Our friend, and designer of beautiful books, Miko McGinty, has recently led Turnstone to the great UK Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Design and Society blog. It’s a treasure trove for those of us in Brooklyn needing a regular whiff of that very British sense of creativity-with-responsibility. We’ll see if we can catch up with its author while we’re in London. Meantime, we’ve noted that after “Alice Rawsthorn”, the tag “Consumer” is one of the most prominent in the cloud. Design for good? Aesthetics, ethics…and a flexible friend, your credit card. Eek.
June 23, 2009
Media Futures Conference: Beyond Broadcast
Nico Macdonald, tireless steward of the UK design community, is running the Media Futures conference in London again this year, on July 3.
It promises a solid line0up of speakers, including some heavyweights (Richard Sambrook, BBC Global News Director; Jan-Christoph Zoels, guru of Sapient during Web 0.5-1.0 and erstwhile of Ivrea, now at Experientia), some of the usual suspects, and a decent representation of women in new media strategy/forecasting (where’s the Guardian’s Meg Pickard?), so by no means a digital pirate ship.
Right up our alley/windy London street as we plan a talk on the future of publishing for later in July, and as we nag NYC to give up the TV model for cab media too. Having thrown out our telly, we’re all about the Beyond Broadcast proposition.
If you can make it, today’s the last day for early registration, so get to it. Otherwise, thank goodness attendees will micro-blog every last breath of wisdom from the podium while we make a habit of showing up in the right city a week later. Grr.
June 23, 2009
Design for Data, la semaine dernière
We will pass through Paris on our way to the Istituto Europeo di Design next month, but boo, we just missed Design for Data, held there last week.
Sponsored by the International Institute for Information Design (IIID) and the OECD, the program featured a keynote called, “What, if …? Tools to help the public make difficult decisions“, and presentations by some great mentors of information design, including erstwhile star of TED conferences from the Karolinska Institutet, Hans Rosling (How to Increase Innovation in the Use of Statistics), Aaron Marcus (Cross-cultural User Experience Design and Information Visualisation), Paul Kahn (Creating Patterns that Connect – drawing overview maps of compex data networks) and even an old peer from the RCA CRD studio, Stephanie Hankey (Information Design for Advocacy and Campaigning).
June 22, 2009
“How To Stay Free” at the University of Trash
Of all the flyers we receive, the ones with headshots of grinning neo-conservatives don’t usually grab our attention first.
But sure enough, our artist friends, Daniel Lichtman and David Baumflek sent out an invitation to attend the first of their three discussions, “How to Stay Free”, about art practice in an age of neo-liberalism. Part of The University of Trash exhibit/events at Long Island City’s Sculpture Center this month, David and Dan screened the first hour of a ten-part season called “Free to Choose”, first aired on PBS in 1980, right before the presidential election in which Reagan came into office. In this first episode, University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman presents the tenets of his free market economic philosophy. The vocabulary of ‘opportunity’, government ‘non-interference’, and ‘freedom of choice’ shouts loudest in our 21st century ears. Two other screenings, including some of Adam Curtis’ documentary work, and further discussion, follow on two upcoming Saturdays (June 27, July 11). A great way to not mind a rainy summer Saturday afternoon.
June 18, 2009
Many a True Word Designed in Jest: iPanic
Wow, talking of suites of services for the downturn, Holly Brubach of Frogelson Lubliner just published this illustrative suckerpunch in the New York Times.
June 18, 2009
Not just a better “off” button for NYC cab media
Thanks to all the interaction designers, architects, New York cab riders who submitted ideas in response to Turnstone’s survey-by-tweet about Yellow Cab screens last week. And no, we didn’t quote the “Porn. Duh” response as a primary recommendation, but we did convey many sensible suggestions from respondents from Ideo, NYU Stern School of Business, ITP, and elsewhere. Proposals included exploring gestural interaction for the maps, a program strategy for authentic, NY-based entertainment content (an SDK for taxi apps, anyone?) and better visual identity for the City agency’s public service announcements. No doubt, the user interface needs some standardizing.
We’ve submitted our assessment to the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission, who requested responses to their Request for Information about upgrading the seat back screens for 2010. We’ll post updates from the backseat soon.
June 17, 2009
It’s Raining Brainiacs (2): The Monsoon edition
Back in, ooh, 2001, Turnstone’s Creative Director wrote a profile of MIT’s Media Lab in India, for an ancient relic publication of the dot com boom (remember ‘e-Design’?). The Lab in India was a roving research unit that sent its grads from the East coast out even further east (to the Subcontinent) to work their engineering magic.
Researching that article, introduced us to the oh-so-not-pointlessly-overeducated Harvard MD/MIT Media Lab researcher, (now Dr) Vikram Sheel Kumar. A co-founder at Dimagi, he has long been doing incredible work developing mobile medical diagnostic systems for India, Southern Africa and elsewhere, places where healthcare in the field really might mean in a field.
He’s now the medic behind a new column in the recently launched Indian edition of Forbes.com, and in his words, “If you have a nagging health question you want answered that could interest a couple million others, let me know and I’ll try to learn something for all of us.”
June 17, 2009
It’s Raining Brainiacs (1)
The Map Office, part of our design enterprise partnership, Constellation, just posted a little video of their fantastic interface-generating, project and asset management tool, the MiG. Take a look here.
Yes, this is a shameless promo post. Because they’re rocket scientists in our midst:
They have “harnessed their creative thinking to offer our forward-thinking clients access to customizable software. Known as the “MiG’, this state-of-the-art Rich Internet Application is built on the latest Adobe ™ Flex and CMS technology. Based on the MiG, they offer a scalable software service that enables their clients to manage and present their own visual media, written content and project tasks; it is efficient and versatile to set up, easy and cost-effective to maintain. With access to the MiG, clients can handle in-depth, database-driven, graphically sophisticated content for web sites that attract large audiences, support user participation and adapt to increasing popularity. The MiG has already brought benefits – cost-savings, improved workflow, enhanced online presence – to a range of institutions, from small studios to large organizations.”
It’d make a great platform for the 2010 cab screen upgrade. Yes, NYC gov, we’re drawing it to your attention :)
June 16, 2009
Shoptastica: Ranking Ranqueen
Back in the golden age of reckless shopaholism, we published a story in The Economist about why shops still exist, now you can buy everything online. We still collect gems about ridiculous shops that really don’t make the list of essential convenience stores: Recently, a friend told us about Tokyo-based Ranking Ranqueen, a concept store that stocks the top ten of…well, everything you can think of. Marvel at some flickr pix from the emporium here. The one that says No Be Photographing is our favorite. Oh well. We’re saving our pocket money for an eyes-on-stalks, jaws-of-shopping-bag-wide-open trip to Japan.
June 16, 2009
War stories from Plot
The High Priest and Priestess of Design Narrative, Mr Durrant and Ms Wildman of UK design consultancy, Plot, are compiling a book of war stories about design management. And you can participate. Keep it clean: Your clients read the internets.
