As you might imagine, I know a lot of people that own iPhones – and Macs. What’s struck me recently is the number of these people that display real passion for the products and hatred of the brand at the same time. It didn’t use to be this way. I remember when Apple fans would not say a bad word about them.

It seems as though in the last few years a strange thing has happened. I won’t get dragged into the economics and business decisions they’ve made – not really my thing. What I will say is that Apple has become quite an anomaly in that it seemingly has an army of ‘hater fans’.

[I tried really hard to think of a catchier name - new suggestions welcome]

They are seduced by the products – and the product experiences – but simultaneously rant about how evil and rubbish Apple is.

I can’t think of any other brand that has this dynamic. You could argue that some people have a love/hate relationship with cigarettes. But it’s not the brand they hate. If anything, the brand is an ally – the best of a bad bunch – their pal who’s a bad influence on them. Petrol? We don’t really love petrol. We love driving. And all petrol is the same to us.

The closest example I can think of is fashion. When I was in my early twenties I had a sort of love-hate thing with Diesel. I liked some of their clothes but hated the brand. So I would only buy items that didn’t have the logo or name clearly on them. Although I didn’t ‘love’ them. I wasn’t a ‘fan’. It was more of a like/hate. (Now it’s a dislike/meh)

Am I missing anything? Can you think of another brand that has this

Anyway, I’m fascinated to see how long Apple can continue to win over these hater fans with premium products. I’m already seeing people crack. Can seduction win over resentment long-term? I doubt it. It feels as though a breaking point is coming.

Update:
I forgot to say. The reason this post even came to mind was because Tom, our tech director has his iPhone signature saying: “sent from my cash sucking shiny thing”. I think that sums it up perfectly.

Sorry for that awful title. I just didn’t want to write ‘infographics’.
Anyway, I came across this wonderful selection of images yesterday, that illustrate global statistics pictorially. They are by Toby Ng Kwong and they make some striking facts very digestible (and somehow more real) by working on the premise “if the world was 100 people”.

The text is very small. The one on the left says:

70 non-white | 30 white

The other one says:

7 have computers | 93 don’t

That last one makes you think doesn’t it.

The work naturally made me think of this example done with Flags (even more clever) and also of this work created with rice. All very smart ways of putting big ideas – that we struggle to get our heads around – into perspective.

Toby’s other work is great too. I particularly like that he had a more original way to celebrate Helvetica than most people.

The idea being that all these brands use Helvetica as their typeface. A cheeky use of the ™ symbol acts as a reminder that Helvetica is the daddy.

Check out Toby’s other work. Tis excellent.

I just found this guy’s work over at Cookie’s blog. Beautiful images and animation using paper craft.

Some more of his stuff on Flickr.

I was told recently (by Nigel) that Hungarian architect Erno Goldfinger describes his craft as the ‘art of enclosing spaces’. The following two projects play, respectively, with the addition and removal of artefacts from public spaces.

add something

Play Me I’m Yours is a street art project in which pianos get left around the city for strangers to play. It’s quite charming and a great example of how very simple things can interrupt daily routine, bringing people together.

The picture above was taken in York by this chap.
Read more about the project here or see what the Guardian had to say about it.

take something away

The unconscious art of demolition is a collection of photographs showing the ’scars’ buildings leave on their neighbours when they’re demolished.

The artist is Marcus Buck. More photos here. Hat tip (really?) to Kottke.

Neil just wrote a monster of a post on social media – or whatever you’re enjoying calling it this week. In true Perkinian style ;) it’s incredibly thorough and well thought through. Have a read.
It covers a lot, but one thing jumped out at me, which relates to my last post about the Iranian green-twitter campaign.

Neil writes:

“I think one of the most useful ways of thinking about your audience is through the level of engagement and interaction they have with what you’re doing. The internet is a does medium. It’s not for passive consumption, it’s about interaction.”

And his diagram helped to tell the story:

But in reference to this diagram, he goes on to admit that:

Using the phrase ‘outer edges’ is potentially misleading – people may be as engaged with what you do here as anywhere else.

I agree (although the word engaged might not quite be right). Assuming the passive-to-active spectrum is linear is too simplistic. I immediately thought about what I wrote yesterday and I added this to Neil’s comments:

Things are perhaps most interesting when active and passive collide. They’re terms that are historically opposite, but now there is a new kind of behaviour that one might call ‘passive doing’ – participating with almost zero investment. Which hyper-connectivity and intuitive tools have made easy.

