Two movies that have stood out from the crowd for me this week feature two very prominent and highly influential American designers Chip Kidd & Hillman Curtis.

One is full of humour and energy, the other is moving and reflective. Both however share the same qualities of passion and love for a craft that has shaped and defined their lives.

Hillman Curtis and Chip Kidd, inspirational graphic designers in their own unique ways.

Hillman curtis 1961-2012, a visionary designer and figurehead in the internet evolution. RIP.

I needed to stretch my legs and have a bit of a creative stroll so I decided to go for a ramble around Soho and beyond.

A walk past Magma Books in London can sometimes be quite a costly ramble, today was no exception! It’s always a visual feast in Magma, lovely to spend half an hour browsing the assorted books, magazines, t-shirts etc.

Then I spotted it, the Fuse 1-20 Box. I remembered Creative Review saying that it had finally been published. Time to delve into the store copy and see what’s inside and more importantly had I made the final cut?

Whoop! Yes I made it. Didn’t end up on the cutting room floor!

Mayaruler 1 was featured as a Bonus font in Fuse 15 Cities. I was luck to be one of 3 students to have their fonts published after a student project set by our then tutor David Crow. Brings back lots of great memories looking through the book.

Some more images and info on Mayaruler 1 in Experimental Typography and Mayaruler 1 posts.

The great thing about working in arguably the most vibrant city on the planet is that you never know what you might stumble across on any given day.

Tonight I witnessed the launch of Face Britain Project, talking to one of the officials tonight apparently this is a world first and will make it into the Guinness Book of Records.

The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts is behind the project which celebrates young people in the lead up to the Diamond Jubilee and the London’s Olympic and Paralympic Games.

More than 200,000 self-portraits have been used to create the picture of the Queen, Children aged four to 16 were asked to produce their own self-portraits using drawing, textiles, 3D, painting, graphics, and photography.

The Face Britain project will be projected onto Buckingham Palace each night till Saturday, it runs from 8:30 to 11:15.

Get yourselves down there it may be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I watched this movie a while back and loved it. Great example of storytelling and very inspirational. I had lost the link but came across it last night as I was tidying up some email folders. Thought I would share it.

There has been something bothering me recently, something niggling away under the skin. I haven’t been sure what it is but I’ve known its there. This week it’s been brought to the surface by a fascinating book I’ve been reading called You Are Not A Gadget by Jaron Lanier.

For months now I’ve been researching new technologies, platforms, interfaces and interactivity. A lot of this research has focussed on gesture driven interfaces whether it be through human touch or the great work through kinect hacks and similar technologies. I have to state at this stage I am a huge fan and champion of such platforms and interfaces as a lot of posts in this blog will reflect.

I love to find and watch ‘visions of the future’ videos produced by companies and agencies to see how they predict how every surface will be transformed into a technical marvel. Some are plain fantasy whilst others in some ways are turning science fiction into science fact.

Corning Concept Video: Please Use More Glass Touchscreens! Please!
(They make the Gorilla Glass for iPhone)

EXOPC EXOdesk first look,concept for a transparent touch-screen workspace.
Apparently it ships this year!

I have fallen for the iPad in a big way and much to my surprise it is become an integral part of my working day as much as the desktop machine. But there has been something missing. Have I convinced myself I like this new interactivity more than I really do?

According to good old Wikipedia “In the context of communication between a human and an artifact, interactivity refers to the artifact’s interactive behaviour as experienced by the human user. This is different from other aspects of the artifact such as its visual appearance, its internal working, and the meaning of the signs it might mediate. For example, the interactivity of an iPod is not its physical shape and colour (its so-called “design”), its ability to play music, or its storage capacity—it is the behaviour of its user interface as experienced by its user”

In a nutshell I have come to realise it’s the physical interaction I am missing.

I don’t want to say it’s a problem at all, technology is progressing both at a fantastic rate and in fascinating directions. I just miss touching, moving, pressing physical objects. I really don’t need or want a life that revolves around interactive flat surfaces.

Maybe this has been accentuated by my design history? I still love getting my nose in a new book to smell the print, to feel the range of stocks and paper weights. It’s the same with cd’s, I much prefer the digipack format rather than the crappy jewel cases. I have examples produced by ME Company for Bjork that are works of art.

Next to my desk I still have a separate cd player and amp, aside from the music quality from cd’s being far better than a compressed mp3 file I still love the ritual of changing over cd’s, the slight resistance on the volume dial and the assured press and click of the buttons.

