Fascinating recording of Charles & Ray Eames launching their Lounge Chair during the Arlene Francis Home show on NBC in 1956. What would the modern equivalent be? James Dyson going on primetime TV to launch his new hand dryer? I would love to see a regular show introducing new work by people like Thomas Heatherwick or Marc Newson.
My working week typically contains a lot of meetings, and there are usually two types of notes I need to take:
When I come back to these notes I need to be able to scan them and quickly separate things I need to do and notes that don’t require any action after the meeting. To do this I mark anything that is a to-do with a little circle next to it at the start of the line. Once it’s completed I just put a diagonal line through it.
This has been my system for a while now, and I was happy to see recently that it is similar to one used in a new line of notebooks, Word. Notebooks. I have a small obsession with/a large collection of notebooks that I have been meaning to write a post or two about.
During a meeting earlier this year, we realized all of our notebooks happened to be filled with bullet points, strikethroughs and assorted combinations of numbers and letters we used in an effort to keep things orderly. They looked a mess. We wondered if we could standardize a system for all these lists and scribbles and pack it inside a good looking notebook?
Word use a similar system to myself, but they have extended it with additional strokes to add meaning:
Awesome. The notebooks themselves feel great, the covers especially. They’re pocket sized, and nicely understated.
Left – Inner cover of a Word. Notebook showing key.Just over a year ago I was able to visit the VitsÅ“ show house/office in Munich. It was filled with amazing artwork and design pieces, with an obvious focus on Dieter Rams. This new short film from VitsÅ“ looks at people who live and work there.
Sun is an experimental weather web app from Jakob Henner that was released last year, but was stalled due to Google discontinuing their weather API. A replacement API was found and version 2.0 just re-launched.
L to R – Opening screen, pinch out view, pinch in view, settings screen. There are some fantastic details and lovely touches in Sun. Everything is accomplished with swiping and gestures, with no instructions. A pinch on the sparse opening page for a city reveals more information, as well as a daily/hourly breakdown. There are also a few settings to play with, including changing measurement units and the colour scheme – the home screen icon even changes to match your selected colour scheme!
There are a few caveats here though: you probably need to check it out on an iPhone 5 This is iOS only at the moment, which is a shame. It doesn’t look so hot on Android.to get the most out of it, its also a little bit buggy in places, and, like WTHR which I have previously mentioned, it doesn’t show weather information in a way I find useful. But these things don’t really matter, it is a prototype after all.
The thing that I find very exciting with Sun is that it feels like a leap forward for web apps. You can use it without ever knowing or feeling like you’re in Safari. You get a beautiful, rich experience without having to go via a walled garden native app store. It feels like looking into the future of apps, and that is very exciting.
http://pattern.dk/sun/ – Sun web app.
https://twitter.com/jalifax – Jakob Henner on twitter.
http://dribbble.com/jalifax – Jakob Henner on Dribbble.
http://adamwhitcroft.com/climacons/ – The Climacon icon pack used in Sun.
I think everybody is a little too fascinated with making interfaces that look like they can be touched.
— Andrei Herasimchuk, director of the design team at Twitter
Connecting, from Bassett & Partners, is ‘A short film that explores trends in UI, Interaction, & Experience Design’. There’s some great stuff here, combining common sense current thinking with a look towards possible future interfaces and experiences.