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second skin II / vitra design museum
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monkey brains will change everything
where are my robots it’s 2010 already
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fashion + technology + culture + data

Example: Apple
Apple as a brand is generic with no personification. At the same time it captures and represents the culture of design and pinnacle of American technology. Apple products such as the iPhone and iPod are themselves cultural and fashion phenomenons. They are attainable status accessories with sophisticated yet simple interfaces providing content data and access to data.

Apple may be the only company with the perfect equation of fashion+technology+culture+data.

Apple products are precisely relevant and timely. So much so the products create a desire for consumers themselves to stay relevant. The need to participate with popular culture and maintain fashionability is a dominant cultural driver for twenty-first century consumers. Apple is the witting master of this desire

Twenty-First Century Design
Study and Practice for Relevant and Successful Consumer Products

Successful 21st century products depend upon the balance of fashion + technology + culture + data. One may drive while the others support. However, they are in constant interdependence and can never again be independent.

Fashion drives trends, publicity, marketing and product relevance. Fashion is what's new. Fashion creates consumer desire.
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Technology is electronic functionality and advantage. It is the constant progression of human tools.
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Culture is the full spectrum of human and societal intelligence and achievement. The what, how and why people do what they do. Culture is behavior. Cultural Intelligence is the ability to tune in and understand the varying wavelengths.
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Data provides information and content and enables [electronic] intelligence. Very soon, data will be active and decisive.
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Relevancy & Success
Victor Chu creates products for leading brands applying fashion and culture to technology creating relevancy and success.

Currently, Victor is working on designs for a smart champagne server for Veuve Clicquot. The Veuve Smart Box is a networked table server that monitors serving data and receives SMS messages that scroll across LED screens on all four sides of the box. The Smart Box provides social interaction and consumption data to the users and brand all encased in a fashionable, interactive device.

For IDEO, Victor created a fashion and technology intelligence report for one of the largest garment groups in the world. The report and advisement outlined the latest in fashion technologies, sources, trends and its impact on consumer culture and behavior.

When consumers step out to grab milk, run errands or pick up some things, they prefer to carry just keys and just enough cash. For American Express, Victor created convenience card design concepts and models. The foldable concepts were designed as accessories to keychains emphasizing convenience for quick, small purchasing. The designs also isolated the American Express card away from the wallet and from competing financial products such as cash and other credit cards. Victor also specified a flat spring technology that allowed the card to be folded yet spring back to shape. The design exploration leads to the American Express Butterfly Card.

More...
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Antithesis
One without the other inhibits a product's success. Technology devoid of culture cannot succeed on pure logic and machinery. Fashion without technology cannot keep pace with culture. Culture cannot exist without fashion or technology. No data equals no content, record or knowledge; analysis or electronic intelligence.

Example: Gap
The Gap’s products are completely devoid of fashion, technology, culture and data. Not only are their designs degenerative emulations of past season’s fashion trends, they are also facsimiles of dozens of other companys’ fits and patterns from years past. Gap is a generic brand that does not reflect or represent any culture. Not even the culture of clothing and barely the culture of the apparel industry. As a clothing brand that built it’s reputation on making wardrobe basics fashionable, the Gap continues to fail in the basics of clothing and fashion. Gap marketing content may be their only crutch, however they wind up paying and promoting individuals who themselves are building more relevant brands.

Gap is completely lost and outside what is current and relevant in the twenty-first century.