Its Friday!..and we will try to bring you something fun every friday. Here is something not to try at home. I just love the way the guy is just sitting there and laughing at this -i think i would be crying. I guess its one of those things when someone hurts themselves and you laugh at their pain ..hehe. Its very cute too :)

Check this out.

(Via Lifehacker)

check out this very cool site:

you type in a search term and the site looks for images from flickr that relate to your term. The cooler thing is that the site also provides you with a range of wider terms that have something in common with your original term. It could become an endless browse...

I think this site is well done not only because of it's function but mainly because of the simple, yet witty design itself. The close up and fadeout between the box of images and the related terms around it works very well...

here it is...

These are absolutley fascinating. Some of the photographs you could explore for ages. Think google.maps technology on ultra high resolution photographs.

In the spirit of our current competition, check these out (click on the zoom ones)!

Yosemite
Owens Valley
Norway Fjords

zRez Exteme Resolution Site for more

Enjoy

Berlin is drawing an exceptional variety of artists at the moment. Be it that the interest in art is big in this city or that galeries just take the opportunity of decent rents to expose their profiles... the scene is active and alive.

This is a site that I follow regularly as a native. It lists a lot of the interesting shows that are on at the moment, in this case "Evidence Locker" by Jill Magid, a piece she did for the Liverpool Biennal.

The rents are still cheapish especially in the area that I live in, and one gallery after the other is opening up. Which is cool because I don't have to walk far...

check it out here...

Really well done clip of typographical representation of the famous dialogue in Pulp Fiction; "What does Marsellus Wallace Look Like". Must See! Here is the original site where you can also find other movies - fantastic stuff.

Also included is another representation done before.

Linky

Also, don'd forget to check out the blog as a whole. There are some brilliant links generally to do with information representation.

Information Aesthetics

This is something out of the ordinary...

Ever thought that you need to say those special words...except not quite those...

a former grapgic designer turned this into a sales idea. So if you ever find yourself unhappy in a situation and would like to express this in a fancy way, go here...

linky

It appears that 80's are really back! How much more 80s can you get but to revive the rubrics cube. Cant wait to see someone on the tube (metro) playing with one of these.
I've resolved my original cube...but this 3-year-old can do it in 114 seconds ..hehe

Description:

Sudokube is effectively a Rubik's cube, but instead of being made of colours, it is made of numbers. The idea of the game is to get the numbers 1-9 on each side of the cube. You play Sudokube in the same way as you would a Rubik's Cube, but you need to get the numbers aligned on each side as you would in a Sudoku grid. In this game you really have got the best of both worlds.

Get it here

(Via Gizmondo)

Hello All,

You might have noticed already but we have added a new section to the website called 'Designers'. It it pretty much self-explanatory - this is the section where our winning tshirt desginers go. These are profile pages and here you will be able to find out all (well, maybe not all :)) about our great designers. We hope you enjoy this section of the website and off course if you have any comments, let us know.

In the meantime, we have also been very busy with two things. One being the printing of winning designs and the other - the shop.
The winning designs are now with the printers and they should be back in a week or so. The shop is on a very similar timetable so expect tees for purchase very soon.

We will keep you up to date as we go. There should also be a newsletter going out as soon as we have these two things in place. So, if you havent signed up yet, do that now, so you can recieve our newsletter.

We hope you enjoyed this update and we will be in touch with you again very soon.

Yours,

Here are two solutions to your wake up problems. One is about saving money :) ..and the other about shooting the damn thing ! ..hehe

Alarm Clock That Saves you Money

These pretty cube-shaped alarm clocks are not your average clock. These little suckers, called BanClock, have no snooze button. To shut them up, you gotta feed them coins.
Via: hiptechblog  

and

Gun-Operated Alarm Clock

Ibars modified an old gaming light gun by adding some tilt sensors and attaching it to an alarm clock. Squeeze off a few rounds for a little snooze action and you can also set the alarm and time with the gun. It is only a conceptual design, so until it is made a reality just imagine shooting someone when you pound on that alarm clock every morning. –Travis Hudson
Via: Gizmodo

This is a useful site for the travellers among you:

It's basically a compilation of tube maps from around the world and pretty substantial too. Regardless if your next holiday takes you to Berlin (hehe...), Melbourne or Taschkent, you are sure to find a map of the existing underground lines here...

