Hasta La Ideas

Frog’s latest issue of designmind, their multimedia publication on business, technology and design, focuses on the TedGlobal conference held in Oxford this past July, on the theme of “The Substance of Things Not Seen.” With selected articles online and a print version available to purchase, this issue offers both behind-the-scenes coverage of the acclaimed TedGlobal conference (where frog acted as a content partner) and reflections by frog designers, technologists and strategists on the conference content. For example, in Seeing the Future Synesthetic, Laura Richardson, a principal designer at frog, reflects on Beau Lotto’s talk about artificially created synesthesia:

Like TEDGlobal speaker Beau Lotto (see “A New Way to See”), I don’t research synesthesia—I prefer to create it artificially. Lotto calls this “virtual synesthesia.” I call it “associational synesthesia.” While he might want to leverage synesthesia for experimenting with the brain’s adaptability, I want to cultivate and harvest it in order to design thinking processes and problem solving skills.

“You can teach people through [synesthetic] experiences to heighten their ability to find new relationships and new associations that haven’t been discovered before. That’s the creativity,” says Lotto.

There’s much more where that came from—frog has a wealth of selected articles here, including pieces on musician Imogen Heap, the working homeless, organized crime and micro-sculptures, among others. For even more, get the printed version.

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