives – as well as for sales reps from various retailers and wireless carriers, were designed to get the right people excited about the product. Attendees were given a Torch upon arrival, and could add an account that would allow them to literally BBM their requests to the DJ. A giant television monitor, dressed as a BlackBerry, displayed the requests, at which point the DJ was tasked to play as many of the requests as possible while maintaining the flow of the night. Shez characterizes this task, the improvisational element of creating a customer experience, as, “catering to the situation,” a notion that applies to many business spaces outside of the nightclub.

While Yale’s research papers are distributed and discussed within the 194 Group in the form of white papers and internal memos – both Yale and Shez are quick to point out that competence in moving dance floors is only teachable to a certain point. “Its hard to plan for,” Shez tells me. “In the BlackBerry Tours across North America, every city was completely different. What worked in New York didn’t work in Boston. You have to trust your talent to get into the psyche of the crowd.”

A recent 194 Group signee, DJ Mensa who also happens to have a background in psychology and marketing, adds that DJing is like creating any number of other customer experiences: “You say something with a song. Hopefully the crowd responds. Then you say something with another song and hopefully it perpetuates the conversation. I’ve always considered DJing a customer service. Develop a vibe that will hopefully peak at the right time.”

DJ Mensa

Robert Bolton is a writer at Idea Couture, a global strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is based in Toronto, Canada.

This Article has been taken from The Customer Experience Issue (Issue #3, Fall 2011) of M/I/S/C/ Magazine – a magazine dedicated to design thinking and innovation available in over 25 countries. To purchase a digital copy of the full issue and for other issues please click HERE.

Lets begin with a short comparison of the customer experience of two mainstream news networks offering free video content online. One an incumbent in the N.A. market the other an interloper of sorts.

When I want to glance at the mainstream news from south of the border I click towards CNN. Apart from their lack of geopolitical coverage – they do have a considerable amount of bite size clips of news from the United States and around the world to choose from. There is no consistent ability to watch a live stream of their main network channels – only on special occasions like presidential addresses or when Anderson Cooper posts on a disaster zone for ratings. Most annoyingly – and this is where they loose major points in my book – is when selecting or clicking upon the bite size video clips, each one is preceded by an ad that you cannot skip – each time – often the same ad over and over again. This is a serious pain point. In addition to this, there are an insane amount of banner ads that take over the entire screen – and I find myself wondering if I’m watching CNN or Capital One presenting the news. Whatever it is, I don’t trust it and I don’t like it. This is a completely negative customer experience – and there is a less than positive brand association for all parties involved.

Clicking over to Al Jazeera (the interloper) I’m able to watch a live stream or feed of their main English news channel – just like watching cable TV. If I choose to browse other stories there are no captive advertisements presented prior to accessing the video clips – refreshingly there are no obnoxious banner ads framing everything, confusingly pushing products and services at me. Just the news as represented and reported by Al Jazeera. The experience is simple, positive and refreshing. I recognize that they are not making me pay for the content in anyway. While I assume and even anticipate this may be an acquisition scheme at play – I go back time and time again and rarely visit CNN’s site anymore.

Netflix versus torrents versus youtube versus Justin.tv

While I don’t have cable TV, I also choose not to pay for content services like Netflix. Due to misaligned content and copyright laws here in Canada, we cannot access the full catalogue available elsewhere. This fragmentation reassures me that I will not have the same customer experience as my neighbors to the south. I choose to wait and see.

Torrents are a free, relatively convenient and a somewhat shady alternative that promises me a broader spectrum of content (some not even “released” yet). Torrents also provide layers of on-demand selection and control, and the ability to download what I want, when I want it. In addition to these qualities I’m also attracted to the lack of advertisements. While Torrent sites are often saturated with banner and pop-up ads – the content at the end of the tunnel is not. Once downloaded, it runs on-demand and ad free. All I have to do is get over the unfamiliar web-personas, the piracy thing and the possibility of catching a nasty virus.

Of course YouTube is a completely different animal. While advertisements have crept further and further into this free content land – slowly eroding my experience – the ability to browse and consume heaps of content at will, upload my own content, create my own channel and subscribe to other channels is great. YouTube empowers me to join the broadcast revolution and embed, spread, seed and share through various online and social media platforms.

