pNokia and the folks from a href=”http://www.feastongood.com/”The Feast social innovation conference/a teamed up recently to launch stronga href=”http://change-connections.com/”Change Connections/a/strong, an online social-innovation platform. /p
pThe site allows users to connect and engage around focus points like disaster planning, community empowerment, and healthcare./p
p a href=”http://www.good.is/post/how-nokia-is-dialing-up-the-future/”Read interview with Nokia’s Ville Tikka/a/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/business/nokia_is_connecting_change_16684.asp”(more…)/a pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Xk8UNiwAK2M250a4_v6X0cQHTWY/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Xk8UNiwAK2M250a4_v6X0cQHTWY/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/ a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Xk8UNiwAK2M250a4_v6X0cQHTWY/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Xk8UNiwAK2M250a4_v6X0cQHTWY/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/p
Today is the final day of Belgrade Design Week and the fact that I haven’t blogged about it yet (I’ve been here since Wednesday) is a credit both to the busy schedule of the seminars and after hours exhibitions and events – and also to the warm hospitality of the festival’s host Jovan Jelovac and his team.
Slightly annoyingly, the seminar timetable has, to a large extent gone to pot – as there’s been no strict adherence to the schedule – some speakers have talked for two hours – rather than sticking to their 45 minute slot. So timing arrival at the theatre where the talks are happening with the beginning of the talk you want to attend has been tricky to say the least. However, fear not, I made it to some great talks – so here are some highlights:
On Wednesday, Laurent Fetis explained to his audience that he hadn’t showed his work to press or publicised his work for several years and then proceeded to show dozens of images of some of his work from recent years, which included illustrations, editorial projects, record sleeves and logo designs:
Danish architect Bjarke Ingels of BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) delivered an energetic and insightful talk revealing his studio’s philosophy whilst showing some of it’s biggest projects to date and explaining the design processes for each one. Ingels approaches each project by thinking about the intended use of the building, the culture of its location and various other factors that seem so obvious and common sensical – yet the work he showed (which included The People’s Building in Shanghai, the Mountain Dwellings project in Copenhagen images below, and his designs for a hotel near Stockholm airport, the three facades of which will display huge portraits of the King, Queen and princess of Sweden) felt radical whilst practical, playful, fresh and highly original.
Yesterday Amsterdam-based lawyer Aernoud Bourdrez (who is managing director of Use IP – a law firm specializing in intellectual property and resolving copyright conflicts) delivered a hugely entertaining and well planned presentation which revealed his knowledge of conflict situations and how best to resolve them. To be nice but tough in negotiations was a point Bourdez illustrated with a clip from Pulp Fiction in which Winston Wolf (played by Harvey Keitel, image below) gets John Travolta’s Vincent Vega to clean up the blood and brains spattered on the inside of a car by asking the question: “so pretty please with sugar on top, clean the fucking car.”
Another choice video clip in the presentation was footage of tennis player Michael Chang bamboozling opponent Ivan Lendl in an epic fourth round, five set match at the 1989 French Open tournament.
Then Bourdrez showed another clip (which I can’t find on YouTube) showing Chang again… Chang was facing match point against Lendl’s serve, Lendl faulted Chang then walked forward to the middle of the court to face the oncoming second serve – which seemed like game suicide. But it wound Lendl up so much that his second serve hit the net and Chang won the match. Bourdrez’ point is that you should never assume you’re cleverer or better than your adversary in a conflict… fascinating stuff. Bourdrez’ book on conflict negotiation, Grrr is available at the moment as a free iPhone / iPad app from iTunes.
A couple of sessions later and Andy Stevens of London graphic design studio Graphic Thought Facility took to the stage and talked about his early design influences, his love of his first Sony Walkman and his mild obsession with finding new ways of printing and using different materials in his work. Anodized printing, extruded aluminium, and cardboard pizza boxes are just some of the materials GFT have incorporated into hugely successful graphic information and wayfinding systems devised for exhibitions at cultural venues inlcuding Manchester Art Gallery and the Frieze Art Fair.
Sadly, Andy was due to spin discs at last night’s evening party, but there were no record decks on which to spin the 7″ records he’d brought along!
Today, David Linderman of Hi-ReS! wowed a packed auditorium with some of his studio’s latest projects – including sites for D&G, The Economist, Massive Attack, and a very funny campaign that takes the form of a rock opera with TV spots, an online game and a call for people to recreate scenes from the rock opera (which is called The Battle For Milkquarious), created with Goodby Silverstein & Partners to promote milk to US teenagers. Linderman showed this TV commercial before showing the site and game:
As well as talking about abstraction and using metaphors to tell stories and create interesting, explorable online environments – using photography, film, motion graphics and animation, Linderman also shared with the audience some of the stuff that the guys at Hi-ReS! circulate round their studio to inspire and amuse themselves. Stuff that is beautiful or just plain funny or stupid. He’s posted up over 300 links to such inspirational findings at delicious.com/bestworst – well worth a visit – if this example is anything to go by:
I also sat in on a talk by Spanish-born, London-based designer and artist Jaime Hayon (above is an image of his Mediterrenean Digital Baroque exhibition which ran at David Gill Galleries in London back in 2003) in which Hayon revealed how a combination of seven years at Fabrica in Italy, a love of drawing, and a hunger to create new forms based on everyday observations – has led him to bigger and better projects – designing art installations, chairs, lights, sofas and interiors… I particularly love this bathroom design of his:
Hayon’s work is wonderful so have a look at his site: hayonstudio.com
Right, it’s time for me to put the laptop away, freshen up for dinner and prepare myself for “the legendary” closing party of the festival…
Une étude de cas pour la marque Durex, conçue par le directeur artistique Nicolai Villads, Peter Ammentorp et Raul Montenegro dans le cadre de la compétition des Future Lions 2010 organisée par l’agence Akqa. Un travail sur une application iPhone et ses déclinaisons au quotidien.