(It seems like only the german version works atm, but it's so self explanatory that this doesn't really matter).

I think almost all of us tried this one back in the days ...it was one of those things you were really proud to have achieved even though it took hours. There is still some delight in seeing images pixelated or converted into text.

www.typorganism.com/asciiomatic/

Check it out

You really have to try this ..absolutely brilliant ...i tried it out the other day and was chatting to this character ..the conversation went like this:

me: Hey
other: hi
me: This is pretty cool, isn't it?
other: Yeah it is ..
other: Are you M/F?
me: M
other: Forget it ..I am off ...

hehe..

try it ..its fantastic and the characters are just brilliant!
(for those not clear what you need to do ..its simple, pick the character at the bottom of the screen and type messages ...you can drag your character around the wold too....e.g. put them in front of another character and have a chat)

How often are you are late? ...Its not about not planning your trip but all the things that happen along it. When you address this problem ...there is a simple solution...in the form of a watch......now how about implement this as mobile phone software as i don't know who still wears watches ..i gave up long time ago...

Check it out here

Although..the only good reason for still wearing a watch is that when a couple of very odd blokes wearing hoodies walk up to you and ask you what time it is, you look at your watch instead of pulling out your $500 mobile phone and before you know it ..its snatched out of your hand. In this case though ..if you pulled this watch out to look at the time ..its probably your arm that would go ...:)) I think i'd rather loose a phone than a limb ..hehe

Here's a neat little application that let's you use an unlimited number of screens on your powerpc or intel based macs. I'm putting this up here for everyone who wants to use it for a few weeks until Leopard comes out, as Spaces does pretty much the same thing. This is also the reason why Rich Wareham, who developed Virtuedesktops will not continue to work on the current beta. I think it's a really useful application and it works fine on my machine...

check it out and download here...

Blogs have taken over the web, we all know that ...but its not just about blogging about things you find on the web (what we do) but also about your life. Some people have taken it one step further and used simple photography of themselves to show how their life evolves. Its a different angle to blogging, but also a very interesting one when you see pictures taken over long periods of time ..in this case 1998-2007 ..thats almost 10 years!!!!!

If you haven't seen this before, its a must.

Have a good weekend everyone, and enjoy this little movie...
(via youtube).

...of China.

This is a fun little website that let's you check if your page is available in China or if it is blocked. I'm not sure to the full reliability of this service, as Allmightys.com was blocked when I first tried it, but seems to work now.

Anyway, have a go here...

Chris Jordan creates his works by looking at very rational statistics and makes these numbers visible by using the smallest unit that is relative to the topic and multiplying this. A tiny element in multitude creates a bigger picture... I think it's an interesting attempt, but I also think that these works can only be fully appreciated when you see them for real.

from the artist's webpage:
"This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics tend to feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or $12.5 million spent every hour on the Iraq war. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs."

take a look at his work here...

Theory of Signage Systems

A very interesting site that apart from including a lot of symbols you can use as a reference also includes theory papers and case studies.
Definitely a worthy reference.

http://www.designofsignage.com

Extract:
Visual representations (as graphical symbols) can be used effectively as a communicative interface where it concerns human interaction with a public facility; especially in matters of identifying and denoting the various functions (of a given public facility); and which constitute a part of environmental directional signage. It is always desirable that the communication of information issuing from these interfaces is not misleading or confusing; it should, on the other hand, be revealed as fast as possible. In other words the information must be communicated properly, efficiently and conveniently.
Graphic Symbols for Environmental Signage:
a Design Perspective
by Ravi Poovaiah

I posted earlier this year about Benrik and their absolutely cool calender.

Here's the Mother's Day book from the London-based illustrators that might make a nice gift for the coming special day for the mums.

I haven't got it myself, but knowing them I'm sure it's as witty and funny as all their published work...

Here's what they say:

"Benrik are striking back against the gooey sentimentality of Mother's Day with a bijou present: The Mother's Book. It includes: Disciplining through medication. Fending off Social Services. Spotting paedophile teachers. Alternative breastfeeding techniques. Rebelling against your own teenagers. And what to do if you accidentally damage your child's self-esteem forever.

