infographic earth facts guide
a collection of “moving diagrams” that illustrate basic planetary science & geographic related data, aiming to solve curious questions such as “where is the earth located?”, “how is the earth different from other planets?”, “where does the sky become space?”, or “how big are the oceans?”.
[link: jvsc.jst.go.jp]
see also universal scale & cell biology infographics.
Originally from information aesthetics
reBlogged by michael on May 15, 2007, 11:46PM
Frankenphone: ID lecturer mods phones
Apparently not all college professors are squares. Mehmet Erkok, industrial design lecturer at Istanbul Teknik Universitesi’s Department of Industrial Product Design, hacked the heck out of some Nokia phones to better suit his tastes. We’re not sure about the machine-screw keypad, but that old-school earpiece is the first comfortable-looking phone speaker we’ve ever seen.
via Jan Chipchase
…
Originally from core77.com's design blog
reBlogged by michael on May 7, 2007, 1:30PM
Luminous Green
Yesterday, i attended the Luminous Green symposium, organized by the lovely FoAM people, on the Groenhoven Estate, near Brussels. The event was exactly what it promised to be: a fantastic gathering of people from different fields and who all battle for a more sustainable environment. There were artists, fashion designers, grassroot activists, business leaders, people from the governement, etc. The aim of the event is to get them to talk together. Not in a self-congratulory spirit but to collect successful stories and see if people from different background can define a common ground.
If you’re in Brussels on the 4th, i can only recommend you to head to FoAM and see how artists, designers and engineers translate the issues and suggestions that popped up during the conference into sketches and prototypes.
FoAM set up Luminous Green to reflect on the importance of creativity practice into the environmental debate. The aim is to go beyond the discussion about the effects of global warming. The debate is rather to see how we can adapt to life in turbulent and anti-environmental conditions and more precisely: How can designers, artists and other creative people contribute to the discussion? Maja Kuzmanovic, who curated the event, suggested that what designers and artists can bring into the discussion is:
– 1. An integrated approach to complex problem solving.
Problems cannot be isolated, they are part of a big picture. We have created unstable systems and they have to be attacked from different approaches and fields. Everything is interconnected and interdependent. This requires a holistic trial and error approach.
– 2. The participatory nature of creative practices.
Today, prescribing universal solutions doesn’t work. There are as many approaches as there are problems. We shouldn’t look for solutions but for ecologies of solutions
– 3. The ability to design beautiful things that people might want to surround themselves with.
Buckminster Fuller said: “When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
If we design or create beautiful things, people will not only want to have it but will also want to be part of the community that made it. Beauty makes it easier to draw people’s attention.
It’s time to be proactive and behave like the avant-garde that many claim to be.
The conference was as sustainable as possible which was not easy at all:
– difficult to find furniture created in a truly sustainable way (good recycling conditions, good working conditions, etc.) The only things they could find were prototypes or showroom pieces,
– they wanted to organize the event in an eco-chateau but nothing of the kind exists in Belgium,
– they got two hybrid cars from Lexus but 50 persons cannot fit in a car. Now Brussels uses hybrid buses for public transport, the only problem is that they cannot go out of Brussels. Regulations wouldn’t allow that.
However, they produced very little printed documents, offered picnic snack in lovely bags designed and hand-crafted by people from the Barefoot College and managed to convince the speakers to either use no projections or be content with the very poorly lighted ones. And it worked marvellously.
Conclusion: there’s still so much work to do, especially for people who don’t have large pockets. We need more tangible products and we need to connect them together to achieve the desired impact.
Originally from we make money not art by
reBlogged by michael on May 1, 2007, 8:57AM
Image, Space, Object 2007: People Centered Brand Experiences
at RMCAD, in Denver, Colorado, August 9-12, 2007 I have to say that I am a bit biased — having been involved in producing the last two Image, Space, Object conferences — but ISO offers a workshop-like experience that doesn’t have a true parallel in today’s conference scene. ISO participants are divided up into small [...]
