Posts tagged “Portland”

Out and About: Steve in Portland/San Diego/Denver

Last week I hit three cities, doing workshops and fieldwork; in hotel rooms, airports, homes, restaurants and the like. Here are some of my photos from a very busy trip.

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Hotel restaurant point-of-sale user interface. So many amazingly awful things here. The help button is labeled “HELP!!!!!”; Cobb Salad (I’m sorry, Fiesta Cobb) is $12.00?

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Without raisins? Now with extra raisins!

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There used to be a baggage kiosk. Now there’s just a sign.

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I found Jonathan Borofsky’s “The Dancers” in downtown Denver to be vaguely unsettling.

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Controls removed for your convenience.

Out and About: Julie in Portland

I visited the great city of Portland, Oregon over Thanksgiving week, and noticed some of the ways its denizens use surfaces to communicate and express. Like Steve did earlier in his recent post, Out and About: Steve in Boston, given our recent interactions article about noticing and documenting street art, Kilroy Was Here, I too wanted to share some snaps!


As elsewhere, the backs of city signage serve as canvas for quick-stick expression. The tiki-figure here is one I commonly see in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco, where I live, which surprised me and gave me a little charge, a feeling of connection to home.


A City of Portland sanctioned sticker, which includes a number to call to report damage to this sign, sits alongside its renegade brethren.


Great juxtaposition of two messages about the dangers of inhaling alongside a DANGER sticker.



I appreciated the friendly, bubbly, colorful style against the rainy, grey backdrop of Portland. Contributors to the collective urban collage here seem respectful of each others boundaries – not much overlapping of images.


And, finally, bunnies!

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • [from steve_portigal] Report: EPA kills Chevy Volt’s 230 mpg rating [Autoblog Green] – [Thorny problem about how to give an actual rating of a car's performance when that rating is based on gasoline consumption and the car in question doesn't (really) use gasoline! The whole frame of reference for assessing the comparative economical/ecological performance of a breakthrough product is based on a slightly obsoleting technology. Craziness ensues!]
  • [from steve_portigal] How the Old Spice Videos Are Being Made [ReadWriteWeb] – A team of creatives, tech geeks, marketers and writers gathered in an undisclosed location in Portland, Oregon yesterday and produced 87 short comedic YouTube videos about Old Spice. In real time. Those videos and 74 more made so far today have now been viewed more than 4 million times and counting. The team worked for 11 hours yesterday to make 87 short videos, that's just over 7 minutes per video, not accounting for any breaks taken. Then they woke up this morning and they are still making more videos right now. Here's how it's going down. Old Spice, marketing agency Wieden + Kennedy and actor Isaiah Mustafa are collaborating on the project. The group seeded various social networks with an invitation to ask questions of Mustafa's character. Then all the responses were tracked and users who contributed interesting questions and/or were high-profile people on social networks are being responded to directly and by name in short, funny YouTube videos.
  • [from steve_portigal] Who’s Mailing What – [A very specific form of "competitive intelligence"] Every month the Who's Mailing What! Archive receives and analyzes approximately 4,000 to 5,000 pieces of direct mail in nearly 200 categories — consumer, business, fundraising, catalogs, and much more — forwarded to us from a network of correspondents around the country. Why? Because the best way to create successful direct mail is to study other company's mail to see which campaign and techniques show up again and again. If you're tracking a particular area of direct mail — you can go right to that category, see what we've received and discover: Who's mailing what, the offers, the control, the complexity of the mailing, whether there was 4-color work, sophisticated computer work, a poly envelope, a self-mailing format.

Value Proposition Escalation


Parking Lot Sign, Portland, OR, July 2010

Sure, we can rationally compare the price tag of one commodity over another, and can conclude that one is objectively cheaper. But what is the emotional benefit of choosing the cheaper one? This parking lot sign encourages us to pay ourselves a bit of a compliment for choosing them over another. A gentle example of escalating your offer.

My deli is more authentic than your deli

From a San Francisco Chronicle interview with Noah Alper, founder of Noah’s Bagels

Q: You write about how important it was that the stores be authentically New York, and authentically Jewish. What did you have to do to make that happen?
A: It involved not being afraid to be unapologetically Jewish. It sounds simplistic, but we acted as if we were operating the store in a Jewish neighborhood – we had Hanukkah candles at the appropriate time of year, challahs on Friday, charity boxes in every store.
We also operated a strictly kosher establishment. We were the largest kosher retailer in the Untied States when we sold the business. That was an added level of complexity. But it not only captured a very loyal kosher community, it also added to the authenticity.

Although I first encountered Noah’s before they were sold (which ended many of these practices), I don’t recall noticing this level of authenticity. Perhaps it’s eroded so far that my early memories have been wiped out. But this discussion of authenticity and Jewish deli on the west coast reminds me of my first encounters in the mid-90s with Portland, OR-based Kornblatt’s. The PDXers I met seemed to cherish Kornblatt’s as a local treasure and I’m sure any criticism here will upset them to no end. My apologies, but Kornblatt’s always struck me as a place for people that hadn’t ever been to New York, liked it that way, but wanted some element of what people supposedly ate over thar. The place evoked what you might call checklist-authenticity: bagels (check), celery tonic (check), New York street signs (check), soft-spoken-shrugging-Jackie-Mason-meets-Ben-meets-Jerry-meets-Jerry-Garcia-proprietor (wha????).

While Noah’s decor is the same cartoonish parody of what New York’s Lower East Side, at least Alper had a sense of how to go beyond that. And ultimately, what it took to export New York deli authenticity to the Bay Area is completely different what it took to expoert New York deli authenticity to Portland. Different markets, different culture, different context, different definition of authenticity.

