NOTICING OUR WORLD.

PARIS
JOEL DESGRIPPES

Sound Designer influences consumers

Sounds made by household appliances are taken very seriously by manufacturers that are hiring a new kind of specialist: a sound designer. Sounds are more involved in a product’s perception than in years past. It is also an element of differentiation for brands: in today’s very competitive international world, sounds are a part of the consumer’s intuitive perception about a product's quality. When a woman uses a tube of lipstick, she concerns herself with two things. First: a secure closing. The suitable sound must therefore be a pop or a click. Of course, materials are to be chosen that adequately produce this sound. The second thing is paradoxically a “non-sound.” Because “no noise” means quality and precision—and when she pulls out her lipstick, there must be no sound. Here, nylon or another soft material should be used. It’s important to note that no woman using her lipstick will ever spontaneously speak of the sound as a criterion for her purchase, but subconsciously, if one doesn’t fulfill this expectation, she won’t buy the product. A lot of tests have been performed that prove this. I think that you can’t have sounds express everything, but for certain products… Let’s take the example of a vacuum cleaner. Strangely, the sound of a vacuum cleaner reassures the housewife on the effectiveness of her cleaning work. A silent vacuum cleaner—they are some—would probably be troubling. Now what I believe is that poetry must be applied in the right places. It is pointless to try to put poetry everywhere: some sounds are about efficiency and they should remain efficient. Others are related to comfort and emotion, and our duty is to satisfy these needs accordingly.

CINCINNATI
ALETA KNAPP

Design and a purchase

Hi, I’m Aleta Knapp and I’m with the Cincinnati office. And I’m here at Reser Bicycle Outfitters in Newport, Kentucky, and I’m talking about how design influences a purchasing decision and specifically, my purchase decision of a mountain bike. I started this process probably about…hmmm…I guess it’s probably been about 6 months ago now. And obviously there are a lot of bikes to choose from. They carry Rocky Mountain, which was a bike I looked at. I rode an Iron Horse, but the bike that I was really crazy about was the Yeti, and Yeti is made in Golden, Colorado and…or designed in Golden, Colorado. It’s very much a, a very high-end bike, it’s probably beyond what I need, but I absolutely fell in love with this model, it’s the 575, and I love the way the frame looks. Aesthetically, purely aesthetically, I love the way it looked. I like the way functionally I can stand over the bike, the way this curves down, and I liked how different it was than everything else. But the thing that was amazing to me about this bike, when I actually rode the 575 for the first time, was how the beauty and the aesthetics of the bike were completely functional. It was very efficient when I rode it, it was very comfortable. I was able to handle the terrain more effectively than I could on previous bikes. And I was so amazed at how what appealed to me aesthetically completely paid off in the functionality of the bike. Another design feature that was really important to me when I bought this bike is…is about functionality, it’s about the suspension. And it’s an amazing suspension, the front suspension has a lot of travel on it, which is really wonderful when you’re doing rough terrain like roots and rocks and if you’re doing any fun stuff like rock gardens or teeter-totters. It makes for a really efficient ride that you feel like you’re really in control and the rear suspension is the same—it’s fully adjustable, so you can make it tighter if you’re more on a street situation and you can make it looser and more spongey if you’re on rougher terrain. So that was probably the most important feature in buying this bike, in addition to the frame geometry and the way it works. The last thing is…there’s functionality certainly to these clip-in petals, but I bought them because they’re orange…and I thought they would look really cool with the bike. This is Aleta Knapp, right across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio, noticing our world.

CINCINNATI
TIM SALACH

Sustainability and buying “local”

NEW YORK
KAREN SCHNELWAR

Small store, big idea

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