Ginger seems to have developed a new preference

by Raafat Majzoub (welcome on board!)

National Happiness and Our Economy

Article by Ali Musleh

In 2006 the New Economic Foundation (NEF) created what they call the Happiness Planet Index (HPI) of more than 100 countries. The goal of the HPI is to measure wellbeing and happiness around the world and the reason for such a study is that almost every country uses GDP to measure its success and social progress but to almost everybody, GDP fails to capture what is really important and focusing merely on it as a measuring tool increases inequality between the rich and poor.

“Gross National Product measures everything, except that which makes life worthwhile.” Robert F. Kennedy

The NEF considered the issues of: life satisfaction, life expectancy at birth, health and ecological footprint to make this study to measure human wellbeing and happiness all over the planet.

HPI Colored map

We (Jordan) scored 54.6 on the index in 2009 which puts us at the happiest countries in the world category. The first HPI study published in 2006 showed Jordan to have 42.1 world average which means that our Gross National Happiness has been increasing almost 4% each year from 2006 to 2009.

Why is this interesting? I hate uninformed arguments especially when we are talking about something that deserves a little bit of effort to understand. For example, some people tend to argue that we will not be able to establish Industrial Design in Jordan because our national industry is weak compared to that of industrialized countries meanwhile people who understand design or business – who are rare if I might add – would know that demand comes from society and different kinds of businesses not only manufacturers. Surely if the field of industrial design depended solely on the demand of manufacturing companies it wouldn’t be as powerful as it is now and with such enormous global impact.

This mindset would make people who make such an argument ignore almost all opportunities to develop products that can ultimately generate profit and can be added to our national portfolio.

A few days ago I sat with a group of people and we were debating the impact of creativity on our economy. To provide context the people on the table were engineers, government employees and sadly businesspersons. Their argument was that our people “Jordanians” are generally not happy which decreases their creativity and that minimizes the impact of creativity on our economy. High taxes, crowded streets, low incomes, and late marriages are all issues they included to empower their argument. This makes sense but its not entirely true when we are discussing the determining factor that is resulting in the minimum affect of creativity on our national economy.

Anybody working in design or in any creative field surely understands that if you’re happy your creativity increases because you wouldn’t be distracted and you tend to focus more as now many organizations are associating design with play, so designers would be more productive and explorative while enjoying there time. Many in the industry argue that being focused is the main thing that makes any individual put more creativity in their work.

There is also a very important driver to be creative and innovative and that is “need”. We all know that “Necessity is the mother of all inventions” so it is because of need that we try to be creative and not because of the lack of need.

Design practitioners don’t generate better income than the rest of the people working in other fields. A junior designers income starts at 300-350 JDs a month in a respectable design house or in an advertising agency and its almost the same for any other field here such as engineering, marketing, medicine etc… as they are subject to high taxes, crowded streets and late marriages. So what is different here?

The answer is suitable management methods. Design Houses and Agencies know that without creating the right environment for everybody to function to the best of their abilities they wouldn’t be able to produce creative designs. It is as simple as that. Designers always try to find the best way to function and thats what makes a difference between creative people.

Creating the right conditions for everybody to function to the best of their abilities to reach the overall objectives is the determining factor when it comes to the impact of creativity on our national economy. It is simply good governance and good governance can help organizations capitalize on the creativity of their team members .

At the end of the debate everybody started comparing Jordan to USA and ironically the United States of America is categorized in the Happiness Planet Index to be closer to unhappy rather than happy with a world average of (30.7) but is definitely the richest country in the world with a GDP of 14.2 Trillion USD. The difference here is that people understand good governance is the determining factor and the pursuit of happiness to be their driver instead of waiting for happiness to be creative.

I made this study because I love my country and I hope it was informative and compelling. The thing that made our HPI (54.6) is that our life satisfaction average was low and I’m sure that for a country with an economy built on knowledge, being creative will hopefully contribute to our peoples happiness.

