Take a look at the video above and you’ll see that Microsoft’s Kinect is the best thing that came out in 2010. Sure I love the iPad, but still this is far more revolutionary and due to easy hacking people use it for more than punching virtual characters in the face with their own hands.
In fact there are more and more examples on how it can bring the futuristic interfaces from some movies and tv shows to reality. And it’s gonna happen sooner than later. This is kinect controlling a 3d projection.
Whoa, that’s a pretty cool example of what web-apps are capable of. Sure this is actually pretty pointless, but proving it can be done, it opens a window for more advanced web applications of the future. Check it out here: http://alexw.me/ipad/
The Picasso’ painting “Two characters” looked a little similar to me, when I saw it in a photobook recently, so I searched the web and noticed that some other sites also picked that up. It seems like the finder icon is strongly “inspired” by the painting. Sure it couldn’t be exact (aside from the obvious reasons) because it’s a bit too sad and depressing. But still, can u see it?
As I predicted earlier, the wave of tablets came from this year’s CES. There’s so many of them, both good and bad, that we surely can talk about a revolution in browsing. Some of them run flash, some don’t, some do it in a limited way. But the touch input will be the new browsing in the starting decade. And we should think about that while designing.
That might mean a small revolution in web design, towards a mixture of print and web styles, that are easier to grasp on tablets. Maybe “swipe to change page” mechanisms, more jQuery and Javascript, video and sound. And bigger, clear controls. We’ll see where it goes next, but since most of the internet is about consuming content, we might see a big transformation of the way in which the content is delivered. Exciting times!
We tend to go towards perfection of many kinds constantly in our lives. Technology gives us HD and megapixels for clearer images, higher sampling rates for better audio. Everything is better, faster, stronger. Or whatever.
But at the same time the rising popularity of the imperfections of the yesteryear (especially in visual and sound arts) are a thing that’s really hip today. Yeah, vintage is pretty hip, but it’s not really because of the hipsters, because most of them are way too young to feel nostalgic about these things. They kind of made it their style, but the world doesn’t follow just one group. And yet the world likes noise. The world likes vintage. The world likes slightly warmer colors in photographs, and grain, and smudged borders. Why?
As I said before, it cannot be nostalgia, because yeah, some of us (like me) remember the days of the 80’s point’n’shoot kodak’s but most of the internet now doesn’t. It cannot be just a trend too though. Why you ask ?
Well let me answer that.
A good example is with sound – you take a simple sine-wave and play it. It’s the most basic sound and it’s pretty boring. But when you add some whitenoise, and some crackles, hiss and vinyl distortion you get something far warmer, harmonic and what’s more important natural. Sure we see and hear the world mostly in HD, but we don’t want the reality to be exactly what we see and hear. Especially since it actually never is. Want proof ?
Go record a concert with your phone’s camera. The sound might be getting better with each year and each phone, but it’ll never beat being there. Even with the most pro equipment (like 20 microphones everywhere and preamps) it might sound clear but it still lacks something.
Another example – colors and noise in images. Take a simple square and paint it red. Then take another square, paint it red as well but add a small amount of noise to it. Which one looks “better” or “more natural” ?
In most cases it’s the noisy one, the imperfect one. Because the computer monitor is pretty perfect already, so everything that’s just one color (or even a gradient) looks kind of like plastic. And we don’t like plastic, right?
It’s not even about a regular texture on a color, it’s about making the color a little bit imperfect to make it more real. Because in real life if we look at a red square somewhere it won’t be 100% completely red, unless it’s printed on a glossy high quality paper and it’s not worn out in any way. But give it some time and it will look different.
Those imperfections are of course also present in the videos, with more and more artists adding noise, scratches and discoloration to their videos. And the results? Well we tend to like those videos more for some reason than the crisp and clear HD footage that’s well lit and almost resembles a plastic version of reality. The video below is of an iPhone app that let’s you record some vintage videos. If you watch it you’ll see that it can make even simple shots look nice, without anything going on in them. We’ll probably see a lot more of that vintage trend to come. Because vintage is (in our heads at least) closer to that warm reality we live in.
