If architecture is all about loving the bodies of the buildings that surround us, photographer Roland Fischer is all about the skin. As part of his ongoing series, Facades, Fischer travels the world, photographing the exteriors of corporate buildings with an attention to detail bordering on the intimate, like someone snapping close-ups of their tattooed lover's skin.
Born in 1958, Fischer splits his time between Munich, Germany, and Beijing, China. It was while he was in Shanghai that Fischer first became so interested in the ornate exteriors of the buildings surrounding him. "I noticed all these new buildings mushrooming everywhere, but they could have been from any other town in the world," says Fischer. "I thought this was a totally new urban visual experience, a natural consequence of globalization."
Sedus, Black Forest #2
What Fischer means is that now more than ever, buildings tend to stick out from their surroundings. With more and more companies establishing global HQs abroad, buildings are becoming more abstract, and no longer seem closely locked to a specific place. For example, the colorful plaid pattern of the Nab doesn't really speak to anything about Melbourne in particular. Likewise, the Nikko building in Paris looks like it might be from Japan, but is not identifiably French. By taking close-ups of these buildings, they become facades that could exist anywhere, because no matter how exotic, there is nothing that betrays their nationality.
To take his photos, Fischer and his assistants first research buildings around the world, looking for possible subjects. He also just flies to different cities and walks around for a few days, looking at the facades around him; according to Fischer, it is during such walks that his best discoveries are made. Once he finds a good subject, Fischer will shoot it dead on, climbing opposite buildings across the street, taking photos from street level and adjusting the perspective later, or even renting cranes to get his shot.
Eldorado, Brasilia
Asked if there are any cities or countries which end up having particularly striking faces, Fischer says that Asian countries—particularly those in Japan and China—end up having some of the more visually striking buildings. "But the quality a facade has as a captivating image is quite independent of the building's architectural style, or that of the city itself," Fischer tells me by email. Neither is the fame of the architect involved a factor. "I've had as many great pictures result from the buildings of 'famous' architects as from unknown ones," he says.
With his series, Fischer hopes, at least in small part, that his images will get us thinking about globalization, and how it has influenced urban life. "Does globalization result in a stronger mix of different cultures?" asks Fischer. "I don't know, but I think Facades has turned into a kind of testimony of a certain period at the beginning of the 21st century."
You can see more of the artist's work here, and a book compilation of the Facades project is available from Amazon here.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 1 billion people worldwide have a disability. To Astrid Weber and Jen Devins, Google's resident accessibility experts, that stat should be stamped on the back of every designer's hand, because it means that one out of every seven people on the planet is potentially left behind by thoughtless design decisions. At this year's Google I/O conference in San Francisco, I sat down with the two UX experts and asked them what designers could do to make their apps more accessible. The key, they told me, was using your imagination and having a little more empathy. Here are six ways designers can reach that extra billion.
Color blindness is one of the world's most common disabilities. It affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 (.5%) women worldwide. These statistics prove that designers should be thinking very, very hard about the colors they use in their apps. "Colors are a great way to convey critical information in an app, but they can't be the only way," Devins says.
She gives traffic apps as an example. If there's a traffic jam up ahead, you can't just mark it in red to be understood. If you do, there are millions of users suffering from red-green colorblindness who won't know what you're talking about. You also need to accompany it with a label, or some other visual cue that doesn't depend on color to be understood.
Blind people use screen readers to access the internet and navigate smartphones. Yet few developers design their apps with screen readers in mind. "On smartphones, the way screen readers typically work is that a blind user navigates through all the elements on a page from top to bottom by swiping," Devins. "It's a very linear experience."
That's a problem. It's common in many apps for the most important interface elements to be at the bottom of the screen, closest to a user's thumb: for example, Instagram's button to take a new photo, or Twitter's navigation buttons. It's fine for sighted users, but users with visual impairments might have to swipe 50 times or more to reach that element, every time they switch screens.
The better solution? Put your most important interface elements closer to the top. That's how Google does it: open the Gmail app on your phone, and you'll see that the "Inbox" and "Write New Mail" buttons are at the top of every page.
Most designers know that interface elements and images need to be labeled for screen readers. But they often don't think about labeling them usefully.
"It's not enough to just label a close button with 'CLOSE,'" Devins says. "Close what? Make that text contextual and relevant. For example, 'close the new message window' or 'close the share window.'"
Remember: while a regular user might know where they are within an app's workflow, a user who is visually impaired will not.
Empathy is all about understanding, but many designers never think beyond what life is like for them. Handicapped users have a very different experience of the world, even doing simple things. You need imagination if you're going to design an app that works for them.
"We'd love to see more developers imagining their users' journey," Weber says. "Put yourself in their shoes. Think about how you'd need to perform a task in your app if you were blind, or deaf, or had motor disabilities, and then pay attention to the steps it takes to get that task done."
"You really can't ever replace the experience of seeing how how someone uses your app," Weber says. "No one will ever say, 'I just don't care,' but if they don't have that experience—a family member, or a personal connection—that allows them to understand how their design decisions are impacting the disabled, they might still not get it."
Weber recommends that designers try to make that connection. Within Google, Weber and Devins hold regular workshops with app teams, providing insight into how the disabled use their apps. She showed the dev team how users with visual disabilities were faring with Google Calendar, for example.
"There were so many different reactions. Some developers were mortified that their app was making someone struggle, while others were just delighted. 'Hey look, someone's able to do something they could never do before!" But if they hadn't actually seen someone with a disability use the app for themselves, they might never have understood the issue.
Ultimately, the biggest mistake Weber and Devins say they see when it comes to accessibility is that designers try to tack it on at the end. That's a big mistake.
"From a pure efficiency perspective, you should do everything you can to build accessibility into your design," Weber says. "If you do it later, you'll have to revisit everything you've already done: there's a ripple effect through your entire design, because accessibility is not a feature. It's just part of good design practice."
How do you make infrastructure policy seem revolutionary? You make the official guidelines look like the old flower-power posters, in the hopes of dredging up the same spirit of change that defined the 1960s.