References:

http://www.neweconomics.org

http://www.happyplanetindex.org

http://catalystsdr.com/

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3464.htm

http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/design_is_the_problem_an_interview_with_nathan_shedroff_13049.asp

Many Steps Forward

By Ali Musleh

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A while ago I was approached among others working in the field of design, art and culture to work on the research priorities in Jordan for the next ten years. My role was to suggest subjects worthy of research in fourteen main topics selected by a panel of academics and market professionals working with the Higher Council of Science and Technology. One of the topics was about “ Identifying the role of cultural organizations in promoting our national identity and heritage”. It caught my attention the most because designers from different disciplines have different problem-solving processes so they interpret their knowledge of culture through the design tools they use and I’m happy to say that a long waited design resource has finally stood off the bench and entered the field and that is Product Design.

Pratt Institute defines product design as “a problem-solving methodology based on a heightened awareness of human activities, human perception, and the role these play in defining our culture through the forms and products of our daily lives”.

In my opinion, the most important value that industrial design will introduce to cultural products is making those products more human centered by solving functionality problems that existed since forever. Who doesn’t get a stiff shoulder when serving Arabian coffee to crowds, and who doesn’t spell coffee on the stove when using a kettle. These problems can be solved to increase the quality, value and functionality of these products and in many ways connect culture and consumer markets making these products and values part of our daily lives.

Both the Arabian Coffee Pot by Ali Musleh and the Coffee Kettle by Design Jordan are still under development and need a lot of work but still these projects are reassuring and encouraging and I hope that cultural organizations and also businesses –being part of society- can see the potential of utilizing product design to promote culture and identity instead of slapping a picture of Petra everywhere.

Let There Be Noise

Underwhelmingly Good | Apple iPad

By hadi alaeddin
Originally Posted On aslittledesign
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iPad is good… Wait, stop wining and let me explain you ingrateful geeks! (This is how Steve Jobs should’ve started his presentation)

Apple launched the iPad yesterday night, never felt geekier as i sat there checking out the live feed on gdgt.com clicking refresh every 30 seconds, stopping on every execs’ statements, and analyzing every picture. I was impressed by how good of a product it is, but it felt funny!

Bear with me on this ok… Now today, I woke up to a new apple homepage, and as usual they followed the keynote with the product showcase video, i thought after watching it, that strange feeling I had yesterday would go away, but still it didn’t.

You can get as much information as you want about the iPad, and all the features in depth, and here is an overview of what the iPad is for those with no idea what we’re talking about here.

But that’s not all what this post is about, this is a collection of my thoughts on why apple will one day rule the world! Oh really? yes really!

So, Two and a half years ago the iPhone was released, five years before that, the iPod, and three years before that was the iMac.

I still remember the hype over the iPhone, as I was still getting into knowing more about industrial design – I majored in 2006 two years after starting college – and in that time it was completely true when they said words like revolutionary, magical, innovative. I watched that video for six months not believing it will be produced until it was released in july 2006, then all hell broke loose.

iPhone, like the iPod and the iMac before it were in fact revolutionary products. They did not only change Apple as a brand, but they literally changed what people thought they need, they changed behavior, instilled loyalty, and gained popularity with people perceiving it as the way cooler, way better looking, way smarter kid that no other kid liked to play with! A show-off they called him! Some kids even called him an elitist, i have no idea where you’ll find a kid say that word but nevermind that!

That’s over-simplification i know but I’ll try to jam in all the info i need to get my point across…

What i mean by changing behavior can be explained by a couple of examples…

You bought an iPod while you have a pc at home, you’ve never used iTunes because you either haven’t heard of it or because you can never find any songs on it, unknown artist being the most dominant artist name in your library! but you don’t care, as long as you have an iPod it doesn’t matter, you can adapt!

Another example. You’ve had a long list of discarded mobile phones, but you’ve never really felt the need to open up your e-mail on those phones, online connection wasn’t that much fun was it, but you get an opportunity to buy an iPhone and suddenly you’re the busy, life on the go, all work no play type, with multiple e-mail accounts, calendar appointments, and to-do list applications installed. You changed, maybe to the worse or maybe to the better, but you changed.
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Now let’s talk about one of the more important things Apple did. As an industrial designer I’m always asked what I do and I always answer based on who is asking and when and why he’s asking… In this case, the definition of design given by the ICSID (international Council of Societies of Industrial Design) fits perfectly.

Design is a creative activity whose aim is to establish the multi-faceted qualities of objects, processes, services and their systems in whole life cycles. Therefore, design is the central factor of innovative humanisation of technologies and the crucial factor of cultural and economic exchange.

