The mobile phone congress started today over in Barcelona with a range of new devices and software already announced. There’s a live video feed on the website running the length of the congress. There are some pretty slick looking UI designs, like Sony’s upcoming Idou: Sony Idou Microsoft have just held their conference, where they’ve demonstrated Windows Mobile […]
Feb 09
Immersive virtual game worlds
“What we think of as ‘mind’ is only a sort of jumped-up gland, piggybacking on the reptilian brainstem and the older mammalian mind, but our culture tricks us into recognizing it as all of consciousness. The mammalian spreads continent-wide beneath it, mute and muscular, attending its ancient agenda. And makes us buy things.” — William […]
Nov 08
Classic information design
Here’s a few beautiful older interfaces in the form of gauges, switches and buttons that I’ve come across while undertaking some preliminary research for an upcoming project. There aren’t many interfaces in production now that reach this level of craftsmanship. JVC HR-3300 (1976) Jaeger Le Coultre compass camera (1930s) Corvette (1958) Nakamichi 700 Tri Tracer tape deck (1973) Sinclair wrist […]
Aug 08
The future of collaboration
Recently I had the chance to experience the leading telepresence system from HP (Halo) with three US locations from a London Halo studio. The company I work for was responsible for the UI/UX design as well as the physical room design. It almost felt like I was in a holographic/video conference meeting from the Japanese […]
Aug 08
Google street view
I noticed a small white car with Google branding and a massive collection of cameras on it’s roof driving in front of a bus I was on the other week. It seems Google are photographing the whole world with fish eye cameras to enable you to bring up images of streets within Google maps. You’ll […]
Jul 08
Inspiration from future and past
Amsterdam based advertising/branding agency, Strawberry Frog, have created a very pretty 2008 campaign for my favourite shoe company Onitsuka Tiger using model making, motion graphics, video and photography. The campaign is based on the brand’s Japanese heritage (with the theme being made of Japan, similar to their previous campaign) and uses elements from modern day […]
Jul 08
Differences between design disciplines
The differences between designers from different disciplines is not one of process or evaluation, or even the specific interests and abilities of the designer, but of constraints. Product designers work with the constraints offered by every day objects, graphic designers with 2D mediums and typography, interior designers with the relationship between people and space while […]
Jul 08
Games lead UI movement towards complete diegetic interfaces
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 […]
Jul 08
Emotional Design
Continuing from my last post hopefully I’ve made a clear point of how important it is to understand the reader when creating any form of graphic communication. A reader’s behaviour provides a strategy for creating successful design work. Design must evoke a response in order to communicate a clear and powerful message that resonates with […]
Jun 08
Visual Rhetoric
From ten years of working in communication design (specialising in digital and interactive) and thousands of dollars spent on universities, books and conferences I think one of the main things I’ve learnt and now base my work on is that visual meaning is personal to the reader, based on their previous experiences — whether that […]
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 […]