xx		xx
"Symphony" from the New World "e" chat with Joachim Müller-Lancé and r@designskeptic.com
	Joachim Müller-Lancé, Principal of Kame Design and co-founder of Typebox and Spiral21, award-winning "bon-vivant" iconoclast based in San Francisco. See kamedesign.com, typebox.com and spiral21.com
r (opening thoughts): The Internet is all to all people. Online banking ("your-bank-name-here".com); difficult and obscure global purchases (ebay.com; kleptomaniac.com); movie rentals delivered to your door (kozmo.com); dating (match.com; personals.yahoo.com); assured movie tickets (moviefone.com); the revamp of the radio station (luxuriamusic.com; radiovalve.com); online trading (etrade.com) and e and "instant messaging" are all part of the New York story. Even a badly designed site like blueangel.com for the ever-travelling cabaret-styled New York club provides a sense of community.
	Email from JML: [What dot-com] crash? There's so many interests involved. [Maybe somebody] would profit from a real crash. Please tell me whom.
				During a Pilot office tour in Hamburg: "we benefited from our neighboring start-up firm that collapsed from this ‘weeding’ because we were able to acquire their office space and systems for our much needed expansion."
	Email from JML: The current 'Gold Rush' in San Francisco …led to a level of greed and aggression [which is out of sort with] complacent mellow San Francisco. Bigger metropoles like NY, Tokyo, London, Hong Kong etc. absorb such surges more easily. As for designers: I agree with Steven Heller in Critique Magazine (autumn 2000, p 144) [where he said] this created unsustainable expectations in design graduates, like starting salaries of 60k and senior positions. I've seen ludicrous job descriptions and unsustainable promises from web design studios. [Then] … unannounced layoffs by the hundreds (clearing one's cubicle in 20 minutes with an armed guard watching)... So maybe next: a generation of smoldering cynicism?
Self-realisation: Independence. I quit my big advertising agency job for a smaller agency. MY agency. Now I work virtually with several clients around the world...
Email to JML: What's "HOT" online now?
	Email from JML: I've been asked several times before and was stumped. Friends recommend URLs to me, and I'm always disappointed: The demand for "HOT" controls the supply of what's there... Most sites go for stimulus without delivering on the promise. Ask Florian [good friend working at Organic NY]. He thinks similarly: "Well dudes, looks great, but then what?" I think that's a very accurate and helpful answer. It's meant especially to help magazines think twice in case they feel "lame" for their printed form, feeling a need for spicing it up with "hot" web stuff: no worry. Different league... This will merely lead to a mutual escalation of form and media, but the human talent pool needed to create content for other humans does not increase. Neil Postman's 1985 book 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' [said it], if we already have difficulty filling 50 TV channels with something meaningful, what will happen if we have 500 channels? The Internet is here with Web TV fermenting in the trenches. (I [recently] saw a demo including interactive-TV attempts since the 70s!).
				In a recent WIRED Magazin Magazine and several NY newspapers: Add another realism "show": the three-month long WeLiveInPublic.com project is now online. Josh Harris, founder of the now-defunct Pseudo.com, decided to redesign his New York apartment for full-unrestricted coverage in every room. He and his girlfriend claim this to be a sociological experiment.
	Post-draft amendment by JML: - Exhibitionism escalating into voyeurism? Jerry Springer [sensationalist US daytime talk show host]?: voyeurism escalating into exhibitionism? Supply and demand? To raise any trouble requires at least two sides.
Aside to JML from r: ...although "nobody" deals with this issue, it is a driving force and far away from the "good" "design" "cool" "aesthetic" topic because when it comes to sex people don't care. What is interesting is that when you do sex in an elevated way, it brings uproars...				Telephone conversation with Eric Morrison, founder and head of EMPARC: ...There is so much money in the sex industry. It’s a major influential tech catalyst in popular culture…I was offered so much money to host a porno web ring but with all the current and possible future regulations I refused…
	Post-draft amendment by JML: Sex/scandal/drama is only one topic where people don't care about design. Other topics may be money, power (called politics) etc. In general: our "lower instincts"? Maybe that's the underlying point?
Mental note: I’m fascinated how people are changing their lifestyles with the web. True story: In less than 48 hours, a photographer’s large party was announced and cancelled. The invitations, up-to-the-minute confirmations and cancellations were handled without a care. [thePlunge.com; signmeup.cc]				In a recent Wall Street Journal: Latest populist trend aided by the sex industry: videophones.
	Email from JML: Personally, I like the sites that have very tiny interfaces. Everything hand-drawn in pixels without anti-aliasing. Constraining themselves. Should I send a few URLs? Their content may not be much deeper, but their form may point at many issues.
Email to JML: New York vs. California vs. the world.
	Email from JML: Always the classic dichotomy. NY is rawer, confrontational, [while] more to the point, [several] important human aspects may get rushed over. [In a design sense, NY is] closer to Europe, [while California is] closer to Asia. California used to have too much time available, so they didn’t need to focus on essentials. More decorative, maybe superficial: hence, California-"style" and not "method". So, when web sites have to deliver and function, California might lack the mindset to deliver plain logic. I've seen a huge increase of design workforce imported from more clarity-oriented cultures, [for this reason]. It impacted immigration law. Those Americans I personally know specializing in usability have also taken education time abroad. The unequaled international mix of the US population calls for lower common denominators in issues and tasks of culture/ education/ information/ communication/ entertainment/ commerce. The US population is a fantastic experimentation ground to test whatever wants to go worldwide, and its people patiently endure things that might just cause refusal (if not public disobedience) in older and/or more consistent cultures.
	-- Post-draft amendment by JML:…having to pay for knowledge keeps social classes separated, and also keeps ethnicities at the levels they were allocated historically... Interesting that '90s political-correctness laws seem to address every aspect EXCEPT discrimination against social class/income level.
Post-draft mental note: I hate the idea that power is money and not the ability to think. I can’t believe that the best private schools offered you such a low rate when they charge so much.
	Addendum from JML: … a student may be charged $20,000 tuition per semester, while a teacher might see a mere $30 per hour in class (and nothing for preparation time). I'd love to know where the rest of the tuition money goes… -- Email from JML: [What makes me enjoy a site?] Delivery, delivery, delivery. "What's in it for me?" I'm spending my time humoring them. Interactivity is supposed to mean choice, not just "glorified multiple-choice". Real options, real content. Everything clickable. Of course, that requires very clear navigation. So: clarity about where I go. Knowing what the site is about. I love surprises on the way, if *meaningful* -- smart, small, immediate, more mind than form. "Information should be offered, not imposed."- Quoting myself from http://ww.kamedesign.com/artic95_idn1.html http://ww.kamedesign.com/artic95_idn2.html http://ww.kamedesign.com/artic00feb_axis1.html --- Email from JML: These URLs are in no particular order. …Some of those sites are just about more intelligent stimulus; others might have more to say. I wouldn't want any of them to contradict my own words... : )
		http://www.lessrain.com/ web/index.html http://www.theremediproject.com/ http://www.yugop.com/ shocked/index.html http://www.mobilesdisco.com/ http://www.eboy.com/ http://www.lollekundbollek.de/ http://bam-b.com/ http://www.poptics.de/pages/03.html http://www.visualengineering.de/ http://www.vBureau.com/flash.html http://www.soulbath.com http://www.quickhoney.com/
	Addendum from JML: "the ocean has not only depth, but also surface".
Addendum from r: "Hey! Don’t encourage people to gloss over things."
Robert Alejandro Chi, new media artist, founder of Design Skeptic, Inc. and designskeptic.com, lives in New York and sometimes leaves the country. He rarely thinks.
back