The Staufenberger Repository

Nike Japan does fixie hipster

We've been banging on about the rise of fixies and fixie culture for a while now. You know us, we like a bit of bike.

Word now reaches us via Buffalo Bill's Moving Target, that fixie culture has kinda reached mainstream status, in Japan at least, having received the ultimate in street-culture endorsements: a Nike ad.

(Picture source: N-J-S Net).

Apparently, the main shot on the right says "Speciality of Hikarigaoka" (I'm guessing this is Hikarigoaka Park, in the Nerima ward of Tokyo. A local fixie hangout, perhaps? Any clarification would be great). The (clipped) shot on the left says "Bike sumo".

And on the subject of Japan's fixie hipsters, we couldn't resist posting this grooooooovy promo for Japanese hip-hop crew, Rip Slyme.

As the kids might say, we're really feeling that bike mechanic look.

As a Tribute to Men and Women who Design

All that talk of Eames and mid 20th century design reminded me of another great film, American Look (1958). Produced by Jam Handy Organization for General Motors, the film is a paean to form, emphasising the importance of style . The film is packed full of designs from the likes of Eero Sarineen, Mies van de Rohe, Eames and Harry Bertoia. But it isn't until you get to the last third of the film that it becomes obvious that it's real purpose was to sell the new Chevrolet Impala with it's exceedingly long tail fins. Today it would probably be called branded content and be given a TV channel all to itself.

Interestingly, many of the products and concepts (such as the open plan office) presented in this film are just as relevant today, yet the Chevy Impala looks so dated. In fact the Chevy shared none of the design ethos of the products it's placed alongside in this film. The designers of the other products were heavily influenced by European modernism (or Bauhaus) where form followed function, they exercised restraint and used a minimum of decoration. The Chevy, on the other hand, was covered in superfluous chrome, which no doubt created drag and reduced fuel efficiency. They were designed to give customers the impression of technological progress rather than delivery real advancement in automobile engineering.

However, American Look is a must see Populuxe film.   

Subliminal Car Advertising

1959 Chevrolet Impala

A Communications Primer

For the last ten years, like any self respecting 30-something loft-living urbanite, I've collected mid twentieth century furniture. And nothing gets me more excited than an Eames LCW (Herman Miller original of course). It's hard to avoid the work of Charles and Ray Eames. If you work in advertising you probably sit on a chair like this in meetings

and if you've spent time in an airport you might have sat in one of these

or just simply recognise this

But Charles and Ray Eames are responsible for far more than just great chairs. They are amongst the most important designers of the 20th century with their work spanning architecture, design, photography and film.

Incredibly, they produced over 125 short films, most famous of which is Power of Ten. Charles Eames said of their films "They are not films at all, just ways to get across an idea". It is in their film A Communications Primer (1953), that Charles and Ray explore ideas within communications theory particularly influenced by Claude Shannon and his paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication. The film was an attempt to present architects with the latest thinking in communications theory complete with an Elmer Bernstein soundtrack.

Archival footage supplied by archive.org

Whether you agree with the contents of the film or not doesn't really matter, thinking in the area has moved on in the last fifty years and there are more schools of thought in communications theory than there are kung-fu fighting styles. However, Eames Demetrious in his excellent book, An Eames Primer, recognised what makes this film really interesting:

1. Charles and Ray's prescience that we were in fact entering an age of communication
2. The ambition of choosing film to express an idea that others might have tackled in writing
3. The explicit notion that the discipline of architecture might have a key role in the way communications systems might develop - it wasn't until the recent experience of the Internet that mainstream society recognised the important role of design in communications in the way ideas are presented, the structure of information and the communications experience.

According to Charles Eames:

"One of the reasons for our interest in the subject is our strong suspicion that the development and application of these related theories will be the greatest tool ever to have fallen into the hand of architects or planners"