The net's my playground.

We are the web is rather amusing site, which publicises the issue of net neutrality.

turning apathy into activity

Drop Knowledge is a really inspiring initative,which utilises the net as a platform for people to ask questions, questions which confront conventional wisdom and incite change.

TXT.

Like electronic products, desktop software seems cursed by the programers desire to add needless complexity. No doubt the latest version of microsoft work ticks an ever greater number of of boxes for its range of features. But do you really want to sit down to write your thesis/novel/letter through an interface that resembles a NASA control board?

Write room Is a piece of word processing software, which lets you see the text your working on and nothing else

the anti 'critical design'

Not suprisingly Wikipedia has an entry for Critical Design

Really interesting and quite to find a dissenting view about it here from Mike Kuniavsky, I think he makes some interesting points. Especially that Noam Toran views design as medium rather than process.

dog is a god

Handsets taken to the grave

via BBC News

Like modern day Tutankhamen's people are actually expressing the desire to be buried with the high status electrical appliances, which define them.

Martin Raymond, director of The Future Laboratory -

"We came across one guy who asked to be buried with his mobile phone and his Blackberry, and also with his laptop."

psp design club

Ben Hooker and Shona Kitchen's site specific gaming system, is one of the design proposals generated by the PSP Design Club , the sites blog is a really rich documentation of life through the eyes of the participating designers.

The eventual showcased results really break with the boundries of more conservative ID projects out there.

design and poetics

I just read this interview with Hulger CEO Nicolas Roope.

I have to say that i find it really refreshing and i think that the world of product design needs more people who share the same approach/values as Roope. For me there are few more miserable sights in the world than walking into Dixons and seeing row upon row of plastic multifunctional products. For me mainstream industrial design usually only succeeds in adding to this banality.

I wish that a large spread of the ID world would come to admire Hulger's Bakelite phone receiver. Its an electrical product' yes, but its human. It does try to solve a crudely defined 'problem' or do things faster. It says 'people are silly', 'people are sentimental' and it achieves a maximum poetic effect through an economy of means, which is a quality implicit in every rare example of design I truly love. Sociologist Michel de Certeau. De Certeau writes about this topic in relation to storytelling. In de Certeau's school of thinking I think that the Hulger phone would rate pretty highly.

Nicolas Roope makes a really interesting point here I think -

"There's a growing market who willingly pay a premium to guarantee the source and production of food for example because they know it's good for them, tastes better and makes them feel good supporting the smaller producer. In a similar way people want to feel that the products they consume are rooted in an ideology or story that resonates with them in deeper way than just through its use. Not only does this make them feel better about using these things but in the case of a fashion item like our phones, they feel good about their association with this brand when using them in public."

this is a beautiful idea

flickr clock

Malle

One day I will track down a decent copy of all Malle's films dating from the 1960's. Foolishly I paid someone £5 for a homemade dvd recording of 'Ascenseur pou l’echafaud'. Was it to much to ask that it would be decent quality? apparently yes, green digital dots keep making an unwelcome appearance. I have learnt my lesson in film piracy.