Young and Brilliant

devidsketchbook: MADEMOISELLE MAURICE – ORIGAMI STREET ART The...

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 12:25:48 -0700

MADEMOISELLE MAURICE – ORIGAMI STREET ART

The latest creations of the French artist Mademoiselle Maurice, ephemeral installations and non-degrading poetic street art performed with hundreds of colorful origami glued on the walls of Paris. A daunting task to achieve thousands of origami using mostly recycled paper, in a spirit of friendly temporary installation, for the environment and the street. A cloud of origami that fly just like the human network and natural elements, with particular reference to the little Japanese girl Sadako Sasaki.

[Via ufunk]

(via Dezeen » Blog Archive » Tregunter by...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 10:05:11 -0700

(via Dezeen » Blog Archive » Tregunter by Davidclovers)

ftalphaville: Bloomberg BusinessWeek does it again. (H/T the...

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:42:27 -0700

ftalphaville:

Bloomberg BusinessWeek does it again. (H/T the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson)

"Design is more of a kitchen than a knife, and more of a lab than a beaker."

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:42:16 -0700

“Design is more of a kitchen than a knife, and more of a lab than a beaker.”

- Arman Nobari | Quotes on Design

"Look at this,” Khosla says, pulling out what looks like an iPhone with an ordinary protective case...."

Wed, 30 May 2012 10:33:00 -0700

““Look at this,” Khosla says, pulling out what looks like an iPhone with an ordinary protective case. He taps an app. Instantly, his phone is an EKG, thanks to the case, which takes readings from his fingertips. Technology like this will revolutionize medical practice, he says. Then he giggles. Khosla giggles a lot. His giggles burble out whenever he talks about some amazingly cool new thing. They are the verbal exclamation marks of a man who can’t wait to see tomorrow.”

- Greedy for good works

Giggles!

OK, and also this, since it appears I’ve never tumbled...

Tue, 29 May 2012 18:52:00 -0700

OK, and also this, since it appears I’ve never tumbled this table before! : A dynamic table consisting of one seamless ribbon stretching from either end to form the complex configuration of a table with an almost fuse like friction. (via brodie neill | products | pop)

Discussing furniture design today, and the lack of furniture...

Tue, 29 May 2012 18:48:00 -0700

Discussing furniture design today, and the lack of furniture taking advantage of modern CNC-type technologies, and so I thought of Brodie Neill. Look at this mobius strip light. How can anyone *not* find this object gorgeous and fascinating? (via brodie neill | products | clover)

"In the nineteen-thirties, two wealthy Americans, Charles William Beebe and Otis Barton, used twelve..."

Sun, 27 May 2012 19:54:00 -0700

“In the nineteen-thirties, two wealthy Americans, Charles William Beebe and Otis Barton, used twelve thousand dollars of their own money to design a hollow steel ball with two quartz peepholes, which they called a “bathysphere,” named after the Greek word for “deep.” The vessel, which was four and a half feet in diameter, was tethered to a ship with a cable; if it snapped, the men inside would die at the bottom of the sea.
In 1934, near Bermuda, Beebe and Barton went down five hundred feet, then a thousand feet more, as greater and greater pressure pushed against the steel walls; they stopped at three thousand and twenty-eight feet. It was far deeper than anyone had ever gone. At one point, Beebe peered out, and spotted something that was at least twenty feet long. Later, in his autobiography, “Half Mile Down,” he wrote, “Whatever it was, it appeared and vanished so unexpectedly and showed so dimly that it was quite unidentifiable except as a large, living creature.””

- A Reporter at Large: The Squid Hunter : The New Yorker — this article is just full of all sorts of goodness. Just stop everything you are doing and go and read it right now.

"Often one feels like beginning with a sketch or description of what the final design will be like...."

Sun, 27 May 2012 12:31:01 -0700

“Often one feels like beginning with a sketch or description of what the final design will be like. Common sense may suggest beginning with a study of what the problem really is. Both impulses are correct! A good way to start is: Expect both problem P and solution S to evolve during the design process:
P1 evolves into P2, P3, P4 etc. S1 evolves into S2, S3, S4, etc.”

- design methods for everyone — www.softopia.demon.co.uk — Readability

"The complete design process, ‘A’ to ‘Z’, is the education you are designing..."

Sun, 27 May 2012 11:17:51 -0700

“The complete design process, ‘A’ to ‘Z’, is the education you are designing for yourself to teach you all you will need to complete the design. Designing is learning - with yourself and the world as the teacher.”

- design methods for everyone — www.softopia.demon.co.uk — Readability

360º Water Jug Pil Bredahl, 2010 (via 360 degree Water Jug |...

Sun, 27 May 2012 10:06:33 -0700

360º Water Jug Pil Bredahl, 2010 (via 360 degree Water Jug | MoMA Store)

This is what I keep by my bedside table, and I absolutely *adore* it. It’s got this crazy cover, where it looks like it’s closed, but the water just pours out when you tip it over.

"The researchers gave pairs of friends separate questionnaires on their lifestyles (how often they..."