Last but not least there’s justin.tv – a venture-backed start-up from California. This is one of my favorite free video channels online and one of the best customer experiences to have. On justin.tv people create their own channels and upload their own video playlists (mostly pirated content) – everything from live streams of geeks playing video games, DJ’s and musicians performing, rants from crazy people to historic documentaries. There are ads but they only play once – the first time you click on a channel. Of course, there are live discussion forums and ongoing commentary next to the video content, if you choose to engage, you can. The only negative is that there is no control over the live streaming content, only the choice to tune in to a channel streaming video and watch or not.

Within this wild and competitive space, content providers are going to have to do a better job of aligning the qualities, characteristics and attributes of free online content. By improving the customer experience by stepping outside of their traditional media and business model approaches towards new media and the flexibility it promises, demands and affords.

Mathew Lincez is a Resident Futurist at Idea Couture, a global strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is based in Toronto, Canada.

This Article has been taken from The Customer Experience Issue (Issue #3, Fall 2011) of M/I/S/C/ Magazine – a magazine dedicated to design thinking and innovation available in over 25 countries. To purchase a digital copy of the full issue and for other issues please click HERE.

More curious, savvy and ambitious customers may flock to alternative, unfamiliar or questionable sources of free video content such as justin.tv or the Torrents – some of which may present pirated or “illegal” content and harbor potentially harmful viruses, trojans and other unknowns – but are still worth the risk because of the content they provide and the nature by which it can be accessed and experienced by the customer.

The contrast between these two sides of free content illustrates how the promise and potential of the digital online context is in many ways not being fulfilled and how the customer experience is still falling short of what it could be. Both ends of this spectrum (the incumbent broadcast brands versus the shady interloping start-ups) present different value propositions, qualities, characteristics and attributes that touch on various aspects of a customer’s experience – but not one (from either side) has been able to combine and deliver the best from both.

For the most part (within the free content experience) the customer still pays the price through Internet access fees, subscription regimes, viruses, uncontainable pop-up windows and spam; and through the same captive ad based revenue models that aggressively force feed online customers with just as much (or more) branded noise as their cable TV based cousins. Although the online context has the potential to deliver entirely new experiences that leverage the very best qualities of the web, digital and social media, the customer experience remains fragmented, inconsistent, and misaligned with the existing and emerging values, expectations, capabilities and assumptions. As a customer of free content I’d like to highlight and compare a few elements of the experience from both sides. My personal evaluation criteria generally boils down to:

1. Ease of access (do I have to sign up or subscribe? I do not want to spend the time inputting my personal data, I want instant one-click access)
2. Content variety and selection
3. The ability to control the timelines and playback
4. The presence (or lack of) captive advertisements and pop-up crap. I do not want to be force fed an obnoxious and out of context ad for tampons or the new blackberry before I watch a news clip about a suicide bombing in Afghanistan. I’m generally not interested in the social dimension to viewing free content (I know some people are) and while I find a few of the live discussions flaming up in the side bars occasionally funny or entertaining, I do not feel this is as critical a part to my overall experience.

To Be Continued…

Mathew Lincez is a Resident Futurist at Idea Couture, a global strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is based in Toronto, Canada.

This Article has been taken from The Customer Experience Issue (Issue #3, Fall 2011) of M/I/S/C/ Magazine – a magazine dedicated to design thinking and innovation available in over 25 countries. To purchase a digital copy of the full issue and for other issues please click HERE.

But there is a danger that these marketers may be drinking their own Kool-Aid. Many customers can have a level of enthusiasm towards certain products or brands because we provide them with a great customer experience, but is that love? This is something worth exploring.

Neurologists suggest that the early stages of love, governed by parts of the brain that are used for goal-seeking and reward, resemble obsessive-compulsive disorder. The first time we look at an Apple iPhone, a Burberry trench coat or a Mercedes SLC AMG, our brains are interpreting these objects in a certain way. At the first stage of a romantic relationship activity sparks in the dopamine-rich region of our brain normally associated with motivation and reward. The intensity is proportional to the activity. Advertising may not elicit love for your brand but it can attract attention and interest.

