Piano Stairs

October 9th, 2009


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.


Gadgetoff 2009: Boom!

October 7th, 2009

gadgetoff.2009_deka.arm2

gadgetoff.2009_mondo.spider2

Gadgetoff 2009 unleashed an intense series of kabooms,  zaps, chomps, and kerplurks rattling 400 attendees on the beautiful 83 acre Staten Island grounds September 25th while slinging Lenovo laptops with a trebuchet,  cooking hot dogs with Telsa Coil Towers, riding jet fueled 5g merry-go-rounds, writing code drunk for autonomous cars legally, and thrashing a series of incredible lectures and demos throughout the day! Welcome to the Gadgetoff 2009 Experience: Boom!

Robots rumbled in every corner ranging from dancing tai chi robots to tiny micro toy hex bugs that jittered their way into everyone’s pockets. The gigantic mechanical Mondo Spider chomped it’s way through the lunch gardens while on lookers enjoyed delicious alcohol infused sorbetDean Kamen of DEKA brought his breathtaking and ingeniously engineered “luke” arm (video) and toy inventor Brian Walker tinkered with large crossbows and rockets made to launch humans 20 miles across the air! Invisible inks, toys, gadgets, art, fire, illusions, magic, and disruptive ideas scorched the island while participants roamed in excitement and curiosity!

Just as I experienced last time, Gadgetoff invited the coolest hand’s on creatives to celebrate the Smart and Useless for an unforgetful day in disruptive goodness!

My adventure brief after the jump! (lots of pictures and videos)

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Viktor & Rolf Spring 2010

October 5th, 2009

viktor_rolf_1
I found the Viktor & Rolf Spring 2010 collection rather disruptive. Cool!

via todayandtomorrow


Pancake Picking Robot! (with beats)

October 1st, 2009


I’m quite familiar with the manufacturing world, but I’ve never seen a smart robot arm made for picking up pancakes for stacking! (FLexpicker). Seriously this robotic arm is quite impressive.  Let’s yank this arm out and use it as a poker dealer,  street trash picker, or something like a burger flipper! Keep the idea flowing with fast smart automated robots, just like the fun Robocoaster!

video
via boingboing


Where The Wild Things Are: Limited Faux Fur

September 29th, 2009

where.the.wild.things.are.outfits

Where The Wilds Things Are releases soon, but in addition to the upcoming premiere Spike Jonze has commissioned Opening Ceremony to make some pretty awesome limited Edition Faux Fur pajamas! I want I want!


Sydney Dust Storm Turns city Red, awesome photos!

September 24th, 2009

Sydney just had some crazy cool dust storm lighting up the city foggy red. End result, awesome photos via the Flickr Pool.

More pics after the jump!
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Philippe Starck: Design For Life TV series

September 21st, 2009


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.


Duplex Bag

September 20th, 2009

duplex.bag.side
duplex.bag
Student Designer Noémie Cotton brings to us a very simple double sided bag used to both contain  and trash something, such as whole peanuts.  I’m craving to find olives-to-go after seeing this,  same goes for Wings, or other likes.  If I had this bag when I was younger, I’d be eating just the peanuts minus shells. I’ve grown up learning to  eat the whole peanut with shell making life a bit easier.

via bookofjoe


Chris Lefteri: Ingredients Books

September 12th, 2009

ingredients.books

Chris Lefteri has some of my favorite books on materials on plastics, wood, ceramics, metals, and many others. I’m not as aware of his books series called Ingredients, but as Ingredients No.4 is released September 24th, it seems his previous ones are FREE to download! How awesome! If Ingredients is anything like his other materials books, be prepared to be floored both visually and with information about each. Download the other 3 here:

- Plastic Ingredients No. 1 (PDF format, 3mb)

Ingredients No. 2 (PDF format, 2,9mb)

- Ingredients No. 3 (PDF format, 2,1mb)


Media Diet Pyramid

September 9th, 2009

media diet pyramid wired

I found this an amusing info graphics from Wired:

“Practicing good nutrition keeps your mind sharp, your body fit, and your life long. The same could be said for consuming media. (Seriously, knowledge is power.) When you add it all up, the average American spends roughly nine hours a day glued to some kind of screen, and like your diet, quality is as important as quantity. Here are Wired’s suggested servings for optimal media health.”


Helvetica Web Love

September 9th, 2009

helvetical_screenshot
If you’ve got some Helvetica love and use  twitter, Google Calendar, or Google reader, your in luck… give your web tech a clean graphic makeover using Helvetical (Google Calendar), Heletwitter ( twitter), and Helvetireader (Google reader).

I use the Helvetical(above image), tweaked it a bit and love it!


The Font War: Ikea Fans Fume over Verdana

September 2nd, 2009



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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