AIGA: futurescoping

This may be an interesting insight into how to gather and develop ideas for the future of a professional organization:

http://www.core77.com/blog/case_study/the_aiga_research_project_by_ziba_part_6_the_final_winnowing_-_evaluate_evaluate_evaluate_25808.asp

It may also be a very expensive design consultancy trying to justify their price with a ream of bullshit. Genuinely unsure.

Lego faces getting angrier

While clicking around the aforementioned Universal Construction Kit I also came across this article: apparently Lego faces have been getting angrier of the last fifty years. I guess this shouldn't come as a surprise, since when I was a kid none of the spaceships had guns (which simply meant that that was the first thing everyone changed on them) and now it seems like they are all meant for battle of some sort. What really impressed me was they way that the academic in this case seems to have made a respectable career out of playing with Lego - his website is more interesting than this particular story, I think.

How to connect Lego to K'Nex to Duplo to etc., etc.

With the Free Universal Construction Kit!


Basically, some enterprising artist collective with a fondness for dubious acronyms has created a set of 3D designs of components to connect a variety of kid's toys (most of which I haven't heard of, but which includes Lego, and that's the main thing). The aim is to allow people to print these out at home - you have to really go through the small print to find the admission that, unless you've got access to the really high end machines, the current crop of 3D printers can't print at a fine enough resolution to successfully connect your creation to, for example, Lego.
However, it is a brilliant idea.
I also particularly like the following rant from their website - particularly the idea of the commercial system enacted as an infinite series of micro-punishments for us, the humans:
"Consider the frustrating experience of purchasing a new computer (a Mac, say) and discovering that it will not play your aunt’s Windows Media video of your little cousins. Likewise, imagine your aunt’s corresponding annoyance when she finds that her PC will not play the Apple Quicktime video you sent her of your cats. This humiliating little episode isn’t an accident; it’s just a skirmish in a never-ending battle between giant commercial entities, played out, thousands of times every day, in exactly such micro-punishments to customers like you. If you’re well-informed, you may happen to know about VLC — a free, open-source video player, developed by independent hackers as a grassroots remedy for exactly this problem. Until the advent of ubiquitous 3D printing, software remedies like VLC weren’t readily available forhardware products, like toys. That’s changing."

BLDGBLOG: Landscape Futures Super-Trip

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/landscape-futures-super-trip.html
Must remember this itinerary if we ever do a road trip in the States...

"Our stops include the "world’s largest collection of optical telescopes," including the great hypotenuse of the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope, outside Tucson; the Very Large Array in west-central New Mexico; the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at the University of Arizona, aka the "lunar greenhouse," where "researchers are demonstrating that plants from Earth could be grown without soil on the moon or Mars, setting the table for astronauts who would find potatoes, peanuts, tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables awaiting their arrival"; the surreal encrustations of the Salton Sea, a site that, in the words of Kim Stringfellow, "provides an excellent example of the the growing overlap of humanmade and natural environments, and as such highlights the complex issues facing the management of ecosystems today"; the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, with its automated scanning systems used for "robotic searches for variable stars and exoplanets" in the night sky, and its gamma-ray reflectors and "blazar lightcurves" flashing nearby; the Grand Canyon; Red Rocks, outside Sedona; the hermetic interiorities of Biosphere 2; White Sands National Monument and the Trinity Site marker, with its so-called bomb glass; the giant aircraft "boneyard" at the Pima Air & Space Museum; and, last but not least, the unbelievably fascinating Lunar Laser-ranging Experiment at Apache Point, New Mexico, where they shoot lasers at prismatic retroreflectors on the moon, testing theories of gravitation, arriving there by way of the nearby Dunn Solar Telescope."

It’s Not About You - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/opinion/31brooks.html
Is it graduation time again? Already? Where does the tme go, eh? Anyway, an interesting article here which laments the advice given to college graduates - the idea tht they should follow their own paths, live their own dreams... just at a time when previous generations (and in all probability, they themselves) are in the process of tying themselves to a spouse, to a career, etc.

"Most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling."

I don't really think we should abandon our dreams and subsume ourselves in othre people's misery as a way of validating our lives, but it does have a grain of truth in it - not sure I could tell you, even now, whether my life is going in the direction it should. Assuming such a 'correct' path could ever exist.

Economics is flakier than a moulting corn flake.

Possibly.

This is a really interesting resource, if you happen to have done Economics at A-level or something.

