I don’t know what’s going on here and I love it and I could watch it over and over for hours. The music is by U900, a Japanese Ukulele duo. Let me repeat that because OMG I’ll never get the chance to type those words together again: Japanese Ukulele duo.
If anyone knows who produced the animation and created the toys, please let us know!
Posted by Luc Latulippe on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: Animation, Japanese, Toys, U900
You've all seen this sucker before:
The venerable Heinz ketchup packet above has been around since 1968. Forty-two years later, they finally got around to a re-design. The new packet holds three times as much ketchup--perfect for me, since I normally use three of the old packets for the average order of fries--and can be used in "squeeze and pour" or "dipping" mode:
via cs monitor
It is with great excitement that we welcome our newest Coroflot job board partner - Brand New - into the fold! Brand New is *the* go-to site for seeing and discussing new corporate and brand identity work. Topical subjects like the most recent Super Bowl identity receive scores and scores of comments from their community of design pros -- not surprising given that Brand New is an off-shoot of the legendary online design community Speak Up.
So please extend them a welcome by joining the conversation at Brand New and, if you need some branding help of your own, post a job!
If progress is to go beyond the banal indulgences that give rise to a never-ending array of car shell designs then we need to analyse our present time with regard to its aesthetics and its media.
Watch Bruce Sterling's keynote on Atemporality at Berlin's Transmediale.
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Atley
Kim Asendorf, an interactive artist from Kassel, Germany, has just released the first version of ONull, a new tool for vectorizing raster graphics.
The software, written in Java with a Processing core, works by changing pixelized color information into a halftone pattern, much like The Rasterbator. The difference is that ONull's halftone pattern is highly customizable, allowing you to choose from a wide variety of vector pixels—circles, square, triangles, X-shapes, etc—and adjust opacity, stroke, rotation, and amplification settings until you get the image you want. One can even import a custom vector pixel, resulting in effects like this:
We're especially excited for the next version of ONull—it will include vector sets and triangle fields, further increasing the transformative, graphic properties of this vectorizing software. For a preview, check out MJ below.
Download the first version here, or click through for more examples.
Swiss designers Zmik have a knack for the highly detailed execution of simple concepts. This is demonstrated especially well in their two latest projects: Nafi and Anna.
Nafi, pictured top, is a new interior for an existing hair salon, dividing it into two zones that contrast in their function (waiting room vs. working area) as much as their atmosphere. The first section of the deep rectangular space is seamlessly papered with photocopies of Vogue magazines on brown packing paper, furnished opulently, and lit warmly, creating an intimate space for discussion and rest. This butts abruptly into the second segment, designed for working—it's brightly lit and bare, with nothing to distract the stylist.
Anna (pictured second) is an interior treatment for Iart Interactive AG's new office space in an old building. Anamorphosis is used to visually enlarge narrow corridors. From 5 fixed positions, the wireframe drawings reveal imaginary spaces behind the walls, appearing as abstract, graphic lines otherwise.
Many more shots of both after the jump.
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We know, we know, another stacking, modular furniture set? Still, this one's pretty nice, nesting closely for storage and expanding into a brightly colored shelf, sideboard or room partition when offset. We suspect that one might also be able to flip a module over to create a recessed coffee table, though its hard to tell from the pictures.
Steckbar, which translates to "snap" in German, was designed by Ismail Özalbayrak, a student at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. Our only regret is that the shelf is only a computer model. Get that thing prototyped!
Several more shots after the jump.
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That's designer Gilles Belley's Energy Saver power strip, which "glows to show the wasted energy your gadgets eat up when they're plugged in but not doing anything." Belley and nine other designers are slideshow'd in William Bostwick's Fast Company piece "Are These Ten Names the Future of Industrial Design?"
Celebrating the 10th anniversary of Maison & Objet's product design trade show Now! Design a Vivre, design-world godfather Philippe Starck and Intramuros editor Chantal Hamaide chose 10 rising French stars to usher in a new decade of design. Fear not, Francophobes--these guys actually epitomize all the current trends whizzing around the design world--warts and all--from environmental commentary to DIY grunge to blog-friendly wit. It's a perfect picture of product design today--but is it a pretty one? Get to know these names and decide for yourself.
