Design and butt-humor, finns and swedes.
Butt humor is the fundament of all humor.. sometimes
one needs to return to those freudian origins, even
the design of a phone needs that. (the Swedes never got
that part, still stuck with Volvo and thinking within
the swedish square)
On design I would guess the basic ideas of so called
"functional design" is something common for all nordic
nations as well as Italy, dating back to the turn of
the century, the 30s and then the 50s.
(in contrast to "aristocrazy design", measured in how
many serfs and years it took to carve one piece of
furniture, crochet one T-shirt or whatever, as Ford's two
T-fords for every employee in the chicken pocket (?))
But in addition to the plain functional design there is
the idea that when there is a "freedom of degree", little
additional cost, one should use that to make the "look and
feel" pleasing to both hand, eye and other urges.
The mythical name behind the Nokia organic design is, or
is claimed to be, an american-italian, Frank Nuovo, based in
CA.
nokia.com
Some roots can also traced to the fundamental consumer
market of making TV-sets as well as plastic knowhow from
Royal Philips (not the screwdriver, but the dutch one,
audiovox)
The functionalism and Art Deco can also be seen in
Miami, and the more organic stuff in Spain, those sexy
towers, and the next generation design might look
like the watches of Salvador Dali.
The big smack-in-the-purse design, the 8210 was introduced
in Paris, with the help of the great Kenzo.
nokia.com
All while the finnish deeper emotions are expressed using
tango from Argentine, while the mongolian roots connect
finno-ugrians to both the Ural mountaines and China, through
Russia, and the language has some striking relations to
Japanese and Koreans also practice the Sauna, and as
the Canadians, try to deal with a huge elephant-neighbour.
The finnish folklore epos, Kalevala (where Ilmarinen is one
big superstar) has roots in the Eufrat and Tigris
region of Gilgamesh, and the DSP algorithms go back to
Mr Al-Gore-ithm, from close to Bagdad, later inventor
of Internet.
Not to forget that the speciality of finnish politics,
left-rigth plus a viable center, close to the buddhist ideal
of the middle of the road as well as confusian thoughts and
Nokia, like BMW, always a better technical solution than
Mercedes.
We are especially in debt to the cute Swedes, who gave us
the understanding of the colonial problems of Africa and
many others, knowledge of many mistakes to avoid, maybe
the most important beeing the tendency to brag about
beeing the best and greatest in comparison to just admitting
the realities of life (finnish realpolitics, roots in
Bismarck and Rousseau, the founders of... another
quillionare question)
Ilmarinen
P.S. Some say it is a question of beeing a fairly young
and small nation, less luggage collected and a more
realistic, humble, even respectful look on most things.
(others claim it is a plainly a question of having
strong women keeping the level of male hormones at
acceptable levels, note the proportion of women in
Nokia management, Oprah as well as Mikulski would
be welcome)
P.P.S
senate.gov
tpk.fi
tpk.fi
(they just got married)
compare our present (popular) president and functionalism,
3310,6210 and 8210, Dali in his more enticing habits.
(unluckily, the swedes can't beat that combination) |
