I‘ve been looking at ideas based around 3D information systems recently, as research for a project I might be working on this month. While I haven’t finished researching, one of the topics that has got me interested is the redundancy of interactive elements such as icons and scroll bars when navigating a 3D space. In […]
Jul 08
Advertising and interactive inspiration
A cute and interesting animation based on generative programming so that every character that rides along the travelator is unique — celebrating the diversity of people seen at Heathrow T5. TED Sphere creates a 3d space to navigate content from the TED conferences based on semantical compatibility. It’s a shame you can’t click and drag to […]
Jun 08
Design power in London
One of the things that inspires me is design being used to improve a situation, rather than sell — just don’t ask me why I work for one of the world’s largest advertising agencies! IDEO has always served as a nice example, and I’ve linked to a few of them previously. The Design Council has […]
Jun 08
Experimental Jetset
Experimental Jetset spoke at the D&AD lecture I attended last night to a sold out theatre. They chose to present work they had done for French clients, simply as a theme for their talk. At first they seemed nervous speaking to such a large audience in a foreign language but it didn’t take long before […]
May 08
What have you learnt?
I met Stefan Sagmeister and had a brief conversation with him after listening to him talk at the Design Museum in London last week. I was even given a signed copy of his new book because I was the first person to ask him a question! While I wasn’t as inspired as I was after […]
May 08
Design documentaries
I‘ve discovered a collection of short documentaries created by New York designer Hillman Curtis on some intriguing designers, artists and studios (he’s also created a number of other short films and documentaries on a variety of other topics too). What got me most excited was the two on Sagmeister, one which was even filmed this year. […]
Apr 08
Nice photography
Holger Pooten and Lara Jade are two UK-based photographers whose portfolios have recently impressed me, specifically their personal work. I’m not sure what it is about having a disturbing element contrasted with a clean, fashion, styled aesthetic (like the image above by Holger) but for some reason I find it really engaging and comical - […]
Apr 08
Functional, then beautiful, type
Jason Smith of Font Smith has just launched a new typeface for Mencap as part of their revised branding called FS Mencap. The face involved close development with focus groups over a 3-month period to ensure people with learning disabilities can see it clearly and are able to easily read it. I like that it […]
Apr 08
2008 D&AD nominations (my vote)
This website for UniQlo Japan has an amazing mesmerising appeal to it. Everything is based around a 5 second beat, and it’s been executed beautifully — especially the type and colour. It’s one of hundreds of sites submitted for nomination for a D&AD award this year and I wouldn’t be surprised if it not only gets […]
Mar 08
Type off the screen and paper
Using real world materials to create type has always interested me. There’s something fascinating about the contrast between the direct meaning derived from the letterforms and the layers of meaning added by the words they create and material they’ve been created in. Here are a few examples I’ve come across recently. The first is from a […]
Feb 08
Geeky movies, mmm, tasty
Gotham (designed by Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones) is a typeface I’ve been quite fascinated with lately. I’ve used it for the title graphic of this blog, and for a recent branding project I designed. It’s almost like a modern version of Eurostile (another of my favourites), with it’s geometric structure and dominate, almost industrial, […]
Feb 08
Great inspirational lectures
TED (which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an annual conference held in California. It features several lectures by industry leaders within those fields. They publish shorter, edited versions of the lectures on their site. One of which is Sagmeister’s happiness lecture. I saw Sagmeister give a 2 hour lecture in 2004 in Melbourne, very […]