Google Waves at users
Google have just announced an amazing new... thing—Google wave. Developed in Australia, it's a web tool that, even in it's early stages, promises to revolutionise the way that we communicate. Watch this video (I warn you, it's 1 hour 20 minutes) to learn more. Watch even just a little bit to get the idea.
Basically it works by using APIs that send XML data to a central server and onwards to those viewing the 'wave'. Seems pretty unremarkable? What's great about it is that it allows you to add users, robots and extensions to regular communication. For those who didn't watch the video, think about live editing by more than one person, live drag and drop attachments (using Gears), live updates of Google Maps, and being able to have an almost instant messenger style chats with almost anyone. It's kind of like a highly editable chatroom.
This could become an incredibly useful tool for graphic designers. Apart from the obvious ease with which it enables things like project management, imagine being able to share reference material with Wave users without having to worry about file compatibility or waiting for them to receive the file and then reply.
Perhaps the most exciting propostion would be combining a Wave with something like a Phixr extension—thereby creating collaborative design across the web. Instantly.
I'm very keen for this. You should be too. This is the sort of thing Richard Seymour was talking about: "When anything new comes in ‘big time’, we think of it as an ‘it’. An entity. And you are going through this right now, with ‘the’ internet. The internet is not a thing at all, it’s a [gigantic, global] ‘how’, not an it." Google Wave is the logical extension of this—it is much more about the way in which we communicate than what is actually being said.
Home Branding
In what is undoubtedly a response to the recession, Australian groceries giant Woolworths has recently started advertising its cheaper in house brand, Home Brand. It appears as though the campaign is trying to counter a general perception of it being cheap and, as a result, low quality.
I've been thinking for some time that Home Brand has one of the best pieces of branding going round. It may not be attractive or particularly stylish, but it is consistent and effective. Every single items is branded in exactly the same way, with clear and concise labels. In addition, it stands out from every other item on the shelf because of its ample whitespace. While other brands may be concerned with getting their product to look fresh or tasty, Home Brand has been freed from that need.
Woolworths have acknowledged their customer base—someone whose looking for basic ingredients, and, according to their own advertisment, doesn't want to pay for fancy packaging. But I wonder at how effective their attempt to increase market share will be—people who are recquired to buy Home Brand do so out of need, not choice.
I've been thinking for some time that Home Brand has one of the best pieces of branding going round. It may not be attractive or particularly stylish, but it is consistent and effective. Every single items is branded in exactly the same way, with clear and concise labels. In addition, it stands out from every other item on the shelf because of its ample whitespace. While other brands may be concerned with getting their product to look fresh or tasty, Home Brand has been freed from that need.
Woolworths have acknowledged their customer base—someone whose looking for basic ingredients, and, according to their own advertisment, doesn't want to pay for fancy packaging. But I wonder at how effective their attempt to increase market share will be—people who are recquired to buy Home Brand do so out of need, not choice.
Tweet Tweet
Methods of communication have rapidly changed with the advent of digital technologies and, while this may seem to be stating the obvious, it goes beyond mere media distribution. A fundamental shift has occurred in the way that information is created and disseminated, a shift that could not have been predicted only a few years previously. But what, exactly, has changed?
Basically, users have become creators. It started with blogging—sites such as Live Journal allowed users to upload their own content to a public page. In quick succession came Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, creating a series of site that users could effectively create and view their own content without turning to a traditional source.
And now we have Twitter. At two years old, it’s still a relative baby compared to the other social networking giants, but it’s growth has been massive (600% over the last 12 months). It combines both the appeal of text messaging and social networking by forcing users to only 140 characters per message, and becomes one of the first with true mobile integration. What results is a glut of content—millions of people all uploading their smallest and largest of moments.
For this brief, I decided to look at the way Twitter works as a public document. People are prepared, and are almost eager, to share their life to the faceless crowds of the internet. I wondered how they would react to having these personal stories shared in print. Printing something has an added impact—a level of perceived permanency that an internet document does not possess. In addition, by placing it on a large format poster, I hoped to replicate the public nature of posting on the internet by confronting viewers with a literal wall of text, while the typeface was chosen to reflect the origins of the content.
Most of the people I asked were initially reluctant to participate, until it was pointed out that their posts were already up for public viewing—by a larger audience.