Designed by Alfons Hooikaas and Florian Mewes, two New York-based designers who have spent considerable time working in Amsterdam, Maak Plaats (translating roughly to both "Create space!" and "Get out of the way!") aims to provide a series of guidelines to government workers on how to better use infrastructure and transit networks in increasingly urbanized North Holland. Sounds pretty dry, because it is, but thanks to Hooikaas and Mewes' design chops, Maak Plaats looks less like a boring government manual than something Ken Kesey might have dreamed up after sharing a tab with an urban planner.
Maak Plaats is designed to channel a counterculture vibe, with 400 pages of collages, illustrations, bold typography, and fluorescent inks. "We wanted to create a sense of urgency by referencing the protest posters of the 1960s," Mewes tells me by email.
Why that generation in particular? The thinking went that Europe's flower children and political iconoclasts had grown up to become policymakers—in effect, to be the ones who make key decisions on public infrastructure. What better way to grab them by the throat than to use design that flashes them back to 40 years ago?
All told, the book took around 10 months to design. "Structuring a book for highly complex scientific content is a difficult task for any designer, let alone making it entertaining," Mewes says. But the designers' goal wasn't just to make the manual look trippy. They also wanted it to be legitimately useful, and easier to navigate than most government manuals. For example, no matter where you are in Maak Plaats, arrows in the margins, almost like hyperlinks, direct readers to related sections and pages.
If you're outside of the infrastructure world in the Netherlands, you'll be hard-pressed to get your hands on a print copy of Maak Plaats. Just 1,000 copies were printed; it doesn't even have an ISBN number. But luckily, the whole book is available to download as a PDF by clicking here. You can also find more information about the philosophy of public infrastructure the book is endorsing here.
A Star Destroyer crashes in Paris, careening to a halt just meters from the base of the Eiffel Tower. An X-Wing sinks beneath the waters of a Venetian canal, like Luke's spaceship sinking beneath Dagobah's muck. The Millennium Falcon is shot down into the Hudson.
These are just some of the arresting composites created by Paris-based graphic designer Nicolas Amiard, who imagined a world in which the spaceships of Star Wars came to Earth, only to be shot down over our major cities.
As someone who penned over 1,000 words on the design of the new Star Wars lightsaber, I'm going to nerd out a little bit here. (Because otherwise, my editors would just lose all respect for me.)
In the upcoming Star Wars sequel, The Force Awakens, a big part of the plot involves the aftermath of a major space battle that happened above the Tatooine-like desert planet of Jakku. As seen in the official trailers, this means that Jakku is littered with destroyed Tie Fighters, Star Destroyers, X-Wings, and more, the dilapidated husks of which have become the cornerstone of a local economy, scavenging for parts. In The Force Awakens, these broken ships make for really striking scenery and battle set pieces: the latest trailer ends with the Millennium Falcon flying through the destroyed engine of a Star Destroyer.
And it seems as if Amiard was inspired by the battleship-strewn planet Jakku in the new Force Awakens trailers when creating this series. Under his digital pen, Jakku becomes Earth, and Rio De Janeiro, London, Tokyo, and Moscow (among others) all become the locations of Star Wars battles that should rightly take place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
If you ever wanted to own a cabinet that channels the cover art of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, here's your chance: the Wave Cabinet, a sideboard created by New York artist and designer Sebastian Errazuriz, is a piece that collapses and expands like a waveform made out of wood.
Made out of baltic birch in both white lacquered and unlacquered finishes, the Wave Cabinet consists of roughly a hundred movable slats. Each slat is joined to the ones surrounding it in such a way that it allows the Wave Cabinet to open and close almost like the rolling ripples of a paper fan.
According to the designer, the Wave Cabinet is designed to make people curious enough to play with it.
"I am inviting people to look at one of the simplest forms of furniture design and to forget that we're talking about furniture, instead to see it as a way of breaking a box," Errazuriz explains about the Wave Cabinet as part of his artist's statement."I love the idea of creating beautiful furniture; nevertheless I am much more interested in using the medium as an excuse to trigger people's curiosity and create a connection with them."
And the wavelike motion has a pretty hypnotic effect. In a video demonstrating the cabinet, Errazuriz manipulates the piece with fluid motions, almost like he is dipping his hands into a wave pool. And the design has some practical aspects too. For example, the Wave Cabinet can be opened from almost any direction. This allows you to do things like keep objects on the the top of the cabinet, even as you open it from the front.
When it comes to a priori art, though, the past project Errazuriz's Wave Cabinet most resembles is this one: the Explosion Cabinet, a sideboard made of interlocking slabs of maple that does what it says on the tin. The Wave Cabinet, though, might be our favorite design of his so far.
Maybe it's just Gmail, or maybe it's something more esoteric like Processing, but there are certain apps we rely on so much that if they suddenly went missing, we'd have a hard time getting by. That's especially true for designers. Their livelihoods depend upon great software. What's more, as people who dissect design details all day, they have unique insights into what makes an app great. They can see UI/UX friction points the way Superman can see microscopic structural flaws in steel.
So we combed out rolodexes and reached out to more than two dozen designers to ask about the apps they couldn't live without. While a few designers said they don't use apps at all—Sagi Haviv and Daan Roosegaarde, we're talking about you on the Internet, if you even know what that is! :)—most designers had at least a couple apps they wanted to wax appreciatively about.
Some of these apps are aimed specifically at designers, but many of them are useful to anyone. Here are the apps the designers we quizzed love most.
What It Is: A Mac app for automatically replacing abbreviations with text snippets.
Why It's Indispensable: "It's awesome for date and time templates or when you want to quickly drop your contact details into an email. There's a bunch of pre-defined snippets and you can create custom ones," says Lee Simpson, product designer at ustwo.
What It Is: From Github, a cross-platform, hackable text editor.
Why It's Indispensable: According to Toby Milner-Gulland, senior designer at Moving Brands, the version control options and versatility of Atom make it the text editor to beat.
What It Is: A cross-platform app and website prototyping tool.