See also:

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • HERMENAUT: Fake Authenticity: An Introduction – Equaled in fake authenticity only by Restoration Hardware, which sells new-but-old-looking pencil sharpeners and fire irons to people who apparently want to live inside a catalog, The House of Blues doesn't bother to lacquer its walls with old Ebony magazine covers, like the recently deceased bluesman Junior Kimbrough did at his juke joint in Mississippi. Instead, Ackroyd & co. just bought Kimbrough's place as soon as he died and carved it up for cufflinks. That might not be exactly accurate, but it is how you feel when you step inside a HoB. They do sell "outsider art" cufflinks, though. Did you know that HoB has its own curator? who's aggressively acquired for that chain the world's largest collection of outsider art? A questionable category anyway, this kind of painting is freely mixed at the Harvard Square HoB with old signs advertising everything from shoeshines to churches, and faux-aged signs entreating you to "Have mercy & say yeah!" and directing you to the T-shirt display.
  • Zara Logue's Contemporary Design class at University of Oregon – This semester's theme is Authenticity. I'll be giving a guest lecture (remotely) on April 29.

The Donut World Tour, in progress

Without donuts being part of the plan when I travel, they seem to show up with some regularity. While Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts seek to provide a consistent experience across geographies, there are also very unique experiences available in the very same category. The notion of donut is rather broad and is reinterpreted in some engaging ways. There’s something about the pure pleasure of a donut that also invites a fun approach to all aspects of the experience: the flavors, the environment, the presentation, the messaging.

Here’s a few I’ve documented. Please leave recommendations for other donuts-shops-to-experience in the comments.

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Randy’s Donuts, LA (Amazing site, donuts are pretty good)

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Voodoo Doughnuts, Portland, OR: Rex Diablo and Ol’ Dirty Bastard (fun to choose, less to eat)

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Murciano in The Marais, Paris (the best thing I’ve ever eaten)

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Fractured Prune, Washington D.C. (didn’t get to try it)

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Roti Donat, Bali, Indonesia (definitely not good)

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Mister Donut sign and exterior, Taipei, Taiwan

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Mister Donut Simpsons promotion, Kyoto, Japan (I don’t remember what I got but it was good!)

Postcards from the road: PHX to PDX

It’s been a busy-yet-fun few days on the road, from giving a plenary presentation and workshop at ASU’s Design Research Symposium (more to come, whenever I get my pictures – Hi, Greg!), to meetings, dinner with colleagues, and helping a client synthesize fieldwork data from China and Russia into product concepts. Here are some images I captured along the way:

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Font problems @ Sky Harbor Airport, April, 2008

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No carry-on tires, Sky Harbor Airport, April, 2008

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Well, Tempe, AZ, April, 2008

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Pay Here, Tempe, AZ, April, 2008

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Fear God, Tempe, AZ, April, 2008

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Disengaged Citrus, Tempe, AZ, April, 2008

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Life imitates The Simpsons, Tempe, AZ, April, 2008

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Busy license plate, Tempe, AZ, April, 2008

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Crepes To Go, Portland, OR, April, 2008

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Font Era #1, Portland, OR, April, 2008

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Font Era #2, Portland, OR, April, 2008

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Dog Paintings, Portland, OR, April, 2008

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Sign upon sign, Portland, OR, April, 2008

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Lift party, Portland, OR, April, 2008

Voodoo Doughnut


cap’n crunch doughnut, originally uploaded by mokin.


Still life with Bacon Maple Bar and Voodoo Doughnut, originally uploaded by HPZ.


voodoo doughnut, originally uploaded by Poisson.


blood-filled voodoo doughnut, originally uploaded by mokin.

I’ve got to get to Portland soon and check this place out. Cool menu, interesting attitude.

Grape Ape
(raised doughnut with vanilla frosting and grape powder)

Dirt
(raised doughnut covered with vanilla glaze and oreo cookies)

Arnold Palmer
(cake doughnut covered with lemon and tea powder)

San Dimas
(cake with three types of chocolate on top)

Butter Fingering
(Devils food, vanilla, and crushed Butterfinger)

Neapolitan
(chocoalte doughnut with vanilla frosting and strawberry quick powder)

Triple Chocolate Penetration
(chocolate doughnut, chocolate glaze, and cocoa-puffs)

Voodoo Doughnut
(voodoo doll doughnut)

Dirty Snowball
(chocolate cake doughnut covered with pink marshmallow glaze and surprise filling)

Apple Fritter
(apple/glaze/doughnut as big as your head)

The Memphis Mafia
(chocolate chips/banana/ peanutbutter/glaze big!)

Portland Creme
(raised doughnut filled with creme and covered in chocolate with two eyes)

Cock-n-Balls
(Bachlorette party favorite, tripple cream filled, with your favorite saying written right on it. Comes in its own pink box. $4.95 Order ahead as supplies can be limited.)

Nyquil Glazed and pepto-bismol (currently on hold)

No Name
A doughnut so good we couldn’t come up with a better name. It has chocolate rice crispys and peanutbutter on it.

VEGAN
(thats right, vegan doughnuts! assorted flavors, come in and eat many)

Hippo Hardware, Hooray

I guess I’m just so amazed at what a cool place Portland is. Years ago I was shown Periodicals Paradise, a store with aisles and aisles of recent and not-so-recent issues of popular magazines – something that is hard to find anywhere. It’s got great bookstores (the world famous Powell’s, not to mention zine and other stores like Counter Media (and other places right nearby, on the 900 block of SW Oak), and finally I went to Hippo Hardware & Trading Company.

It’s a big old house or some kind of store from way back, many floors, little zones just filled with stuff – it’s like what Restoration Hardware promises to be – a dreamy junk store with knick-knacks, handles, drawer pulls, walls, windows, lights, jammed into little wooden rooms with old dirty stuffed toy hippos peering at you from unlikely places.

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