Check out the slideshow here.
Switzerland-based designer Barbara Bona just sent us "Waterfall," an LED-lighting concept that intends to "transform night into day" by bouncing the focused light of the LEDs off the reflective, translucent fabric of the curtain and into the surrounding space. The project transforms the unfriendly light of LEDs into atmosphere and suggests that a room be lit from its window instead of point sources on the ceiling, wall or floor.
We spent some time poking around her site and found a few more blog-worthy projects. Though never groundbreaking, each one exhibits a level of clarity and execution that we can get down with. A favorite is Twisted Chips, pictured above, where Bona created new ways to prepare and present potato chips, reminiscent of Kenya Hara's pasta re-design project and Guixé's Meta-territorial cookbook.
Below, see her temperature reading teacup and lightweight, collapsible stepladder for the closet.
This entry will only appeal to the manufacturing guys at your firm, but hey, engineers are people too. Israeli CAD manufacturer Cimatron, which specializes in CAD for mold, tool and die makers, has developed a new tool which enables manufacturers to "simulate and analyze the injection molding process from within CimatronE," CimatronE being their CAD program.
The Moldex3D eXplorer add-on is activated with only a few clicks in CimatronE and requires no additional training or CAD conversion. A report generator enables users to provide relevant feedback to their customers.A free trial of the Moldex3D eXplorer can be obtained from CimatronE service providers worldwide; please log on to http://www.cimatron.com to find your local branch.
Copious documentation accompanies ID student Maximilian-Peter Von Speyer's ID thesis project, his personal mission to "design and develop the best downhill frame ever made in Chile, by combining various rider's experiences with my own into sophisticated technologies software adopted from the aerospace industry." Called the Norland Cycles Project, Von Speyer draws upon both his love of bicycles and fascination with military airplanes in hopes of perfecting his design.
Luckily for Von Speyer, a Berlin-based German downhill bicycling club saw his work and has offered to build multiple prototypes for him for free, for simultaneous testing in both Germany and (Chilean-German) Von Speyer's home base of Chile.
The final design is still some time away, but you can see tons of his ideational CAD work here.
via pink bike
You might remember the BakerTweet from last year, this video just surfaced from Webby Night Berlin featuring Nicolas Roope cram a 10 minute presentation into 5 to explain how that project and a couple other examples define POKE's belief in creating "things" to communicate a brands message rather than traditional advertising. The lip-syncing is messed up but essential viewing for anyone looking for tips on successful story telling.
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Via MrPrudence
Folkert
The entries are continuing to roll in for our current 1 Hour Design Challenge: Emergency Shelters. We're still a good 20 days away from the February 28th deadline, so you've still got some time to enter your own. Core77 will donate $500 to Architecture for Humanity's Haiti Earthquake Support Program in the name of the winner.
We've picked a couple more highlights to share with you below.
From Atohms: "I did another one...Got inspired by the HESCO-system I posted earlier and the other container ideas I saw in this tread. Basic Idea: A big coiled wrapped in fabric (similar to the collapsible bins you find everywhere for putting your laundry in) So The coil is compressed in a container (regular shipping?) And the tube (shelter) will pop out as soon as the doors open. Like a devil in a box."
From steveboynton: "Credit is given to the American Indians TEEPEE design for it's durability, portability, and responsible use of natural resources. In this concept the material (tarp, canvas, gore tex...) would be provided to skin the frame. The units cold be set up alone or combined to form multi-room living spaces."
Look over the rules and guidelines here, and remember: simple and clear!
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Photographer and filmmaker Niall O'Brien has been candidly documenting the lives of a group of young punks from south west London over the last three years. His current show, Good Rats, showcases imagery from the project...
