Chris How | Blog | Ça va pas la tête

In a week where the EU has changed the much derided and misquoted legislation on shapes and sizes of fruit and vegetables, it made me think of the French influence on apples. Being the unashamed geek I am, my apple thoughts are more of the Mac type than the Golden Delicious variety.

Although the look and feel for the iPod was designed by a Brit, Jonathan Ive, it appears recent innovations from his team have been inspired by two great design classics from our cross channel cousins.

Now design inspiration can and should come from all around us. Great designers have the ability to keep their minds open to stimulation, sometimes plundering from unlikely sources. For the Apple team it would appear that a Francophile is in their midst.

One of the unique selling points for the new iPod nano is the updated shuffle functionality. To evoke a new random playlist you physically shake, rattle and roll your iPod. To me, this sounds decidedly similar to the unique functionality of Orangina. Since its launch in 1936, at the Marseille Trade Fair, the quintessential French refresher has instructed users to "just shake it, to wake it".

The result of shuffling your tunes is to generate an unpredictable, eclectic, free-ranging mix of music. This has been the music policy of the legendary fip (France Inter Paris) radio station since its inaugural spluttering onto the airwaves in 1971.

Partly devised as a government backed calming measure for mad motorists on the hectic Parisian periphique, it is a radio station that effortlessly epitomises the phrase ‘vive le difference’. With wildly diverse music, minimal DJ chatter, sarcastic traffic updates and no advertising, its Gallic charm emanates from throwing away the rules to instead celebrate the diversity of music.

With no such thing as a typical fip playlist you get fantastic juxtapositions. You can be listening to Puccini next to Daft Punk and obscure smoky jazz fading into plastic pop. If you have never listened to fip I urge you to give it a go and let me know what you think.

While on the subject of Apples, for all you designers out there, please be aware using your Apple MacBook Pro and Apple iPod does not comprise of two portions of your recommended five fruit a day.

This entry was posted on November 13, 2008 at 8:22 pm and is filed under design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.