Tagged with design
logical or emotional
Posted December 30th, 2008 at 7:59 pm. There is 1 comment.Craig Oldham recently published 12 IN 12, an accompaniment to a talk where he gave a listing of 12 things he learned in his first 12 months as a graphic designer. In the talk he touched upon hte different cultures of designers, emotional design and logical design, and lists members of each.
British Design Classics
Posted November 30th, 2008 at 7:51 pm. There are 0 comments.Great Stamps from the Royal Mail. The British Design Classics collection come out in early 2009.
via British Design Classics « Thinking for a Living™
It’s a Good Thing
Posted November 13th, 2008 at 1:12 pm. There are 0 comments.Ted Booth, head of Interaction Design at Smart Design spoke earlier this evening at the AIGA Design Remixed series. He spoke a bit about Smart’s approach to running an inter-disciplinary design practice and the role of the ‘hybrid’ in their studio. The ‘hybrid’ spans across disciplines (Smart Design has: Industrial Design, Engineering, Interaction Design, Communication Design, Insight & Strategy and Prototyping) and seems to help drive innovation by having their hands in many pies.I usually consider myself a generalist or hybrid, for better or worse. Of the several projects shown two stuck with me until this morning.
HP Q Control
Conceived out of an initiative to consolidate the many different physical navigation elements across their wide offerings of devices. The Q part is the little back button which dangles off the bottom left which serves as a “get me out of here” safety net for users. It also seems that it creates a crutch for less rigorous interaction design on the screens and functions being controlled by the Q control. Not having ever used one, i can’t really say.
HP produced video talking about the Q Control
HP’s Q Control from maritoruiz on Vimeo.
Augmented Reality Prototypes
In the prototyping of consumer electronics they often mock up user interfaces in Flash and then build rough physical prototypes that control the interactions on screen. While janky, it can be effective but it still doesn’t look pretty. Booth briefly described a methodology they are using on a new project, where physical interactions such as pressing buttons is done on a block of foam covered in green screen paper and the video of the new devices and on screen activity keyed in. I think it would make for a compelling visual and easily help sell their ideas.
No images or video so here’s a clip from the Girl skateboards video Yeah Right where the skaters ride invisible skateboards
chair for sharing
Posted October 17th, 2008 at 9:48 am. There are 0 comments.
Instead of having to try to fit two people onto a chair made for one person - we have here a chair made for two half people. Studio Ball
(via designboom)
big ideas are small
Posted April 4th, 2008 at 9:54 am. There are 0 comments.
d-barcode in Japan design barcodes for the items you see on the supermarket shelf. These are the little flourishes of design that take the banal and make it fresh and that keeps me smiling everyday.
Space Mirror
Posted December 7th, 2007 at 7:11 pm. There are 0 comments.
This is one of those projects that goes under the radar, relatively unknown to most. I had the fortune several years ago to see Wes Jones speak, and he presented several of his architectural projects, nearly all forgettable. The work was fine, maybe even great (I don’t remember) but paled in comparison to the Astronauts Memorial (completed 1989) for one simple reason, the concept behind the project, the daring to propose to the bureaucratic agency NASA what he did , and nearly pull it off 100%.
The Space Mirror is a huge plane of mirror polish black granite, meant to reflect the sky above. In the granite slabs are carved straight through the names of fallen astronauts, scattered across the plane of granite, grouped by the tragic events in which the lives were lost. Behind the plane of granite an array of silvered mirrors was meant to be placed to reflect the light of the sun through the cut out names effectively burning the names of lost astronauts into the retinas of the viewers. Yes. The idea was to burn afterimages of the names of deceased astronauts into visitors eyes. The sheer violence of this small bit seals the deal for me and this project. It is some thing I will never forget. The power, and the metaphor contained in that simple move makes this project .
This is in addition to the fact that the several hundred ton steel structure and granite slabs rotated and tilted to track the sun across the sky, to insure that users eyes were continuously exposed to the full strength of the suns rays. Sadly, the bureaucracy being what it was, as per Mr. Jones, the mirrors were replaced with white painted surfaces to reduce the intensity of the light. After an malfunction with the equipment controlling the rotation & tilt sun tracking, flood lights were installed to provide a sanitized continuous source of light through the crippled memorial.
ABC Button
Posted November 29th, 2007 at 10:42 am. There are 0 comments.
Button typography. Very bespoke. Similar to minimal type faces made from 5X7 grid or LCD calculator numerals, I had never seen, or thought possible for that matter, that all the letterforms would be possible. You can download the font as well.
via Michael Surtees’ very excellent DesignNotes
touch: nearfield communications
Posted November 19th, 2007 at 12:26 pm. There are 0 comments.
At nearfield a presentation on RFID as a Material in Design outlines the background, goals and findings of the research into NFC (nearfield communications) using RFID.