Unfortunately japan didn’t win the chance to organize the 2022 world cup in soccer, but their presentation is breathtaking. The amount of new technology that they’re showing is astonishing – on the fly translators, augmented reality and what’s even better a holographic representation of the main games in many other countries. Imagine that – you go to a stadium in your country and you see all the stars doing what they’re doing somewhere in Japan in real time. Well that won’t happen since Japan didn’t win and that sucks because an event like that could push the technology forward. Just watch the video
Doesn’t it always work like that? An event of a totally different kind can push the technology forward so it later can be used for many other things. Rock concerts anyone ?
Will it redefine the interfaces for tablet publishing? Will that in turn redefine the web as we know it a little bit? We’ll have to wait and see. Right now they have a pretty neat and at the same time grungy/electronic Tron cover with animations and flashes known from some thriller movies. That might be fun. We’re witnessing some sort of future here, and another one when “The Daily” comes out. Exciting times to be a web designer. A lot of new trends will emerge REALLY soon. See the vid :
Apple is pushing forward the magazine revolution by cooperating with news corp. and they want to create a tablet-only newspaper. This is revolutionary and exciting for a couple of reasons. One – right now the tablet papers are “versions” of a regular paper. This one will be completely 1’s and 0’s so less trees will die in the process. Good.
There seems to be a lot of discussion about it recently, but mostly content-wise or about their future plans – i.e. more electronic only but high quality content publications. And yet everyone seems to be missing one point – since we already kinda know how a tablet magazine should look and work in terms of visuals and interface, is it the time for an “apple style revolution” again? Will they invent a tablet newspaper interface of their own, or will they simply base it on the best ones out there (Flipboard). ?
We’ll probably see sometime mid-december. And if the interface will be new it might be a start for A LOT of change coming soon to the tablet publishing industry. Well unless it’s actually any good…
All of those comparisons between html5 and flash could give anybody but batman a headache. Good to know that someone with a sense of humor decided to make their clash a bit more “fun” than numbers, predictions and angry “thoughts on flash”. As with every technology, things have their advantages and disadvantages. And true, HTML5 is better battery-to-performance-wise, but Flash has some pretty cool tricks up it’s sleeve too. And even if the web moves away from flash video completely (which it has started to do) there will still be plenty of use for flash – gaming, “creative” showcase type websites and cartoons for which it is perfect.
The cool people at Code Computerlove decided to make a pong game (for two players) that uses FLASH to render one side of the table, and HTML5 to render the other. And they work together in harmony. Maybe it’s a hint towards the future? Huh, Steve?
You can check out the game and play it here. Enjoy!
It’s always great when charities involve artists into a cooperation that’s both creative and helpful to some. This time it’s about people arranging canned foods together to form an image or a sculpture. Hence the name “canstruction”. And since I love the idea I decided to share some “Canstructions” with you.
As soon as the iPad came out I wrote an article here that explained why I think the web should change a little bit for an oncoming wave of touch based tablet devices. Apple haters of course thought otherwise, but now we can see more and more tablets coming into the market so we need to prepare ourselves for a little different approach. Web should be more “book-like” because sites like that will be more fun for both the tablet and computer users. That means it needs to have streamlined information in such a way, that we’re not blown away by the amount of content to perceive and grasp on the first glance, yet we know that a lot of content is there and is quickly and easily accessible.
RIM has announced it’s own tablet just yesterday, there’s a SAMSUNG galaxy Tablet out already, and there’s the iPad. These three are sort of the first of the much bigger wave since every PC manufacturer is currently working on a touch based tablet. That combined with a large decline in laptop sales, might be the first sign of what laptops did to standard PC’s a couple of years back. And we need to be ready!
Animated short film, Royal College of Art, London, 2009
Dictaphone Parcel is an animation based on a sound recorded with a dictaphone travelling secretly inside a parcel. As the hidden recorder travels through the global mail system, from London to Helsinki, it captures the unexpected. We hear a mixture of abstract sounds, various types of transport and even discussions between the mail workers. The animation visualizes this journey by creating an imaginary documentary.
Dictaphone Parcel was awarded the Passion Pictures Prize in London, in February 2010.
