Designer Vadim Kibardin's suh-weeeet Black & White Clock turns two dimensions into three with a series of four OLED digits, each with their own power source.
A light sensor would figure out if it's bright or dark in the room, adjusting the numbers accordingly--going dark to form numbers during the day, and bright white at night.
Status: Concept stage, seeking a manufacturer.
Apple's design chief, Jonathan Ive, was honored at the Royal College of Art's "Innovation Night" on Tuesday, where he took to the stage. The event was closed to the public and much of the media, but geek.com has provided an account of Ive's talk--as reverse-engineered from Mozilla consultant Pascal Finette's Twittering of the event! Oh, the times we live in.
Here's a rather interesting excerpt:
Ive: My drawing skills are terrible... and I'm a lousy presenter. So I focus on designing instead. :)
Not sure if the smiley icon is Finette's addition, or if it's meant to represent Ive smiling after his statement. What is the Twitter transcription protocol? :)
Click here to read more, including Ive discussing some of Apple's design process.
We designers love almost any trick that shakes us from our traditional thinking patterns. Synesthesia, "a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway [wiki]" is one such trick.
The latest short film from Terry Timely explores the theme of synesthesia with the richness of a 17c. natura morta painting and sprinkles on top.
Engage your senses here.
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Archaeologists who dig the following up in 10,000 years will be able to use it to point out that by 2009, American society was surely in decline.
When we first heard about the Army using military-style videogames as a recruiting tool, we felt the notion of wooing American youth into joining an operation where you're meant to kill insurgents, and equating that with something you do on an X-Box, was kind of obscene.
The Air Force has stepped up their recruitment efforts with this super hi-tech Dodge Challenger (itself a symbol of decline, coming from a once-great, now-failed automaker that must go through 40-year-old car design archives to find a winning design from its past).
The Challenger Vapor features radar-absorbing stealth-black paint, not unlike what is used to mask stealth bombers. The Vapor is set to run almost silently, thanks to "stealth exhaust".... You need biometric verification to enter the cockpit.... The driver can view night/thermal vision projections on the windshield while sitting in a compartment that looks like something out of Crimson Tide.If the driver doesn't feel like getting out of their bunker he or she can command Vapor from a remote control system (even through internet) modeled after the Air Force's Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
via dodgepedia
Design consultancy Kicker Studio has designed a rather cool "Gestural Entertainment Center" for electronics company Canesta. Take a look:
Looks like your arms would get tired, no? But in today's sedentary world, that's probably a good thing.
In any case, a fair amount of research went into this device; the gestures are not arbitrary. As Kicker Studio explains,
We...set about to understand the activity and context of watching TV. We recorded subjects while watching video on their TV or computer. We looked for the types of casual gestures a user would make in order to limit the number of accidental triggers cause by non-deliberate gestures. We also noted the type of commands necessary specifically for operation of video playback. We looked for similar patterns of control to reduce the size of the vocabulary for easy retention. For example: changing the volume and changing the channel.From these investigations, we quickly established a list of metrics to measure success. We wanted to clearly "beat the remote" while creating a fun, engaging experience.
Read more about the project here.
One of the neater items on display at CES–and one of the items bound to excite product designers–is Samsung’s foldable display. It’s still in the prototype stages and yes, you can see the crease, but I’d be willing to put up with a line if it meant I could carry a 17″ laptop in a 9.5″ form factor!
via oh gizmo
In this period of crisis, designing for the depression certainly seems to be taking its toll on many of us pencil-pushing-product-ers — evident not only in the previous post, but also in this poster we ffffound online. There’s tons more inspiration/instigation where this came from, so if you haven’t checked out ffffound.com yet, click there right now! It’s a dynamic sharing platform for all things design-y — and hey, if you still have your job, it just might spark some great ideas during lunch time surfing.
While ubiquitous office binder clips are finding new legs as iPhone stands, they're simply not very convenient for those who need to carry bundles of documents around, as you can see below left. The superior design of Yamasaki Design Works' stainless steel Triangle Clips, below right, solves the problem and uses less material to boot.
via instructables and mocoloco
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