The insular cortex and parts of the anterior cingulate cortex, the parts of our brain associated with emotion, are not activated until the more mature phases of a relationship are entered. In the context of brand marketing, emotive connections require consistent good customer experiences, whether wonderful or awful – or love and hate. Love occurs when the sum of the total interactions that a customer experiences with a brand reach certain thresholds. Starting from the moment when a product is purchased to the moment when joy is shared with their friends on Facebook.

A parallel can also be drawn to kissing. According to Sheril Kirshenbaum, research scientist with the University of Texas in Austin and author of The Science of Kissing, kissing is sort of like Nature’s litmus test – whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, humans use the information encoded in a kiss to decide where a relationship is headed. She goes on to explain, when we kiss, we engage all of our senses. We’re learning so much about a person, not just visually, but we’re engaging our noses, our taste buds, our sense of touch, and through that information, all sorts of signals are being sent to our brain, telling us about the other person. Scientists discovered that women tend to prefer the scents of men who have a distinct genetic code for immunity – something that can only be picked up when in very close proximity, such as kissing. So think about the first kiss equivalent in multi-sensory customer experience – how do you design the litmus test for your brand?

Love is not emotion – it is a strategic capability to gain happiness. And love by itself has no object. It is some invisible and unexplainable energy of consciousness, which at times, we are not even aware of. It is beyond form, yet inclusive of form. Love is a capability that can be developed, nurtured and learned. We develop this capability when we were very young and over the years, we develop the ability to love and care for other people and sometimes even objects.

Emotion is a different animal. It is feelings (or reactions to our brain activity) that are aroused as a result of stimuli. When you see something, an emotion is elicited – you want to touch it, feel it and maybe even own it. As many relationships exist out of convenience or benefits, people remain loyal to certain brands. This may be because there is a lack of choice or simply because there is low involvement the product category.

Sex, love and emotion are three different things. In an ideal world, they intersect to produce ideal results. While it can be one of them, sex is not the single manifestation of love, as the purchase frequency of a product or brand is not necessarily the manifestation of brand love.

Emotions can often get us into trouble but we must recognize them as part of being human and accept them into our consciousness, where they can be cared for and managed. We often use the word “emotive” connections in the customer experience design process but I wonder how many of us know what it actually means.

Idris Mootee is the publisher and editor-in-chief of  M/I/S/C/, a published author, speaker and CEO of Idea Couture, a global strategic innovation and experience design firm. He spends his time between, London, New York, Toronto, San Francisco and Shanghai.

This Article has been taken from The Customer Experience Issue (Issue #3, Fall 2011) of M/I/S/C/ Magazine – a magazine dedicated to design thinking and innovation available in over 25 countries. To purchase a digital copy of the full issue and for other issues please click HERE.

“Our model at Method is that being weird and different is good. Weird changes the world, and Detroit could use a little more of weird in terms of creative ideas.”

- Eric Ryan, Method Products Co-Founder (AdAge)

I’ve been into the idea of weird lately. It feels like odd and peculiar themes are increasingly breaking through and holding the public’s attention. Somehow, today’s world of endless choice still offers us an oversupply of sameness; so we’re almost begging for non-conformity. If you look to popular culture, the not-so-weak signals are everywhere. Austin’s “Keep [City] Weird” support-local movement is spreading across the US.  The world’s number one pop artist wears clothing made of meat. The LA Lakers’ starting Small Forward is changing his name to Meta World Peace. It seems the novelty of of the unconventional is pushing us to the edges of our relative notions of comfort. And we are liking it.

Unlikely friends have benefits.

One of my more specific interests around weirdness is the uncharted space that odd combinations can lead us to. I realize cultural mash-ups are not a new idea. And yes, they can be excruciatingly bad (think Rap-Rock). But they can also be hugely interesting, inventive and inspiring.

Artists, of course, have been fearlessly blending ideas for centuries. But in the business world we seem more hesitant to look beyond category borders for experimentation and learning. The recent emphasis on Design Thinking and Innovation has more key players preaching the merits of cross-disciplinary collaboration, but in practice this approach is still barely visible.

Recently I stumbled upon Grant McCracken’s Culturematic posts proposing the need for more culture-smashing tools. I think we’re likely to see an explosion of similar Oblique Strategies over the next few years. You can only imagine the fruits of a Large Hadron Cultural Collider. Or an event series that promotes weird cross-industry collaborations like Food & Psychology or Comedy & Finance (call it Funny Money).