"There's something beautiful about capturing the spontaneity of youth," says O'Brien about the work exhibited - which depicts his subjects relaxing, partying, congregating in some scuzzy looking venues and, occasionally, fighting. "It's something everyone can relate to on some level," he continues, "even if they can't immediately identify with this mad group of punks."
Good Rats runs until March 11 at Art Work Space, Lower Ground Floor, The Hempel Hotel, 31-35 Craven Hill Gardens, London, W2 3EA. Tel. +44 (0)20 7298 9000
To see more work by Niall O'Brien, visit his site at niallobrien.co.uk
Lichter
Until a few weeks ago photographer Jan von Holleben was stationed in Haukeli, one of the coldest parts of Norway and the place where his ongoing project with artist, Michelle Jezierski, began last year...
In the village of Haukeli, which lies between Oslo and Bergen, von Holleben endured temperatures of -30º to get the images he wanted for what became his and Jezierski's White Lakes project.
Schloss
"During the shoot I established the idea of working with Michelle," says Holleben of the collaborative project, the first images from which recently appeared on his website. "For a long time we'd wanted to do a project to do together."
When Holleben travelled to Norway in the spring of 2009, he became interested in the snow covered mountain lakes that, to him, "seemed to hide something hidden and magical". These white lakes appeared to be mirrored in the sky, with only a few rocks and trees indicating the solid ground.
Yellow Brick Road
He took his photographs to Jezierski, a painter, who began to apply colour to the prints. "An artistic ping-pong game took place," says von Holleben. "Photography versus painting, reality versus the surreal. The work turned into a friendly struggle with the will to fuse one another's visions, yet still be clear on one's own perspectives."
Do The Mountain Dance
Von Holleben hopes to exhibit the project this year and has said that a second batch of images are currently being worked on. This time, however, he's visisted somewhere "very hot".
More at janvonholleben.com (where you can see more of the White Lakes series) and michellejezierski.com.
Landing Strip
I feel like I got this flood of great Geoff McFetridge exposure recently. Last time I was in Seattle, I discovered his fantastic installation at the Seattle Art Museum’s cafe by the sculpture garden. Then I watched the great documentary, Beautiful Losers, where McFetridge appears among a bunch of other artists I love. Of course he also did lettering, titles, and other drawings for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are.
And finally, above is a great video of McFetridge talking about how he works and what he does, all while a video of him doodling runs on the screen behind him. Thanks, universe, for the inspiration!
Posted by David Huyck on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: Beautiful Losers, doodling, Geoff McFetridge, installation, video, Where the Wild Things Are
It’s tricky to pull an image from this all-Flash site, but the animations were too hilarious not to try. They seem to be a seamless mix of tiny puppets with digital animation of some kind, and they have the oddest sense of humor. Add in their bright candy-colors and strange hybrid creatures (the above characters are Francie, with “an apple for a head and a fish-finger body”, and Bertie with “a frog’s head and a fish-finger body”) and I’m wasting a good hour watching everything on the site. You have been warned.
Bonus: the name “Swatpaz” seems to be a truncated spoonerism of “Patrick Swayze.” (I think.)
Posted by David Huyck on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: Animation, flash, Illustration, spoonerism, Swatpaz
Matthew Albanese’s photos of dramatic landscapes are gorgeous, but they are not what they first seem to be. These are meticulously hand-made models. For example, the caption on this striking tornado photo reveals: “Tornado made of steel wool, cotton, ground parsley and moss.” This seems to me like matte painting taken to a new and strange (and pretty awesome) 3-dimensional space.
Posted by David Huyck on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: landscapes, Matthew Albanese, models, Photography
Love: minimalist Star Wars travel posters by Justin van Genderen.
Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: Design, Justin van Genderen, star wars
(Illustration courtesy Rod Filbrandt - click image to visit his site.)
So the XXI Olympic Winter Games will open here in Vancouver next week. I think it only cost us something like $1.7 Billion. And all this after the BC Liberals cut funding to the arts by nearly 95% in 2009. Ha ha! Nutty! But I digress.
