Hell has always be a source of fascination — it exists in most cultures and religions. Many artists, designers and writers take inspiration from Dante’s Divine Comedy when referencing hell in their work — in fact it’s surprising how much influence the Italian poem has had on modern culture. I’ve been exploring visual executions of […]
Aug 09
Ryohei Hase, Hort, Digital Club, Severed Heads + Field
A selection of work that I’ve recently discovered that has impressed. Surreal digital art of Japanese artist Ryohei Hase: Typographic work from Hort: Mare Street video by
Jul 09
The Age of Conan
Funcom is currently giving ex-players of Age of Conan the chance to come back and try the game for 2 weeks for free. If you sign up for a subscription at the same time they’ll even give you 20% off and through in some nice in-game items. Being particularly interested in MMO games from an interactive […]
Jul 09
The Forgotten Web Standard
This movie reminds me of my day, only in three minutes! I think there’s something quite beautiful, raw and revealing about it. It’s purpose is to demonstrate the process of creating a set of slides that were used in the author’s presentation. The presentation was given at The Future of Web Design by Mike Kus, […]
Jun 09
Design documentaries
Sometimes I forget how much I love film, a compelling narrative combined with well executed elements of composition, light and sound — though I also have a thing for hanging out in old cinemas late at night wired on caffeine. Anyway, I’ve had the fortune of having a week off between freelance contracts so taken […]
Jun 09
Mrs Eaves at Typo Berlin
Late last year Gemma O’Brien, an Australian graphic design student, executed a popular response to a university design brief based on the themes of vandalism and graffiti. She was inspired by my favourite designer, Stefan Sagmesiter, and named herself after my favourite typeface, Mrs Eaves, by Zuzana Licko. She was interviewed abut the project on […]
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 […]
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
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 […]
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 […]