A weird little brand case.

One of my favorite new local brands is a microbrew out of Barrie, Ontario. Flying Monkey produces a roster of delicious craft brews like Hoptical Illusion and Netherworld Cascadian Dark. The brand is not just a nod to oddity, it’s built on the idea. Their tagline “normal is weird” is a pledge to the peculiar, and everything they do serves to honour that pledge. The glassware, for example, is littered with little bits of unusual magic like the “Reorder Line” (photo below). The brand purpose extends to its people as well, as is evident in this excerpt from an article on a hot new little Toronto snack spot:

“Peter Aitchison, a salesman with Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery in Barrie, told us that he could sculpt anything. So we said, ‘OK, let’s see you make a draft tap out of a telephone pole.’ And he did, over a span of 12 hours with a chisel.”

Their website also keeps it surreal. Upon arrival you’re unsure if you’ve landed on the brewery’s mainpage or if you’re embarking on a journey to the fantastical underground of the early internets.

Things could (and should) get weird.

The Age of Weird is arriving. The business world is already playing catch-up. We know creative advantage is more crucial now than ever before. Firms willing to move beyond their core comforts, embrace their cultural quirks, and experiment on the fringes will be best positioned for innovation. Yes, this will be a difficult transition for many. But it also promises to be fun, enlightening, and potentially lucrative for those wiling to get a little freaky.

Stay tuned for some IC weird-play in the coming months.

Pitchfork named OutKast’s “B.O.B” the Song of The Decade proclaiming even that it “is the decade…effectively crafting a fast-forwarded highlight-reel prophecy of what the next 10 years held in store.”  It remains to be seen where the song will sit in twenty or fifty years. And without hindsight it’s impossible to know the lasting effect of the current pop music aesthetic. But it’s clear that the funk-heavymetal-jungle-rap-gospel hybrid “B.O.B.” was a total-work-of-song and creative milestone for OutKast in the 2000s. Anticipating the ramifications of changing technologies (Napster, mp3 players and all that followed), OutKast catered to the the popular audience’s soon-to-be diversified tastes, at the precise moment when it was becoming practical and affordable for people to listen to a fuller breadth of musical genres. Let that be a lesson in strategic/artistic foresight.

The taunting lyrics challenge, “Who want some?/ Don’t come/ unpre-pared / I’ll be there,” and are met with a decade of genre-transcending songs by superproducers like Timbaland and the Neptunes, a new remix culture, and a mash-up revolution, popularized by Dangermouse, Diplo and Girltalk. More dramatically, B.O.B.’s announcement of a revolutionary sound, an “electric revival” as chanted in the song’s refrain provokes imitation by pop acts across the board. Could there have possibly been a Gnarls Barkley or MIA without OutKast? Could synthy dance-rock have become a dominant genre? “Hey Ya” had a part in this too, but “Hey Ya” likely wouldn’t have existed without the earlier genre-violence of “B.OB.” Would Kanye have sampled Daft Punk? Would Animal Collective have even been noticed commercially?

There is certain uniformity in the way critics describe “Bombs Over Baghdad.” It’s been characterized as “a booty-bass blitzkrieg, an obliteration of the boundaries separating hip-hop, metal, and electro (Pitchfork).” Or: “an electro workout reimagined as a praise-and-worship service…the classic Southeastern sound as a jumping-off point, building from beat to call-and-response hook to chant to level-shifting outro in freight-train succession (The Village Voice).” Better yet: “Miami bass… nervous energy with a foreboding organ line, a gospel choir…and a keyboard out of Kraftwerk ping-ponging in stereo (The New York Times).” And my favorite: “the reverbed drums of first-wave hip-hop (played at the tempo of booty hip-hop), organs suggesting ‘The House of the Rising Sun’, futro blips, George Clinton freakouts, choral gospel, rave-up drum-n-bass, Prince funk-metal, speed-scratching, and an extended roller-rink outro (Pitchfork, again).

Now it might be that one just writes in such longwinded juxtapositional constructs after listening to an album full of phrases like: “Cooler than Freddy Jackson sipping a milkshake in a snowstorm (Big Boi).” But more notably, the emphasis on sonic contrast is evidence of OutKast’s early recombining the pieces of an increasingly balkanized pop music landscape.