Sat, 26 May 2012 21:47:27 -0700

“The researchers gave pairs of friends separate questionnaires on their lifestyles (how often they drank, exercised, etc.) and opinions (on topics such as abortion) and found that the bigger the school, the more similar friends were to one another. In follow-up research, not yet published, Ms. Bahns and her team found similar results comparing big cities like New York and Chicago to smaller ones like Iowa City and Lawrence, Kan. How can more people and more diversity lead to less diverse friendships? It’s simple, really: We like people who are like us. Social scientists call it the “similarity-attraction effect,” and it influences everything from whom we date and hire to where we choose to live. The bigger the pond, the more likely we are—consciously or not—to swim around until we find a group of like and like-minded people.”

- The Tribes of Androids and iPhones - WSJ.com

"Of course, for most people, asking questions is usually not just about coming up with innovative..."

Sat, 26 May 2012 17:04:16 -0700

“Of course, for most people, asking questions is usually not just about coming up with innovative ideas—it’s about extracting information from others. But even seemingly factual questions can be deployed tactically: In their new book from Harvard Education Press, “Make Just One Change,” Rothstein and Santana from the Right Question Institute outline a basic classification system, dividing questions into ones that can be answered with a single word (like “yes” or “no”) and ones that require a more discursive response. Choosing the right question is in part a matter of making the right trade-off between clarity and depth: “Does the president support gay marriage?” versus “How have the president’s views on gay marriage evolved?” As part of their “Question Formulation Technique,” which is what the kids at Cambridge Rindge and Latin were engaged in that Friday morning, they ask people to transform one type of question into the other, in order to demonstrate that the way a question is structured can determine the range of possible answers it can inspire.”

- Are we asking the right questions? — www.bostonglobe.com — Readability

This is the most exciting thing I’ve read in a while. I recommend you click through and view the entire article. We ask questions of ourselves and the world around us: asking the question is how we begin to make sense of the world around us, so asking the right one makes us better thinkers.

It’s just one shop, in a marketplace. « CriticalSpeak

Sat, 26 May 2012 16:32:21 -0700

It’s just one shop, in a marketplace. « CriticalSpeak:

I’m not exactly sure how to react to this piece, but I can’t help but be a little annoyed: Yes, there is a problem in that there are many design researchers whose work is impossible to find outside of an academic situation. but, the other half of it is, that most designers are simply not looking to engage with real, critical discussion around design.

It’s not just designers — the fact of the matter is, for any given profession, 90% of people will work with material that’s not really cutting edge or all that interesting. The people on the bleeding edge, however, make a practice of engaging with deeper thought around their profession.

But I also think design is one of the only professions where we would expect that this research be presented in a way that it would reach out to a mainstream audience. The fact of the matter is, if you don’t think like these academics think, if you don’t follow their research and understand what sorts of work has been done, you really aren’t going to follow their work.

Also: Berg has a blog, follow Jon Kolko, subscribe to Interactions Magazine. It’s really not that hard.

"Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we’re going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness,..."

Sat, 26 May 2012 16:11:00 -0700

“Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we’re going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work.”

- Elon Musk

"As far as the perfect size, there was a whole study on asteroid retrieval done by the Keck Institute..."

Sat, 26 May 2012 16:05:16 -0700

“As far as the perfect size, there was a whole study on asteroid retrieval done by the Keck Institute for Space Studies. It turns out that if you’re going to go and get an asteroid, you don’t want the asteroid to be too big, because if you mess up the asteroid could hit Earth and that could have disastrous consequences. Also, transporting a large asteroid is harder than transporting a smaller asteroid. So the study tried to find the sweet spot based on the size of the asteroid, small enough to transport but large (and massive) enough so that the fraction of metal and other resources for extraction is worthwhile. The study favors asteroids that are 7 meters in diameter, which corresponds to a mass in the range of 300,000-700,000 kilograms. 7 meters doesn’t seem that big, but I think it would be very cool to bring something of that size back.”

- Robots, Platinum, and Tiny Space Telescopes: The Pitch for Mining Asteroids — www.theatlantic.com — Readability

"Well there are limits to mineral extraction on planets like Earth, because a lot of the heavy..."

Sat, 26 May 2012 16:05:00 -0700

“Well there are limits to mineral extraction on planets like Earth, because a lot of the heavy elements have sunk deep inside in a process called planetary differentiation that happened during the planet’s early, hot existence. An asteroid doesn’t have that problem because it either started out as a fragment of something bigger or is a leftover building block of a planet that never fully formed. And so the heavier metals in asteroids didn’t sink out of reach. Asteroids are also more accessible than bodies like the Moon and Mars because they have very low gravity, so landing on and taking off with material is easier.”

- Robots, Platinum, and Tiny Space Telescopes: The Pitch for Mining Asteroids — www.theatlantic.com — Readability

Warrior Official Video - Mark Foster, A-Trak, and Kimbra (by...

Fri, 25 May 2012 16:03:59 -0700

Warrior Official Video - Mark Foster, A-Trak, and Kimbra (by converse)

(via Playing with Light: Fernand Fonssagrives...

Thu, 24 May 2012 16:13:59 -0700

(via Playing with Light: Fernand Fonssagrives « onlinetransformer)

"The bursting of the bubble discredited the term “dot-com,” which was understandable but, in a way,..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 10:00:04 -0700

“The bursting of the bubble discredited the term “dot-com,” which was understandable but, in a way, unfortunate, because the term itself had come to be the expression of an attitude that saw in online communication and online commerce boundless possibilities. Facebook’s I.P.O. represents a return to that mindset. It’s the fulfillment of the dreams of the nineties—and a reminder of their potentially fatal attraction.”

- Facebook: The Ultimate Dot-Com : The New Yorker