Talking Piano

[Ed. Note: I found this in the drafts folder… started this draft on February 8th, 2010 and now it’s February 3rd, 2011.]

I’m totally floored.



(via today and tomorrow)

ONull

ONull is written in Java and uses Processing as a graphical engine. Awesome vector generator that rasterizes an image to give you a vector output file. You can choose the squares, crosses, circles, etc. or you can import your own vector to use as the “pixels.” Excellent tool.


Self portrait using ONull + gCircle logo

Perpenduum turns two

I know it’s been quiet on the Perpenduum front for a bit but it’s only because we’ve been so busy that we’ve even forgotten our birthday! Perpenduum was registered two years ago on August 21st, 2007.


Birthday Cake

(Birthday Cake from Andreas’ Flickr photostream. Take a look at his fantastic online portfolio. Particularly liking his video showing the most used words in the Billboard Top 5 during the years of each presidential administration from 1950 to 2006. He’s incredibly talented and a real Gentleman.)



Finding the average color in an image

Just thinking about a project and quickly found this free online tool by Wise Geek that finds the average color in an image. Seems to be good! I’ve done things like this in MATLAB before, but it’s unnecessarily complicated and Photoshop doesn’t seem to have a good way to do this… please comment if you have a better solution.


Color Averaging


The photo here is of the Stanford Solar Car.

Spring 2009 Liu Lectures in Design at Stanford University

I’m really excited to present the lineup for this Spring’s David H. Liu Memorial Lecture Series in Design.

All talks will begin at 8pm in building 320, room 105.
Every lecture is free and open to the public!

Andy Spade will be speaking on Wednesday, April 15th. Spade had over a decade of experience with top advertising agencies Saatchi & Saatchi, Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, and TBWA/Chiat/Day managing accounts with companies such as Coca Cola, Evian, Reebok, Lexus, and Coach. He’s the branding and marketing man behind Kate Spade and Jack Spade (the companies that he and his wife created.) He has also been tapped to design the experiences of a number of companies including Delta’s Song Airlines and J. Crew retail experiment The Liquor Store. Spade’s latest project is Partners & Spade. It includes a highly conceptual retail experience in downtown Manhattan. Beyond all these business ventures, Spade is heavily involved in the art world. He is a patron to emerging artists, co-owner of a gallery, and curator of several exhibitions. Spade’s projects merge emotional branding, experience design, brilliant collaboration, and always a touch of surrealism.

Dr. Jonathan Cagan will be speaking on Monday, May 4th. Dr. Cagan is a co-director of the Masters in Product Development program at Carnegie Mellon and also the co-director for the school’s Center for Product Strategy and Innovation. He has the title of Barrett Ladd Professor in Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and holds appointments in the School of Design and Computer Science. He has expertise in product development and innovation methods for early stage product development. Both his design methods and computer-based design research have been applied in a variety of industries. Dr. Cagan is the author of two books: Creating Breakthrough Products (co-authored with Craig Vogel), and The Design of Things to Come (co-authored with Peter Boatwright and Craig Vogel). He has consulted with a variety of small and large companies in diverse areas on product development, brand strategy, and strategic planning. He is co-founder and chief technologist of DesignAdvance Systems, Inc., a company focused on developing CAD software for the early synthesis processes. Cagan teaches New Product Development at Carnegie Mellon and runs executive training sessions in small and large companies.

Alex Wipperfürth will be speaking on Thursday, May 21st. Wipperfürth is a partner at Dial House in San Francisco. He is the author of Brand Hijack, and the upcoming The Co-Creation Myth and The Fringe Manifesto. Dial House is part think-tank and part creative hot shop. The client list is diverse: from fringe (Napster, Doc Martens, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Jones Soda, Red Stripe, Altoids) to cutting edge (Current TV, New Yorker Magazine) to blue chip (Diageo, IBM, P&G/Clorox, Toyota, Coca-Cola). Projects range from innovative strategy, innovative research, meaningful creative expressions with DIY production to brand innovation. In earlier work, Wipperfürth had interviewed actual cult members and people in “consumer cults” (like Apple or Harley-Davidson fanatics) and made fascinating insights about their similarities.