Subway Maps & Purpose-Driven Design
Maps are just…cool. They put us two or three miles above the earth and let us peer down, like God(s) at what lies below. By giving us this view, they ground us and give us information and perspective that we couldn’t otherwise obtain and digest.
There many types of maps: climate, political, topographical and transit system maps and they all have one thing in common: we overlay information upon the geography to help serve some purpose. A topographical map is of no use to me if I’m interested in zip code boundaries.
Tina Eisenberg’s excellent Swiss Miss blog points to a redesign of the NY subway map has been boldly put forth by designer Eddie Jabbour. Here’s a little taste of what Mr. Jabbour’s done to our beloved subway system map:
You can see a lot more by clicking the above image. A quick stare tells the story: the map has been redesigned with a greater focus on its intended purpose. Mr. Jabbour is clearly cheating here. The paths of the subway lines are downright inaccurate, but alas there’s a great lesson to learn here: good information design is about cheating with information if the result better serves the consumers of that design. We’re not looking to plot out exactly where the subway lies underneath New York City. We’re just trying to make our way around the city, and this revised map is better aligned with that purpose.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority to date hasn’t shown much interest. Ah well…
Originally from Basement.org
reBlogged by michael on Apr 25, 2007, 9:46AM
Solo bus stop ads let you talk to strangers. Over.
Nokia’s got bored British commuters playing games, but Solo takes a different approach to interactive bus stop marketing by showcasing the phone’s walkie-talkie feature. Under Vancouver-based agency Rethink’s creative guidance, bus shelters in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, and Calgary were equipped with built-in two-way radios that connect commuters between different cities, in real time, with just a push of a button.
via ad goodness
…
Originally from core77.com's design blog
reBlogged by michael on Apr 25, 2007, 10:41AM
Jan Chipchase – Future Perfect Where’s The Phone
This essay presents data from a series of Nokia street surveys conducted between 2003 and 2006 that explored where people carry their mobile phones and why. The first study in this series, conducted in Helsinki during the summer of 2003, was designed to understand the extent to which people noticed incoming communication. Since then the study has evolved to encompass the carrying location of other objects, collect a visual snapshot of mobile phones and their ‘owner’s’ and has since been run in eleven countries across four continents.
New experience design school in the Netherlands
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The Utrecht School of the Arts in the Netherlands will be starting a new bachelor degree in experience design [website in Dutch only] as of September, the first programme of its kind in Europe, and is now recruiting students.
The four-year degree programme is lead by Rob Van Kranenburg, who used to work at Virtual Platform, De Balie, the New Media Department of the University of Amsterdam, and Doors of Perception. He published on RFID and Ambient Intelligence. The programme has a strong focus on the design of ambient devices in a wireless world. It is introduced as follows (my translation):
Interestingly, it has a rather idiosyncratic way of differentiating itself from interaction design (that one can also study at the Utrecht School of the Arts) that is not too clear and I don’t really agree with.
But maybe this definition has more to do with internal politics at the Utrecht School of the Arts than anything else, and we shouldn’t focus too much on it. Good luck, Rob |
Originally from Putting people first by
reBlogged by michael on Apr 14, 2007, 6:59AM
FSI Releases Spiekermann’s FF Mt
April 1, 2007, Berlin — FSI FontShop International proudly announces FF Mt™, Erik Spiekermann’s most economical typeface ever. Employing obscure but powerful techniques like vwl mmssn and cap reduction, FF Mt uses up to 50% less paper, screen real estate, and wall space than other text faces without a single condensed letter.
The German government has already incorporated FF Mt in their road sign system.
Before (left): Inconsistent hierarchy. Is Mönchengladbach less important than Münster or Dortmond? After (right): Clean hierarchy, increased legibility, 15% smaller sign saves costs.
In addition to its conservationist benefits, FF Mt also enables the generation of buzzwords, product names, and Web 2.0 domains as the user types.
Finally, FF Mt prepares us for the future. English is changing. With the popularity of MMS and internet chat, spelling reform is occurring at a quickened pace. FF Mt accommodates this new condensed written language now. Any copy set in this advanced font will conform to next-generation standards, yet still pass present-day spell checkers.