During this kooky international event (which, I am constantly hearing, will “put Vancouver/Canada on the map.” We’re not already?), one thing that may be of particular interest to artists and art aficionados (that’s my big word for the day) is the “Cultural Olympiad.” What is this, you ask? Perhaps some money went to the arts, sorta? Sorta.
The Cultural Olympiad is a celebration of the contemporary imagination. [...] this amazing showcase of Canadian and international arts and popular culture will feature an unparalleled variety of music, dance, theatre, visual arts, film, outdoor spectaculars and digital media experiences.
There are really a surprisingly vast number of events taking place (almost all of them free), spreading from Vancouver, Whistler, Surrey, and Richmond, though very few involve your traditional gallery-style art shows. There are lots of giant internet-controlled spotlights, flames projected on buildings, and my partner reported seeing an “art installation” at one of the Skytrain stations consisting of, um, dozens and dozens of Coca Cola logos. Mm. “Art.” *sigh*
One interesting show during the Cultural Thingamabob involves poster art displayed across the city on bus shelters and billboards. I’d actually love to see a show like this, but not scattered god-knows-where this way. I can’t help but fear that such an exhibit will be, at best, noticed by almost nobody, and, at worst, noticed by absolutely nobody. You’ll essentially see them by accident, if you do at all. It seems like a slap in the face to the artists who created them. I dunno, maybe there’s a plan I’m not aware of here. Here’s one billboard I found on Flickr:
Another Cultural Blah-dee-blah gallery exhibit which caught my eye is Monster, at the West Vancouver Museum. It features paintings by a dozen artists of (what else?) monsters! It’s on till early May, so I’ll wait till after the Olympics to see it because security all over town is utterly insane for the duration of the Olympics.
Monsters appear through time and across cultures. Fear, paranoia and the triumph of good versus evil manifests itself in violence, polarized societies and intolerance giving rise to monsters in folklore, mythology, legend, literature, art and popular culture. This exhibition includes works by Canadian and international artists who explore monstrous sensibilities in their practice.
Yet another good looking event is Ed Pien’s Tracing Night, at the newly rebranded Museum of Vancouver:
Tracing Night is a large maze-like installation that combines drawing, video and sound to recreate the phenomenon of night and darkness. It invites viewers to walk around and through its evocative environments, filled with fanciful creatures, to discover its multi-layered, labyrinthine interior. At its core are ancient ideas, pulled from Chinese and Inuit mythology, that confront uncertainty and fear.
But one event that isn’t part of the Cultural So-and-So, but should be (thanks to pal Mark Pilon for the heads-up on this one) is an art-crawl called ArtWalk Vancouver, and it starts on the same day the Olympics do. I’m looking forward to seeing this:
ArtWalk Vancouver provides a platform to promote and aid the insanely fantastic work of all the visual artists working in Vancouver’s Downtown East side, Chinatown and Gastown communities. You are invited to explore the galleries, retail spaces, studios and temporary “pop up” galleries involved and to see the work of over 250 artists from a full spectrum of disciplines. Join us on our first annual ArtWalk and support the hard work and passion of all who spends their life creating and making for the sake of art.
Posted by Luc Latulippe on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: 2010, arts, cultural olympiad, culture, Olympics, Vancouver
Since we last linked to him, illustrator Tim Gough has updated his site with plenty of new work. I’m a fan of his candy-coloured palette and use of textures.
Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: Illustration, Tim Gough
I enjoyed this look at the editorial making of a New Yorker cover starring the magazine’s art editor Françoise Mouly, and artists Dan Clowes, Zohar Lazar, and Mark Ulriksen.
Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: Dan Clowes, Francoise Mouly, Mark Ulriksen, New Yorker, Zohar Lazar
Having a pint glass smashed at high velocity into your face by a drunken idiot is a truly horrible experience. I should know - some inebriated nob-head tried to glass me in a bar last year and if the glass in question hadn’t been of the “toughened" variety and smashed into tiny cubes (as it was designed to do) on impact with my eye-socket I would almost certainly have lost my left eye. Now two new pint glass designs are set to minimise further the chances of serious injury as a result of glassing incidents...