Since 1998, Apple has been taking gigantic leaps in innovation, risking massive losses with every new product launch, never compromising, never negotiating terms, and most importantly never disappointing (yes even the apple tv)

It’s now 12 years and Apple is now selling music, movies, applications, ebooks, publishing podcasts, treating software developers very well, and their retail customers better, designing the best accessories, while opening wide opportunities to the infinite amount of third party accessory companies, and doing that at very affordable prices (respectively) and above all that, guaranteeing the best user experience across all mentioned platforms!

“Objects, processes, services and their systems in whole life cycles.”

That’s why after this much growth and change on both ends of the company and the customer, this was the perfect timing for a product like the iPad, a product that’s not necessarily revolutionary in technology or aesthetic, but definitely in it’s positioning. it’s easy to disagree with this but iPad is the product the brings the apple brand to a full circle.

There you have it… I could have ranted and went on and on how un-amazed i was. I could’ve went on about the app icon layout, the big screen smudges, no usb, no camera, no multi-tasking, no new groundbreaking efforts in changing aesthetics, and i definitely could have shortened this post to one sentence that the iPad is a giant iPhone with iWork!… But I didn’t because the iPad is good! even if it is underwhelmingly good for now.

This is what the short-sighted review woul’ve looked like:

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Finally, you have to know by now… Look where the iMac, iPod, and iPhone were back in the day and where they are are now. So far it seems, the iPad might have the biggest prospects of any Apple product ever made! That is definitely worth waiting for!

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While you’re waiting, don’t forget to check out this video, and ask yourself how on earth does Apple think they’d get away with a name like the iPad!?

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Neo-Bullshitters!*

..having been fed “aggressively” for the past few decades; Bourgeois culture and its production and remolding of bourgeois morality somehow lately managed to fuse its self with hippies only to prove there is nothing more sickening than smelly, barefoot, weed-smoking lower-bourgeois hippies other than the neatly-dressed upper-bourgeois bullshitters whose new hobbies, next to shopping, are saving the world and feeding the Africans!

Apparently the most selling merchandise next to weapons, arms, politics, pornography and coke is conscious!

That which is packaged in all sorts of themes; the environmentalist package, the vegetarian, the freedom-of-expression package, the caring-for-the-homeless, the president-on-Oprah package, the world-free-of-smoking, the rescue-the-whales and the leave-Britney-alone package!

Go and light a cigarette for all its worth because to build your stupid Hybrid a fucking god-scale factory is built in east-asia with abused workers whose annual income don’t match to your “Save-the-World” bumper sticker – and when that worker rests to light a cigarette you won’t let him so he won’t harm your health!

* this is not intended to ‘enlighten’ anyone in anyway, deliver any idea nor ‘stimulate’ anyone to think! But it is only a public deceleration of refusal!

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“Bourgeois democracy is democracy of pompous phrases, solemn words, exuberant promises and the high-sounding slogans of freedom and equality. But, in fact, it screens the non-freedom and inferiority of women, the non-freedom and inferiority of the toilers and exploited.“

Operation Swiss 2.0

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Notes on Falafel

Written by Khaled Sedki for Waw Al-Balad‘s Issue/9.

Besides the Roman Theatre, the Citadel, the Hussein Mosque, Rainbow Street, Mansaf and Omar Abdallat, one more thing you can’t avoid in Amman is Falafel.
Though most of the times Falafel is one of those ‘by-the-way’ type of foods rather than a destination, some Falafel places make it to tourist guide-books, international newspapers and most recently to Amman’s GPS maps. They bring together people of eastern and western parts of Amman; ordinary people, rich and kings alike and are culturally eminent as they were celebrated in the late Amman’s Centennial Parade.
Falafel often drew analogies to people, to the city, to street culture and to tradition; and off these analogies are these notes on Falafel.