Why It's Indispensable: "Axure is our go-to prototyping tool," says Jason Broughton, head of user experience, Zappos. "It gives us a way to rapidly create design prototypes for user testing, build documentation, and stakeholder presentations. The Team Project feature allows us to collaborate on projects without the fear of overwriting others work. The best part of the tool is that it's versatile for designing mockups on phone, tablet, and desktop."
What It Is: An Adobe-owned website and app for designers to share their portfolios online.
Why It's Indispensable: "I love browsing through Bēhance to see what other designers are working on. You can use the app to follow your favorite designers, or use the 'Discover' function to browse the best current designs in any conceivable subject. The iPad version works great as well," says Eleanor Lutz, data visualizer at Tabletop Whale.
What It Is: Google's cross-platform web browser, available on Mac, PC, Linux, and mobile, as well as the basis for the Chrome operating system.
Why It's Indispensable: Due to its compliance with modern web standards, fantastic speed and reliability, Chrome is "the best browser for testing, experimenting and on any platform," according to Toby Milner-Gulland, senior designer at Moving Brands.
What It Is: An online platform for sharing anything between computers, including screenshots, files, web links, and even screen recordings.
Why It's Indispensable: "I've been using CloudApp for as long as I can remember," says Lee Simpson, product designer at ustwo. "For quickly hosting screenshots and small files it beats Dropbox hands-down and it makes it super easy to send image links to clients without cluttering up an email. I'm still on the free plan and I haven't maxed it out yet. For bigger files, I use Dropbox, naturally."
What It Is: A cross-platform digital locker for all your recipes, notes, receipts, and other digital files.
Why It's Indispensable: "I work across lots of different devices, including my MacBook Pro, iPhone 6 Plus, and Samsung S6 Edge, so I need a way to capture ideas, thoughts, discussions, screenshots and pictures no matter where I am or what device I have handy," says Josh Bloom, VP of design at Skully. "Evernote makes sure all of those platforms are in sync and I can find anything I've captured, whether paper sketches, whiteboard photos, product ideas, blog posts or book ideas."
What It Is: An online reader for RSS feeds with support for loads of apps.
Why It's Indispensable: "A friend put me on to Feedbin about six months ago as an alternative to Feedly. Feedly just became too clunky, it had a ton of features I never used and an interface that got in the way of the content—at one point I stopped checking my feeds. I like that Feedbin is really simple, and it just works! $3 a month and it integrates with Reeder," says Lee Simpson, product designer at ustwo.
What It Is: A prototyping tool for interfaces, interactions, and animations.
Why It's Indispensable: "I only started using Framer Studio recently but it looks like it's going to become an integral part of my workflow," says Raphaël de Courville of ART+COM Studios. "Framer is in its early stages so some features are still a bit rough around the edges, but it is very promising and integrates perfectly with Photoshop and Sketch."
What It Is: An online, collaborative text editor owned by Dropbox.
Why It's Indispensable: "I'm a big fan of Hackpad for collaborating on documents. I use it to compile resources when doing research (it embeds video automatically which is great for gathering content from various video platforms all in one place) as well as for drafting articles," Raphaël de Courville says. "Since anyone can join and contribute to a pad, it is a great tool to take turns writing notes during a meeting or a conference."
What It Is: Google's cross-platform messaging, voice calling, and video conferencing platform.
Why It's Indispensable: "I work in Portland, my clients are in SF, and my co-workers are in NY, so I live in Google Hangouts," says Joe Stewart, co-founder of Work & Co. "Nothing is as good as being in a room with somebody, but, it works tremendously well—even on the phone. Being able to see someone's face when you talk to them is super powerful. It's great for sharing work and it's relatively lightweight."
What It Is: A recipe tool for linking together multiple services: for example, making sure that all your starred Gmails automatically get backed up to your Dropbox.
Why It's Indispensable: "I signed up to IFTTT sometime in 2010 (I was part of the original beta) and I've used it religiously ever since,"Lee Simpson, product designer at ustwo, says. "I've used it to backup photos, capture links I've shared, send reminders, cross post to social networks—basically, it does a ton of stuff. Recently I built an SMS mood-tracking app by stringing together a few 'recipes'—it's so quick for experimenting with fairly complex ideas and prototypes."
What It Is: A vector graphics editor by Adobe for creating original digital art.
Why It's Indispensable: "This is the one I use most frequently pretty much for everything, including drawing, design, user flows, and wireframes,"Sandijs Ruluks, founder of Froont, says. Toby Milner-Gulland, senior designer at Moving Brands, agrees: "The best app for any sophisticated vector drawing as well as wire framing and layouts."
What It Is: Apple's version of PowerPoint, Keynote is software for creating presentations, available on the iPad and Mac.
Why It's Indispensable: "Keynote, which I use on my MacBook Pro, is great for sharing designs and concepts to larger audiences. You can very quickly create click-through prototypes that exhibit great animation and transitions. People are even making great motion graphics that look like something from After Effects (see Linda Dong's recent work)," says Josh Bloom, VP of design at Skully. Sandijs Ruluks, founder of Froont, puts it more succinctly: "Design is only one side of the equation. For telling the 'why' behind a design, I turn to Keynote."
Why It's Indispensable: "Obviously LinkedIn is a great place for finding a new job, but it's also a good resource for staying connected to the design community," writes Jason Broughton, head of user experience at Zappos. " Clichéd aspirational image posts aside, it's easy to find a group having in-depth conversations on design. We're currently following a great thread on the evolution of personas."
What It Is: The latest version of Google's mobile operating system, available on smartphones, tablets, wearables, and even the occasional laptop.
Why It's Indispensable: Charles Fulford, group creative director at Huge, says he couldn't live without Lollipop's Priority Mode. "Priority Mode allows me to turn off all but extremely important notifications on my phone," he says. According to Fulford, good work requires focused time. "I constantly see clients in meetings staring at their phones every 23 seconds. Listening, and the natural empathy that accompanies it, are core tools to great design. Priority Mode clears the airwaves during frenetic days."