Overall I'm happy with how it turned out—thanks to all of those who let me plunder their precious Twitter archives!
Super Stimuli
With the recent release of We Love Typography I've been thinking about the shift in the way that we receive design content (and content more generally). It's something that has been going on for some time, and is becoming more prevalent with the expansion of Web 2.0
I'm talking about cloud content. Gone are the days of a single author or 'blogger' deciding what users would like to read or see—now we can use sites like Buamai to channel our image searches into something more to our tastes. It also categorises according to colour, theme and shape. Add to that WLT, Tumblr and Twitter streams and we have an absolute abundance of content available for designer's to look at and enjoy.
All of this sounds great in theory, but I think that we're missing something—a critical view. While blogging is a relatively new practice, it did allow for specialised content to flourish, and is why we have valuable resources like I Love Typography and The Strange Attractor, and gave designers a background on the pieces that passed before their eyes.
I feel that for design to be successful it has to have context, otherwise it deviates from solution becomes mere image. That's why I worry about this shift—the amount of stuff I've learned about design over the internet is amazing, and it's a vital resource for Australian designers. If we lose this critical content on the net through our race to please all viewers, where will it come from? Certainly not from print, whose death has been long foretold and does not have the reach or impact of internet communication.
Before we all jump on the bandwagon to user dictated content, I think we need to consider how we provide context and critique for the images that we choose to display.
Sketchy Speakers
I've decided to post my sketchbook from AGideas 2009. It's basically an attempt at visualising what each speaker was talking about, what I found interesting and what was... less interesting. Here it is in its glorious entirety.
Stefan Sagmeister was really very good. He spoke mostly on how design can make us happy—not just represent or visualise happiness. I also attended his masterclass on Monday, which was really great. You can view a similar speech of his over at TED.
Presented some interesting ideas on food, but I'm left wondering how much of it is about spectacle and how much is about producing really great food. For example, he used a combination of edible bubbles and liquid nitrogen to present mango. It really was just mango, too. Oh, he's from Vue de Monde.
Not much to say here—I find this sort of photography quite lacking in depth.
Kate Cullity's work was very interesting, if only for it being so strongly tied to the Australian landscape. I struggled with Jill's piece. It was essentially a film studies lecture and didn't really bring any ideas to the table.
I think that Etienne was truly the surprise hit of the entire week. His work is really quite innovative and his thoughts on web design are very interesting. Loved his philosophy on clicking. Also, totally got his signature! Bit of a convert, I must say.
John Marsden can really tell a story. He was softly spoken, sat on a chair, didn't use any graphics and yet he managed to keep the crowd engaged throughout his presentation.
To understand why I was excited for a boat designer you need only look at this clip (strong language).
Apologies to Garson Yu—his work is truly incredible. Some of the best titles for films I've ever seen (including the Watchmen & 300) but I had to leave early to attend Studio Access night with Studio Round (lovely people doing lovely work).
Marina had some really nice work to display, but I thought that the best part of her presentation was her ideas, including an all too brief discussion of the brand as it stands in modern culture.
Dinosaurs are really very cool. Go watch Jurrassic Park.
As always, the curator struggled to capture the attention of the crowd. This was despite his talking about some really interesting work and the role of a curator as designer. Who would've thought that designers were bored by art? Also, a very boring presentation from the Sartorialist...
Sean Cummins was very entertaining and presented a strong argument for drawing from local sources for our creativity. He's also responsible for creating the 'Best Job In The World' campaign.
Tobias was amazing. To even get a glimpse of the thoroughness of approach that typifies H&FJ was a great experience, let alone a detailed breakdown of two of their most popular typefaces (Gotham & Archer).
Although I've heard similar talks before, Stephen Banham's was a great insight into the promotion of design.
This is the section in which I won free beer from Soap. It was good beer, too, and a nice talk about the culture at Soap that they so obviously put a lot of thought into.
Harry Pearce does some really great stuff, and his devotion to pro bono work is really great. It was no Richard Seymour moment though—something I'm coming to realise was a true once in a lifetime thing. Here's a review of that particular speech from DesignVictoria.
Stefan Sagmeister was really very good. He spoke mostly on how design can make us happy—not just represent or visualise happiness. I also attended his masterclass on Monday, which was really great. You can view a similar speech of his over at TED.
