Show your design space - and poke your nose into others...

I'm rather nosey when it comes to other people's work spaces, especially if they are designers. As someone who has literally worked in spaces ranging from a small cupboard to sleek and spacious creative studios, I have seen how my surroundings affect my own creativity so I wonder how other designers are affected by their working surroundings?

Well, now we can all poke our noses into studios the world over thanks to Where We Design, a really nice idea for a website which shows studio spaces from creatives across the globe.

New website for Paul Smith

One of my favourite fashion designer's, Paul Smith, has launched a new website.

The new site is both an e-commerce site and a brand showcase for the internationally renowned fashion business. (Smaller-scale online purchasing had already been available on the site since 2004, but it has now been ramped up). It's a simple, clean HTML interface with large, animated images and it results in a strong visual impact.

Paul Smith World is a section of the website which features creative and art projects by the designer. This will be refreshed on a regular basis to encourage users to return to the site.

The new site certainly offers an enhanced user experience and I imagine it will greatly drive online sales.

Peter Blake tie-in with Chelsea FC

Loving Peter Blake's (somewhat unlikely) tie-up with Chelsea Football Club. The famous Pop Artist behind the album cover for the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, has been brought in to back the launch of their new kit.

All those familiar with my work for Jewish Book Week know that I have been greatly influenced by Blake's collages. and follow him closely.

And now created an artwork to celebrate the launch of the new Adidas Chelsea home shirt, supported by a microsite, video and social media campaign created by ad agency Iris.

The launch will include a three-foot high collage created by Blake, which will appear in the Chelsea megastore and in sponsor Adidas's shops from 6 May, that aims to celebrate the club's staff, players and fans.

Images used in the collage tell the story of Chelsea from the terrier that played a role in the creation of the club and the development of Stamford Bridge to the £1 note that Ken Bates used to buy it in 1982.

Adidas's campaign, created by the ad agency Iris, is called "Made from 100% Chelsea". Blake was filmed for a "making of" video that will be available online.

The first 10,000 fans to purchase the new home kit, which has a red collar and trim in tribute to the Chelsea Pensioners, will receive a limited edition print of Blake's piece.

This is seriously enough to turn me into being a Chelsea supporter. No more Leyton Orient for me...

Unexpected fashions for iPad

Puma's clever little shoe bag box

If you love clever packaging you'll have some respect for Puma's innovating thinking on the humble shoe box while keeping sustainability in mind.

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

It's 6 months old, but it's gold... just a word of warning: put down your drink while watching, so as to spare your computer a bath.

Oh, and watch out for cameos by Muppets you probably wouldn’t expect to see. Enjoy!

'Slap The Election Candidates' online game

Now you have the chance to take your anger out on the main election candidates with the help of a website where you can slap Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg in the face, simply by sliding your mouse cursor across the screen.

The site launched on 1st April and as of this morning (13th April), Gordon Brown had received 47.8% of the slaps, David Cameron had received 37.9% of slaps, while Nick Clegg had endured just 14.3% of slaps.

Google has made its first ever UK acquisition buying the startup, Plink

The acquisition follows chief executive Eric Schmidt's statement that Google is aiming to acquire at least one company each month – as well as recruit more staff – as it expands the company post-recession.

Founded by PhD students Mark Cummins and James Philbin, Plink's first product was PlinkArt, a visual recognition app for mobile that analyses pictures of well-known artworks and paintings and identifies them. Users can then share the photo with friends and also click through to buy a poster version.

The developers claim the app was downloaded more than 50,000 times in the six weeks following launch, and Plink have also held discussions with galleries including the Tate over potential partnerships.

The two founders will work on Google Goggles, the search giant's visual search project.

Cummins and Philbin founded Plink nearly two year ago while PhD students at the University of Oxford's mobile robotics and visual geometry groups in the department of engineering.

The app was brought to Google's attention during the Android Develop Challenge in December last year, an initiative to promote innovative new applications for Google's mobile platform, when the pair won $100,000 – Plink's sole funding to date.
James Philbin explained how Plink's technology works: "It picks out repeatable elements from the image you take and comes out with a statistical representation of them." That process works even at different angles and different lighting conditions.

"We found our way into art almost by accident, because we were really interested in visual search. But art is compelling space because it is so empty. There isn't even a definitive site for art," said Philbin.

Cummins said the two had the classic startup dilemma of deciding whether to accept Google's offer – or to acknowledge that endorsement of the product and keep developing independently. But they opted instead to accept Google's offer and become the first UK startup to be bought by the technology giant.