Yesterday two new prototype pint glass designs were unveiled at the Design Council - with the hopes that new smash-resistant designs end up cutting the frightening 87,000 glass attacks each year in the UK and slashing the huge (estimated at £2.7 billion) NHS bill such attacks cause…
The two prototype glasses, Glass Plus and Twin Wall both work on the principal of having a binding layer of resin that holds the glass together even if the glass is smashed. In the case of Glass Plus the layer of resin sits inside the glass while, with Twin Wall, it resides between two ultra-thin layers of glass. Here's some handy diagrams to show how they work:
Glass Plus (internal coating)
Twin Wall (laminated glass)
Both prototypes were devised by design consultancy, Design Bridge, which used early research results from InnovationRCA, the business network of the Royal College of Art, to help create dozens of initial concepts. These were assessed by leading glass manufacturers, materials experts, drinks producers and pub owners before the two final solutions were chosen. Jeremy Myerson, Alliance lead on this project and director of Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art (and a former editor of Creative Review), said: “This is a major step forward and an impressive example of using design to solve social issues and make communities safer from crime. These solutions have the potential to reduce serious injuries. What the designers have shown here isn’t the only solution to the problem – there are other ways to achieve a similar effect – but it’s about offering choice.”
Just to remind you - here's the current choice of pint glass on the market (the middle one was the one that saved my eye last year):
"The beauty of these [two new] glasses," says David Helps, director of 3D and innovation at Design Bridge, "is that they keep everything British drinkers love about their pint; they look good, work better and are safer in front and behind the bar.”
Development of the prototypes and further safety testing under laboratory conditions will now take place before the glasses are tested in a pubs and clubs. As part of the Design and Technology Alliance the Design Council is already in talks with major pub chains about trialling the Glass Plus glasses, which it is hoped will be ready within 12 months. The Twin Wall designs will be further refined in consultation with manufacturers to investigate possible large scale production processes.
I'l leave you with some pint facts...
Folkert
We just received a copy of this small but beautifully formed book (published by Nieves right at the end of last year) which collects some of Geoff McFetridge's drawings created whilst working with Spike Jonze on the titles, type treatments and marketing graphics for Jonze's film, Where The Wild Things Are...
The book is a little under A4 in size and has just 16 pages of work – but it's beautiful. As well as illustration work, a page in the book has a little bit of blurb about the collected work by McFetridge - who has worked with Jonze on various projects before. Here's an extract from the text:
"I noticed a difference when I began working on Where the Wild Things Are. For the first time I felt that Spike and I were working on a project where I could actually contribute in a significant way. Much less of what I was making was being thrown away, which was a first. I was given the opportunity to interpret not only Spike Jonze’s interpretation of Where the Wild Things Are, but also Maurice Sendak’s original book.
Like any kid growing up in the 70’s I was greatly influenced by Mr. Sendak’s books. His books are not just on my bookshelf they are in my blood. What I did with the titles, type treatments and marketing graphics also owes greatly to the heavy creative lifting done by Sonny Gerasimowicz who designed the creatures in the film and the Art Direction of K.K. Barrett."
Here are a few spreads:
The 16 page book measures, 19.5 x 25.5 cm, and is printed on Color Offset and a copy will set you back $14 from nieves.ch
I’m looking forward to the new Gorilaz album, Plastic Beach. More than the music, I’m looking forward to the animation and visuals that Jamie Hewlett will bestow on us. This trailer for the album certainly whets the appetite.
Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: Animation, Gorillaz, Jamie Hewlett, Music, video
Photographer Matt Stuart's show, Happy Accidents, opens tonight at the KK Outlet in Hoxton Square...
And what a delight it promises to be. Stuart is something of a specialist in the art of being in the right place at the right time. He roams the streets at every opportunity armed with his trusty Leica, looking for those wonderful instances where circumstance collide, and happy accidents occur... Here are a few images that will be exhibited at the show which runs until February 27 at the KK Outlet, 42 Hoxton Square, London N1 6PB
See more of Stuart's work at mattstuart.com - or, alternatively, you could simply type in "photographer" into Google. Remarkably, Stuart's site comes up top of the pile.
