brand

Designing Obama

Posted by _tango! on October 11, 2009
Posted in: art, brand, design, entertainment, experience, fun, ideas, information, inspiration. Leave a Comment


“The Obama presidential campaign was innovative. For the first time in American politics, a candidate used art and design to bring together the American people—capturing their voices in a visual way.

The Design Director of the Obama campaign, Scott Thomas, has collaborated with artists and designers to create Designing Obama, a chronicle of the art from the historic campaign. Get the inside story on how design was used by the campaign, and scope out the pieces, created unofficially, by grassroots supporters.”

This book will only happen enough donations are received by November 4th. They are 2/3rds they way there, so if you you’d like to buy the book ($50) or donate a smaller amount for a pdf of it ($10) visit their site now.

designing-obama.com
(thanks paul)

Piano Stairs

Posted by _tango! on October 9, 2009
Posted in: art, brand, design, entertainment, experience, ideas, inspiration, music, thoughts. 1 comment


Transform an  existing staircase in a subway staircase next to an escalator into a step-a-thon playing piano, and people will walk.  Add fun changes common behavior!

Reminds me of Bruno Taylors Playful Spaces Bus Stop Swing Set.

If your liking these video posts, go join the Designverb Facebook Fan page, where I’m posting lots of  cool videos not on designverb, including my tweets, Last.fm favorites, yelps, and much more.

Philippe Starck: Design For Life TV series

Posted by _tango! on September 21, 2009
Posted in: brand, design, entertainment, experience, information, inspiration, me, style, thoughts. 3 comments


Design.for.life.tv
Philippe Starck has a reality show about design called Design For Life on the BBC… but not just design, but more importantly design thinking, observation, understanding, and how design is almost more about everything outside of what most think of design.

If your in the UK, let me know how the show is. If your not in the UK, you can catch a glance of the first hour long episode on Vimeo here or above.

Thus far, I’ve enjoyed the first episode and think it’ll be a great insight into what design really is… not just aesthetics or making cool objects, but understanding a story as a whole, a process, an eco-system and a rather complex element that is widely ignored.

The Font War: Ikea Fans Fume over Verdana

Posted by _tango! on September 2, 2009
Posted in: brand, design, information, me, style, thoughts, wacky. 2 comments



IKEA’s 2009 online catalogue uses the old typeface. (Futura)


IKEA’s 2010 online catalogue features the Verdana font.

Unbelievable! IKEA switches up their long lasting Futura font that everyone has grown to love to Verdana which though great, just quite doesn’t do the trick for me for an icon like IKEA! Outrage I say =)

Much like the whole Tropicana rebranding disaster that got rejected by consumers once it came out, I’m not sure this is a good move, though change and understanding take time… I’m sure ther was a reason for this… wait, isn’t Verdana a free font from Microsoft? I’ve had recent troubles in license agreements with font foundries.

Article:
“Thumbing through his local Swedish newspaper, Göteborg resident Mattias Akerberg found himself troubled by a full-page advertisement for Ikea. It wasn’t that the Grevbäck bookcases looked any less sturdy, or that the Bibbi Snur duvet covers were any less colorful, or even that the names given to each of the company’s 9,500 products were any less whimsical. No, what bothered Akerberg was the typeface. “I thought that something had gone terribly wrong, but when I Twittered about it, people at their ad agency told me that this was actually the new Ikea font,” he recalls. “I could hardly believe it was true.”

full article after jump via Time.

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Craigslist Extreme Makeover

Posted by _tango! on August 25, 2009
Posted in: brand, design, ideas, information, inspiration, me, tech, thoughts. Leave a Comment


Above images:
Pentagrams Luke Hayman with Lisa Strausfeld  and Matt Willey of Studio8 Design.

“The craigslist team isn’t interested in updating the site, so Wired asked leading designers to give it a user-interface lift.”