What It Is: Mindmapping software for the iPhone, iPad, and the Mac.
Why It's Indispensable: "A MindNode diagram is like a subway map to me, and the design helps us navigate through our work," explains Jannie Lai, head of UX at Light. "I use this app to capture all things big and small—everything from concept models and design hierarchy, and all the way down to specific gestures and features. It provides a bird's-eye view of our work. As designers respond more to visuals than a text document, I find it to be an effective tool for planning and communication."
What It Is: A designer-centric sketchbook app for iPad.
Why It's Indispensable: "I like to start any design work with a sketch. My favorite app for this is Paper by FiftyThree as it's easy to generate new concepts that can be shared with the team," says Shaun Tollerton, Product Designer at ustwo.
What It Is: Adobe's legendary photo-editing and retouching software.
Why It's Indispensable: "Once I'm confident with a sketch or concept I will use Photoshop to bring the design to life," writes Shaun Tollerton, product designer at ustwo. "Yes it's a very bloated tool, but it does what I need it to do with ease. All design elements are vector-based too so that the design can be scaled easily."
What It Is: A popular social network based off of online bookmarking.
Why It's Indispensable: "This is hardly an underground app, but I've been surprised at how often I come back to it," explains Charles Fulford, group director at Huge. "Like the elusive blue whale, free time and inspiration both surface quickly and stick around for a short time, so the ability to access Pinterest from any device (and even effortlessly from Chrome plugins) makes this an ever present and ever expanding design museum without walls."Jason Broughton, head of user experience at Zappos, agrees: "You'd be hard pressed to find a designer who hasn't used Pinterest for a project."
What It Is: A cross-platform app for creating 100% native prototypes, no matter what device you're on—even wearables.
Why It's Indispensable: "At the moment, we're working on creating watch faces for Android Wear, so I'll use Pixate to prototype due to its support for the platform," writes Shaun Tollerton, product designer at ustwo. "This allows me to validate proposed designs and test their functionality."
What It Is: An open-source programming language for new media art, electronics arts, and visual design projects.
Why It's Indispensable:
"It lets me quickly explore design possibilities in code," says Raphaël de Courville, ART+COM Studios."When necessary, it can scale to develop more complex installations. I like that it offers the quick feedback loop necessary for the iterative creation process I'm used to."
What It Is: A statistical computing environment, useful for making data visualizations.
Why It's Indispensable: "Although technically not a 'design app,' it's irreplaceable for me. I make data graphics and R is good at handling data. There's a substitute for everything else I use," says Nathan Yau, founder of FlowingData.
What It Is: A user interface and icon design tool.
Why It's Indispensable: "Everyone in the design team relies on Skala to look at their work real-time on their phones," says Jannie Lai, head of UX at Light. "We want to make sure our design looks right in a high-pixel density screen, but we also make sure it is comfortable to use."
Why It's Indispensable: "Sketch on my MacBook Pro handles wire framing and visual design with equal aplomb. It's deeply vector-based and has a ton of great features to output various sizes of design assets without lots of work," explains Josh Bloom, VP of design at Skully. Joe Stewart, co-founder of Work & Co. agrees, although he points out that the app is only really good for designing iPhone apps. "They don't seem to care much about supporting Android, which seems idiotic to me," he says.
What It Is: A cross-platform team communication tool based around persistent chat rooms.
Why It's Indispensable: Amazingly, Slack was the app mentioned by more of the designers we polled than any other. Charles Fulford, group creative director at Huge, chalks it up to the fact that collaboration and communication are key for any design work. "Having all accounts and projects organized and searchable under one roof and accessible from any device helps soothe daily chaos," he says. "The ability to check comps within Slack and give instant feedback keeps projects moving. Also, third-party integrations provide seamless workflow. For example, Box gives access to all project files—from briefs to research to wireframes to comps. Slackbot even retrieves a daily feed of inspiration from Product Hunt."
What It Is: A graphical text editor for OS X, specializing in code and markup.
Why It's Indispensable: "Text editors are my most used type of app. I use them for everything from keeping track of my ideas to writing code," says Ryder Ripps, creative director at OKFocus. "To be honest, I have used many text editors, so I don't really care that much about which one I use: TextMate gets the most use, but I used to use BBEdit, Text Wrangler, and Notepad, too."
Editor's Note: Are you a designer with a favorite app (not your own) you want added to this list? Feel free to leave a comment below and we'll fold it into the post.
What do the best-looking sites on the Internet use for color palettes? A surprising number of pastels with the occasional sprinkling of earthen tones, at least looking at this infographic from Awwwards.com.
Since 2009, Awwwards has been handing out accolades to what it considers the best designed sites of the web. Over the last six years, it has built an extensive database of websites with beautiful pixels, so it was relatively easy for developer Matt DesLauriers to program something that would automatically scan the entries for their dominant three colors, and smack them together into a big RGB pixel.
Over at the Awwwards.com website, you can drill down into the exact hexadecimal colors that the top 20 sites use.
If you want to know how to make colors pop on your own websites, Awwwards.com offers a list of tools you can use to come up with color palettes of your own: Coolors.co, Stylify Me, Adobe Colors, Paletton and more.
Why design jewelry when you can grow it? Enter Floraform, a new line of jewelry that uses advanced computer algorithms to organically "grow" necklace, ring, and bracelet designs which were inspired by jellyfish arms and iris flowers.
A generative design studio based in Somerville, Massachusetts founded by MIT graduates Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, Nervous System, started working on the Floraform project back in 2011. Rosenkrantz and Louis-Rosenberg came across two scientific papers, describing how leaves, flowers, and other forms of life grow into their recognizable forms. The duo discovered that the beautiful, complex ruffles seen in nature are formed from a relatively simple procedure: they just push all of their growth to the edge, and exotic ripples, ruffles, and waves will start to form.
Plugging that logic into a computer algorithm, Nervous created a line of 24 unique pieces, 3-D printed out of nylon and silver. These designs are divided divided into three sets: one inspired by flowers, the other based upon the arms of a jellyfish, and the third incorporating design elements of both.
