imran*

Category: Design

  • Carbonmade

    Carbonmade Designers are notorious for never getting around to producing their own portfolio sites – the dilemma of the shoemaker’s children. Carbonmade has just made this a whole lot easier with a free service for creating and hosting online portfolios.

    Though portfolios (limited to 6 projects and 50 screenshots) can’t be customised, other than profile information and project screenshots, simply being able to create a portfolio within a few minutes is immensely valuable…and I’m sure customisation options and greater storage will come with time.

    Carbonmade could evolve into a very powerful directory of designers, perhaps coupled with eBay-style feedback scores and a tag-cloud of skills. There’s nothing here that can’t be accomplished with personal site, blog or Flickr, but it’s a simple, elegant and very well designed application.

    Incidentally, they swiped the name of our new company!

  • Virgin Territory

    Virgingalactic Philippe Starck has been commissioned to design Virgin Galactic’s first spaceport in New Mexico as well as rebranding the company as it prepares for the world’s first commercial spaceflights.

    Find out more here and here.

  • The iPod and the Bathtub

    Nanobathfrog design has recently launched its Design Mind column at gadget blog, Gizmodo. The inaugural article, The iPod and the Bathtub: How Products Shape Our Perceptions, attempts to understand the success of Jonathan Ive’s pristine white industrial design of Apple’siPod, iMac and iBook…by drawing a parallel with the shiny white porcelain of bathtubs and toilet bowls. It’s an interesting theory – an equal mix of insight and hokum (inkum?).

    Read more here…

  • Stamen Design

    GrafarcYesterday, I met Mike Migurski and Eric Rodenback, the people behind San Francisco’s Stamen Design. Stamen is the company behind innovative visualisations of digital media, including the Flickr-powered Mappr, reBlog and the del.icio.us-based Vox Delicii.

    Stamen has an interesting philosophy, mixing innovative work for clients such as MoveOn.org, BMW and the BBC with experimental visualisations of complex data, such as Mappr and Vox Delicii.

    Their work is fresh, vibrant and exciting and turns mundane sets of complex data into rich, tactile and fun user experiences.

    We’re hoping to engage Stamen on a number of projects, bringing to life the digital life experiences that we’ve been developing through 2004 and 2005.

    Watch this space… 😉

  • Students exhibit tomorrow’s designs

    LeslielauThe Show is The Royal College Of Arts’ annual exhibit of student projects. This year’s projects included: a smart urinal that reports STDs to your doctor; furniture that ‘breaths’ gently; a roll of pixel tape and a pixel roller for creating tangible information displays.

    My favorite was Leslie Lau’s winning car design 🙂

  • Designing from the outside in

    "Isn’t it curious how many of the applications and ideas getting the most buzz right now are coming from fertile collaborations between designers and developers?".

    He’s right.

    Tim O’Reilly attempts to deconstruct some of this relationship with 37signal’s Jason Fried here…

    Fried’s own advice is to "Start with the UI – there’s nothing functional, about a functional spec!"…indeed in contrast to the linear production-line and risk-averse methodologies of most web service design, 37signals espouse a more organic and iterative approach:

  • Start Designing
  • Start Prototyping
  • Start Experiencing
  • Start Changing
  • Rinse & Repeat

    • More advice from Fried and 37signals here…