"Recently it’s been said that it has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Crisis, normalized to the point that it appears proper for extinction events to be assuaged through market-based incentives and the atmosphere pimped out to the highest corporate bidder, is the currency by which the world now turns. But what if, for the sake of experiment, we were to press our thoughts just beyond the thin, strangling curtain of capitalist maximization? "

http://kickitover.org/

aesthetics of joy

http://aestheticsofjoy.com/


This isn't what I was going to post, but Ingrid Fetell's "Aesthetics of Joy" is a charming blog of the genus "I wish I'd written that". Packed full of really interesting posts and links - marvel at the cubist art of the Dutch tulip growers, and discover what noises children in different countries think animals make! Brilliant. And that multicoloured cake looks just too good not to copy...

"The politics of happiness" Think-tank report on sustainability & society

http://demos.fi/files/Demos_Politics_of_Happiness_A_Manifesto_Eng_Draft.pdf
Recently, I've been reading Paul Theroux's follow-up to The Great Railway Bazaar called "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star". In it, he retraces the route he took in the Railway Bazaar after an interval of thirty years, across the Middle East, through India to the Far East, then back via Japan and the Trans-Siberian Railway. They are both fantastic travel books; I recommend them. One of his musings that most caught my attention was his desire to travel without luxury. Luxury, he complains, is the enemy of observation - comfort reduces your alertness to the world around you. and besides, he adds, rich people are deathly dull to travel with - all they talk about is how poor they are.

This last observation interested me. It seems to me that as a nation - perhaps as a civilization - we are caught in this trap: we are massively better-off than our grandparents were, and yet we seem more and more concerned with poverty. The idea of 'fairness' was a political touchstone in the last UK election - but when we all have so much, it seems strange that we are so fixated on this concept. Oh, I know, we're all struggling to keep our heads above water - as a wise man once said to me, 'job' stands for 'Just Over Broke', and that's the way it is and will always be... but if I look at the amount of material possessions that I own, I can't claim to be impoverished. And when I walk down the poorer streets round me, the plethora of satellite dishes and heavily modified cars suggests that poverty is not the simple "lack of money" concept we sometimes assume it is.

All of which leads me to the above report. I haven't read all of it - as usual, one of the reasons I'm posting it here is in the hope that I'll get around to reading it thoroughly later - but it seems like a really interesting discussion of the problems of running a sustainable, happy capitalist economy. Here's what core77 had to say about it

My bright idea: Cory Doctorow | Technology | The Observer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/may/23/cory-doctorow-my-bright-idea
Cory Doctorow is promoting his latest novel, which apparently deals with teenagers and privacy. He makes some interesting points, which will chime with anyone who (like me) knows far more than they'd like about the private lives of their younger relatives thanks to facebook. Thanks facebook.

"Kids' relationship with privacy is really confused; they're told by teachers and adults that their privacy is paramount, that they should stop disclosing so much information on Facebook and so on. And then they go to schools where everything they do is monitored; there's mandatory spyware that takes every click they make, every word they utter and sends it back to teachers and headmasters for disciplinary purposes.

When they go out in public, they're photographed every five minutes and there are signs that prohibit taking any affirmative step to hide themselves from scrutiny or maintain any privacy."

Wow. It really sucks being a kid, doesn't it? Mind you, I recently found my name, address and email are publicly available on the internet. No wonder I get so much spam. Really should do something about that.

New Bus for London unveiled, and look who it isn't...

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/new_bus_for_london_unveiled_and_it_looks_pretty_sweet_16585.asp
Yes, my favourite designer is back, hurrah! The Heatherwick strikes again. I'm a tad suspicious that this thing might be a bit longer than the ones it's replacing, but damn if it doesn't look good. Two staircases! Three doors! How do they manage to fit people in?

Here's the official London Transport announcement. Damn you Thomas Heatherwick, you're so curly and brilliant.

Hoodie Origami: gotta try this

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/hoodie_origami_fold_your_sweatshirt_into_a_laptop_bag_baby_carrier_etc_16131.asp
I haven't yet fully got my head around this - for example, in that video, where does the hood go? The only hoodie I own doesn't have a zip, either - I worry this may be a problem...

Still fascinating, though.

Beyond the Schlock of the New: a design essay on core77

http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/beyond_the_schlock_of_the_new_eight_strategies_for_design_and_foresight_by_kevin_mccullagh_10912.asp
Strange how some things seem like complete common sense, and yet rarely get articulated...

Logging: one for the grammarians. Or possibly grammaticians.

Logging: why the timber industry is trying to take over the internet for nefarious but as yet unclear purposes.

on/off

 

 3

in/out

 

 5

shake it all about, stick in some ice, hey presto, a rat's arse cocktail.

 

 4

sign please

 

 0

Question:
(I've just been simultaneously on the facebook and HSBC websites, which have different approaches to this)

Does one log on? And then subsequently log off? Or does one log in, then out? And having logged in, is it then possible to log off? Does logging on preclude logging out? 

Should we all be signing in, instead?