Another happy accident?
I’ve been enjoying reading Sailor Twain, or the Mermaid in the Hudson, the graphic novel that First Second editor Mark Siegel has been serializing online.
(via BoingBoing)
Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: Comics, mark siegel, Webcomics
Currently on show at the Schunk* museum in the Dutch city of Heerlen is a new exhibition by Radiohead collaborator and artist Stanley Donwood, titled Red Maze...
The show is based on the myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinth, which also formed the inspiration for Donwood’s artwork for the Radiohead album Amnesiac. Donwood has turned the cellar at Schunck* into a maze of rooms and hallways that visitors are encouraged to explore. “The exhibition begins some distance outside Schunck*,” he explains, “as from several points within Heerlen there is the start of a red line; a painted representation of the red thread given by Ariadne to Theseus, the thread that enables him to find his way to the heart of the Minoan maze, slay the Minotaur and make his escape.”
The red lines all lead down to the cellar at Schunk* where the viewers are, according to Donwood, “confronted by a 20m length of dilapidated red wall, a wall constructed from corrugated iron, reclaimed plywood, old doors that do not open; the sort of wall that is hastily erected around a scrapyard. Several entranceways loom darkly from the wall, beckoning the visitor into the Red Maze.”
Donwood cites the Italian graphic artist Giovanni Batista Piranesi, who created a number of fantastical etchings of dungeons, as an influence on the exhibition, as well as “the ordered chaos of the scrapyard, or the crude functionality of a 20th century military bunker”. But the Red Maze also represents the disorder and confusion of the human mind. “There appears to be no logical reason or order inside,” says Donwood, “but in fact the construction and the embellishments are all carefully considered and do make perfect sense … if only to their creator.”
During the show’s run, visitors will be able to use a printing press that forms part of the exhibition to print their own versions of a Donwood linoprint, titled Fleet Street Apocalypse. The exhibition will run until March 14, more info is at schunck.nl.
To test the night vision technology in the Mercedes E-Class, Guy Bird took on the hairpins of the Stelvio Pass in the Italian Alps, in the dark. With no lights. He also made a short film of his unusual road trip...
Night vision technology has come a long way since the first heat-sensing systems used in WWII by the US Army to spot enemy targets writes Guy Bird. Today, the latest systems are now so effective and affordable they're being offered as road safety devices on civilian cars.
Car manufacturer research found that many accidents were occurring on poorly-lit country roads due to cars only using dipped beams to avoid blinding on-coming traffic. They then worked out that night vision systems in tandem with dipped beams greatly enhance drivers' ability to see further down the road and spot hazards earlier.
To see how good night vision technology has become three plucky British journalists drove up the infamous 60-hairpin Stelvio Pass in the Italian Alps in a night vision-equipped Mercedes E-Class at midnight, and then taped up the exterior lights to see if the night vision system alone might be enough to navigate by.
The car uses ‘near infrared' technology (also known as ‘active infrared') to allow the driver to ‘see' just beyond the visible light spectrum of the human eye. It works by illuminating the road with invisible, and therefore non-reflective, infrared light from the car's two inner front headlamps. A tiny infrared light-sensitive camera mounted in the windscreen then records what it sees and beams the greyscale images to a small LCD display on the dashboard.
The system in the new E-Class not only detects pedestrians, cyclists or obstacles up to 90 metres ahead, but also highlights them via a graphic on-screen framing device to help avoid them. Luckily, halfway up the Stelvio Pass at midnight pedestrians and cyclists are thin on the ground – but the technology's still useful for displaying the odd car, plus obstacles like stone walls and boulders, behind which lie huge drops down the mountainside.
Mercedes' system is not the first to be plumbed into a passenger car but most of the others major on ‘far' or ‘passive' infrared technology that processes infrared radiation and displays the images on the car's front windscreen.