"It feels good, yeah," said Philbin. "I'm not complaining."

Nicorette 'films' - film parody ad

Nicorette have launched a TV and cinema campaign with ads parodying generic film genres by substituing the film stars' cigarettes with inhalators.

Following the first Nicorette inhalator campaign in 2007, there was still a large barrier to purchase, in that many consumers were self-conscious about using the product in public. To counter this, AMV BBDO have developed a campaign that they hope will further conventionalise the product's use.

Personally I belive they're still a great barrier to purchase because these inhalators still look fairly ridiculous!. As nice as these ads are. I believe it's a job for the product design team rather than a new ad campaign.

New iPad.. will it blend? I found this excruciatingly painful to watch!

Living Portraits

These 'people painted to look like portraits' were done by Alexa Meade. She is an installation artist based in Washington DC.

Her innovative use of paint on the three dimensional surfaces of found objects, live models, and architectural spaces has been incorporated into a series of installations that create a perceptual shift in how we experience and interpret spatial relationships.

So rather than a painting trying to capture the likeness of a person, these are people painted to look like the likeness of a painting. It's so wonderfully the wrong way round!






Above, self-portrait of the artist, Alexa Meade

Good old fashioned bidding war

Thanks to Gaulaleh for this one.

Gap rolls out iPad e-commerce app

Gap's free-of-charge app, called The 1969 Stream, is designed to promote the brand's 1969 Premium Jeans range, and has been created by digital agency AKQA.

It features exclusive content from Gap designers, musicians, and fashion experts, including a music video from US country rock group Truth & Salvage Co.

Additionaly, the app will include photographs of celebrities wearing Gap clothing and a Twitter feed from the brand's creative director Patrick Robinson.

A number of media brands, including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Lonely Planet, and Condé Nast titles Wired, GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Glamour, have each launched apps for the iPad and I can't wait to see how the new iPad format has inspired the very latest digital apps. Roll on late April and the UK launch of the iPad!

Meanwhile have any of our American friends played with an iPad yet? Let us know about your experiences!

Google Street View... now in 3D!

To see Google Street View in 3D, you will need a pair of old-fashioned red/cyan glasses. Put them on, bring up Street View in Google Maps and click on the Pegman with 3D glasses on the left hand side of the screen. This feature seems to be available anywhere in the world where Google currently offers Street View.

This is what Google had to say about their new 3D Street View feature.

Uniqlo creates Twitter show in online campaign

Uniqlo is attempting to tap into the popularity of Twitter by creating UTweet, a somewhat off-beat online promotional campaign for its latest t-shirts.

The application invites Twitter users to enter their details in order to create a personalised 'Twitter show', based on the history of messages posted.

It then uses audio and imagery to tell your story and encourages you to send it on to friends. During the Twitter show, models wearing UT t-shirts from Uniqlo appear, promoting the range.

I love the vibrant, bold feel of UTweet - and the striking user-generated red and white typographical images. Nice work. And their previous campaigns are interesting too: eg. Uniqlock, an obscure video involving dancing models and another nice one, Uniqlo Calendar

Those with iPhones, and a love of vintage, will want one of these

www.deskphonedock.com

Source: The Cool Hunter

Israel by Design

The Holon Design Museum.

Israel offers many good reasons to visit: breathtakingly diverse landscapes, endless historical and religious sights, and plenty of incredibly friendly and beautiful people. Recently the country added another feather to its cap of landmarks: its first museum devoted entirely to design. The project, in the Tel Aviv suburb Holon, is part of an ambitious plan to put the wealthy but otherwise bland municipality on the global culture map; in fact, an interesting group of international architects has already been invited to submit proposals for a new town hall on an adjacent lot.

Designed by Ron Arad, Israel’s poster boy of design, the Holon Design Museum (pictured above) and its planners make no bones about wanting to create the famous Bilbao effect. While the project might lack its Spanish role model’s interesting location and size, it makes up for any shortcomings with sheer chutzpah, both in its dramatic design (five sinuous bands of weathered steel that Arad elegantly undulated around the exhibition halls) and its programming.

The museum’s first show, “The State of Things: Design and the 21st Century,” opened festively in the presence of Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, along with international guests like Liz Diller of Diller and Scofidio + Renfro and the Spanish design wiz Jaime Hayon. For 35 shekels, the paying public can browse the museum with a state-of-the-art touch-screen audiovisual guide in hand and admire the display, which was pulled together by a group of international guest curators (Aric Chen, Julie Lasky, Garth Walker, led by Barbara Bloemink, formerly of the Cooper-Hewitt).