[Falafel is a fried ball or patty made from spiced chickpeas or fava beans. Originally from Egypt, falafel is a popular form of street food or fast food in the Middle East. The Arabic word "falafel" (falāfil) may be the plural of (filfil) 'pepper', but more relevantly, it is an adjective for fluffy/crunchy things, as in (roz mfalfel), a kind of cooked rice, and (sha'r mfalfel), curly hair. It is also transliterated felafel and filafil.] Wikipedia

Falafel is Universal – Falafel is trans-cultural, trans-racial and trans-class. The fried brown donuts of the Levant, symbolic of oriental food culture, can fit envelopes that make it deliverable to distant cultures and posh restaurants next to more prestigious dishes. Therefore, Falafel can be deliciously political and present an anti-segregation protein-rich statement.

Falafel is Urban – Falafel is an urban act, a scene that contributes to the city’s visual, aesthetic and experiential character. The public display of frying, making and eating falafel and what it triggers of group behaviors are significant urban qualities inseparable from falafel’s distinguished tradition.

Falafel is Progressive – It is traditional, yet dynamic keeping an original substance while it constantly reproduces its self. It has the ability to transform in response to various times, contexts and oil brands and to mold its self in different shapes to blend in at all occasions among colorful dishes; a unique survivor of globalized foods and a trusted ambassador to a rapidly deformed world.

Design can be good again

By Hadi Alaeddin
Originally Published On aslittledesign
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I tried embedding this video but it’s not working…

WATCH THIS VIDEO!

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Maybe you know this already, but the work of Dieter Rams is getting more exposure and being noticed by non-product designers more and more every day. His work and teachings are things I spent my college years and even after with, learning more with every thing I read…

His words are not to be taken lightly , neither can he be confused with other famous names in the design world… He does not say or do the irrelevant, the unnecessary, or the fantastic. He’s a designer with a collective experience that surpasses groups of young designers put together.

Just now his work is being published in a way it deserves. Later this month the amazing publisher Gestalten books is releasing Less and More The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams. It looks awesome, and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

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What bothered me after these principle spread over all online communities is the fact that I’ve had an idea of a poster in my head, even though it’s a personal project, I never got around to finalizing it. But I did post how I have those ten principles on the walls of my room and the office.

Bibliothèque An amazing design studio was commisioned by Vitsoe to do that poster for the ten principles, and it looks good, based on a very well-thought of grid, and photographs and color palette that really feel like dieter rams’ work. I liked it even though it made me hate my self for not doing my idea.

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The Fountainhead

By Rusaila Bazlamit; originally published on Reflect Upon on July, 22, 2008

So finally I have read [The Fountainhead] a novel that I knew many people praising… Once I started reading it I couldn’t stop till I finished it…
The novel is written by Ayn Rand… in the novel Rand chose Architecture as a form of self-expression…

Gary Cooper as Howard Roark; Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

I can’t understand why during my 5 years studying architecture none of my professors recommended the book… It is such a good book and deals with architecture in a new critical way… allowing us to interpret the history of architecture and the modern practices of it in a new way…

Many of the main characters are involved in Architecture whether they are architects like the main character Howard Roark or they are critics of architecture like Ellsworth Toohey…

The Fountainhead; Ayn Rand

The Fountainhead; Ayn Rand

The novel talks about selfishness, egotism and altruism through another perspective which shakes some of the bases of how societies are led to approve or condemn actions that are defined as virtues or sins by other people for whatever agenda…
As you are reading there will be many sections which you forget you are reading a novel but you concentrate on the ideas presented… again gaining more insights about architecture and society.
I liked the way Rand has used architecture as a medium to convey her own philosophies…
The novel is definitely a must-read… especially for architects and architecture students…
The novel had been made into a movie in the 1940s but I’m always disappointed when a novel is turned into a movie… so I recommend the novel… having said that I found this video of Howard Roark’s speech toward the end of the movie… is worth seeing… [ full Howard Roark courtroom speech]

Howard Roark: A building has integrity, just like a man.

The Fountainhead; Ayn Rand

The novel also tackles some of the ideas related to Capitalism and though I’m myself an anti-capitalism to the core… I have to say that I had a new understanding of Capitalism that made me reflect more about some of own ideas related to man, freedom and wealth…
Also the concept of self, self-sacrifice, selfishness made me think about the concept of the self in my own Islamic beliefs which I’ll talk about some other time…

It is a mind opening when we understand the hidden driving forces that shape, create and re-create some of our basic cultural and societal patterns…

The Fountainhead one of my best novels of all times…