Presented some interesting ideas on food, but I'm left wondering how much of it is about spectacle and how much is about producing really great food. For example, he used a combination of edible bubbles and liquid nitrogen to present mango. It really was just mango, too. Oh, he's from Vue de Monde.
Not much to say here—I find this sort of photography quite lacking in depth.
Kate Cullity's work was very interesting, if only for it being so strongly tied to the Australian landscape. I struggled with Jill's piece. It was essentially a film studies lecture and didn't really bring any ideas to the table.
I think that Etienne was truly the surprise hit of the entire week. His work is really quite innovative and his thoughts on web design are very interesting. Loved his philosophy on clicking. Also, totally got his signature! Bit of a convert, I must say.
John Marsden can really tell a story. He was softly spoken, sat on a chair, didn't use any graphics and yet he managed to keep the crowd engaged throughout his presentation.
To understand why I was excited for a boat designer you need only look at this clip (strong language).
Apologies to Garson Yu—his work is truly incredible. Some of the best titles for films I've ever seen (including the Watchmen & 300) but I had to leave early to attend Studio Access night with Studio Round (lovely people doing lovely work).
Marina had some really nice work to display, but I thought that the best part of her presentation was her ideas, including an all too brief discussion of the brand as it stands in modern culture.
Dinosaurs are really very cool. Go watch Jurrassic Park.
As always, the curator struggled to capture the attention of the crowd. This was despite his talking about some really interesting work and the role of a curator as designer. Who would've thought that designers were bored by art? Also, a very boring presentation from the Sartorialist...
Sean Cummins was very entertaining and presented a strong argument for drawing from local sources for our creativity. He's also responsible for creating the 'Best Job In The World' campaign.
Tobias was amazing. To even get a glimpse of the thoroughness of approach that typifies H&FJ was a great experience, let alone a detailed breakdown of two of their most popular typefaces (Gotham & Archer).
Although I've heard similar talks before, Stephen Banham's was a great insight into the promotion of design.
This is the section in which I won free beer from Soap. It was good beer, too, and a nice talk about the culture at Soap that they so obviously put a lot of thought into.
Harry Pearce does some really great stuff, and his devotion to pro bono work is really great. It was no Richard Seymour moment though—something I'm coming to realise was a true once in a lifetime thing. Here's a review of that particular speech from DesignVictoria.
AGideas: Is Design Difference?
This week I attended the AGideas conference in Melbourne. For those who don't know, AGideas is a three day conference that attempts to bring various luminaries from the world of design (and beyond) to talk to Australian designers. It's a really great conference to be able to attend, especially if you are at all curious about the process that goes in to creating a piece of design. The speaker list for this year was impressive: Stefan Sagmeister and Tobias Frere-Jones were definite highlights, along with a broad range of others (including writer John Marsden).
What I wanted to talk about today was not so much the individual speakers, but the theme for the event. We are told that "Design is Difference" — a fine statement that, given the current economic climate, makes a certain amount of business sense. The tagline is structured in such a way that it doesn't define anything (even though it tries to say that design = difference) — both of the key terms are so broad that the phrase could come to mean anything.
When you're putting a conference together and trying to help speakers out with their presentations, I'm sure it is helpful to have a broad topic. But when you are one of the premier design event on the Australian calendar, your tag line should mean something. Let's start by defining some terms. To quote Sagmeister; 'I hate to answer "what is design?" It's a stupid question.' — but I think it needs doing anyway. For now, design will be defined as something created or done with intent. Difference can be said to be a change in state.
We're still no closer to cracking this little nut, though. Design may well be different, but different from what? A state of un-design? That seems too simplistic. It cannot be that design is different from any other human pursuit — most others are designed, to some degree. I would argue that design is, in fact, sameness. Design brings order and form to an otherwise chaotic environment. It is this ordered beauty that makes design so great. To call general design difference is to deny what it does. Maybe they are referring to 'good' design?
In a world where truly shitty design is the norm, the three days of AGideas were a truly different experience. While there was no real 'Richard Seymour' moment (something I am now sure was a once in a lifetime thing) the quality of design and, perhaps more importantly, thought on display was truly inspiring and intimidating. It wasn't so much that design was difference, it was more that it was different design.