“The State of Things: Design and the 21st Century.”

It’s an eclectic mix of more than 100 pieces from the last three years, including iconic designs by industry bigwigs like the Campana brothers, Ingo Maurer, Maarten Baas and Jaime Hayon, as well as some pleasant surprises, like Andreas Angelidakis’s gold-foil chair. (Arad’s own designs were conspicuously absent.) Such an ambitious and high-profile opening sets the bar high for what’s to come in the future, and it’ll be interesting to see how the museum’s program will evolve over the next couple of years, during which time its staff plans to build up its permanent collection. After all, according to the artistic director Galit Gaon, the Holon Design Museum’s mission is to “educate the Israeli public about design.”

Not that Tel Aviv needs any further education in design or architecture — there are two important architecture schools in the metropolitan area, a Preston Scott Cohen-designed addition will open soon at the Tel Aviv Museum, and the Bauhaus district, which lines the area around Boulevard Rothschild, has a remarkable architectural heritage. Given the pride the city takes in it, the Bauhaus district sometimes seems surprisingly under-renovated. Less than 50 percent of it has been fully restored, including the beautifully modest former town hall on Kikar Bialik and the expensively refurbished Pagoda House, near Tel Aviv’s niftiest boutique hotel and restaurant, The Montefiore. The Pagoda House, built by the architect Alexander Levy in 1925, is said to be owned by an elusive Swedish billionaire who won’t let anyone photograph its interiors, which only adds to its allure.

Equally alluring — a few minutes south of Tel Aviv — is the predominantly Arab port city of Yaffa, with its lively small streets, flea market, delicious hummus restaurants (Ali Karavan, at 1 Ha’Dolfin Street, is one of the best — but come early, given that hummus is mostly considered breakfast or lunch food) and a newly developed port area, where new art galleries and cafes pop up almost by the minute.

Even for those who only stay in Israel for a short time, a night in Jerusalem is always worth it. By car, the two cities are only one hour (yet worlds) apart. Whereas Tel Aviv oozes hedonism, Jerusalem bears the weight of history and centuries-old religious conflict. Deciding to bypass the most famous sites — the Wailing Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (to name but two) — I follow the advice of Noam Dvir, the architecture correspondent for Haaretz, and went looking for Jerusalem’s less obvious architectural gems.

The first stop: the Rockefeller Museum, on the edge of the Arab quarter of East Jerusalem. Built in neo-colonial, East-meets-West style by the British architect Austen St. Barbe Harrison, the museum houses a strikingly vast archeological collection. But the most fascinating part is the fact that nothing has been changed since the museum opened its doors in 1938, offering its few visitors a spellbinding (and free) step back in time: the bas-reliefs and signage in English, Hebrew and Arabic (designed by none other than Eric Gill, the famous British font creator), the display boxes and stalls, models, wall coverings and even the lavatories are all exactly as they originally were.

Mamilla Hotel.

Another noteworthy, and considerably newer, addition to Jerusalem’s design marvels is the Mamilla Hotel, which opened last summer near Yaffa gate. Part of a larger development in the Mamilla district — courtesy of the Israeli architect Moshe Safdie — the Mamilla hotel is Israel’s first and only Design Hotel, thanks to Piero Lissoni’s Midas touch on all rooms and public areas, including the spa, the pool, the roof deck (with a great view over the Old City - pictured above) and the Mirror Room, the hotel’s very chic restaurant and bar.

Plenty of reasons for anyone interested in design to visit this wonderfully diverse country.

Source: NY Times Stye Magazine

Didn't think you wanted an iPad? Think again

Enter the iCade iPad Arcade Cabinet from ThinkGeek.com. To use the iCade, gently slide the iPad into the docking cradle. The docking cradle uses a standard 30 pin connector to link the iPad to the professional-grade arcade controls. Once the iPad is in place, launch the iCade App (available free in the App Store April 3rd) and it’s game on!

ThinkGeek.com didn’t want to take any chances that the iPad would run out of juice during your favourite game, so they included a 10w USB power adapter so that it's possible to charge the iPad through any electrical outlet.

But wait, what happens when you click the BUY NOW button?

Yes folks, it's another April fool’s prank!

April Fools: Google's best jokes

Google takes April Fools very, very seriously...