Is this the most innovative song in post-millenial pop music? I’d be very interested in your nominations.

A couple weeks ago, I attended the opening of the “$H!T HAPPENS in Berlin”exhibit in the Toronto showroom of Relative Space & Floorworks. The exhibit explores the aesthetic and technical innovations of creatives in Berlin, showcasing both emerging and established designers. “$H!T HAPPENS” was curated by celebrated architect Juergen Mayer H., who put the exhibit together using the unique curatorial strategy of ‘Chain Curating.’ Says Juergen of the process,

“There are three concepts that are intertwined: the first is to show designers from Berlin because it’s a happening place. The second idea is to have a chain curating concept where we invite four or five voices that we think are relevant, and then they bring in their network. Everyone feels responsible and part of creating the show. The people involved come from different disciplines—graphic design, product design and conceptual fashion. What was important to us is that the designers have an agenda that twists conventions, and that is also why we called the show “$H!T HAPPENS,” which means allowing errors and trials and experimentation as part of a creative discourse or discovery. Therefore, by having accidents or problematic moments in your design process, you might discover something completely new.”

Coming off an extraordinary reception in New York City’s NOHO Design District, the exhibit will be up in Toronto through July 8 2011 at Relative Space, 365 Dupont Street.  Be sure to check it out if you’re in the city.

www.berlinhappens.com

“The Greatest thing by far,” Aristotle declared, “is to be a master of metaphor…. It is a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.”

IARPA, the US governmental arm for intelligence research (sometimes described as ‘DARPA for spies’)  announced The Metaphor Program, with an open solicitation to researchers in academic institutions and the private sector. The program, operated under IARPA’s Incisive Analysis Office, aims to examine and extract insights as to what people mean from what they (don’t really) say. Metaphors characterize people’s subjective frames in imperceptible and obvious ways. Whether ‘life’s a playground’ or ‘life’s a bitch’ likely reflects some aggregation of thoughts, feelings and experiences.

IARPA’s investment strategy favors “high-risk/high-payoff research programs that have the potential to provide overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries.”* No surprise then is IARPA’s venture on the road not taken. The Metaphor Program’s official mandate: “Exploit the use of metaphorical language to gain insights into underlying cultural beliefs by developing and applying a methodology that automates the analysis of metaphorical language.”

Poetic and linguistic metaphors are used to express what cannot be put in plain language. They’re used easily in ordinary speech to express complex or abstract ideas—so it makes sense that analyses of linguistic metaphors would be used to unpack what people can’t (or refuse to) articulate outright.  For IARPA, the metaphors you choose in speech and writing determine and are determined by stated and unstated beliefs. The choice to use different metaphors reflect contrastive stances. For example the Metaphor Program briefing references a study that presented participants with a report on crime in a city. “The report contained statistics, including crime and murder rates, as well as one of two metaphors, CRIME AS A WILD BEAST or CRIME AS A VIRUS. The participants were influenced by the embedded metaphor.” Those that read the beast metaphor were more likely to recommend more police and jails, while those in the virus group typically suggested investigating the root cause and establishing community programs. According to IARPA’s briefing, metaphors are associated with affect. And affect influences behavior.

Literally from Greek, metaphor means transference. We transfer the qualities of one thing to another—something normally not considered related to the first thing. IARPA’s program labels the two parts in terms of the source of the metaphor (the metaphorical expression) and its target (the subject or thing being interpreted). Poets call these the vehicle and tenor, respectively. As you like it:

“All the world’s a stage

All the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances”

The qualities of a stage are transferred to the world. The subject, ‘world’ is the tenor or target, the thing that undergoes the transference. The ‘stage’ is the vehicle or source, which carries the transferred qualities. Making and interpreting metaphors involves an analogical relation which can be mapped out and inferred upon. What do the system of concrete concepts—theatre, actors, stage, etc—say about the abstract concept, life?  Metaphors are a sensemaking tool—using unobvious comparisons to interpret the form, function, motion and feeling of anything and everything.

