The lectures at The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts are precious gems, including talks by David Crystal and Muhammad Yunus. The other day, a friend pointed me towards the RSA Animate, beautiful visualisation of some of the lectures, illustrated by Andrew Park.
In the one above, Professor Philip Zimbardo talks about how our relationship with time plays a big part on how we shape our culture.
Makes me wish I was there. By Skill Lab.
What if Holga went digital? Holga D, super cool project by Saikat Biswas.
It’s good to see a someone talk enthusiastically about what he/she believes. Here, Adam Greenfield starts to give a glimpse (I suspect) of his upcoming book and projects. Everyware goes social, political, gets embedded in the way we relate to each other and the cities we love (and some hate). I particularly like the part where Adam talks about the transformation from “objects to services”, “ownership to use” and “vehicle to mobile”.
Adam has been posting more frequently again on his famous Speedbird blog. I love the praise for the iPhone 4 industrial design and the well put criticisms on its UI aesthetics. I hope you keep on the avalanche of inspiration my dear friend!
It’s from 2007, but I only ran into it now. Selton Mello again proving to be one of the best Brazilian actors of the current generation. Directed by the Brazilian duo 300ml.
Just got my copy of Designing Obama, a brilliant project by Scott Thomas, Design Director for Barack Obama’s Campaign. The book is beautifully crafted, with pretty much all design pieces as well as the various artists that collaborated the campaign (including the famous Shepard Fairey poster).
Check Scott’s lecture for 99% Think Tank. Maybe one day we’ll do “Designing Gabeira”, who knows 
It’s hard to find creative people admitting others have better. I’m no different, but now and again the pain is strong and I end up saying out-loud: this is genius. Reaching a professional maturity (?), I believe the time has come to register here some of my recent favourites; it will help my recovery the shock/envy, and you will get a gist of what inspire us these days.
Square
I’m obsessed with financial services these days. It might have to do with the direct connection it carries with the one thing I research lot these days – mobility –, or maybe because it is one of the truly universal (in all sorts of different level) service.
My first praise goes to Square, the latest venture from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. It combines a small hardware hack with a system complex on the background but beautiful on the front-end. You connect the little square to the audio input jack of a mobile device, install the app, create an account and you’re done. It is now possible to receive payments from anyone carrying a a credit or debit card. It works almost like a Paypal for the masses, as ‘everyone’ carries a mobile and a payment card these days. The elegant idea of using the audio jack (data is transferred via audio) allows for the system to be integrated to any device. Of course these are still baby steps but the service, which was available only for the iPhone at launch, now runs on Android two. Definitely a great solution and I’m sure it will still create much noise.
Ok, like any other designer, I’ve always shivered whenever I’d run into one of those “will do your logo for $100″ websites. Design is about craftsmanship, unique solution for each specific client, and so on.
But I have to hand to the AppArt guys: the addLib app generates random design pieces based on pictures you’ve taken; the result is beautiful. They’ll kill me for saying random because allegedly “addLib mixes the Grid System, a fractal theory, the golden ratio and the Facial Recognition System, and then creates graphic design.”
So recapping. Design is about craftsmanship, only now we can store all the hard work in a few lines of code and let people enjoy it instantaneously. Btw, found it via the cool website by Jason Fields, app.itize.us.