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Welcome. You’ve reached the blog of Tau Siroko. By a freak hyperlink malfuction, or a desire to find out more about me, you have somehow ended up in here. So please, enjoy your stay.
Into the Archives
Audio Input
Visual Pleasure
OK GO Poster
February 8th 2009
Here’s a poster I made recently for a club called Chop Suey in my old home of Seattle.
Tea!
January 15th 2009
As a huge amount of you will know and possibly have experienced, us Brits love tea. It is a wonderful substance which for centuries we have fought wars over, done many a morally questionable thing and in the end, generally been quite obsessed with.
I realised just how much of a British thing tea and the way we treat tea is, when I spent the last year living in America. I realise that some of you, poor misguided fools that you are, bless you, believe that America has tea. America, in no way, shape or form has tea. The hot water with floating leaves in a bag that you serve is a travesty of naivety and tastes more foul than I could ever have imagined the sweet nectar that is tea to have tasted. I went to great lengths to find real, good, heart warming tea, the good stuff in short and eventually realised my only option was specially imported loose tea, mixed to my specific blend ideas. This of course, is a huge amount of hassle for an englishman who just wants a good cup of tea!
Tea, as my now extremely informed and quite wonderful long term (and sadly at the moment, long distance) misses once remarked, is like a loving hug in a mug. It raises the spirits more than coffee ever could and wraps itself around the heart as if it was the amber of life itself. And as I close this post, mug in hand I hope that you all find the joy of tea, it has become a small obsession of mine, I feel I become more and more of a traditional English gent by the day, something that perhaps is actually a positive thing.
Go! Drink Tea! And be merry!
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The Collector
January 12th 2009
Part of being a designer it seems, is having a little bit of a kleptomania just dying to burst out. In some sort of an effort to contain and categorise my obsession with trawling ffffound.com and many other design sites I’ve started using iPhoto. By combining iPhoto with my mobile me account I can automatically upload and update my digital scrapbook to the web which I’m willing to share with you guys as there’s no point keeping it private. check it out at my digital Scrap Book, I’ll be updating fairly regularly as I find new stuff.
Posted in: Design Rants, Life the Universe and Everything | Comment
The Fixer
December 27th 2008
This post originally was going to be something so stereotypical I can’t believe I even considered it. A debate, between windows and osx. I can’t however be bothered with this, let it be sufficient to simply say, I have battled XP for the last few days, although I won, it took so much effort I wish I hadn’t started in the first place.
Instead, I’m going to talk about the way I think. I’m not entirely sure which way round my mind approached the particular behaviour it has now. But, in essence, it is a giant puzzle solver. I see things as either problems, or solutions. Something either requires that I fix it, or can be used to fix something else and from this, I often wander, is this why I’m a design. Or, more interestingly, do I see things this way because I design. Design, is after all, simply a search to find the best fitting solution to the problem a client supplies.
Either way, that is the way I work. It is the holidays and I think that’s quite enough for now, beer, good food and good company await. I hope you are all as fortunate.
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V-moda Arrives and Good Times
December 10th 2008
My replacement v-moda’s arrived today, which is nice because my others just stopped working completely this morning.
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V-moda and the Replacement Headphones
December 6th 2008
Having complained previously about my broken V-moda’s earphones, one thing I can say about the company, is that their customer service is very good. They agreed (for a second time) to send me a new pair of headphones and were even happy to let me keep the old ones so that I won’t have to pay for the shipping fee’s to them. Within a day the replacement pair shipped and their currently on their way across the pond. I just hope that they last a little longer than the last few pairs.
I’d also like to let the spammers of my comments box know that there’s no way their junk will get through the filter without my knowledge, so stop it because it’s extremely irritating and waists my time.
Posted in: Design Rants, Life the Universe and Everything | Comment
Design Archives
December 3rd 2008
I’ve just been looking through my own personal design archives of the last few years of my work. I was hoping to find something, something I remember as being a fantastic piece that I had never got round to publishing. Whilst on the hunt I dug through many folders and their contents and the change and progression is quite staggering. If anything, it supports something I’ve been considering for quite a while, to be a good designer you must be able to identify what makes design good, bad or inappropriate and there’s no better place to start than your own work.
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V-moda and the Failing Earphones
November 17th 2008
So this is my first design rant. Frankly I am amazed that it has taken me this long to get to one, I am a man with a very strong opinion and even stronger convictions to speak them.
I have just one, very important point to make and it is this. Design is nothing without proper execution! Design often gets blamed for the failings of a product, when often it is the products build quality that is the real fault of the item. This is most obvious in american cars, which feel, quite frankly, like tin boxes. And there is one Simple reason for this, everything is made by the cheapest bidder. If your parts are cheap, no matter how nice the over all aesthetic is, the design and product as a whole will fail and consumers will be wary of future products, no matter how beautiful you make them.
What, you may well ask, has this to do with V-moda and failing earphones? Sadly, that is the problem, it has everything to do with V-moda and the failing headphones. I love the design of my v-moda’s, they look sharp, they feel sturdy and the sound great. They also, however, break. And often. I sent back my earphones in August because they had completely failed and shortly there after, received a replacement pair, with an improved design that supposedly fixes the problem. Well it didn’t. A couple of months on and I’m having the beginnings of the exact same problem. I’m sure V-moda will replace my headphones again, but when shipping will cost me up to half of the price of the product again, things start to seem unreasonable.
The point of my rant is this: Design cannot save your product if you make it as cheaply as possible. Engineering and design must be wielded as one, to create a product that both appeals to the heart and the mind. One day companies will learn this and I know a great deal of product designers that will breath a deep sigh of relief.
Posted in: Design Rants, Life the Universe and Everything | Comment
Scott Pargett says:
December 9th 2008
I went through the exact same things. I’m on my second replacement pair. I’ve noticed alot of re-design on the models along the way.
Excellent customer service.