While they can work up to greater distances than ‘near infrared' the images tend to be much grainier and lower resolution, and Mercedes says such heat-reliant systems don't always work as well if the object to be detected is of a similar temperature to the atmosphere around it, ie rocks or boulders warmed up by hot weather may fail to be picked up by the sensor.
To test the theory that our night vision really could substitute for headlights, the car's main and side headlamps were taped over, leaving only the tiny but crucial infrared light elements exposed. Even so, you'd be hard pressed to read a book by the light left remaining outside, let alone drive anywhere. A safety car drove several hairpins in front (to alert any cars coming the other way) and then it was the turn of our night vision car to set off.
Mercedes' system only kicks in at about 14mph, so once the night vision system has been activated by a small button in the dash it takes a real leap of faith to accelerate into the darkness and just wait for the satnav screen to start beaming back images. But put your foot down properly and the critical speed is quickly reached – a second later the camera is feeding back crystal clear, virtually real-time images to the driver's cabin.
It's a particularly unnerving experience driving a car up a narrow, unlit mountain pass navigating almost completely on the basis of images that resemble a black and white videogame on a screen normally reserved for consulting the satnav.ght vision But after some mental and physical adjustment, traversing the straighter sections gets easier and we go above 25mph.
The hairpins are trickier. The night vision images that feed back as each corner is taken are no more than a fast-moving blur of impending wall. The only way to tackle them is to pick a line hugging the outside wall before you enter the corner and make the turn into the middle of the darkness as smoothly as possible. Without being able to see inside the curve, memories of turns taken in daylight practice runs help, but as soon as the road straightens up again the night vision tech shows the path forward remarkably clearly. After ten minutes more concentration, and dozens more hairpins, the summit is reached.
Of course, ours was a slightly daft test that should ‘not to be tried at home' – or halfway up a mountain – but it nonetheless shows how sharp an image ‘near infrared' night vision can project and how effective a tool it could be for road safety. It's also quite affordable at £1,100 and could well filter down to cheaper and smaller models in time, just like so many other devices from airbags to ABS.
Guy Bird is a freelance journalist, specialising in cars and car design. This article appears in the CR February issue.
I've yet to see or touch the Apple iPad, writes Malcolm Garrett, so the following is based on conjecture, and quite a bit of enthusiastic anticipation, but when it comes to interactive technologies I am a receptive audience. I had an instant liking for the iPhone, not so much for the object itself, but for how it would shake up both the telecoms market and the whole world of computing. After only a few minutes of playing, and of enjoying of the way the touchscreen interactions varied from task to task, it was apparent to me that this direct yet dynamic way of handling information pointed towards a complete rethinking of hardware interfaces everywhere.
Almost overnight, expectations of how technology could and should work, subtly but irrevocably changed. At once straightforward, yet playfully seductive, this way of manipulating information feels natural and obvious. It is not at all technical or intimidating. It just works effortlessly and effectively.
This can not now be taken away, nor can other products ignore it. I'm already expecting everything else to work in similar ways, and miss that level of control, even when it has never been present. I find myself instinctively touching and stroking screens, and already feel disappointed with old fashioned buttons, keys and clicks.
Many critics are understandably concerned that the iPad appears to be a solution in search of a problem, and are speculating about what it's actually for [see reaction to our earlier post here]. For me the real interest lies in the evolution of the interface rather than any debate about the precise form factor.
I am excited by further exploration of this type of interaction, and the unpredictable outcomes it will precipitate. Arguably the most remarkable thing about the iPhone has been the sheer volume of inventive responses to its unique combination of hardware and software. It is the integration of accelerometer and GPS which makes the iPad such an exciting prospect, bringing together touchable interaction, connectivity and physical and spatial awareness. Together these features have added hitherto unexplored dimensions to software development, and implementing them in this next generation of device was inevitable. The irony is that although the iPhone was in part successful because it could, of course, be relied on to be a cool phone, the reality is that this is its least interesting facet. Far from being a criticism, this highlights a bold distinction between the iPhone and all else around it.