I know, I know. It’s a bit wanky to make up terms like ‘passive doing’. But you get my point. I sub-consciously (and in true binary style) succumbed to seeing the Iran campaign as ‘faux activism’. I think my discomfort was that it looked like it was trying to be a ‘doing’ thing, when actually it isn’t.

The web is full of passive doing. Because ‘doing’ simply means clicking nowadays. And in the quest to incentivise people to participate, I think maybe these things are being dressed up to make them feel more significant. ‘Exhale twice to show you care’ etc.

Anyway.

What does it mean if I change my Twitter profile picture to green?

Does it mean I support democracy in Iran?
Does it mean I care enough to do something, even if that something is small?
Does it mean anything?

I have uncomfortable feelings about campaigns like this – as well as what they say about certain aspects of digital ambassadorship. My niggle is that the easier it becomes to do things, the less they mean. ‘Action’ used to mean getting off your arse and moving your limbs and vocal chords. Now it’s wearing a digital badge. A badge that tells people, “I care”. But in the age of Facebook, where I can “join a group” by clicking once and not reading a single word, what does this gesture really mean?

[I'll be very honest. I can't claim to do anything better or more valuable than take part in campaigns like this. I don't have better solutions and this isn't a right/wrong discussion. It's just something that feels important enough to question and think about - especially when trends show that people interact with more and more things but for less and less time. Now I'm going to be working with Barnardo's, I'm becoming more and more conscious about how good causes can garner support. And what that support really means.]

One argument is that things like this green-badge campaign simply raise awareness. That the wearing of the badge is the surface and that beyond this surface, the campaign prompts people to dig deeper, find out more and maybe even do more. The argument would continue to say that, like any campaign, only a minority will be activists and that it can only be a good thing to harness the volume of the less interested masses for pure awareness. And boy what awareness. Only about 5 people I follow on Twitter have gone green, but I see one of them every few minutes.

Awareness, however, is pretty bloody high about events in Tehran.

One of my problems is that I can’t shake the feeling that making such a shallow (read: easy, commitment-free) gesture is simply an announcement/reminder that I’m actually not doing anything at all; its meaning tangled up with all the other little badges and apps that I have played with and which now swirl about in a soup of transient support in my subconscious.

We are socially motivated creatures. And we know that we can enhance our social presence disproportionately to the effort it takes to do so. One click and every friend or follower gets an eyeful of you and your ‘beliefs’. It’s democracy for Iran today. It will be “which character from The Wire are you?” tomorrow (Lester, btw) and and who knows what the day after.

Perhaps the problem lies in campaigns like this inadvertently masquerading as something more. It feels like a ‘movement’ and yet it’s really not. It’s just a bit of presence, magnified gently by a hoard of people whom are (presumably) otherwise passive to the cause. Maybe this pretense is in fact in our own preconceptions. But preconceptions are hard to shake. And if they’re real, the compromise to the gesture’s meaning is real.

On the other hand, I’m doing nothing. Maybe I should think less and do more – I just feel uncomfortable  jumping on bandwagons that feel like they’re more about the ’supporter’ than the cause. More about not not doing it, than doing it.

But maybe it is for us after all. Maybe joining together in this Pantone coalition is just a way for us to feel as though we’re doing something. An illusion of influence for the helpless. Which isn’t necessarily all bad.

Sorry for the brain dump. Helps me to make sense of my own thoughts. Love to hear yours too.

I’ve not been sleeping well recently. And I keep having visions of strange images as I roll about in semi-consciousness in the (very) early mornings.

This ‘Ban Guns’ image was another one. Obviously I didn’t make the image in my sleep. That would be weird.

I had this image in my head when I woke up the other day. Seeing as I can’t draw very well, I asked my friend Seb (artist, illustrator, thumb-wrestling champion) to draw it for me. Explains itself really.

Somehow this short documentary about a chap that likes to climb trees and sleep in them in even more charming for being ‘radio’ (read: audio only) and not ‘TV’ (read: you know, video and stuff).

Worth a listen, if nothing else, for the peaceful sounds of larks and woodpeckers all around professional tree-climber, James Aldred as he wakes up in the canope of ‘Goliath’ one of the largest trees in Britain. Just when you think this is a wonderful escape from all things technological though, James reveals:

“I have a little ritual when I reach the top of a tree. And thats to put in my iPod and listen to classical music. And there’s one piece that for me opitomises the feeling of being at the top of a tree. It’s by Bach – Cello Prelude.”

For those of you scaling a redwood as they read this, that feeling sounds like this.