Playpen

Following on from my last post about Hereafter, my podcast interview with Matt Clark from United Visual Artists is now online at Core77.

We chat about a range of UVA’s work, process and interactivity. Matt gives some great insights into working across disciplines and the exciting and emerging field of interactive installations much more tightly integrated into architecture rather than being a last-minute add-on, as well as using their skills and techniques to create stunning visuals for video. My thanks to Matt for his time - have a listen and let me know what you think.

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In another interview I’m re-publishing online, I talk with Ben Reason from service design agency, Live|Work. He explains exactly what service design is, its roots in product and interactive design and the difference between service designers and consultants, as well as the important role it has to play in a sustainable future.

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My first Core77 Broadcast with Nik Roope about Hulger has just gone online.

It should become one of a series of podcasts for Core77 and I’m really pleased because it’s one of my regular reads. Core77 started out (and still bills itself) as the “industrial design supersite”, though their remit has become somewhat wider, which I think is great personally.

So I thought I’d start with Hulger because it is product design, but with a very different philosophy to most gadgets.

I’ve known Nik for around 15 years. We were both members of Antirom and also used to do an interactive performance together with Joe Stephenson. Over the years we have had some really interesting conversations about emerging technologies and cultures and I’ve watched Hulger go from an amusing idea to being on its way towards being a design icon.

The interview also brings this philosophy to bear on his main job as one of the co-founders and creative directors of digital agency, Poke and it’s interesting to hear about how those two sides influence each other.

You can listen to the broadcast on the Core77 site and there is also a version on iTunes.

Let me know what you think and also who you would like to hear interviewed in the future.

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The latest issue of Desktop is out with an article by me called A New Set of Design Principles. It’s based on interviews with Stefan Sagmeister and Milton Glaser in dealing with ethics, sustainability and the general cultural shift that is happening (or needs to happen). Like it or not, designers are intimately bound up with a culture of seduction and consumption and we all need to think about how that can work positively rather than just selling toys to children made by children.

The Desktop version online is the short version. You’ll have to buy the mag for the full one or wait a few months until I can put it up here.

(Image: Stefan Sagmeister - Designs for True Majority who are trying to cut 15% of the Pentagon budget and move that money over to education.)

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In keeping with my re-release of prior interviews and articles I have written, here is the one with the good folks at 37Signals. It’s a little out of date in terms of some of the content and applications they refer to, but the wisdom is still there and worth a read.

37signals - Less is more

Back in the late 90s most web companies were busy grinding new features and technologies against the constraints of poorly designed browsers and a lack of standards. Then, in 1999, a four-person web design company called 37signals put their manifesto online and links to it started appearing everywhere. The manifesto espoused the virtues of simplicity, elegance and standards-based design as well as remaining small and focused on what they did best. “Less is more” wasn’t cool back then, but they stuck to their principles and now the rest of the web is catching up.

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A quick pointer to an interview about the Creative Waves VIP Project with Rick Bennett and I on the very excellent WorldChanging.com.

If you’ve been wondering what it’s all about and why it might be interesting to take part, then have a read.

Thanks to Regine for writing it too.

p.s. If you haven’t bought the WorldChanging book, go and do it right now. It has everything you need to live with a smaller environmental footprint. It’s the stiletto heel of life.

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I interviewed crazy animation duo, Zeitguised, for the last issue of Desktop.

I’ll post it here once my three-month buffer from Desktop’s publishing date is over, but in the meantime you can read it over at the Desktop website.

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