“The Society of Sinister Simians” explores the mysterious world of an evil collection of vicious and power hungry primates that held sway over the land centuries ago. Thanks to the efforts of the ill-fated Sourcrust archeological dig of 1887, details of this foul organization have finally come to light. In this book you will learn of The Society’s immortal leader, his powerful and brutal cadre of ministers and advisors as well as a variety of assassins, spies, soldiers and frightful supernatural figures.
pa href=”http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/gulf-original.jpg”img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-1877″ title=”GULF-original” src=”http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/gulf-original.jpg” alt=”” width=”405″ height=”255″ / /a/p divembr / /em/div pEvery disaster is always bigger than the last one. Newspapers and tv anchors have to say that, don#8217;t they? Otherwise it wouldn#8217;t be news. But those slick-covered birds look the same every time. A bit distressing, but what#8217;s a pelicanem for/em, at the end of the day? To be honest, this disaster is getting a bit boring. Haven#8217;t they capped that well yet?/p pThe Deepwater Horizon oil spill (1) is the worst environmental disaster in US history. But it#8217;s a catastrophe of the creeping, cumulative kind, composed of images familiar from earlier ecocides. How to get a grip on its width and breadth? Obviously: a map. Ingeniously: a map of the area affected by the oil spill transposed on your geographic location of choice #8211; your home, for optimum shock effect./p pThis simple act of teleportation, by the almost appropriately named website a href=”http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com”www.ifitwasmyhome.com/a (2) , puts a stark perspective on the disaster#8217;s geographic impact, now stretching from the coast of Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle. The immediate, visual result is immensely more powerful than crude statistics (3):/p pSince the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20 (killing 11 crew), over 1 million US gallons have been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico every day, by now adding up to almost 50 million gallons. A recent study by the University of Miami puts the surface of the oil spill at about 10,000 square miles (almost 26,000 square km), or triple its size on May 1st. This means the affected area is rapidly approaching that oft-cited (4) unit of large-surface measurement, the size of Belgium (11,787 sq mi, or 30,528 km2)./p pa href=”http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/gulf-london.jpg”img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-1878″ title=”GULF-london” src=”http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/gulf-london.jpg” alt=”” width=”404″ height=”254″ //a/p pThe spill#8217;s size is less abstract (and more ominous) if transported from its aquatic domain to a land-based vantage point. Centred on London (placing the gushing wellhead somewhere below Westminster), the area affected by the spill covers most of southern England, almost touching Swansea in Wales and nearly spilling over onto the French coast at Dunkirk. The area does look a lot larger than Belgium, to the spill#8217;s east. One assumes that the calculations of Miami U refer to the darker-shaded areas within the total affected region./p pa href=”http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/gulf-losangeles1.jpg”img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-1880″ title=”GULF-losangeles” src=”http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/gulf-losangeles1.jpg” alt=”” width=”404″ height=”255″ //a/p divspan style=”font-size:x-small;”Superimposed on a map of the Los Angeles area (zoomed out a bit more than the London map), spillage threatens to swallow Lompoc, and has engulfed lovely Oceanside #8211; all the while extending as far inland as Death Valley, not too far from the Nevada border./span/div pspan style=”font-size:x-small;”You too can centre the spillage on your hometown. Go to the website (emcf. sup./em) See how far you would have to travel to stay clear of the oily mess. Then zoom out to see how large it is on a global scale (spoiler: emquite/em large!) Maybe not the most uplifting of pastimes, but an intelligent way to impress the scale of this disaster on our minds, saturated as they are by superlatives./span/p pemMany thanks to Stannous Flouride for sending in this link./em/p p#8212;#8212;#8212;#8212;-/p p(1) Or the BP oil spill, if you insist on naming, shaming and/or blaming the guilty./p p(2) If it emwere/em my home, indeed. There is no need to compound ecocide with grammaticrime./p p(3) emexcusez le/em pun./p p(4) an a href=”http://www.sizeofbelgium.com/pmwiki.php”entire website/a is dedicated to the recurrence of this rather unusual unit of surface./pimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bigthink/blogs/strange-maps/~4/iskKJbLKHJ4″ height=”1″ width=”1″/
The Matias company makes a computer keyboard that works well for single-arm amputees, people who suffer from carpel tunnel in one arm, and those looking for a completely unconventional way to save desktop space — The Half Keyboard:
Try out the demo software to get an idea of how it works. (Warning: The demo is addictive, like a video game.) Unlike other one-hand keyboards, this one is based fully on the QWERTY system so you don’t have to learn a new method of typing. Simply hold down the space bar when you want to switch to the keys on the alternate side of the keyboard. I think the Matias Half Keyboard is really cool and efficient, and I would love to use something like it on my work surface, but …
unfortunately, it costs $600.
I’m not really sure how half a keyboard can be so expensive compared to a traditional full-size keyboard, but my guess is that eventually the price will fall and/or single-hand QWERTY competitors will enter the market. Matias claims that with practice a typist can usually type “up to 88% as fast as your two-handed speed.” I love the space-saving qualities and productivity benefits — hold the mouse continuously in your right hand, while you type with your left.
I’m eager to see what the future holds for single-hand typing. Anyone out there already own and use one?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