It has a nice pink cover, shown below, and makes the perfect gift for the mother in your life. Mother's Day in the UK is on March 18, so there's still plenty of time to order it here. Good child!"

Art meets product design and analogue meets digital. An interesting investigation in how we  might interface with technology via analogue objects.

http://www.dialog05.com

Artist's text:what is the difference between analogue and digital, physical and virtual? what connects and bridges these apparently different worlds?

this is the area we wanted to explore with our universal connections experiment and project. It is a question that each member of dialog05 addresses on a daily basis as an industrial designer creating consumer products.

USB, an abbreviation for a technical user interface, is nowadays often used as a synonym for a universal connection. originally only used by computer experts and nerds, this so-called former high-tech standard has developed into an every-day item and low-tech symbol for such universal connections.

this is an example of technology being clearly understood and accepted by the general public. something democratic evolves and develops and therefore often even receives a totally different usage than was originally intended. given the current, often exotic use of USB, it would even be argued that there is a 'USB subculture'! this phenomena inspired us to use the USB interface, with all its possibilities and ambiguities as a medium for this project. we created installations, objects and products that are surprising, enlightening, inspiring and questioning, and on the other hand ironic or even amusing.

The Voting has just finished and...

WE HAVE THREE WINNERS!!!

Gold goes to Low for the Design "Drawing the Universe"
Silver goes to md-sign for the Design "Pigs against Racism"
Bronze goes to anusheandjake for the Design "Running Man"

Well done, all three of you!! Your designs are excellent and gathered the most votes among all the designs that were submitted!

Allmightys are looking forward to print your designs and have them in the shop as soon as possible!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

The Voting results are:

"Drawing the Universe" : 3.10 points (Average)
"Pigs against Racism": 3.02 points (Average)
"Running Man": 2.79 points (Average)

Interesting collection of work ranging from bags, shirts to prints. Art and consumer products come together...

http://www.imsmitten.com

Artists text:

In children’s stories, animals always mean magic. They are wonderful and ordinary. They talk and wear clothes and sometimes they go to school, and so, growing up, surrounded by these sorts of friends, you have the sense that almost anything can happen to you. The older you get, though, the more it seems that all of that magic has gone off, somewhere else maybe. I decided to take my artwork off the wall and out of the frame, and to put these images of everyday mysteries onto cards, and handbags, and t-shirts, so that everyone could have something a little bit pretty and a little bit strange to add to their day.
Ashley Alexander

Here is a collection of very interesting work by an artist Mark Jenkins. It is a kind of guerilla art that interfaces with ordinary public, to disrupt, interact and alter understanding and reading of every day objects.

Really interesting ... must check out.

Now, i know i keep going on about bags but thats just because I am still looking. My endless search is coming to a close, i think. Here are two more sites with really nice laptop bags....some more for girls other more for boys.

I think i am getting close...

https://www.shopcomposition.com

and

http://www.jackspade.com

Colour schemes is something we all work with day in, day out. Every time we do it, we spend at least an hour just playing around with colours and 90% of that is getting it wrong...and then we find one or two we want to try out.
Here is a site that might save you hours and actually give you some really useful ideas of what colours may go with what. You might not use it directly but definetly a good starting point.
Also included are illustrator and psd files you can download and use straight away.

http://beta.dailycolorscheme.com/

and http://www.colourlovers.com/

Fantastic panoramas ...Here is one of Sydney

Here are some from Apolo 11-17 spacecraft landings.

I just love the way it just takes up your whole screen and off you go. I wonder what this looks like on a 32in screen!

At panoramas.dk you can see interactive 360 degree panoramas, also called
VR Photography, by some of the best VR Photographers in the world. They are presented in Fullscreen and you need Quicktime

New panoramas are presented weekly. Scroll down for the last features. The Archive contains more than 300 panoramas from all the world.
Read help for more info.




More here

Hey there Londoners, as its a sunny day, how about a walk on the beach?

Have a great weekend all!


Special Defects is the personal experimental project and digital playground of Antonio Costa. For more information on Antonio, please visit his personal site at www.010175.com

This is for all of you who like swinging the frying pan once in a while...

