幣 - Bi4 - Currency

錢幣 - Qian2 Bi4 - Coin

Tonight’s movie (The Thundering Sword, another tragic love story set in the martial world. Boy meets girl, girl accidentally almost kills boy’s sworn brother while both are attempting to steal magic sword, boy swears revenge, …) reminded me of the time I went to Design Continuum and they showed us the cell phone they designed for use in China, which featured a microphone that was a tiny square hole inside an etched circle, which they said was an example of how good their design process is, because they figured out that a square hole inside a circle had some sort of good connotation for Chinese people because of… well… the guy talking forgot the details, but the point was it was good, and they knew it was good, and they were smart. It wasn’t until a few hours later that it hit me: they probably did it because that’s what traditional coins look like! Every time you look at your phone, you are subtly reminded of money…

They also told us that they were asked to help redesign some consumer grade locks, and they figured out that people judge the strength of locks based on the KEY. If you make the key look really fancy, people assume the lock is strong! Apparently it worked, they advised the lock company to just put some serious looking plastic cladding on they key, and feature it prominently in the packaging, and sales went up like 8 billion percent. Neat!