Every since I started school, I always had a little fetish for those Japanese made frosted Polypropylene folders, especially those with refillable pages. I’m not sure why, but I guess it was probably the unusually silky but rough texture or the crispness of the plastic. However I could not, for the life of me, figure out why they were so expensive!

I eventually did move on to Filofaxes and leather binders (my printed portfolio lives in one!). However the simplicity of a piece of a folded sheet meant that I never strayed far from plastic or paper folders.

So believe me when I say I love this Notefolio multipurpose folder from Poketo. It unfolds itself to expose a slot for a notebook and pockets for all your stuff. The attention to detail, as well as the icons, makes this paper product look precious. I’ll see if I can buy a few for Christmas.

Via: Yanko Design

This post went out a little later than I expected, but I just wanted to remind all of you that the Icsid congress 2009 is but a less than a week away!

If you are not planning on going, you can keep up to date with the action as I will be Tweeting live from the congress at my @designsojourn or the official ICSID congress @design2050 Twitter accounts. By the way if you can’t up with my Tweets, don’t worry as you can search out the #icsid09 hashtag so that you can review the Tweets later at your leisure! I will also do a full congress write up either at the end of each day or if not at the end of it all.

The highlight of this congress is the Design 2050 studios where we can catch design leaders share their thought leadership on what the world will be like in 2050. In particular I’m looking forward to the Studios by Chris Bangle on Personal Emotional Mobility 2050, Feng Zhu on Entertainment 2050 and Ravi Naidoo on Protofarm 2050.

As a member of the congress organizing committee, I will be at the congress, so if you are going to be here in Singapore next week (23-25 Nov), do drop me a note on my contact page or email me at dt [at] designsojourn.com. I would love to catch up with you for a coffee and/or a chat?

The craftman’s spirit, I think, imbues people with a sense of beauty, as in elaboration, delicacy, care, simplicity (words I often use). Obviously, this also applies to bento-making and the pride people take in making them as beautiful as they can.

There is a similar craftman’s spirit (“shokunin kishitsu” or “shokunin katagi”) in Europe. Yet in Europe I can see it coming alive only from a certain level of sophistication. –In Japan, even ordinary jobs such as cleaning and cooking are filled with this craftman’s spirit. It is is common sense in Japan.

While Japanese are known for their particular aesthetic sense, I would say we also have an incapacity to see ugliness. How come?

We usually focus fully on what’s right in front of our eyes. We tend to ignore the horrible, especially if it is not an integral part of our personal perspective. We ignore that our cities are a chaotic mess, filled with ugly architecture and nasty signage. And so you have the situation where a Japanese worker will open a beautiful bento box in a stale conference room or on a horrendous, crowded sidewalk.

I never really saw it, but now that he brings it up, I have to agree. The last time I was in Tokyo, I encountered exciting avant-garde architecture (like the Prada shop at Ayoman, Omotesandō) nestled within a bunch of drab buildings. It stuck out like a sore thumb!

Kenya goes on to explain the difference between Japanese vs. Western forms of simplicity by comparing the design of two chef’s knives. He implies that the Japanese prefer simple, designs devoid, of any frills as it means the product can be used in as many ways as the user desires. It is interesting to see that by going with simplicity as an aesthetic approach does not necessary result in boring single use products but actually encourages products to be applied in many situations. I’m convinced.

Check out the full write up and the original interview transcript in Japanese at iA.

I think there is a lot more to this discussion, more than about “just making things simple and easy to use”. Why are some objects simple and easy to use but end up limited and boring? Why are some objects, like the iPhone, simple to use but somehow able to have many layers of more complex functions? Is this what they call simplexity, or an “emerging theory that proposes a possible complementary relationship between complexity and simplicity”? (via Wikipedia)

Recently Tim Brown muses with his colleagues at IDEO that simplicity in form, also called minimalism, is about a surface treatment or style that is “…limited in its usefulness”.

My own view is that minimalism has come to represent a style and as such is limited in its usefulness. It represents a reaction to complexity whereas simplicity relies on an understanding of the complex. This is an important difference. One is about the surface, about the stuff. The other is about our experience and requires a deep appreciation of how things work so as to make them just simple enough.

So we can achieve simplicity when we are able to understand, distill and appreciate the complex enough to extract the simple. The Guru of simplicity: John Maeda, expands on this at his Laws of Simplicity blog. John writes:

Image from Laws of Simplicity

Muji expresses their point that achieving simplicity is deceptively complex because it is a thoughtful process.

I thought the description of Muji’s process pretty much nails it. But perhaps, the Harvard Business Blog’s Ron Ashkenas says it best by putting simplicity in a commercial context with his post: “Selling Simplicity — Not Just Marketing It“.

The reality is that simplicity is highly appealing in a world that is getting more and more complex — where consumers have too many choices, where technology is constantly evolving, and where the political and economic environment is unpredictable. In the midst of all this instability and change, people want to get back to basics. They want uncomplicated products, straightforward guidance, and things that work quickly and simply the first time, without lots of extra effort.

What is interesting about this phenomenon is that it is in sharp contrast with the thinking of the past few years — which was that consumers wanted unlimited choice so that they could customize their products and services to fit their own unique needs and lifestyles. As such, technology companies pushed for more and more bells and whistles, while other firms drove towards mass customization. The result was a huge array of choices that became almost overwhelming and costly.

The hardest part of simplicity is when a designer or product manager has to take a conscious effort to limit functions or specifications of a product to the most crucial ones. The process of achieving simplicity is highly complex one. I would say it requires a good combination of anthropological studies, analyzing consumer behavior and two secret ingredients, a designer’s problem solving skill and critical insight.

I agree with Ron that now more so than ever, the focus on consumer profiles and segments will continue to be very important in our product development process as it drives designs that are created from a consumer perspective. Better still, it really shows that we are listening to them.

I hope you enjoyed this mini research exercise as much as I did. Looking forward to reading your comments!

Piano Staircase:
”Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator and feel better” is something we often hear or read in the Sunday papers. Few people actually follow that advice. Can we get more people to take the stairs over the escalator by making it fun to do? See the results here.

This video really made me smile.

It was created by The Fun Theory an initiative by Volkswagen “…dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.”

It is great to see examples of design or designers succeeding in encouraging people to recycle or take the stairs, get healthy and perhaps save some electricity by shutting down the escalators. Check out another of my favorite below for inspiration in your next sustainable project.

Bottle Bank Arcade Machine:
Many of us return our plastic bottles and cans. Noticeably fewer recycle their glass. Maybe that’s because we don’t get any money in return, as we do for cans and plastic. Can we change this attitude by making recycling glass fun to do? So you are not just rewarded with a good conscience, you also get a smile. See the results here.

Check out the rest of their videos at The Fun Theory.