I love Craigslist but I’ve always wondered about their interface. Do I like it, hate it, or is it just right? As a designer I’ve always craved images, but also as a designer I love the directness in raw text.  They’ve made subtle changes over the years but if they launched with a more visual design would they have been more successful, worse, or the same?  What role does design actually play a part of in our society for sucess, what do people latch onto, what makes it work, and is great design about differentiating from the rest of the world?

Anyhow, I’m not sure what I’d do to improve Craiglsit since it’s just that good, besides all the spam which often becomes part of the culture.

More at Wired

TEDx YouTube Channel

Posted by _tango! on August 20, 2009
Posted in: art, brand, conference, design, entertainment, experience, food, fun, green, ideas, information, inspiration, materials, me, misc, music, style, tech, TED, thoughts. 1 comment


The TED conference has transformed dramatically over the years thanks to the launching of TEDtalks which I’ve posted on several times. This past year, TED launched another brilliant event called TEDx which allows individuals to host their own local unofficial TED like events. Since March 2009 several events have taken place around the world. How awesome!

A few weeks back, I attended the TEDxBoston event which I wanted to post about, but had no videos to share. As of today, TEDx videos from around the world can be viewed and shared on the TEDx YouTube Channel as well as play lists from each location like TEDxBoston. I’ll post the TEDxBoston videos after the jump, and make sure to watch the last video with our favorite Ben Zanders conducting the Youth Orchestra of Americas.

TEDx YouTube Channel

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Apple Store as Your Office

Posted by _tango! on August 18, 2009
Posted in: brand, design, entertainment, experience, fun, ideas, information, inspiration, music, tech, thoughts, wacky. 1 comment


Awesome. If you can’t afford it go use it at the Apple store!  Computers, Programs, the Internet, Cameras, etc!  Nicholi created several Youtube Videos and probably all his graphics using equipment inside the store on 5th NYC. Nothing like a young entrepreneur figuring out how to get things done, now getting him spots on TV shows. Watch the video above… I love the public’s reaction in the background.

“This little dude Nicholi has shot dozens of lip sync videos at the 5th Avenue Apple Store. And why not? Plenty of desktops. Free wi-fi. Solid tech support.

These are the same reasons model and self-marketer Isobella Jade wrote her entire memoir in the SoHo Apple Store. (Sound uncomfortable? Consider that Hemingway also wrote while standing up.)”

via boingboing

Weekend Links: SF

Posted by _tango! on August 13, 2009
Posted in: art, brand, design, entertainment, experience, fun, information, inspiration, materials, me, misc, style, tech, weekendlinks. Leave a Comment


I’m off to San Francisco for a Weekend Wedding, so I’m posting my weekend links a bit early. If ya’ll have any must see, eat, go to events in SF this week, please let me know.

– Travel: Jetblue offers a all you can fly month pass, Sept 8-October 8 ) for $599! hmm, I do need a break, perhaps each weekend!
– Graphics: Incredible digital flowers by Macoto Murayama! very cool, I want the larger images!
– Fashion: Socks are fun, go get happy socks at happysocks.com
– Tech: Nerdy cool web2 pillows! haha, I want I want!
– Fun: Colored bubbles! yah, colored I said…and no stains! its magic!

James Reynolds: Far Foods

Posted by _tango! on August 11, 2009
Posted in: art, brand, design, experience, food, fun, green, ideas, information, inspiration, materials, me, tech, thoughts. 6 comments


Far Foods by Designer James Reynolds

“Alternative packaging for supermarket produce, highlighting the distances that some foods travel from and the resultant carbon dioxide released during the journey. The receipt features a boarding card style tear-off strip.”

Awesome! I’ve always wondered when food labels would change my buying decisions.  Some receipts tell you how much to tip , but none have been more eco-educational than this concept.  Forget calorie counting, lets count carbon miles from food transportation. I’d definitely buy something for a bit more, knowing it used less carbon miles than another product. Think how the word Organic or Local has become such a  buzz… hopefully one day, the carbon food miles will do the same =)

via swissmiss