What is key is that Apple continues to simplify and demystify the computer interface. The flexibility of the screen is such that the location and function of screen tools is always contextual, and specific to each and every application. It is obvious that the iPad is intended to be a general purpose media device, rather than an office or work-related tool. Given the incremental development of the iPod over the past decade from the first click-wheel through to iTouch and iPhone, it is quite logical to see the iPad as a very powerful, and uniquely responsive, next generation iPod, rather than a downgraded MacBook.
That said, the iPad could really be the first laptop to actually warrant that description. You can't use a MacBook on your lap for long without needing heat protection. The iPad just has to be more comfortable, portable and perfectly useful on your lap, in your hand, on the coffee table, sitting on a shelf, relaxing on the sofa, or even lying in bed. Thinking about its use, I note that there are many more games consoles and DVD players in the world than there are laptop computers, suggesting that mainstream media consumption is entertainment-oriented, and for most people becomes most usable in singular ways rather than in complex, work-like, mutli-tasking environments.
The consensus of opinion at my company, AIG, is that this is a good thing. As this is an Apple controlled operating system, the design of Apps maintains just enough interface consistency to enable them to be comprehensive yet comprehensible, and given that they are empowered by wi-fi and internet, this alone could easily make many browser-dependent websites redundant. It is no surprise that the publishing industry is finally seeing a challenging opportunity rather than a threat to its existence.
For my part, back in 1990, when I made the irreversible transition from analogue to digital, I was still somehow anticipating the development of a computer with a screen as large as a drawing board. I felt that screens needed to maintain a better physical relationship between user and media than was allowed by keyboard and mouse, and the disassociation brought about by the confines of such a tiny window into a vast virtual world was a conceptual step too far to grasp easily. The world now suggested by the iPad isn't at all how I imagined things would progress, yet it feels like a step towards something much, much better.
Malcolm Garrett RDI is creative director at Applied Information Group
This article will also appear in the March issue of CR, our 30th birthday issue in which we have asked 30 notable people in the field of visual communication to nominate one thing that they are excited about for the future: Malcolm Garrett chose the iPad. The March issue of CR is on sale on February 20
Stuck for a suitably creative Valentine's gift for your loved one? If you're in London, you could make your own glass heart at Zest's studio
Zest, the contemporary glass gallery in West Brompton, will be holding courses for couples to come and make each other a glass heart on Saturday 13 February. Or, if you want to make it a surprise, you can go along on the evening of Thursday 11 Feb where, for £25 you can blow your own (if you see what we mean).
And then, when everything goes sour, you can pick it up and symbolically dash it to the floor where it will shatter into a thousand shards, just like the ruined remains of your so-called relationship. Sorry, got carried away there...
Incurable romantics can email corinne@zestgallery to book a place.
The shoe sculpture
Since launching its Made Of Japan campaign in 2007, trainer brand Onitsuku Tiger has created a series of shoe sculptures, each representing different aspects of Japanese culture. Its latest celebrates Tansu, the Japanese woodworking tradition...
The shoe being built
The new shoe sculpture, which was created in a traditional woodshop in Japan by expert craftsmen, forms part of a campaign titled Hidden Tiger by ad agency Amsterdam Worldwide. In keeping with the Tansu tradition of carpentry, the sculpture contains a number of beautifully carved wooden boxes and drawers.
The online shoe, where visitors can interact with the boxes and drawers
Traditionally, these drawers would be used to conceal kimonos, medicinal herbs and swords. The Onitsuku Tiger Tansu shoe instead contains stories of the shoe brand, as well as films, photos and other fun Japanese stuff, which can be discovered by interacting with it online at onitsukutiger.com. Visitors may find some of the drawers locked, presumably as a tactic to get them to return to the site at a later date.
One of the open drawers on the website
The shoe sculpture itself will tour various stores throughout the year, and will first be on show at Offspring in Selfridges, London, from this Friday. To see previous shoe sculptures created for Onitsuku Tiger, visit the website here.
Folkert
Folkert
David Maisel's first appearance.
Atley
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Folkert
Atley
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