I just finished reading the live blog on Kotaku and watching the delayed video stream on xbox.com of the Microsoft press conference at E3. It was so much better than last year’s, one of the best I’ve seen — I think it will be hard for Sony and Nintendo to better it and they keep […]
May 09
E3 2009
The E3 begins tomorrow in LA, this year it seems like there should be a number of interesting announcements along with all the trailers (the PSP Go has already been leaked). I’m looking forward to not only viewing the new art styles, 3d graphics and UI elements of upcoming games but also finding out release […]
May 09
OFFF Oeiras’09
I spent the last few days in Lisbon at the OFFF design festival. It was inspiring to listen to people talk about work that I have a lot of respect for, though I didn’t get as much out of it as previous design conferences I’ve been to. I think this was just because these events […]
Apr 09
Games as interactive art
The Independent Games Festival took place at the end of last month in San Francisco, along side GDC. The finalists are listed on their website. The games that impressed me were the ones with really stylized art, each could exist as an artistic installation even without any interaction so I imagine playing them would be […]
Mar 09
Digital keyboard
Art Lebedev studio designed a keyboard that blends traditional with an emerging screen-based model a few years ago called the Optimus Maximus. The keyboard features OLED displays under each key that are capable of displaying video at up to 10fps. This makes it possible to have a customised keyboard for each application using letters or […]
Mar 09
OnLive
The Game Developers Conference is on this week in San Francisco. One of the more interesting announcements has come from startup company OnLive — their website will feature a big announcement tonight at 2.15am UK time (7.15pm pacific time). They have developed an on-demand gaming streaming service, which essentially means you can play games running […]
Mar 09
Glitchy fashionable effects
An interesting observation came up a number of years ago in one of my typography tutorials at the National Institute of Design while I was presenting some work. The T-shirt I was wearing featured deteriorated type on the sleeve. The print was worn, faded and some of the letters were even beginning to fall off, […]
Mar 09
Interactive public art
Cinimod are a London-based design studio involved in the creation of public interaction design pieces. I saw Beacon at the Kinetica Art fair last weekend. I thought it would make a really nice entrance piece for a bar or club. Beacon is a kinetic light installation with a mind of its own. An array of emergency […]
Mar 09
Investing in digital media technology
NASA is planning to release an MMO in 2010 titled Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond. It looks like it will be primarily based on exploration and designed to get people interested in what NASA hope to achieve in the near future, which has the potential to help with recruitment but also acts as a powerful […]
Mar 09
Kinetic art
Some really inspiring work was on display at the Kinetica Art Fair in London the past few days, the exhibition comes to a close today. The fair is described as showcasing carnivorous art, man-animal-machine hybrids, mechanical drawing machines, subliminal installations, pole dancing robots, light sculptures and cybernetics. If you’re at all interested in digital art, […]
Feb 09
3D animation in games
I‘ve been inspired today by the art direction from two games, Dante’s Inferno and Prince of Persia. Not only do these animations bring in some beautiful illustration (Prince of Persia), but they also include some really nice type (Dante’s Inferno) and stunning visual effects. The first is from an upcoming game called Dante’s Inferno, based on […]
Feb 09
Future of interaction
I see games as one form of media that is advancing trends in interaction design. Two recent trends which I’ve begun to explore are Augmented Reality and free Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games. Augmented reality games overlay the real world with a virtual world, the two combine to create a gaming space, though this concept requires […]