Google changes its name: In homage to the US city of Topeka – which recently changed its name to Google in the hope of winning a place on Google's new broadband rollout scheme – Google announced that it is changing its name to Topeka. "We've been wondering how best to honour that moving gesture," wrote Google on its blog. We didn't reach the decision to change our name lightly; after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name. But the more we surfed around Topeka's municipal website, the more kinship we felt with this fine city at the edge of the Great Plains."

YouTube cuts costs: Google said it was going to cut the cost of running its video clip website by adding a text-only mode. "It's great news that there are 24 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, we support 1080p and HD uploads are rising quickly, but that's also meant increasing bandwidth costs cutting in to our bottom line," said YouTube on its blog. "TextP is the result of months of intense transcoding efforts by our engineers, who toiled for weeks to ensure that a large chunk of videos on the platform could be reduced to their most basic elements. By replacing the images in the video with a series of letters and numbers, the videos are far less taxing on our system – and have the added benefit of promoting literacy!"

Google Wave notifications: Google has announced a new notification service for its Google Wave account – a man who comes up and physically waves at you whenever you have a new message.


Google Search: Type in a search in the box, and Google will tell you how long it took to find a list of results. A search for "space", for instance, takes 0.20 cantons.

Google Books: Google's digitised books collection can now be "viewed in 3D".

Google Docs: Google has taken its cloud computing service to another level, offering to store everything from keys to train tickets in Google Docs so "you'll never have to worry about finding them again".

Google Translate: Ever wanted to talk to the animals? Google Translate makes the dream a reality, with an Android app that translates "words and phrases that are common to a species".

Google Maps: Australian users of Google Maps have been greeted with a localised version of Google's mapping service, which tells them to "chuck a right" rather than make a right turn.

Google Voice: Google has launched a retro voicemail service – messages will be deleted after 14 days "so you don't have to listen to them", and users will only be able to access their voicemails on their phone, rather than via the web. Just like the good old days.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

More Photoshop CS5 Content-Aware Fill Sneak Peek Awesomeness

iPhone HD rumoured to launch June 22nd

On June 22nd, Apple will unveil their latest iPhone creation, the iPhone HD, according to two reports from the Wall Street Journal, and another by Engadget.

So what makes this version of the iPhone so different that it justifies the HD name? Well for one, the screen is said to be a much higher resolution, specifically set at 960 x 640, which is double the resolution of the 3GS. It’s a good thing too because Apple’s newest Android competition, the HTC Evo 4G, has a resolution set at 800 x 480. Those higher quality screens mean better looking games and just as importantly, the ability to see more data on the screen at one time.

The iPhone is drastically in need of a better camera and the iPhone HD is again, set to deliver in this department as well as that other long-awaited feature, an iSight webcam. The iSight camera was also rumoured to be in the iPad, although it didn't make the final cut (although rumours point to a space in the case ready and waiting). The iSight camera could accompany iChat software enabling video chat on the iPhone.

Anish Kapoor to create 'London's answer to the Eiffel tower'

Designs for what will be Britain's biggest piece of public art, a 120 metres tall looping tower by Anish Kapoor that people will be able to climb, giving spectacular views of London, were unveiled today by Boris Johnson, mayor of London.

Kapoor's Orbit, a vast, snaking steel structure, will dominate the 2012 Olympic park. It is being hailed as London's answer to the Eiffel tower and is part of an ambition to make the Olympics site a permanent visitor attraction.

Kapoor won the commission from a shortlist of bidders believed to include the artist Antony Gormley and the architects Caruso St John. Johnson said of Kapoor: "He has taken the idea of a tower and transformed it into a piece of modern British art. It would have boggled the minds of the Romans. It would have boggled Gustave Eiffel."

The structure will officially be called the ArcelorMittal Orbit, after steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, the richest man in Europe, who is funding it. Johnson said that if he and Mittal had not bumped into each other in a Davos cloakroom "we would not be where we are today".

Mittal said: "This project is an incredible opportunity to build something really spectacular for London, for the Olympic games, and something that will play a lasting role in the legacy of the games."

The structure will cost about £19.1m. Johnson said: "Of course some people will say we are nuts – in the depths of a recession – to be building Britain's biggest ever piece of public art. But both Tessa Jowell [Olympics minister] and I are certain that this is the right thing for the Stratford site, in games time and beyond."

Kapoor has collaborated on the project with his friend Cecil Balmond, one of the world's leading structural engineers. Approximately 1,400 tonnes of steel will be used. The plan is for work to begin soon with a completion date of December 2011.