For the flowers, Nervous tweaked its algorithm to grow what it describes as "curling, convoluted" forms that explore concepts of symmetry (or its absence). The jellyfish necklaces, on the other hand, "incorporate directional, gravity-like forces, resulting in a more elongated draping of form with dripping cascades of ruffles." As for the third set, they're not really like anything on Earth: incorporating elements of both flowers and jellyfish, the resulting necklaces are neither beast nor plant. They seem almost like the flora of an alien world.
Available as a line of bracelets, necklaces, and rings, the Floraform line of 3-D printed jewelry is available directly from Nervous System's online shop. They range in price from $25 to $390, depending upon material.
Ever wonder why all our gadgets are rigid rectangles? It doesn't have anything to do with the outside of the device, but the inside. Electronics are full of conductive sheets, which are basically responsible for shooting electricity and data between components. While technically flexible, conductive sheets are designed to be flat, and become less efficient when they bend due to tearing. It's why our smartphones only gently curve, why our tablets don't fold, and why our wearables seem underpowered.
But that might all be set to change. A University of Michgan research team lead by Professor Nicholas Kotov has figured out a way to apply Japanese paper cutting techniques, called kirigami, to a new type of flexible conductor, opening the door to gadgets that bend, flex, fold, and transform. Why not print out conductive sheets that were pre-cut to rip in artful (and very conductive) ways?
The first prototype of the kirigami stretchable conductor consisted of tracing paper covered in graphene nanotubes. The layout was very simple, with cuts like rows of dashes that opened to resemble a cheese grater. Later concepts, though, we more complicated: Terry Shyo, a doctoral student in materials science at U.Mich, made later conductor sheets out of graphene oxide, etching cuts into the surface just a tenth of a millimeter long using laser beams and a plasma of oxygen ions and electrons.
According to Kotov, the reason no one has ever pre-cut these conductive sheets before has to do with material science. "In principle, you can do this with sheets of metal," Kotov says. "But the homogeneity of the material is a factor." There are impurities, especially in composites, which can make the microscopic cuts go off course. Graphene, however, made an optimal medium for their electro-kirigami technique, which is why this has never been done before.
But what does it all mean for the gadgets of the future? Kotov tells me his technique opens up big possibilities for implantable medical devices, which have to flex and bend within the human body to work. But gadgets that won't break when bending or flexing is another possibility: the day of totally transformable devices may well be at hand. Even flexible batteries could happen thanks to kirigami. The day when your Apple Watch's battery lasts a week because it's strung out all across the band may be closer than you think.
As the primaries fast approach, presidential hopefuls are unveiling their official campaign logos, and let's speak plainly. Whether the logo is an "H" that functions as a sort of political Rorschach test; a logo that looks like it was just plucked from the side of the pyramid HQ of a dystopian mega-corporation in Blade Runner; or the exclamatory wordmark of a country-fried bumpkin who seems surprised that he's running for president, the logos we've seen so far leave us mostly underwhelmed.
We felt sorry for the design-blind politicians who are all vying to be our next president, so we decided to help. We turned to the most prolific logo designer in the world, Christophe Szpajdel, to create entirely new identities for 11 presidential hopefuls, ranging from Jeb Bush to Bernie Sanders. A professional logo designer since 1977, Szpadjel has spent the past 40 years distilling the complex socio-political platforms of over 7,000 black metal bands like Fistula, Arcturus, Old Man's Child, and Moonspell down to single, indelible wordmarks— albeit ones that usually contain a bloody Pentagram or an upside down cross somewhere in the design. Here's what he came up with (side-by-side comparisons below, unadulterated metal versions above).
Bush's 2016 presidential logo is notable for the fact that it doesn't include his family name. Szpajdel takes a different approach and makes the thorny branches of a Bush part of the design. Each one drips blood, but Szpajdel didn't discard everything from Jeb's existing logo: a surprised exclamation point hovers above the rest of the wordmark.
If you sort of blur your eyes, Democrat Lincoln Chafee's new logo sort of looks like the Batman symbol, albeit for a Batman who turned into Dracula somewhere down the line.
In Szpajdel's design, Hillary Clinton's "H"—which naysayers derided for pointing to the right—inspires a new logo in which razor sharp arrows pierce her name from both the left and the right. Meanwhile, the "H" itself almost serves as a sort of daemonic glyph, the kind of thing you might find scratched on the basement walls at the end of the Blair Witch Project.
In real life, Ted Cruz is a southern baptist, so Szpajdel incorporates a celtic cross into his logo as a nod to the candidate's faith. Szpajdel also references the Texas senator's go-to facial expression in the blank moon of his logo's "C."
The name of ex-HP CEO Carly Fiorina has been turned into an imposing, Vlad-the-Impaler-style spike: appropriately enough, the sort of things you'd just hate to get shoved up your ass for four years.
The slogan for Mike Huckabee's 2016 presidential campaign is: "From hope to higher ground." Szpajdel imagines this higher ground as a mountain, completely undermined by a network of underground fissures leading straight to hell, spelling out Huckabee's name.
Rand Paul's 2016 presidential logo already looked like something peeled off Al Pacino's stationery from The Devil's Advocate, so honestly, Szpajdel didn't have to do much to draw out the Satanism.
In Marco Rubio's widely lampooned presidential logo, all of America is reduced to a single dot above the "i" in his last name. But why stop there? Szpadjel covers the Rubio logo in dots like an outbreak of Rubella—or, should we say, Rubio-ella? (Not that he's likely to get it himself: Rubio believes in vaccination, even if his constituency doesn't.)
Ah, Bernie. He's the candidate least likely to sell America's soul to Beelzebub, so Szpajdel didn't have much material to work with in his redesign. Instead, the Lord of Logos just tried to make Sanders look as bitching as possible.
These days, many of us (and even maybe most of us) have a more intimate relationship with our smartphones than we do to our friends, our family, even our partners. We spend our waking hours glued to these devices, and often, they know us better than even we know ourselves. But what is falling in love with our phones actually doing to us, especially when that love is fleeting?