Hey, what's that?

http://www.heywhatsthat.com/

Right now this is a very flaky beta, but it's still a great application. What it does is, takes a location you specify (click on Google maps, or lat and long, or whatever) and works out what you can see from there. However, I think they've missed a serious trick here. Focus seems to be on creating a system which will calculate and display the views from mountaintops - but what this reminds me of most are the coastline sketches you find in pilot books for yachtsmen (and women, no sexism intended). These sort of sketches are really seriously useful if you're down at sea level looking out at unfamiliar coastline... sadly, though, when I tried to get the view from just off Holy Island (the Lindisfarne one), it - well, it struggled. Sea level kinda blows its little mind right now, I guess.

A couple of interesting links about colour and presentation

Thee have been sitting in my inbox for ages, so it's high time they were posted.

The first, livelgrey.com, is the work of a certain Igor Asselbergs, who as well as working as an illustrator and CEO of a company making digital colour design tools (whatever the heck they are), lectures and writes about colour. It's not that frequently updated, but what he says about the use of colour in design is interesting.

The other one is a bit more fun: infosthetics looks at how information is presented, and the aesthetics at work. 'S good.

It also has, I notice, a post about gapminder, which has to be one of the most fascinated and brilliantly presented look at international economic and social trends ever.

When you've tried the best (call for list)

In this life, I have certain fundamental beliefs which I hold to be fundamentally true. They are:

Everyone is born equal and deserves to be treated equally.
Habitat, despite being a furniture shop, sells the best dressings gowns in the world.

Just occasionally, you come across a product offering which is so good that you'd never want to try anything else. I have two: the aforementioned dressing gowns (big fluffly clouds of towelling, just perfect for curling up with a cuppa on the sofa - wonderful) and Body Shop's Men's Shaving Cream (not so much for any skin benefits it offers, but because the razor always rinses perfectly). I firmly believe that these are the best dressing gowns and shaving creams in the world. Everything else, I could be tempted to try different suppliers - I'm not picky about what sort of bread I buy, or what brand of car I drive (I'm currently driving a bus pass). But dressing gowns and shaving cream... nah.

My question is: do you have things which you'd never, ever buy from anyone else? Products which will leave terrible holes in your life when they finally cease production? Caviar, cars, socks, hairnets, waffles, whatever...

Amazing transforming fashion (I mean it. Really. Amazing.)

I did have a couple of interesting blogs lined up today on the subject of colour and information presentation, but they'll have to wait, because core77 flags up this amazing video of the work of Hussein Chalayan. Aren't they just incredible? I've never seen anything like this. Such elegant use of smart fabrics - a field which has been promising so much for so long and yet (so far) delivered so little.

Admittedly, it'll still be a while before these are ready for the high street... but by the look of it, not that long. I've never before seen anything that hinted at the possibility, so to me these look just incredible.

Black is the new Green (according to Google)

http://www.blackle.com/


It sounds like a wind-up - probably because the logic of it is so beguilingly simply and obvious. Some bright spark (or possibly some much more eco-friendly, less energy-consuming dim spark) at Google has pointed out that powering all those white pixels on Google's front end is more energy-intensive than leaving them all black. Hence, Blackle - Google's search, but in black. Individually, each screen won't save much... but there's an awful lot of people using Google. Cute.

BMW publishes 'The Secret Life of Cars'

Via dezeen:

BMW have just published a report entitled 'The Secret Life of Cars' (download the 3.3MB pdf
here). On one level, it's a long paean to BMW dressed up as research; and there are a few places where some juicy nugget of information has, one suspects, been deleted (I can spot at least one reference to a paragraph no longer there). But there's still some interesting stuff. I especially liked the guy describing how the seating arrangements in British cars varied according to class:


"My American friend sent me a description of where English couples sit in cars. It made me laugh because it's so true. It said with a working class couple the two men sit up front and the women behind. With a middle class couple one couple sit in the front with the man driving and the wife in the passenger seat. And if its an upper class couple the couples mix up so one man drives and the other man's wife sits in the front. Genius."

There are also some interesting observations about who we allow in front of us (small cars let other small cars in, women are more likely to let others in, etc) - although it seemed obvious to me that similar cars are more likely to be polite to each other. After all, the drivers have something in common already.


I do, however, harbour a secret suspicion that every driver quoted is a BMW driver.

It's official: the universe has excess time in it

http://jeffdeboer.com/Galleries/CatsandMice/tabid/77/moduleid/433/viewkey/photo/photoid/120/Default.aspx
Otherwise, how do you explain this?


I mean, yeah, it's cool and all - amazing, frankly - but really, one or two pieces would have made the point, yes? Producing thousand of variants starts to look slightly, well, like you need to get out more? That's my humble opinion, anyway.

via my little brother.