I just stumbled over it on the net and I think the idea is neat: click at the ingredients that are in your fridge or cupboard and the site will find  you a (hopefully) tasty recipe. To be honest, I haven't tried it yet and a first test where I clicked beef, butter, cheese and pineapples gave me this recipe:  Greenbeans with parmesan and black pepper ;)

So, the effectivity of the site remains to be seen and the looks are really old-fashioned, but I guess it's worth a shot if you have a weird collection of stuff in your fridge...could be fun, anyway!

If you try this, share your experiences with us here!!

This is the link...

Check out these photos by photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten.
I think they are really interesting in the way that she plays with the scale of the human figure and the world surrounding it. These photos show everyday moments and movements while at the same time being unreal to an extent which is odd and playfull at the same time.
Eyemazing Gallery writes "Julia's technical virtuosity allows her to use complex visual strategies that play on the viewer's habitual perception of the natural versus the artificial. Her images combine a high degree of stylistic slickness with a sense of oddness resulting from the use of studio lighting in outdoor photographs".
She is a graduate from the Berkshire College of Art and Design and lives in London.

Fantastic exhibition of Gilbert and George at the Tate Modern in London.

This long-awaited exhibition is the largest ever to explore the remarkable art of Gilbert & George. This is the first major exhibition of a British Artist at the Tate Modern. If you haven't been to see it yet, now is the time!


There are also some great intro movies by Gilbert and George on Tate's website. Check them out here.

Description:

Gilbert & George place themselves, their thoughts and their feelings at the centre of their art, and almost all of the images they use are gathered within walking distance of their home in London’s East End. Yet their pictures capture a broad human experience, encompassing an astonishing range of emotions and themes, from rural idylls to gritty images of a decaying London; from fantastical brightly-coloured panoramas to raw examinations of humanity stripped bare; from sex advertisements to religious fundamentalism.

Info

Hello All,

Just a little update on Allmightys developments.

As you can see, we now have live voting and we hope you have been enjoying scoring your favorite designs. Without giving too much away, currently in the lead are three great designs. The results keep changing so we don't want to reveal anything. Someone you think will stay in the lead suddenly looses it because only 2 more people have voted for other designs, e.g. scored more other designs that the ones in the lead. It is really very hard to tell which one will win so until the last moment, we will not know. For example, one shirt has been in the lead for the past 4 days and its still very close but not no.1 anymore. The same applies for all other designs ...when you think they are at the bottom, suddenly the shoot up and it doesn't take much for the to move into the first three.

So, the voting ends on Monday 12th March. Thats 10 days away and plenty of time.
Once the voting has been completed we will announce the winners and move onto getting them printed as soon as possible. If you have not qualified in the first three, don't worry, we might print some of you too. Unfortunately, though, we cant offer you any prizes but your designs may still be worn. We will get in touch with you in due course.
With regard to the shop, we expect that to be up as soon as we print the first batch of the winners. At the moment we estimate sometime end of March but we will keep you posted.

We are also at the moment thinking about the next competition. Different to the launch one, next one will be themed. Don't worry, it wont be a specific thing but rather a more general theme. This should happen in a week or so. Keep checking the site and if you have any ideas/suggestions on the future competitions themes, please let us know.

We hope you enjoyed the update and we will be in touch again soon.

Yours,

We have a pretty small kitchen at home and have been looking for a nice toaster for a year or so. Every time we walk into a store selling kitchen equipment we always end up looking at toasters. Each one is bulky and just looks silly. Why should a toaster be center piece of your kitchen?  I could never understand why objects that we use so rarely (twice a day max) should take up so much space on a working surface.

Here is someone with a fresh view..dont you just want it!

designer's own words:
There has been little development of the toaster since the start of the century, whilst other appliances have developed and improved incorporating new technologies and thinking, toaster have remained relatively untouched. When the toaster was first invented eating toast was a social activity that took place on the breakfast table, these days toasters have been relegated to cheap plastic objects hidden away in the kitchen landscape. This toaster is designed to engage the user, re-invigorating the social context of toasting by questioning everything about what we toast with today. I was also keen to make playful object to be proud of having on your breakfast table. Slip moulded bone china allowed me create this intricate and sculptural form, but also provided the material longevity that I required. This is a toaster that brings life and joy to a stagnant domestic appliance, and iconic object for the home.

(via designboom)