If you're keeping up with the design-blogosphere, you've probably already seen that the British Royal Mint recently revealed their new coinage.

If not, then you have now.

The young gentleman responsible for these designs (which were chosen from a public contest) is Matthew Dent, who says this:

I found the idea that members of the public could interact with the coins the most exciting aspect of this concept. It's easy to imagine the coins pushed around a school classroom table or fumbled around with on a bar - being pieced together as a jigsaw and just having fun with them.

I've always thought that being charged to design currency would be an interesting design project. It certainly seems as if it would be incredibly high-stakes: as if literally everyone would have an opinion, as if this moment of design would really count. But would it?

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For my inaugural post, I'd like to talk about the significance of something which I feel was overlooked in last week's announcement of the new iPods-- the completion of the switch from Apple's signature double-shot plastic to aluminum cases.

Why do I blog this?

At Design Less Better, I specialize in the parts of our projects that people are most likely to see: graphics, product housing, packaging, etc. As a designer, at a minimum, I can be expected to fulfill the functional requirements of a product and make it look good, but I submit that a well-designed surface can deliver much more.

To illustrate this, I'd like to talk you through what Apple has done with their new product housing, to illustrate how a change in material addresses not only how their product looks, but a range of other design issues, as well.

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