I was over at a friends house recently playing around with his iPad controlled Sonos system, as much as I marvelled at the level of control just moving small sliders up and down within the interface felt very devoid of any interaction experience. Again something was missing. Surely this could and should be better, after all this may be the only way you will engage with that brand.

I still get very excited however when I see agencies like BERG London exploring and converging techniques to produce lovely playful interactions.They have used cinematic techniques including depth of field, focus and exposure to allow the user using simple swipes to explore the qualities of a product. Read the full blog post over at berglondon.com

Glass manufacturers are now exploring flexible and textured surfaces to enhance the gesture driven experience and in the next few years we will no doubt be introduced to incredible advancements in technology.

And when I watch programmes like the Gadget show taking on hugely innovative challenges such as building the Ultimate Battlefield 3 Simulator well this blows my mind and illustrates that when you converge both physical and digital technologies you can blur the boundaries of reality. Ultimate Battlefield 3 Simulator – Build & Test.

I really hope that in our pursuit of the perfect interactive experience we don’t eliminate all physical interaction, the world would be a very dull place.

They declare “the world is there canvas” and the may be right judging by the images on streetartutopia.com.

This is a fantastic collection of urban street art from around the world.

A most eggstraordinary event is happening around London in the run up to Easter. Over 200 very special eggs created by both famous and amazing artists have been hidden across the streets of London. The Big Egg Hunt competition is to find as many as you can to be in with a shout of winning The Diamond Jubilee Egg no less!

The website has been developed by Made in Fallon, Fallon’s in-house design agency. The site works superbly well for two reasons. Visually it is playful, colourful and the illustration style works fantastic on the Zone maps but it is the way the site has been executed that really interests me. It is a great example of what is being termed as Responsive Design. The way the site visually looks, delivers graphic assets, imagery, content, navigation, etc has all been tailored to the device or platform that you are viewing the site on.

So this has got me thinking! I have been studying, thinking some more, saving articles, pondering, and then thinking some more about Responsive Design for a number of months.

Day to day work projects at the moment aren’t allowing me to attack a piece of work in this manner so I am going to re-design and re-launch this blog as a self initiated responsive design project.

It’s exciting and daunting all at the very same time. I know there will be a ton of work to do, lots of problems to solve, a number of people who will get tired of my endless questions and pleas for advice but it will be good fun.

I would normally pull together a team of developers, UX experts and creatives on a project of this nature, for now though it will be just me, a sketchbook, iPad and my thoughts.

I’ve literally made my mind up to do this today. That is as far as I have got in the process. I know I want to record every development, I will post up thoughts, images, sketches, prototypes etc up to the usual channels including Flickr, Pinterest (why not everyone else is..) etc.

I need to consider the right approach to this project, it will be slightly different to what I would term a normal website development. It is feasible I need to consider the most restrictive screen resolution first, then build into the larger template and canvases. If anyone out there has opinions or experience in this approach then get in touch I would love to hear from you.

I will try and write as many posts as I can on the thought processes and developments. It may take a while in-between work and family life but will make a great case study to look back on.

I’m off to do some more thinking…

If you’re interested in finding out more about Responsive Design, the links below provide some interesting reading.

Media Queries, Web Design Ledger, Mayfield Digital, Line 25

We all know Twitter, most of us related with design, advertising, media etc probably have twitter accounts. But how many of us realise what a phenomenon it really is?

Twitter originated only 6 years ago in a brainstorm session and was originally titled twttr inspired by Flickr.

“…we came across the word ‘twitter’, and it was just perfect. The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds’. And that’s exactly what the product was.” – Jack Dorsey

Work on the project started on March 21, 2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9:50 PM. In 6 short years there are now 175 million tweets a day!

There’s even more, the full glorious info graphic is at infographiclabs.com for your visual delight.

Lovely teaser trailer for a upcoming film that documents a group of students grad project as they explore, concept, create, make and play with a diverse range of software and hardware to create new possibilities of interaction.

The students have a website in development prototypinginterfaces.com (just a holding page at the time of writing this post) and they’re hoping to get a book publishing deal.

If you give kids thousands of stickers what do you think they’re going to do with them?

This (originally) pure white room installation is the brainchild of Yayoi Kusama. For two weeks at the Queensland Museum of Modern Art children were given thousands of coloured stickers and the freedom to go crazy and decorate the room. The end result is amazing.

The Obliteration Room (cool name for a cool concept!) is part of Kusama’s Look Now, See Forever exhibition.

If you’re in Queensland it’s worth a look and runs till March 12th.
More images can be seen at thisiscolossal.com