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Really nice graphic and print design company in London, pity about the sound though… the internet was meant to be silent…
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usability firm in the UK
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Some friends are exhibiting at this space in Amsterdam, brilliant and critical work on farming and food.
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Nice sounding work by Cati Vaucelle, maps and jewellery
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Nice visualisation of used lipsticks
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another cube-based game
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Lovely exhibition and event design work.
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I should do one for the UK
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Don’t know what to think about this program description. Are they teaching businessmen how to be designers or the other way around? If both, then should they even be in the same program?
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Really nice paper / waste sculptures
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Nice speech for once.
Archive for October, 2007
links for 2007-10-30
October 30, 2007The internet of things doesn't have any users
October 30, 2007
I’m catching up on a week of madness and found7 steps to a green product and Bruce Sterling’s Anatomy of a spime diagram that Matt Jones commented on.
Funnily enough both speak about similar things. The Metropolis article highlights a methodology when designing a product: the right materials, clean and green production, etc. Bruce’s diagram highlights technologies used for a “spime”: tracking, fabbing, etc…
Both of these relate to technologies and production techniques. Neither of them includes the user!
In an age of the ubiquitous “user-centered design”, it seems a mistake to put a user’s behavior aside especially when talking about sustainability. Most of the sustainability issues we will have to deal with relate directly to our behavior and our choices: the number of places we fly to, the %age of household waste we recycle, where we shop at etc…
None of these issues relate to either of these systems and maybe a next step in the thinking around the Internet of things is the integration of that crucial parameter.
Let me put it this way: even if a chair has been fabbed, tagged and can be easily and instantly replaced by the same model, in this day and age, noone wants to keep the same chair for their entire lives.
Consumerism is a broader behavior that technology alone cannot resolve or change.
links for 2007-10-28
October 28, 2007-
worst company tagline ever but interesting interactive screens/tables
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Really nice collection of work, and beautifully simple navigation.
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simply beautiful, the sad thing being I think a lot of it still applies in 2007
Where is home?
October 28, 2007
I grew up all over the place (Paris, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Canada) and continued to relocate in my adult life (Italy, Holland, now UK) and many of my closest friends have had similar experiences. This got me thinking that the fashionable community of frequent travelers might not necessarily equate the community of frequent re-locators. From children of diplomats or bankers, to anyone who decides to relocate on a whim once they’ve become bored of a city (happens to me a lot), are there any new online or service interactions that can illustrate that granularity of personal experience or cater to those needs? Here are a few “weak signals” I like that could start some thoughts about this area:
We are multicolored is an interested exercise that allows you to draw your own flag based on different flags of countries that have had an impact on you.
I found however that I wanted to include and play around much more than 3 flags. “Where is your home” is question that has become much too broad. Where do you live now? Where have you lived? Where do you call home? are all questions that expand on this idea and could lead to interesting interfaces or visualisations.
What is the difference between relocating somewhere for a few months or a few years? My friend Hayat Benchenaa worked on a service design project for relocation and packing. There’s something interesting here about being able to recreate the idea of “home” quite quickly, before the container full of your belongings arrives. There is potential here in merging some of these ideas with the pre-furnished apartments people rent when staying somewhere for just a few months (very popular in Amsterdam).
Monocle could try catering to re-locators and giving deeper insight into some of the cities they cover instead of skimming through the globe over and over again (the latest one covers Milan in 3 different articles). They could also try catering to women in a different way, other than sticking in awkward fashion ads but that’s another story. There is a market for a magazine that gives insider’s knowledge not only on fashion and politics around the world but also on what makes every city special and different culturally. (Why, for eg. you shouldn’t order a cappucino after 11am in Milan, something re-locators want to know more than people dropping in for a few days of meetings)
Globalisation is a trading concept not a cultural one and there should be services, both online and offline that acknowledge this.
links for 2007-10-27
October 27, 2007-
really nice London Underground pictures and history
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Strange sounding conference in Singapore, supposed to be related to sustainability somehow but I fail to see how.
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The graphic design industry just discovered bio-mimicry it seems…I think its more interesting to see that professionals across design fields are appreciating cross-disciplinary interactions.
links for 2007-10-26
October 26, 2007-
I’m really looking forward to the next book of Jonathan Chapman and Nick Gant. I think they have really identified a great approach to looking at the issues around sustainability
Xmas suggestion #1
October 26, 2007Subtlety was never my thing :)
Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories: A collection of sustainable design essays.
links for 2007-10-23
October 23, 2007-
Outsource your mundane daily obligations. I know a lot of geeks who could benefit from this. Ben? Matt? Massimo? :P
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My friend Kars is now freelancing in Denmark and open to speaking opportunities about game design, ux and service design. Check him out!
Sustainability through education?
October 23, 2007
I like to think that design schools don’t just teach good creative thinking but also good habits that shape you as a professional later on and skills that can influence the profession in general.
I’ve been co-teaching one day a week at the University for the Creative Arts and in a way it’s been quite an education (couldn’t help it ;) ).
These 19-20 year olds spend 6 weeks trying out a different program every week and the practice of design is actually called “3DD” or 3D design. 3DD competes with illustration, animation, fine arts, photography and other such courses for student’s attention and at the end of the 6 weeks they will choose a “pathway” for the next 3-4 years.
All the different professions and opportunities in design such as architecture, product design, interior design, urban design, etc are all dumped into this one unappealing label.
Not only that, but the issue of sustainability doesn’t get mentioned anywhere, making this choice of a course completely removed from the realities of society and the professional environment.
This becomes quite obvious in the totally wasteful ways in which students treat the materials they are provided with. Card, paper, foam, toxic glues and the likes are thrown around. Shapes are cut right in the middle of a piece of paper or card and huge leftovers are simply discarded. Being sensitive to the environmental doesn’t grow on you, it’s taught or even imposed as just another set of constraints that come with being a designer.
If we are to make any kind of change in designer’s expectations of the world, their work and their clients, that’s where it starts: among the doubts and questions of students still working out where they stand in a world they don’t quite know how to master.
