7x7 - 14 Sept Edition

Dave Buonaguidi aka Real Hackney Dave has worked in advertising for over 30 years, founding St. Luke’s, the world’s first co-operative ad agency and latterly, Karmarama in 2000. You can find out more about him via an interview on Print Club London but you might have seen his work already - he is best known for screen printing on to found images and ephemera. I rather liked his gentle reminder to stop fucking about and maybe do that thing which will make you a happier person. If you want to keep fucking about, you might find happiness in owning a piece of his bold art in gold foil.

The Future of Disasters is a retirement lecture by Professor David Alexander. Offering reflections on 45+ years of disaster research and insights on complexity, context and foresight. 23/Oct at UCL's Elvin Hall, Institute of Education in Central London. Entry is free but a reservation is required.

In the present-day world, the pursuit of disaster risk reduction (DRR) involves some exceptional challenges. Climate change, emerging risks, instability, mass migration, and the intersection of disasters and conflict are some of the drivers of change that can be sudden, profound and highly disruptive. As we live in networked societies, with an increasingly high dependency on critical infrastructure, modern disasters are to a greater or lesser degree cascading events. Hence, to understand and react to the threat and impact of disaster we need to pay particular attention to three things: complexity, context and foresight. 

Trees of Great Britain and Ireland was announced for pre-order by RRB Photobooks this week. Priced at £28 for the standard edition.

Over 120 years ago Henry John Elwes and Dr Augustine Henry embarked on an epic project to create a comprehensive catalogue of British and Irish Trees. This monumental work was published in a series of seven volumes, containing 2022 pages, 412 main photographs and recorded over 500 species of tree. This new book is first to focus on the previously overlooked role of photography in the original, including 64 litho-printed reproductions, contextualised with an essay by photographic historian and writer, Michael Pritchard.

Niwaki have created an annual publication entitled Field Report - it's about people, places and things that Niwaki find interesting with a strong horticultural focus. Niwaki are a horticultural product retailer, best known for Japanese edged gardening tools, tripod ladders and playful site marketing copy. You can buy individual editions or a discounted bundle of edition 1 and 2. The second edition was only just released but between the first two issues, they profile three of my favourite gardens - Great Dixter, Beth Chatto Gardens and the Japanese Gardens in Portland amongst a great many other topics including a curated reading list.

Apple announced a series of new product updates this week in what was billed to be an 'awe-inspiring' event. There was no rapture. The clouds didn't part. The presentation was overblown and would have benefitted from an editor cutting it down. It was also engorged with insufferable quantities of marketing bullshit to the extent I gave up and watched a CNET supercut later. 'Plateau' was introduced into the lexicon of Apple's marketing superlatives. If you're uninitiated, the 'plateau' is the lumpen mass of lenses and massaged corner radii that attempts to downplay the extrusion from the otherwise elegant form factor of the device. Despite the fact that the new phones are an improvement on their predecessors by every objective measure, they're not really that remarkable from a user perspective. I find myself being entirely nonplussed by passing on an upgrade for another year.

Ben at Stratchery provides a good overview and astutely observed that Apple have constrained the space in which they innovate by pursuing easy profit. The iPhone Air looks to be the most innovative of the announcements but the thinner form factor simply serves to add emphasis to the bumpy sunlit uphills of the 'plateau'. I'm old enough to remember Bendgate and the issues that Apple had with chassis distortion on the iPhone 6. Apple subsequently acknowledged they were aware of this some years later and in a phone that is larger and thinner, I'm going to see what at least six months of real world use reveals about the durability of the device.

Jony Ive had a recent 'fireside chat' with Patrick Collison (CEO of Stripe) as part of Stripe Sessions (think Stripe TED talks) and it's particularly interesting to hear Jony's current design ethos and views given that he will be working with OpenAI and developing hardware. You can watch the session with a transcript at Stripe or via YouTube. A few sound bites resonated:

“What kills an idea is people’s urge to express their opinion”

“Joy and humour has been missing … products that we’re all developing, they’re complicated, aren’t they? And sometimes joy gets confused with being trivial”

I've had to deal with this for years, particularly when clients are focused on financial return and accountability. Jony led the packaging design movement which ushered in the unboxing video and subsuming packaging as part of the product ownership experience. He is eminently qualified to reflect on the hard-to-quantify metric of customer delight. Perception of value is still business value - and often an overriding purchase factor - shaped by how a product makes you feel.

“I believe that when somebody unwrapped that box and took out that cable … they thought, ‘Somebody gave a shit about me”

Ive + OpenAI are a credible partnership but remain an unproven challenge to Apple’s dominance in hardware. Ive has proven he knows how to create desirability and perceptual value and with the intangible voice driven interfaces that OpenAI is moving toward, it'll be interesting to see how he addresses the brief.

The Crisis of American Leadership Reaches an Empty Desert Tens of thousands of people escaping famine and violence arrive in a desert town devoid of support - where basic survival is threatened, and international aid has largely retreated. The photoessay underscores the urgent need for renewed leadership, funding, and attention to stem continued tragedy.

The Global Humanitarian Assistance report released in July shows the stark reality that dismantling USAID brings. It is saddening to see that humanitarian assistance has overtaken development as a marker of progress.

I was at UCL's 15th Risk and Disaster Reduction conference in July and Christina Bennett presented her perspective on the future of aid. As violent conflicts intensify worldwide, Bennett cautioned that the humanitarian principle of impartiality is under growing strain. When aid is delivered with political preferences, it undermines both the neutrality and the very essence of humanitarianism - even within humanitarian organisations themselves.

Countries experiencing protracted crisis are more vulnerable than ever; humanitarian assistance has overtaken development assistance as their dominant source of external concessional support, and the average protracted crisis pays double the amount in debt payments compared to a decade ago.