This is not actually about apple mobile devices at all. Sure they didn’t have any multitasking for a long time and now they have a pretty limited one (so it won’t drain battery). No, that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about multi-tasking on a computer. And as a broad term to multi-task can be quite a few things like writing an essay while listening to some mp3’s or stuff like that.
Do we multi-task?
The main problem here is whether we really need to multitask to get the job done. What comes to mind here is an example of doing a presentation or some paper and switching to a web browser to find data and references. But this is actually a limited multi-tasking since you switch from one app to the other to transfer information between them.
What else comes to mind? Well when designing it’s often necessary to be on sites like istockphoto or sxc to search for design elements. And listening to music helps sometimes too.
So what’s wrong ?
The main thing wrong with multitasking is social networking. Being either facebook or chats / IM’s that can take a lot of the attention away from the job that needs to be done. It can take a lot of time when a friend sends some funny link or someone engages in an important conversation. And thus productivity suffers. This of course is pretty obvious, but without the ability to multitask (like on an iPad a while ago) it’d be impossible to do anything BUT the job. And sure we can turn off the IM’s and facebook, but we usually don’t. Why? Because we can have them running in the background, so we do it.
Not many people have enough self control to really focus on one task anymore. We work on our computers with the tv on in the same room. Or work and talk on skype. Or work and switch to chat.
Sure the modern age has enforced people to do more with their time and do everything quickly, but there needs to be a limit or our productivity will suffer greatly.
So probably the best idea is to have partial multi-tasking (that won’t happen) or have a lot of self control if you don’t want to spend too many extra hours on a project.
What do you think? Do you “multi-task like crazy” ? Or do you somehow moderate yourself ?
Here’s how technology can influence creativity. Those guys used an iPad and some clever ideas to lightpaint really cool 3d letters. Look for yourself in the video below. Now that’s creativity!
This must’ve been a lot of dollars pumped into google’s account by Tipp-Ex but the production quality and the viral potential are one of the biggest youtube can give you. Mainly because it uses one big flash made by the advertiser to just play some videos inside it. This is I think the first time youtube went in that direction and even though there’s a bottom line here that it’s still just a clever commercial, it’s worth checking out.
There were campaigns similar to that one before of course, but not on that level of complication. For example the show “Dexter” had a campaign in which every youtube clip had hot spots on it to click, and there was a crowd moving within which you had to spot the main character and click on him. If you did you were redirected to another movie and so on. But that was done using just the typical youtube API so it probably wasn’t as popular as this new thing will be.
The main reason for success here is being surprised – when the hunter reaches outside of the movie you know you’ve been tricked but still you want to go forward. (that’s not much of a spoiler so don’t get upset about it ;p) There’s still plenty of room for innovation in online advertising and thankfully every once in a while we see that someone has come up with a fresh idea. Sure this one can’t be done with just a few bucks in your pocket like the “Jumping into jeans” or “Coke and Mentos” memes but it has more of that “I’m gonna send it to all my friends” action attached to it. And that’s precisely how a good viral works.
Know any other good examples of creative (meaning different than just a video) youtube campaigns ?
In graphic design the hardest things are actually the simple ones. Sure it sounds a bit stupid, but when you think about the rule of “Less is more” and then look at the big letter “a”, written in helvetica on a white background you can see that it’s not actually all peaches and cream.
Simplicity in webdesign is often refferred to as “minimalism”, which basically says it all. Something “minimalist” (-ic) is something simple, an expression of content/function with very little form.
This form can of course has it’s saturation levels – we can have a nicely designed website with just the text. Various typefaces, paddings and margins working together to create something that’s nice to the eye.
But that would probably be considered ultra-minimalism, so let’s move on.
Another step is adding a couple of elements like a background here, a divider line there, but still keeping it simple with as little colors, gradients, photography as possible. And this is where the hard part starts.
We all know that graphically rich and intense websites can hide their content flaws in a lot of flashes and eyecandy. With minimalism we don’t have that comfort, so everything has to be in place. Considering typefaces, font-sizes for different elements is crucial for the whole thing to look good while still being minimalist. If you want to make minimal websites it’s best to look around first and get some inspiration (that doesn’t mean copy+paste! ;))
I think every designer should have at least a couple of those minimal sites in his/hers portfolio among all those beloved graphically intense sites that we’re all so proud of.
