Campsite is a New York based design blog and studio run by visual designer Max Ritt.
Michael Surtees of the blog Design Notes and the new web shop Gesture Theory has recently launched a Google Chrome extension called Silence of the Celebs. The extension gives you the ability to remove headlines of celebs from CNN, Huffington Post, and TMZ. You can choose from their default list or add your own. Additional features are said to be coming soon, including the ability of the extension to function on any site.
My friend Skylar Challand of oak is the genius behind this revolutionary new bookmarking and sharing tool dropmark. Dropmark combines a lot of the features I love in Gimme Bar with a little be more focus on data ownership, which I really appreciate. They also have a handy little API so you can use your data and dropmarks in anyway you would like.
(via swissmiss »)
By now anyone and everyone has most likely heard about LetterMpress. It has received almost double it’s goal in funding on Kickstarter, which I think is a good barometer for its high potential. I only wish it was going to be available on iPhones as well.
The app. itself will allow you to create custom letterpress compositions and prints in a user interface and process that parallels the real act of letterpress printing. You will also be able to print directly from the app. or export vector files of your designs for use in other applications such as AI.
Over the course of 2010 there were a bunch of concept videos and designs based on the idea of translucent displays, and even display technologies that were so cheap they could be applied to any surface. Now, a mere two months into 2011, to hear that Samsung has unveiled a 46″ LCD television that is solar-powered, zero energy, and transparent. Well this is just a complete mental explosion. I do have to say it starts to feel a little scary when the most absurd future visualizations from the movies of your childhood start to become realities, and we have definitely gotten to that point.
The prototype was unveiled at CeBit in Germany. The television has integrated solar panels that draw energy from ambient light in the room, so dark screening rooms will no longer be friends with the televisions of the future. The translucence of the display is actually attributable to the display being so thin. The next obvious jump is to start integrating this type of display into glass surfaces for any and all applications. The biggest one off the bat is obviously going to be car windshields. Yes another hazard on the road! My cynicism aside the combined super powers in this new TV really are rad and the energy efficiency side of it really impresses me coming from a big corporation like Samsung.
(via Inhabitat »)
I love the way Midget & Giant by Ryuji Nakamura artfully improves a piece technology. This webcam add-on for your Mac is a fabulous example of making something more fun and interesting with a simple paper house structure. The image it makes from the inside is even cooler than the view of it perched at the top of your monitor.
(via The Best Part »)
Disclaimer: This post makes some broad strokes about a few different things, but it’s main intention was to recount a recent data snafu and to send some appreciation to a couple of fellow bloggers for being awesome.
As you read this I am recovering from what initially looked like catastrophic data-loss. My Lacie d2 Quadra 500GB hard-drive(sole file storage for most if not all of my work past and present. Yes I am a lazy dinosaur) refused to mount and was making that brushy clicking sound; said to be characteristic of collapsed brushes. It turned out to be the other common and infinitely more palatable scenario. A corrupted power source. Painless $30 fix from the nice helpful people over at Tekserve.
The comedy in all of this lies in the fact that earlier that day I had signed up for Backblaze and made the mental note to start putting together A Backup System. This initiative had stemmed from reading two insightful posts from some fellow design, web creatives Frank Chimero and Antonio Carusone of Aisleone. I really respect these two guys for their work and for the education and inspiration I get from their blogs on a regular basis. These posts about something that could be written off as trivial or something any body should be able to figure out on their own is a great resource. Inevitably we all need good information on a particular subject at some point. So why not get that info. from someone you have learned to trust?
It is really great that people in our field have the compulsion and platforms available to them, like never before, to share their experiences, ideas and tools for doing what it is we do.
Antonio Carusone of AisleOne has just released his 2011 desktop wallpaper calendar, which breaks the year up into 3 wallpapers. They come in on size of 1920×1200, which should accomodate most displays.
The design fits Antonio’s minimalist design style and he has chosen to have the color get darker as the year progresses. Download the zip file with all three wallpapers.
This morning I came across this post by Giorgio Biscaro on Klat and was very taken with the simple way he talks about the details of color on the Dieter Rams design for the Braun T1000 as they pertain to function. Without using any buzzwords or tech talk Biscaro points out the subtle use of color in this device that really elevates the usability and the users understanding of it’s functions.
“I personally like the use of colours when they help identify a specific function, or when they underline a specific performance, or behaviour.”
I think this does a great job to encapsulate the understanding and practices of design that went into the T1000. This radio and the other sound products released by Braun during this period went on to define standards of design and precedents for the interface designs of technology, which spanned far beyond stereos and household electronics. These days you hear a lot of talk that Jonathan Ive of Apple has taken many design cues from Dieter Rams and his work for Braun, and my response to that is, how can you blame him?
