The Social in the Visual

In recent posts we’ve been having a chat about, among other things, economic rationalism and creativity. And, as always, information design is the subject of this blog. Here’s a recent find which combines all of these topics in one succinct design. This ‘faceless watch’ was ffffound on the Geek & Hype site. Like a lot of very good design, this is ‘meta-design’: Design that refers to design, in this case, watch design. It acknowledges a typical bracelet design, yet asks a perverse question: do we need the watch part of the watch? Will the bracelet alone do the job? Superb concept. I wonder how well it works in bright daylight?

As the economic rationalist mantra goes: “time equals money”. I wonder how much designer, Hironau Tsuboi, got paid for this design. And how long did it take? It’s difficult, via fffound, and many websites for that matter, to get to the source of an image to find out, as for example in this case, who designed that? As Uriah said in a previous post, the Web definitely throws the issue of ownership up for debate. What do you think of sites like ffffound which, on the one hand, provide endless eye-candy or ‘inspiration’, and yet, on the other, pull so much creative work free of its cultural and personal, authorial anchors? Faceless indeed.