Design Changes

The blog has had a slight design change this afternoon.  Do you like it?  More radical changes are coming shortly, which will prompt a review of the features used on the right hand side. Which ones are most useful, and which ones do you think can be removed? Please let us know.

PS: This fascinating image shows how the logos of many well known brands have changed over time - sometimes dramatically (check out Nokia and Apple's earliest designs!) and sometimes imperceptibly (Ford, BMW, etc). You can read more about it here.

Made in the USSR

Here is a fascinating article from the Guardian examining the state of design in the Communist USSR. This brings up a stereotype of drab, slightly comical consumer goods like the Zaporozhets car shown above compared to their glamorous Western (particularly American) counterparts. Richard Nixon emphasized this in 1959 when he asked Nikita Khruschev, "Would it not be better to compete in the relative merit of washing machines than in the strength of rockets?" This prickly exchange became known as the "Kitchen Debate". However, although there were many Soviet designs which were clearly knock-offs of their western counterparts, others were genuine classics, such as the Lomo camera and avos shopping bag, with their most impressive features being their simplicity and durability in comparison to the throwaway culture of the west.


You can read more about Soviet design in Michael Idov's book "Made in Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Design" - this is perhaps a subject A2 students can explore further within their extended essay.

PS: If you liked the Zaporozhets, there is much more of this sort of thing at oldrussiancars.com

New Design

As you have may have spotted, Nonsuch HP has had its first re-design. We've gone for a slightly "cleaner" look and which should stop some of the pictures and videos overlapping. What do you think? Do you miss the green? Please let us know your thoughts.

@

Here is a short article about the history of "@", which has been officially honoured today by New York's Museum of Modern Art. Apparently it dates back to the 6th Century and was used as a symbol of measurement, as shown in the image below. It took on its digital meaning in 1971 and hasn't looked back since.