”What a wonderful thing!” – People from around the world, gathered in Berlin to listen on people from around the world, talking on the subject: Typography…

This years edition of Typoberlin was a 3-day extravaganza  of thrilling talks, lectures and discussions of the freely interpretated subsubject Image. Pioneers, nerds and generally highly respected designs and innovators gave each of there contributions – Ranging from biographical presentations of what the individual had created through a lifetime, to problemsolving on specific typographical issues over presentations of interesting individual projects.  Below you can get an overview of some of the highlights:

 Monotype collection poster, created på ‘Ed’ Benguiat – who stressed to point: that it’s all right to steal inspiration as long as the person you are stealing from is dead… :)

Stefan Sagmeister (sagmeister.com) talked about different client productions…

… and his personal project www.thingsihavelearnedinmylife.com – working creatively with his diary and him self as his main source of inspiration.

Christian Schwarts (christianschwartz.com)  talked about his work on the typeface Giorgio for the New York Times Magazine, and his collaboration with Speakerman (no picture, since the photopolicy of this blog is not to distrbute pictures of work, from people whose wicked plan is to laminate the earth …)

Kim Haemin (kimhaemin.info) – A young Korean programmer and artist, showed some of her work that explored experiences that connected our different ways of sensing, through touch, seeing and listening… Cool shit!

“That’s all folks!”

Here are some other interesting links:

fuenfwerken.com

odedezer.com

www.fabrica.it

De fleste designere og mac-nørder har ventet med spænding på, at se hvad Steve Jobs og co. ville præsentere på WWDC 2008.

Sædvanen tro imponerede de alle Apple-fans – ikke bare med en iPhone der indeholder 3G (så de afhængige af os altid kan tjekke mail) men også med løftet om en lancering i Danmark primo juli.

En masse nytænkende mennesker har været på banen for at udvikle banebrydende applikationer. Apple er sjældent bange for at involvere udviklere udefra og det har bl.a. resulteret i en ultratjekket opdatering af spillet “Super Monkey Ball”. Spillet udnytter iPhone’s bevægelsescensor - man styrer altså spillet ved at bevæge iPhonen.

IPhonen bliver ikke mindre interessant af, at den har fået GPS. Ikke blot kan ejeren nu altid finde sig selv og den nærmeste latté, men også afskaffe bilens GPS og nøjes med telefon, musik og GPS i samme gadget.

En række udviklere har brainstormet på hvordan den nye GPS-funktionalitet, kontaktpersoner og kommunikation kan kombineres på nye måder. Det er resulteret i programmet “Loopt”. Loopt bringer social networking til nye højder – hvor venner/kærester og andre i din telefonbog altid lokalisere dig. Sidder du alene til frokost kan Loopt hurtigt lokalisere dine venner i området.

Forhåbentlig er det en funktion der kan slåes til og fra efter behov, ellers ryger dårlige undskyldninger om “sene aftener på kontoret”, “jeg er ude at rejse” etc. Det rejser naturligvis nogle problemstillinger i forhold til overvågningssamfund, men vi vælger istedet at glæde os over de muligheder det åbner op for…

Som altid er der tænkt brugervenlighed, færre klik og enkelhed i designet af både telefon og applikationer.
We like…

Læs mere om vores nye yndlings-gadget

‘Serious Play’ is the title of the conference I recently attended in Pasadena, California. Is the title a paradox or does it actually make sense? To me it makes perfectly sense – that is, if serious equals values like: meaningful, absorbing and valuable.

After having interviewed his kids, John Hockenberry put it like this: “Play is so fun, that it’s serious!” In my ‘post-conference’ state of mind I will add to this: since being essential to our ability to learn, create and innovate, play is serious matter!

Consequently, I will claim that play is a seriously important part of the design process. Without knowing how to play, we will lack a crucial tool for creativity and for creating anything new and truly remarkable. To create new innovative and creatively splendid ideas, products or designs you may as well take playfulness quite serious!

During the conference ‘Serious Play’ was addressed from many different angles - from speakers of different professions to performers and musicians, during the workshops and as the theme for the evening parties.

Serious versus Solemn

Artist and Pentagram partner, Paula Scher took her outset in the distinction between the serious and the solemn. She emphasized the importance of changing focus before the serious, imperfect and explorative gets stuck in popularity and moves into the comfortable and all to perfect zone of ‘solemn’. Paula Scher further argued how you need to go places that you don’t know, where you can be a fool and where you can PLAY! Because this is where you learn and grow.

Role-play and prototyping

Among the featured speakers were also Tim Brown, President and CEO at IDEO, John Maeda, President-elect at Rhode Island School of Design and Charles Elachi Director at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, all of them integrating elements of play as an essential part of their professional careers.

In his presentation Tim Brown focused on tree aspects of the design process: exploration, building and role-play. All tree being an essential part of children’s games and their way of learning through play. He emphasized that in order to explore and be playful you need to feel trust. If not, you are not likely to take creative risks. Tim Brown emphasized the counter action between playfulness and seriousness and argued that play needs to have rules in order to be constructive – especially when playing in groups.

Tim Brown showed examples of how they have integrated these elements of play in the design processes at IDEO, providing the team with tools for generating and sharing ideas, for grasping form and functionality through building and prototyping and gaining insights and empathy through role-play.

John Maeda once again inspired through his engaging playful and experimenting approach and his ability to keep an open, creative mind. His design and art installations sparkes your curiosity and make you see things from a different angle - often adding a smile on your face. An example is his human computer installation, which showed how prototyping and role-play helped his students grasp the complexity of the computer. Finally he shared with the audience his concerns about how to fit unrestricted creativity into the academic world.

Charles Elachi gave a great example of how to keep a playful attitude in a complex context. Having worked as a principal investigator on a number of research and development studies and flight projects sponsored by NASA, Charles Elachi knows the value of innovative thinking, passion and imagination, - and seing some of the solutions for launching a satellite into space and make it land safely on a foreign planet, - you can tell that experimentation and creative thinking has been put into play!

Celebrating uniqueness and curiosity

(Photo © Matthew Barney; Gladstone Gallery)

Athlete and artist, Aimee Mullins, has a different motivation for being innovative and playful in order to affect her world. Aimee Mullins had both of her legs amputated below the knee when she was one year old. Being determined to live through her successes, Aimee Mullins shows how she used her obvious difference as a potential to opening up possibilities rather than constraining them. Wearing amputees she has learned to explore the fun of changing her personality – and her physical appearance.

Aimee Mullins has realized how we in childhood learn that differences are bad. Instead she encourages us to consider diversity as a quality that make us aware of our uniqueness and makes it enriching to collaborate. She asks us to see our potential and go for wild and improbable goals and to constantly practice our curiosity, - since curiosity makes us see possibilities and allow us to take risks.

Both Aimee Mullins, Tim Brown, John Maida and Charles Elaschi thus seem to agree with Paula Scher on avoiding the solemn.

The conference was great. Now go play, …seriously!