For me this cute but powerful culture jamming-concept is a perfect sign of our times. Skillfully condensed in a small sticker ... available online for free...
Sprint Nextel, leading mobile broadband internet provider, wants you to experience the now. For that purpose, they commissioned a number of animated infographics that illustrate random data from around the world.
Next they upped the ante just an extra notch. In a clever play at the current information widget fad, Sprint presents Plug Into Now, a dazzling, interactive overview of random data and information about the world, now. The deluge combines information gathered from a variety of statistical sources with live feeds from all over the internet (top search terms, top Google searches, the Internet Buzz Meter).
Seemingly unrelated information are linked through the animated graphics (the number of houses being built vs the amount of forest being cut), and you can also add yourself (if you have a webcam). There's even a big red button that doesn't do anything (which reminds me of a certain Punch feature on a certain Marketing blog...).
And it goes without saying you can also download a condensed version for use on your favorite social platform. An great idea, superbly executed and wonderful to look at.
...and all we got was this mouthwatering presentation over lunch about the highlights of the OFFF.
...as proven by this very inspiring TED talk by designer Stefan Sagmeister. Basically he thinks there are two ways to design around hapiness: displaying hapiness and evoking hapiness. The last category is design that is made to get you laughing or smiling. This is very similar to what we refer to as our "Beyond the Promise" approach to communication: marketing a brand through proving, acting and engaging, in stead of shouting through advertising. Why telling what you are if you can actually show the world what you are. Sagmeister uses some brilliant Beyond The Promise examples: design that evokes hapiness. Aspecially the NY subway stickers are awesome.
Thanks to the Waybackmachine you can easily go and look for yourself, but via this article aptly called "The internet was a real pile of shit in 1996" you can have a glance of the most notorious examples of how the Internet looked like 12 years ago.
CLICK the play button. Then CLICK and DRAG on the video screen to pan across the 360° view.
Pretty immersive indeed.
From: ImmersiveMedia.com.
Jesse made me rediscover Tom Coates' Plasticbag again. Tom Coates is one of the most original thinkers on social software (which is basically the meme we used before we all started using web2.0). In his daily bookmarks you can often find links to surprising interfaces such as this one. This holding page for the d-construct conference on interface design is quite remarkable. I love the idea that even work in progress can have artistic or entertaining value.
Also check out this Youtube mashup portal: http://oreseg.com/.
The shortfilm is called Le Grand Content. The hint was provided by Wim Lockefeer. It's a brilliant little animated story. And God, I wish I could make a Powerpoint like that :-)
Le Grand Content examines the omnipresent Powerpoint-culture in search for its philosophical potential. Intersections and diagrams are assembled to form a grand 'association-chain-massacre'. which challenges itself to answer all questions of the universe and some more. Of course, it totally fails this assignment, but in its failure it still manages to produce some magical nuance and shades between the great topics death, cable tv, emotions and hamsters.
A nice Photoshop effect for turning colour photos into high contrast black & whites, in the style of Sin City: Efecto Sin City
The original and the result:
Take a look at the Damen project. What you'll see are not photos, but computer art!
'As a photo-realist painter, I have often been asked why I don’t just take a photograph.Good question, when you consider my paintings look like photographs. Well, for one thing, I’m not a photographer. To me, it is not the destination that is important—it is the journey.
The incredible challenge of recreating reality is my motivation. — Bert Monroy'
