n. The strong and irrational fear that in the near future the earth will be destroyed by some cosmic event.

I’m not exactly sure how we came across this video, but it is a gem. It’s an amazing illustration of process, workflow, and execution. It’s difficult to measure and understand the success of many of the things we do as designers. The experience such as perfectly ironed shirt however…

The definition of the book itself is up for grabs. We don’t know understand at the moment what the consumer is prepared to pay for […] We will only find answers to these questions by trial and error.
– John Makinson

Now we begin to see who in the publishing industry can be creative. The iPad is an opportunity to think of publishing from the bottom up. New authors, new stories, new experiences. It is an exciting time for publishing; more exciting than we have seen in quite some time.

This vid realizes the potential of communicators when they do good work. It is not spectacular. It is not just clever. It speaks and we understand.

Animated appraisal? I think not. This is a filler piece that The New York Times has listed under it’s sports section. I imagine it’s there to sprinkle a little design item into the Olympic coverage.

You can watch the video with the sound off since there isn’t much value added listening to Steve Heller’s voice over. I would call it a scrapbook. Little snips of Olympic Pictograms past with pathetic attempts at animation which don’t add anything to the story. I’m sure with just a bit more effort something more informative and satisfying could have been done. Adding some labels and a timeline with dates and cities would have been a survey. This piece was a meaningless.

I’m not really sure why the Olympic committee has the pictograms redesigned for each Olympics. Seems the smarter path would be to have a fixed system. Then the visual language and cultural expressions of the country and city would embrace the information system and create it’s own layer of identity.

I imagine it’s about money in the name of creative freedom.

For the record favorite Olympic identity : Mexico City

For the record favorite Olympic pictograms : Beijing 2008 and Lillehammer 1994

I think that Los Angeles may win for my most disliked. Well, then there was Atlanta.

see the New York Times post >

Probably the most profound opportunity to create an object of lasting meaning for the games is the medal presented to the athletes. Three levels of achievement for Olympics and the Paralympics

The Olympic Medals for 2010 were designed by Omer Arbel and Corrine Hunt. They were cast from metals recovered from discarded computer motherboards. This video is an interview with the designers about their process and efforts on behalf of Vancouver Olympic organizers to reflect the culture and values of the city.

Brings to mind those push up ice packets when we were kids. Your lips and tongue would be a blue. There really wasn’t any thing natural about flavor or color. Still see them sometimes in the heat of summer.

John Maeda lives at the intersection of technology and art, a place that can get very complicated.

This talk creates more questions than answers. It is about observing, questioning, and experimenting. Creating something new that adds to the universe. Something that brings joy. Organizing found objects and everyday things to make something totally new.

John Maeda uses imagination to inspire. Live one day as John Maeda. Think what would John Maeda do with this? Open your mind to new and creative ways to move forward in whatever you do.

BTW Mr Maeda is no longer at MIT he is now President of Rhode Island School of Design. You can find out more about what he is doing there. http://www.risd.edu/president/

I posted a video about how Sports Illustrated was imagining the use of  the iPad platform and it was pretty interesting considering that it really addressed content. It wasn’t eye-candy.

This video is being shared all over the place as the next coming. Not all that imaginative. These are all pretty simplistic ways of adding interactivity once you have a touch screen. So, will you care after the first three times you use it? Will you want to interact with content this way on a regular basis?

How will a reader be able to avoid the advertising is the question that comes to mind. Will advertisers want to invest the resources needed to make advertising for these kind of publications? Advertisers a consistent model to build ads. For pricing and production. Seems like a big barrier.

With each publication designing it’s own interactivity where is the common interface?

Wired has thought about lots of spinning and interactivity but nothing that seems to enhance the CONTENT/CONTEXT experience.

In fact even they state that they are hoping that people will pay for it. The expectation on the web is FREE. Ads, but free. People do not want to pay for delivery and content. People don’t want the cable model anymore.

Just not convinced that this particular economic model is sustainable.

Maybe they should go have a talk with Steve Jobs. I hear he has a few ideas how publications can work.

It makes us think of the berries on bittersweet (Celastraceae) bushes.