Kapoor said one of his references was the Tower of Babel. "There is a kind of medieval sense to it of reaching up to the sky, building the impossible. A procession, if you like. It's a long winding spiral: a folly that aspires to go even above the clouds and has something mythic about it."

Source: The Guardian

Latest Photoshop CS5 tool unveiled. Is this an April Fool's Joke? What do we think?

Karen Cinnamon in Design Week: 25 March 2010

Following the speculation that James Dyson is being lined up for a role in a potential Conservative Government, Design Week asked Karen Cinnamon, who in the design world she would most like to see enter politics and why:

"I’ve dined in his restaurants, flopped on his sofas, and been inspired by his out-of-the-(Habitat)-box thinking. It has to be Terence Conran, our very own design superhero whose Bauhaus-inspired beliefs that ‘“good design should be available to the whole community, not just to a few”, and extraordinary flair for business and visionary innovation, would make him my candidate. I’m confident he won't be claiming expenses for lunches (or duck houses) at Pont de la Tour".

Two great examples of guerilla advertising

1. No more living in denial about the size of your waist line, thanks to this fantastic albeit terrifying guerrilla marketing initiative from the health club chain, Fitness First.

Unsuspecting commuters in the Netherlands are faced with viewing their body weight in bright lights - quite literally - when they take a seat at this Rotterdam bus stop. Scary to say the very least, but extraordinarily clever and likely to increase membership numbers at the local Fitness First.



2. Nikon took its cue from our celebrity-obsessed paparazzi culture to launch the brand's D700 model in Korea.

At a busy Seoul subway station, Nikon mounted a huge interactive, light-box billboard displaying life-like images of paparazzi. Huddled together as if at a premiere, the "paps" appear to be jostling and competing for the best celebrity snap. The celebrities in this case were the passersby, who automatically triggered a deluge of flashing camera lights as they walked past the billboard.

The accidental superstars then followed the red carpet all the way out of the station and into a mall - directly into the store where they could purchase the new D700.

Both examples sourced from The Cool Hunter

Great examples of infographics

For more inspiration I recommend the following infographic books:
- Information Graphics: Innovative Solutions in Contemporary Design
- Information Design Workbook
- Visual Function: An Introduction to Information Design

Tampon-makers can't mention the V-word. Period.

For years, advertising for tampons and "sanitary products" have been shrouded in euphemism. So what happens when a US tampon-maker drops the coy messaging and goes straight for the jugular (so to speak)? Its ad gets banned by the major US television networks for mentioning the word vagina.



Even when the company substituted "down there" for vagina, two of the networks still wouldn't run the ad, so the company was forced to drop the idea altogether. That provoked Amanda Hess, author of The Sexist blog, to observe: "Now, the commercial contains no direct references to female genitalia – you know, the place where the fucking tampon goes."

An executive for Kimberly-Clark, the owner of Kotex, notes that US TV networks have no such compunction about references to "erectile dysfunction" in prime-time ads for Viagra and Ciallis.

The amended ad – produced by JWT - shown above, "How do I feel about my period?", has a series of images parodying the stock images used in sanitary product advertising, and concludes: "The ads on TV are really helpful because they use that blue liquid, and I'm like, oh, that's what's supposed to happen." The ad debuted on US television this week.

Source: Richard Adams's blog

Geek friendly jeans

Sanja and Pedja, two Web enthusiasts living in France, have created WTF Jeans.

The ultimate gadget accessory, these jeans have pockets especially for your iPhone or iPod Touch with microfiber protection so they don't get scratched, as well as extra padding where it counts for guys. They also have a hidden memory stick pocket.

Low in the front and high in the back, they feature snazzy “twitter bloo” stitched pockets to accentuate those geeky butts!

According to the site, the jeans are still in beta stage (whatever that means), and the first pairs are expected to ship on May 2, at 59 Euros (£53).

The New Dork - Entrepreneur State of Mind (Jay-Z ft Alicia Keys Spoof)

It's the year of the geek baby!

Beautifully crafted parody of one of my favourite songs."Social net-works-what-dreams-are-made -of"... Love it!

Amy Winehouse to design a collection for Fred Perry

Fred Perry, the sports label favoured by mods, and Northern Soul fans, has collaborated on a new collection with soul singer Amy Winehouse.

Although Winehouse is best known for her disheveled outfits, massive beehive hairdo, and exaggerated eyeliner, the singing star is adding fashion designer to her credentials with a womenswear collection that will be based on her own 1950s-inspired style and will comprise of 17 pieces, including polo shirts and skirts.