infographics

Audi Urban Future Summit from onlab on Vimeo.

onlab produced a lovely animation for the Audi Urban Future Summit at the Frankfurt international motor show. It’s often hard to get across abstract concepts of future services and this accomplishes it very well. From Onlab’s site:

The animation explains the implications of three types of energies that were examined on the summit: ‘Energies of Data’, ‘Energies of Social Relations’ and ‘Energies of Resources’. The complex interrelations and abstract visions are narrated by means of simple scenes and playful elements.

I like the fact they included some shots of their storyboards, complete with scribbles. It’s always interesting to see the transition from page to screen.

Confusing Information with the Form

by Andy Polaine on June 29, 2009

in General

Information from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.

Lovely video from design and research consultancy MAYA on the difference between information and the form we give it.

I came across this on David Sherwin’s ChangeOrder blog in a post about moving beyond words for better brainstorming, which is also and interesting article. He asks why it is so hard to break people out of their regular ideation habits. Words are one problem, but it is also an issue of corporate and company culture, even within design agencies.

The rules of brainstorming are pretty much the opposite of what a usual business culture is. Working in a company that has a traditional hierarchy encourages sniping, competitive, uncooperative, pressured and role-based behaviour. It’s the way people “fight to the top”, create “creative competition” and so on.

It’s very hard to convince people to take suspending those habits seriously if they’re not taken seriously at a company culture level and we have come to consider that the normal way of working. Companies like IDEO or Pixar spend a lot of time and effort on not working this way. It’s no surprise that they are successful in this area and why so many other companies fail to bring ‘innovation’ into their culture, despite bringing in consultants who specialise in ‘innovation training’ or whatever the latest business buzzword is. The consultants, of course, are temporary blips, outside the main culture of the company, so easily dismissed after they have gone.

Much like MAYA’s video, you have to re-think what it is and means to work together, what the purpose and idea of a company is to really change its culture. A company is the form given to a group of people working together, but it is by no means the only, nor the best, form.

Little Red Riding Hood, Infographics Style

March 28, 2009

Slagsmålsklubben – Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo. You have to admire the Swedish ability to indoctrinate their students with brilliant design skills. The above Little Red Riding Hood piece by Toma Nilsson was for a college project, inspired by the Röyskopp videos and got tweeted all over the place in the last [...]

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Sprint’s Now Machine Data Overload

November 12, 2008

In keeping with the seemingly American obsession that more data one has the better (especially on TV), Sprint have launched a viral campaign called the Now Machine Widget. Kottke says, “I don’t know what this is or how it works or why Sprint is involved, but man is it fun to just let the data [...]

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Night of the Living Maps

November 5, 2008

Apart from last night’s making of history it was a night of interactive maps gone wild. The BBC’s virtual studio 3D environment was replete with sounds of steel shutters opening and closing as the graphics changed, which gave me flashbacks of The Day Today. Wired have a good selection of other overblown 3D madness. (Can’t [...]

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