The Life & Death Of An iPhone a new seven-minute short which aims to answer that question. Directed by Paul Trillo, who was previously featured on Co.Design for his two-mile uber zoom down New York's 5th Avenue, shot and edited the whole thing using Cameo, Vimeo's video suite for iOS. The choice to use Cameo ended up determining the project's subject matter—although good for what it is, an iPhone's camera is still limited. So Trillo just made that limitation part of that narrative.
"I figured if I had to shoot through the lens of an iPhone why not just have it function as the eye of the iPhone?" he says. "There was something instantly compelling about seeing the world, and really ourselves, from the POV of a phone. It all became too obvious and I could make fun of the ridiculousness of smartphones."
I don't really want to spoil it for you, but in a sense, The Life & Death of an iPhone is really about the life of an iPhone cursed to be owned by the douchiest human being in the world: a lying, pretentious, thoughtless, and shallow scumbag who spends all of his time ignoring fellow human beings in favor of his phone. By the time the iPhone breaks, shoved into the back of a drawer, eventually gets resold, is repaired, and finds itself in new hands in China, you'll breath a sigh of relief. It's almost like it's been brought to heaven by whatever the iPhone's equivalent of the Velveteen Rabbit's fairy is.
According to Trillo, although he didn't want his film to be a PSA, that was by intent. "It's a reflection of our times," he says by email. "As much as smartphones have made things easier and more efficient, they've caused a lot of social issues."
One of these social issues, as Trillo sees it, is our increasing inability to relate to the people in our lives. "That's why there is this parallel of dating someone that runs throughout the film," he explains. "The lack of human interaction contrasts the obsession with the phone itself. We have to vie for the attention The phone is the true love of the short. Yet these devices are fleeting. Our love one day, is tomorrow's garbage."
After two years of gently suggesting that users switch from the classic Gchat UI to the newer Hangouts platform, Google surprised Gmail users around the world this week by automatically switching everyone over. Luckily, there's an easy way to get the old Gchat back. Which is a good thing, because Hangouts in Gmail just sucks compared to Gchat.
Why the Hangouts hate? There's a reason that online professionals love Gchat. In a world of instant message clients that feel like a Tokyo Pop fever dream, Gchat was proudly text-based. Putting functionality first, it co-existed with Gmail without ever trying to overpower it. When you weren't messaging anyone, Gchat lived as text-based list of your contacts by name nested in the lower left corner of your inbox. When you clicked on a name to message someone, you could send them text, and later initiate a video conference, but that's it. No emoji, no avatars, no candy-colored chat bubbles, no stickers, no animated GIFs, nothing. It was for sending text messages in real time, and that was it. It was proudly, even defiantly no frills, but it still had some beautiful, understated touches: for example, the lovely way a type-based smiley would straighten itself into an upright position after you typed it.
So for those of us who loved the old Gchat, the new Hangouts pane that replaces it is a fucking nightmare. It's everything about instant message clients we were trying to get away from, except worse. Hate emoji? Here's a library of the ugliest ones you've ever seen, designed by Google's resident Fentanyl addict. Did you like how Gchat's IM windows were small, and kept out of the way so you could concentrate on your email? Now they're three times as large, and impossible to ignore! And hey, so's your contact list, requiring you to scroll constantly to find the contact you want. Did you like how you could set yourself as "away" all the time in the old Gchat, so people didn't bother you when you were working? The new Gchat always tells your contacts you're free, no matter what! And so on.
Luckily, the new Hangouts is easy to turn off—at least for now. Just click the arrow next to your name, and select 'Revert to old chat' from the dropdown. You'll be asked to confirm, and then Gmail will reload, with the old Gchat replacing the crummy new Hangouts. Like so!
Easy peasy! Unfortunately, don't expect to be able to choose between Gchat and Hangouts indefinitely: Google has a history of eventually forcing holdouts to use the company's "new, improved" designs, whether you want to or not.
How many people do American police kill every year? It's a question that should have a concrete answer, yet no one really knows: no government agency transparently and accurately reports the total number of Americans killed every year by police officers. This despite the fact that media reports suggest that American police kill more people in an average month than the U.K. police killed last century. In the wake of high-profile killings of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, and scores of others, it's a statistical blind spot that needs addressing more than ever.
Given the lack of data, The Guardian took it upon itself to put together the most comprehensive database on American police killings so far. The result, The Counted, is an explorable interactive visualization of all the people police have killed in 2015 so far. Pulling their data from media reports and verified user tips, The Counted gives all known details about these killings, and lets users drill down into their statistics: which cities account for the most deaths (Los Angeles, Houston, and New York), which races are most affected (whites account for most of the deaths, but they are outnumbered by black deaths almost three-to-one when adjusted by capita), how often these killings happen (about four or five deaths a day), and so on. Deaths highlighted in orange are ones that The Guardian feels warrant more reporting: the rest are represented in neutral gray.
According to Kenan Davis, an interactive journalist with The Guardian, The Counted was created to address the troubling lack of data about police killings in America. The project started in late February, and took the better part of three months for the Guardian's interactive team to build. The interactive isn't flashy, but it wasn't designed to be: the Guardian team made a pointed effort to stay away from schmaltzy design details that could politicize the data. Rather, they wanted it to be a flexible, expandable front-end to a series of statistics that are powerful in their own right. The goal is to make it easy for people to find the information you want, so the interactive largely focuses on allowing people to run reports, and drill down into more data, not just look over a list of names. If people want to tell more emotional or political stories based on that data, The Guardian encourages it: anyone can download their database to visualize as they see fit.
"With The Counted, the goal was to highlight the absence of official data on the number of police killings in America," Davis says in a phone interview. He points out that while the FBI ostensibly reports these numbers, they are both out-of-date and incomplete. The most recent official report on what the FBI calls "justified" police killings in America is from 2013, and puts the number of deaths that year at just 46. Compare that to the Guardian's database, which has 534 police deaths for just the first six months of 2015 alone, as of writing. "It really gets the point across how skewed the official numbers are," he notes. (If you want more information on why the FBI's official numbers are so out-of-whack, the Washington Post has a good explainer here. Suffice to say that "unjustified" police killings get buried, and only a small percentage of law enforcement agencies contribute to the report anyway.)