IARPA’s Metaphor Program intends to devise and deliver methodologies and software prototypes “to automate the handling of data, discovery and semantic definition of metaphors.” As poets have always known—metaphor usage and complex verbal patterns can tell us something profound about how people form images and conceptions of the world. If IARPA is successful in creating a mechanism that deduces biases and unstated beliefs from how people construct everyday language—what will be the implications on how we respond to social issues (like crime in the example above)?

How might poetics and cognitive linguistics studies advance or replace quantitative surveys and focus groups, which reflect conscious knowledge and sample bias?

How can weak signals be identified from conventional metaphors in strategic foresight—revealing hidden cultural tendencies and unmet needs?

What affect do metaphors have on customer and user experience? Would you rather surf or navigate a web or a net? Why do I have files, a desktop and a trash bin instead of interfaces, containers and deletion?

And how far are we from Poetics Thinking as the next big strategic business buzzword?

*Just as further corroboration for my last post, IARPA also mandates that: “Failure is completely acceptable—as long as it is not due to failure to maintain technical and programmatic integrity and results are fully documented.”

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Marshall McLuhan’s birth. I was reminded of this when I came across a website yesterday called Marshall McLuhan Speaks.

McLuhan has certainly been adopted by many digital enthusiasts as a patron saint, starting with WIRED magazine back in the early 90s, and now again by proselytizers of the social web. I have been an admirer of the Sage of St. Mike’s since my high school days back in the 60s, when one of my teachers, a student of McLuhan’s, completely turned our young brains inside out by encouraging us to view history through the lens of the media. I remember in particular an exam question that asked us to “take a TV camera through the streets of ancient Rome and tell me what you see”. Blew our minds, that did.

McLuhan continues to fascinate precisely because so many of his predictions have come true, especially when you are talking about the internet. What this website does so well, aside from allowing you to hear the man himself, is shed some light on where his core ideas came from. In an articulate and succinct introductory video,  Tom Wolfe reminds us that ‘the medium is the message’ was in fact an aphoristic nod to the work of Canadian scholar Harold Adams Innis. The idea was originally described in Innis’ 1951 book, The Bias of Communications. Readers of McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy will know that he acknowledged Innis as his inspiration for it.

Less known is that the prediction of what we now call the internet originated in the work of a Jesuit priest named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In his book The Phenomenon of Man, de Chardin makes the prediction that one day the earth will be surrounded by something he called the noosphere, a unified field of connected ideas and thoughts brought about through the interaction of human minds. He saw this as the logical and ultimate goal of human history.

The reason McLuhan never publicly mentioned de Chardin was because the latter’s works were banned by the Catholic Church, which regarded them as a heretical interpretation of the church’s teachings. McLuhan worked for St. Michael’s, which was the University of Toronto’s only Catholic college. Clearly McLuhan, a devout Catholic, did not want to bite the hand that fed him, as Tom Wolfe so eloquently points out in his introductory remarks. Check them out for yourself. wn

There’s a terrific moment in a video interview with Erik Spiekermann, master type designer, in which he reminds us that the badly designed Florida ballots in the 2000 presidential election resulted in voter confusion that tragically led to 4 more years of George Bush. A better design of this simple little tool could have altered the course of history and changed lives – or even saved some. Hard to argue with that.

The video is well worth a watch. Type designers dedicate their lives to creating the most utilitarian, prosaic and yet indispensable tools by which we live: letters. They’re all around us, like air. They’re in every medium from print to digital. And yet it’s because of their very ubiquity that they are invisible to us – or should be.

It’s this tension between ubiquity, utility  and invisibility that Spiekermann is so passionately vocal about, and what he strives to balance in his practice. When he’s not designing fonts, he’s designing large signage and information graphics systems, the kinds of things you see in railway and airline terminals. Due to the urgency of this type of information, the fonts need optimal legibility. In fact, according to Spiekermann, they need to be so legible you don’t notice them. You don’t want to be distracted by the shape of the letters. If the design is successful, you won’t think about it. If it’s flawed, you might miss your plane.

Spiekermann was a pioneer in the digital distribution of fonts, and of fonts designed specifically for the screen. People tend to think that because print is a fading medium, so is the written word. But as Spiekermann points out in this interview, letters, fonts and words are the things we look at the most when we’re online. Hard to argue with that too. wn