New Media Mantra

Have you ever wondered that? We’re exposed to so much “Design” these days, it seems that for the most part, expectations are pretty high, but not always closely followed by clear understanding of what “Good” design actually is.

I’m on shaky ground here, I know.  For openers, I’m using the word “Good” in the title and lets face it, if anyone wants to get into subject / object dualism, I’m screwed – but bear with me.
I’m going to list two examples of design, which to me are near perfect solutions, because they have something in common.

 
Photo: (c) flickr.com/people/bru

1.    The Starck Lemon Squeezer
The problem which this piece of design is solving is this – “How do I extract the juice from citrus fruit”. Not the most exciting problem to solve, but oh how it was solved! Look at the form of this and try to simplify it. Not possible!

2.    The humble Pencil
Like all excellence in design, the pencil is designed to do one thing very, very well. It’s simple and to me, beautiful. Stick a rubber on the other end if you must.

What do they have in common?

Simplicity. It would be very, very hard to simplify either of them without rendering them non-functional. It looks childishly simple, doesn’t it?

In hindsight.

But of course, that’s the trick with design. Getting to the beautiful, efficient simplicity from the mess of conflicting agenda, functionality requirements and the wishes of the dreaded committee.

Einstein said “solutions to problems should be as simple as possible, but no simpler” and he had a point. Picture the lemon squeezer with one less leg, or the pencil without the wood..

We made a site live today, http://www.eco-environments.co.uk.

From start to finish, the project took 4 weeks or 2 weeks if you forget the time we were waiting for approvals at various stages.

  

The BBC have featured our interactive Liverpool skyline project, MyLiverpoolSkyline.com on the new flagship Liverpool 08 site.

Cool :)

I got back from a snowboarding trip to Morzine a couple of weeks ago.

I’d been looking forward to it, and in particular, getting to do “The Satellite Run” on a powder day again. Its been 2 years since I first experienced the childlike joy of floating down this legendary off pister so I was perhaps a little… over-enthusiastic.

Well, 30 seconds in, I managed to dig the nose of my board into the powder and perform an involuntary double front somersault – fairly spectacular, I’m sure.

On the first rotation, I managed to take my full weight on my back leg which hit the deck at about 30mph and compressed with a nice, ligamenty squelch.

A torn medial meniscus, no less.

2 weeks later, the limp is getting better and I find out tomorrow whether I get the joys of an arthroscopy or not.

 

Science fiction fans among you will like this one.. You’ll no doubt be familiar with the way Minority Report, The Matrixes and Perhaps even Vernor Vinge are treating interfaces.

Immersive but also on demand – in the future, we will not be constrained by clunky screens (according the these visions anyway..).

Imagine being able to simply look at an object to Google it. Imagine being able to private message someone by looking at them. Or call up their linked in or Facebook profile by looking at them.

Impossible?

Odds are you’re carrying a computer in your pocket which is more powerful than your desktop was 5 years ago. Your phone is already capable of wireless comms, right?

The main problem is display.

University of Washington have just made a breakthrough that is taking us very strongly into this future.

 

 In short, this is a contact lens which contains a circuit and a number of LEDs - a rudimentary display. All it needs is power and theyre working on that.

Just got a new sign for the office. Mark at Phlex Imaging sorted it out for us.

Lovely :)

  

Brighten up your office with this festive fireplace

For all our friends this holiday season we made a festive screensaver. You can turn your computer into a warm glowing fireplace.

Like so:

 

Neat huh, if a little kitch.. 

You can get it here: http://christmas.glow-internet.com