FSI FontShop International believes this tool is so revolutionary and beneficial to the Earth that access should not be limited to the few. Starting today, April 1 2007, the cross-platform OpenType font is available for free at FontFont.com.
Syndication sponsor: Use this link to buy fonts at Veer and they’ll turn your type love into Typographica support.
Originally from Typographica
reBlogged by michael on Apr 1, 2007, 9:38AM
Gillian Crampton Smith – Research?
Gillian Crampton Smith is regarded as one of the pioneers of interaction design. In 1989, she established the Computer Related Design Department at the Royal College of Art in London. In 2001 she set up the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy, a graduate school and research institution sponsored by Telecom Italia and Olivetti which gained wide recognition as a leading centre for interaction design research and education. She is also the Chair of Convivio EU Network.
She is now developing together with Philip Tabor a graduate programme of interaction design in the faculty of design of the IUAV University in Venice.
The craft of Interaction Design has developed through experience without thinking too much about rationalizing it. Like Bauhaus’ work in the ’20s, the new grammar of film making developed by Eisenstein, it can be a platform from which those coming after us can build upon. Many designers work in a very intuitive way. So far any attempt to systematize design has proved inconsistent. The only way to research design is by doing design.
Design as research.
– Argument 1. Design isn’t research: design has no theory, no fool-proof methods, design is intuitive and overrationalism will ruin it.
Design reflects on what has been done and draws on it. It’s risky to apply paradigms of science to design. Theories about architecture have been around for centuries, design is much younger. There are thousands of interaction design projects and only a few are really relevant for research. She reminded how hard it had been years ago to convince the Design Council that what interaction design was doing was relevant for research. Now it’s much better accpeted and understood. Research projects seek to provide knowledge and insight. If a research project fails, there is still a gread deal that has been learnt by doing that research. This doesn’t apply to design, you can’t say to a client: “it didn’t work, but we’ve learnt so much in the process!”
Argument 2. All design is research. Each design problem is unique. Design progresses through exemplars. Design repertoires.
Argument 3. Includes the invention and generation of ideas, images, performances and artefacts, including design, where these lead to substantially improved insights.
Looking for 3 types of insight:
– Medium: what is possible within the constraints of technology;
– People: ways technology could better support people’s needs, values, desires;
– Process: improving the way systems, products and services are designed.
What is possible to do with technology? How can we communicate it in implicit and explicit ways?
Examples.
Victor Vina and Massimo Banzi‘s Box. The platform allows non-technical people to experiment freely with designing interactions between physical devices and their wireless networking. These networks could connect objects in different rooms of a building-or even in different countries or continents.
Each cardboard box can do one simple input or output thing. Each box knows where it is, the time and where the other boxes are. Interactions can take place anywhere in the world; for example, a box in Ivrea can have a switch that turns on a light in Tokyo-all done via the Internet.
Gilian Crampton-Smith then showed several projects from Strangley Familiar, a series of explorations into physical computing by ex-students of Ivrea. The first rule the students were given was “No button.”
Message Table, for example, is an answering machine that forces you to have a clear desk.
The cord connecting each of the Tug Tug telephone to its base is a shared interactive object, allowing each person to affect the distant phone physically by pulling the cord. If you pull the cord, the receiver at the other end falls of the hook.
Hardware platforms developed at Ivrea that build on processing: Wiring and Arduino.
Need to make a difference: after some 20 years of interaction design, we still spend a tremendous amount of time staring at a screen and typing with two fingers. Good ideas need to be sustainable, understandable and not just implementable.
Aequilibrium is an interactive environment developed for the Rialto fish market in Venice. The project shows how to use a technology without loosing the quality that makes the city so special. The fish in Aequilibrium react to your presence: they get scared and avoid your arrival but they become your friends when you are quiet. Four columns on the sides show predictions and pollution. The prediction can change accoring to your behaviour, by interacting with Aequilibrium you get a sense of how your actions can influence nature
Bad pictures of the slides.
Originally from we make money not art by
reBlogged by michael on Apr 1, 2007, 10:05AM