(via klat »)
This is a pretty nifty little creation that could revitalize almost any monitor. Personally I have never been very big on screensavers, but this DROPCLOCK is definitely one I could get into. It illustrates the current time with Helvetica numerals dropping into water in super slow motion . I would love to see some behind the scenes stuff on how they shot the footage and coded it.
(via iso50 »)
I remember a time when Polaroid film was abundant and digital cameras still took blurry distorted photos (not on purpose). The feeling of immediately holding and being able to touch a crisp new print maybe coming back. Polaroid, on December 2nd, released an image teaser of the upcoming product release to Engadget. They have doctored the image in their post to reveal more details of the product, but I somewhat prefer the mystique and surprise of the obscured.
(via iso50 »)
Tiger Stone is a machine that cannot be better described than by saying it is a brick printer. I would love to see this tool in the hands of some artists and designers. This machine could be used to make some insane patterns and murals. Using it to make type or inset lettering into could be super cool as well.
I love to see beautiful designs applied to everyday objects that really revitalizes them. I always recall from school that the calculator was a jumble of buttons with little heirarchy that was sure to change between manufacturers and models. This design by Alexander Hulme is a nice simplification of the calculator that marries form and function with usability. A minimal calculator like this is something I could see using everyday. If only apple could take a couple hints when designing their version on the iPhone and iPod.
(via Minimalissimo »)
It seems like everyday there is a new technology or software that really blows my mind. This Beautiful Modeler is one such entity. This interactive 3-D modeler is an incredibly simple idea perfectly executed. It takes an easily accessible set of tools and links them together through programming or in my language magic to make a completely marvelous, and useful invention.
(via @chloalo »)
“Photoshop dexterity (PSD) is a skillset acquired by proficient users of Adobe Photoshop, the world’s most ubiquitous digital tool for creating visual ideas. Qualities of PSD include supernatural powers of imagination and an overwhelming desire to constantly make the world more beautiful. PSD affects people from different walks of life. In fact, there is a high probability that you have PSD.”
Hyperakt seems to make some of the most enticing and fun side projects around. Whether it is a 2010 World Cup bracket poster or this short film showing “PSD” (Photoshop Dexterity) in someone’s morning routine, the folks over at Hyperakt seem to be able to infuse some good old ingenuity into it.
(via swissmiss »)
Chris Messina has created a nice simplified system for streamlining our character usage and ways of crediting people on twitter. The extremely thorough post over at his blog is a must read for any twitter users and possibly for twitter haters as well.
(via swissmiss »)
For all those designers and cool cats who love Leicas this is a pretty sleek machine. Definitely adding this to my “when I win the lottery” wish-list.
(via iso50 »)
The new updates for Ommwriter 2.0, referred to as Dana, aren’t revolutionary in their own respect, but they definitely add some value to what is already an awesome application.
This is a truly beautiful visualization that allows us to firmly grasp how rapid the growth or I guess in this case the shrinking of technology has progressed over the past decade.
(via Quipsologies »)
Since the day the iPad was released I have been and will remain a skeptic, but as more amazing companies and developers come out with such astoundingly rad apps and products for the iPad the more difficult it becomes to not breakdown get my own. I have always felt that typography is the most commonly neglected portion of UX, and the fact that the type and idea of type is so present in iA’s development and intentions for this app makes me very happy. Sadly as I don’t have an iPad myself I am going to have to wait to test-drive the app until I run into a friend willing to buy it. Despite that the article on their website really allows you to grasp how fully integrated and enriching Writer is for the iPad. The auto syncing with Dropbox is also another personal favorite of mine, and something I would love to see in action.
I guess the only thing I could find any information on was what types of file formats can the writer save to as well as open and edit. I would be curious how much format wrangling they have done to make Microsoft Word documents and stuff like that accessible in the app.
I am unsure of the number of times I wrote the word app in the past two paragraphs, but I do know it was most likely excessive. To read a more elagant and detailed description of the writer check it out here.
I watched this little video by IDEO a few days ago, and I had waited to post it until I could really digest it and figure out my feelings on the subject. I still feel like I am opposed to all these new media types that intend to stamp out the printed word. First the Kindle, then the Nook, and now the iPad have done a mediocre job of creating a successful reading experience on screen. Skipping ahead to the future in this short film, we see three distinct and mutually beneficial paths outlined for what IDEO sees as The Future of the Book. I really love the parallel access to contextually related resources and content provided by “Nelson”. All three directions share an impeccable sense of design and very beautiful interaction. The gestures and motion feel very real without reinforcing the idea that reading on an e-book platform should adhere to the look and feel of printed materials.
(via swissmiss »)