In designing the look of the The Counted, the biggest challenge was striking the right tone. "We didn't want this to be a memorial website, but rather a humanizing record of instances," Davis says. Instead of putting up a long list of pictures and names of people killed by the police, The Guardian opted to highlight the context of the killings: the victim's age, race, where they lived, and the circumstances of their deaths.
The Guardian has a team of editors and journalists responsible for verifying new additions to the database, and reporting them out. Even so, the Guardian doesn't know how accurate The Counted actually is. "I can say this is the best we feel we can possibly do, given the data we have, but does it account for all police killings in America?" Davis says. "We don't know. But the fact we can't say if it's accurate highlights the need for more transparency. The government should be tracking this, and they're not. The ultimate goal is to get there to be a change in legislation."
Since it was unveiled earlier this month, The Counted has had deep impact. More than 400 tips have been submitted through the site, and over 8,000 people are following the project on Facebook. U.S. Senators are also starting to call for mandatory reporting of police killings, similar to what The Counted does.
Perhaps good design paired with rigorous reporting really can effect change. One thing's for sure: with The Counted on track to tally more than 1,000 police killings before the year is done, just how many people need to be killed before America wakes up about the problem?
In our spoiler-obsessed culture, giving away the end of a movie is viewed as rude at best...and a crime worthy of being drawn-and-quartered at worst. Warsaw-based designer Dawid Frątczak just doesn't give a damn, though: his Spoiler Alert! series takes malevolent glee in spoiling the end of Hollywood movies, right in the poster.
In Frątczak's The Empire Strikes Back poster, for instance, Darth Vader's helmet gets a "world's greatest dad" sticker slapped right across it. Tony Kaye's American History X shows the fate of Edward Furlong's character, thanks to a brain-spattered silhouette in front of a urinal bank. Donnie Darko? Forget the nightmarish rabbit, it's just a jet engine crushing a bed. And Frątczak's irreverent poster for Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind is best described by the words that precede the title, "His friends were all part of his..."
Other films in the Spoiler Alert! series include 127 Hours, Kill Bill, The Number 13, 300 and The Lord of the Rings. They're all well-done, which is sure to make them extra irritating to the spoiler adverse: you almost can't help but be drawn into them, but by the time you've looked at them, it's already too late. (To be fair, these are movies you should have seen by now. Well, except for The Number 23. -Ed.)
Better send Robocop. Shepard Fairey, the world famous street and mural artist, is a wanted man in Detroit.
A warrant for Fairey's arrest was filed in Michigan's 36th District Court, in connection with two counts of malicious destruction of property. If he's arrested and convicted, Fairey could face five years in jail, plus $10,000 worth of fines.
Fairey's crime? While in Detroit last month to paint an 18-story-mural on One Campus Martius for Dan Gilbert's Bedrock Real Estate Services—the artist's largest work to date—Fairey slapped some of his signature Andre the Giant posters on up to 14 buildings between May 16 and May 22.
The posters, which are about 4 feet by 4 feet, are removable, but police say they caused the highly specific sum of $9,105.54 in damages.
An example of OBEY posters in HollandFlickr user Marco Raaphorst
"Just because he is a well-known artist does not take away the fact that he is also a vandal," Police Sgt. Rebecca McKay, who oversees the city's graffiti task force, told The Detroit Free Press."And that's what we consider was done, in these instances, was vandalism."
Police say that Fairey will be arrested if he comes back to Detroit, where Fairey last worked in the early 2000s as a guerilla street artist, tagging public spaces without permission. Since then, Fairey has gone on to become an internationally respected artist, and has seen mainstream success as the creator of Obama's 2008 presidential campaign "Hope" poster.
Something tells me Fairey will take being Detroit's public enemy in stride. He's been arrested for defacing public property almost 15 times in his career. It goes hand-in-hand with what he does.
Still, the irony of Detroit issuing an arrest warrant for Fairey is hard to ignore: one of the country's most run-down, derelict cities with a rampant graffiti problem trying to arrest one of the few street artists whose work could probably drive up property values.
With his trademark pencil mustache, Pink Flamingoes and Hairspray director John Waters took the podium at the Rhode Island School of Design earlier this month to deliver the commencement address. After complimenting the school ("I wanted to be the filthiest person alive, but no school would let me. I bet RISD would have."), Waters delivered a 12-minute commencement speech that had plenty of tips on how to live a creative, disruptive life. Watch it here or read on for the highlights.
Waters dismissed the idea that, for a creative person, work and play are separate entities. "In the fine arts, play is work," he says. "What other field allows you to deduct gangster rap, Gaspar Noé movies, and even vintage porn as business expenses?"
"Today may be the end of your juvenile delinquency, but it should also be the first day of your new adult disobedience," Waters says. But how do you get influential enough to be disruptive? Become an insider. "It's time to throw caution to the wind, really shake things up, and reinvent yourself as a new version of your most dreaded enemy: the insider, like I am," he says. "Refuse to isolate yourself. Separatism is for losers."
"You need to prepare sneak attacks on society," Waters says. "Hairspray is the only really devious movie I ever made." He then points out that although the musical based on the film is now regularly performed in every high school in America, "it's a show with two men singing a love song to each other that also encourages white teen girls to date black guys. ...Hairspray is a Trojan horse—it snuck into Middle America and never got caught. You can do the same thing."
Remaining relevant means knowing what's happening around you in your field. "Keep up with what's causing chaos in your own field," he says. "If you're a visual artist, go see the shows in the galleries that are frantically competing to find the one bad neighborhood left in Manhattan to open up in. Watch every movie that gets a negative review in the New York Times and figure out what the director did wrong. Read, read, read. Watch people on the street, spy, be nosy, eavesdrop." And, especially as you get older, become obsessed with youth culture, and employ "youth spies that will keep you abreast of new music that nobody your age has heard of yet, or body-piercing mutilations that are becoming all the rage, even budding sexually transmitted disease you should go to any length to avoid."
