One of the most famous sculptures made in Israel is “Nimrod”, created in 1939 by Itzhak Danziger.
A powerful figure in red sandstone, it depicts a naked young man with a falcon on his shoulder and a sword held behind his back, looking intensely ahead.
This is Nimrod, the biblical great-grandson of Noah, king of a number of cities in Mesopotamia, and traditionally considered the leader of those who built the Tower of Babel. He is also cited as a mighty hunter, the original prototypical hunter of animals.
So what?
So, in October 1988 the National Geographic Magazine published on its cover a photo of a small carving, in mammoth ivory, of a male human head. This was found in Dolní V?stonice in Czechoslovalia, a rich archaeological site that had yielded a number of sculptures, including one of those obese “Venus” figurines. The carving is dated to some 26,000 years ago or earlier, and is the earliest representation of a specific person that has come to us from our ancestors.
And it instantly evoked in me the face of Danziger’s Nimrod, as you can see in the photos below:
Both figures represent hunters (well, we can’t know for sure what the caveman on the left did, but I doubt he was into computer programming). Both hunters come from the dawn of human history. And both have the same indescribable expression on their face.
What a cool coincidence!
Unusual business cards are not rare; many companies and individuals try to deviate from the traditional white rectangle design in the hope of standing out from the crowd. But today I was handed a card that goes far beyond this. Here it is:
This card has a rotating wheel that allows different short phrases to be viewed through a cutout in the cardboard. The wheel carries the phrases “SIT International”, “Father and Uncle”, “Facilitator”, and “Builder of Communities”.
Unusual, but at first glance this seemed just one more gimmick. You see metal cards, wooden cards, cards with laser engraving… so this one has a wheel. Nice, but…
And then it hit me: there is a deeper purpose to this design! You see, once the recipient gets the idea that rotating the wheel will reveal more information, it is inevitable that they’ll rotate it in anticipation of each new snippet of insight about the card’s owner. As they do that, their interest goes beyond the mere form of the card; they engage with its content instead. Most information on a business card just slides past you; but through this tiny experience you can’t help internalizing what the phrases say about the person: the fact that he is a father and proud of it; the fact that he values his skill as facilitator; the fact that he does not care about formal titles. The wheel trick gets this knowledge across in a far more engaging manner than just reading a static card would do.
Incidentally, Amnon is the co-founder and manager of a company specializing in innovation methodology, and he told me the design for this card was undertaken as an exercise in applying that methodology; you can read about that in this article.
And here is the back side of the card – it’s quite cool that the stylized man of the company logo actually turns somersaults when you rotate his wheel!
One seldom gives much thought to the humble sugar packet seen in coffee shops (unless one is a sucrologist, at any rate) but there’s an interesting observation related to its design.
A few years ago the age-old form factor of these packets – a rectangle some 7 by 5 cm in size – was supplemented by a new format, a long paper tube about the size of a finger:
So – which of these is a better form? At first glance, it hardly matters. But actually the new tubular packaging is superior to the old.
Here’s why:
Taken apart and flattened out, you can see that while both packets carry the same 5 grams of sugar, the new form uses about 40% less paper!
This is clearly visible at the right where the two exploded packets overlay each other. Admittedly it’s only a tiny scrap of paper, but multiplied by the volume of packets used around the globe this can save quite a few trees for sure.
Oh, an the tubular packet has a bonus advantage: it can be used, in a pinch, to stir the coffee!
Some designs never change…
Consider this one:
Two instances of the same product exactly – but separated in time by two millennia. The die on the left is one of a collection of bone dice I saw in the archeological museum of Pompeii. The design worked then, and it works now. Nothing to improve…
Here is the lot of them (pardon the poor camera on my then cellphone):
[Photo credit for the modern die: Double Six Dice by Joy Shrader ]
A century ago Gilbert Small, of Waltham, Massachusetts, invented a compact pocket calculator that is small, effective, and designed with special attention to usability.
Read the new article on my History of Computing site to see what he’d crafted!
We’re all familiar with the spring-loaded paper napkin dispenser to the right. Every low-priced restaurant and diner has these; you’d think it has hit a sweet spot of stable cost and performance. After all, it works, doesn’t it?
And yet, recently I’ve run into a major improvement on the theme: a competing design that has a better user experience by far.
Here it is:
The main change is that the older design dispenses paper napkins at two opposite ends, and this one issues them at the top. Why is this important? Because in the more common design you need two hands to pull a napkin, holding the dispenser with your left and pulling at the paper with your right. In the top-loader you pull the napkin up and gravity (and a heavy bottom plate) holds the dispenser down. This not only allows one handed operation, but also makes the dispensing action far more repeatable, so you’re less likely to end up holding a large bunch of multiple napkins.
Sure, there are more important design challenges out there… but in a world full of sloppily made products, no clever design should go unpraised!
See this product which I found at a hardware superstore. Looks useful enough for organizing stray cables in the home. But it has another unexpected function.
As you see in the close up, this device has an added benefit beyond storing extra cord length, and the packaging clearly states it:
Helps prevent children.
You don’t say! 
Something caught my attention in this children’s playground in our neighborhood, where my kids used to play long years ago.
Back then the slide was made of metal, but the new one works just fine. However, back then the slide ended in a large sandbox, which was a major attraction in its own right. Kids would dig, build sand castles, mess around and have fun.
Not any more, as you can see: the sand has been replaced with some green rubbery material. This must have seemed a great idea – clean, easy to maintain, resilient and safe. However, consider this line from Wikipedia:
Sandpits encourage the imagination and creativity of children by providing materials and space to build several structures such as sandcastles; use toy trucks, shovels, and buckets to move the sand around; dig holes and bury objects, etc. In other words, the sand provides a medium in which children can pretend to explore, construct, and destroy the world in three dimensions.
With this ersatz version, kids can do none of these things. They can stay clean and hygienic, certainly; and safe, so nobody gets sued.
Still,my kids, and my own generation, and countless others before it, have managed quite well with the sand.
Sigh…
Most cafeterias sell water to their thirsty customers in plastic bottles full of mineral water. The water is no better than the tap water in most countries, its environmental impact is dubious, and of course it turns a tidy profit for the business. As a customer I find it annoying to pay for one of the most common molecules on my planet, but hey, there are bigger problems and like all of you I pull out my wallet and forget about it.
So you can understand my delight when, while visiting the Science Museum in London, I saw this in their cafeteria:
Self-serve, free and simple… what a delightful practice!
And then there is the wonderful museum itself…
Check out this humble black marker pen.
What about it, you ask? Well, look at the close up: this marker marks most surfaces, is waterproof, practically odorless, safe… and has a cap off time of up to two weeks without drying up.
What about it, you ask? Just think of the hi-tech perfection that this list describes. What more could anyone ask for in a marker? Not long ago, you couldn’t get this for money or love. In particular, consider the 2-week cap off time. That was the one shortcoming of felt tip markers: they’d dry out if you forgot to cap them. Not any more, it seems – those boffins at the marker factory have figured a way to make ink that doesn’t dry until you actually mark with it.
That’s progress for you!