"Contemporary art's job is to wreck what came before," Waters says. "Is there a better job description than that to aspire to? Go out in the world and fuck it up beautifully. Horrify us with new ideas. Outrage outdated critics. Use technology for transgression, not lazy social living. It's your turn to cause trouble—but this time in the real world, and this time from the inside."
Most cabinets just open or close. Not the Cubrick. Instead, it pirouettes open, allowing you to access its contents from any side (and elegantly hiding the contents when it's not in use). It saves space, too: whether opened or closed, it's exactly the same dimensions.
The Cubrick cabinet gets its name from resembling a fatter, less monochrome cousin of the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was created by Ian Spencer and Cairn Young of the London-based furniture design company Yard Sale Project. They describe it as "luxury furniture with a sense of theater," and that seems apt: the fluid motion of swinging the Cubrick open has a theatrical edge to it, similar to what you might expect from a magician swinging open the doors to a trick cabinet.
Although you can use the Cubrick for anything, there are different configurations available, and they vary according to how many cubes they contain. The 12 is the smallest one, but there are 16- and even 20-box versions, suitable for everything from creating a wine bar or cocktail cabinet, to housing your wardrobe or shoe collection.
Made of wood and available with both brass and copper handles, each Cubrick comes lined with Impala fabric in a variety of color options, which you can choose from an interactive online demo. Cubricks don't come cheap, though. The most affordable models cost more than $7,300. That's a fair chunk of change to pay for a cabinet you can't line up flush against a wall.
Can't figure out your company's org chart? You're not alone: no one can, and attempting to do so is just wishful thinking. To translate what it means, the Doghouse Diaries has come up with a handy primer, breaking it all down. Here's what the six types of org charts really mean, and how to work your way up within them.
"Organizations claim to follow this structure, but no one has ever seen one work in real-life," writes Doghouse Diaries. "Your only hope is to wear fancy clothes and say things that sound intelligent, but are actually meaningless."
"Typically touted by new age, hipster, my-beard-can-beat-up-your-beard, startups with all-you-can-eat Clif bars and work-from-your-yoga-mat policies," notes Doghouse Diaries. "The company will likely either run out of capital or get bought out — either way, you'll probably lose your job, so keep your head on a swivel."
"Most commonly found in consulting firms that boast some sort of 'cross cutting, multi-disciplinary strategy' that generates 'synergy' throughout the organization's 'verticals'. Your only hope is to keep promising yourself you're going to quit one day and open up that juice bar in St. Lucia."
"Welcome to the government!" quips Doghouse Diaries. "Where trying to get anything done is like trying to teach a fish to fish. Your only hope is to put in your time and retire knowing your private-sector friends made way more money than you."
"Rare, but probably real," says the Doghouse Diaries, describing the least friendly of companies' org charts. "Any hint of circle-to-circle fraternization could get you fired. Your only hope is to follow standard prison rules and mind your own business."
None of these seem familiar? There's a reason for that. "The actual structure of most organizations [is the ball of yarn], regardless of formal org charts," says Doghouse Diaries. "Your only hope is death."
Of course, there are some other org charts that Doghouse Diaries doesn't cover: for example, whatever Autodesk's crazy nuclear mutational org chart is called. But for most of us, these org charts are depressingly familiar indeed.
Anyone who has ever wrapped a Christmas present has dealt with the maddening problem of trying to cut a long sheet of paper in a perfectly straight line. Even if you've got a steady hand, you'll usually end up drifting diagonally, or ending up with little notches in your cut. If you're a wrapping perfectionist, like me, that can make precision jobs impossibly difficult. But Tamás Fekete's Vector scissors feature a unique flat edge design that allows you to cut perfectly straight lines every time.
The innovation is all in the handle, which is designed with a lip that can grab the edge of a table. Using that table edge as a guide, it glides along a sheet of paper, slicing it apart in the kind of perfectly straight line you'd usually need a razor or exacto-knife to achieve.
Of course, paper isn't the only thing you can cut with the Vector scissors: they could be quite useful to a tailor or seamstress, for example. Nor are they only good for cutting in straight lines. The Vector scissors have been designed so they feel natural in the hand for any other cutting task. Don't want to cut straight lines with them? You don't have to...but if you do, the Vector will cut straighter lines than any other scissors.
These scissors seem like a total no-brainer; the kind of item anyone who likes having the best tool at hand, especially when they only cost $25. Amazingly, though, Fekete was totally unable to get a meager $40,000 Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign off the ground, likely due to a lack of publicity. Let's hope this is a matter of better late than never, and Fekete tries again. He can count on my preorder, at the very least.
Microsoft Research Labs, the creators of real-life holodecks and mind-reading stylii alike, have just unveiled their latest augmented reality project, dubbed Semantic Paint. Harnessing the scanning technology of the Kinect, Semantic Paint creates a 3-D scan of the room you're in, in real time. Initially, it sees the room as a single object, but users can begin labeling individual objects, just by coloring them in.
For example, if you reach out and touch the chair you're standing next to, you'll color it in as effectively as if you used the paint bucket tool in Photoshop. By doing so, you not only change the chair's color, but teach Semantic Paint that all similarly shaped objects in the room are chairs too, which allows you to apply changes to them in bulk.
Microsoft Research isn't necessarily selling Semantic Paint as a sort of real-time augmented reality coloring tool. Instead, they say it's a "fun, interactive way" to give augmented reality and 3-D scanning systems like the Kinect more all-around smarts when it comes to understanding the context in which they are being used.
That said, it's not hard to imagine how Semantic Paint could be used as a consumer facing product. Changing the paint on your walls, the carpet on the floor, or the color of your upholstery could be as easy as using MS Paint. Hell, slap a Crayola or Pantone license on this tech, and the Occulus-tethered kids of the future can run around the world, coloring it in like real-life Harolds with (virtual) purple crayons.
You can read Microsoft Research's full paper on Semantic Paint here.
