Made with Paper

Made with Paper

Made with Paper

More foot than hand. I think it still counts.

Made with Paper

self portrait 

Made with Paper

Slightly off topic, but there are hands in there.

Made with Paper

Made with Paper

Made with Paper

Made with Paper

CELEBRATE BOB: Moog Chief Engineer On Google Doodle (by MoogMusicInc)

http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/

gregmelander:

BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS

“A two minute overview of the Business Model Canvas, a tool for visionaries, game changers, and challengers.” This tool looks interesting for analyzing business models for any start up. via prettyfresh

a chart about which chart to use

(via This Inspiring Note Greets Apple’s New Hires on Their First Day)

(by velluminous rex)

(via Milo&Ben | Grid Wall)

gorgeous indie video game

Chasing Aurora — Mood Teaser Trailer (by BrokenRulesGames)

(via Fancy - Transformer 613TF Jumbo Marker by Molotow)

polyhead:

http://www.industrialdesignserved.com/gallery/Cardboard-Stealth-Chair/1130521

fastcompany:

Using Origami To Mock-Up Ingenious Gestural Interfaces

springwise:

Trackers embedded in athlete’s apparel provide live in-game data for coaches

Devices that help athletes monitor their performance have been around for a while and are starting to encompass a range of sports – we recently reported on the Swimtag wristband, which acts as a training aid for those heading to the pool. Taking the concept one step further, adidas is set to test its miCoach performance-tracking system on world-class soccer players during a live game in July. READ MORE…

nbmoutreach:

Lucy McRae, body architect.

(via The Dream Society | PechaKucha Presentations)

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

architecturemas:

MoorRoom pavilion, Krumbach – Austria (2009).

Paul Steurer, with Bernardo Bader + Rene Bechter

thexxsoundboard:

Whitest Boy Alive - Golden Cage (Live on BBC 2)

tylrd:

archispasm:

Soak, Dye in Light

“Dying fabric is a time-honored tradition of humankind. Local materials such as herbs, flowers, rocks, juice of animals or shells have been used through the dying process. Especially in Korea, people have deep affection toward the unique colors and textures of fabric dyed with traditional materials. Now in the age of new media, we tried a whole new way of coloring fabrics with the essential materials of new media, ‘light’ and ‘interactivity’. Also, as a meta-creative interactive installation, ‘Soak’ can be expanded for creating garments with personalized patterns or textile productions using today’s digital fabric printing technologies.”

via Creative Applications Network

Full screen for this one.

purestform:

Typical Structures within Groups

Who Shall Survive?
A New Approach to The Problem of Human Interrelations
Moreno, 1934

tylrd:

(via ponoko)

(via An Ultra-Minimalist Cabin Takes A-Frames To The Limit | Co.Design: business innovation design)

I’m experimenting with sumi-e.

This is an essay about the philosophy of vellum, a drawing app for iPhone. It took a fierce reductionist approach to interaction design for drawing. I’ve since discontinued its development, but a follow up venture is in the works.

Drawing is precious.

Drawing is a precious activity to me. It is calm, reflective, and joyful. It can be simple and spare. One only needs paper, pencil, and — if one desires — pen. With a single stroke, one can create a mark that is beautifully varied in weight, from light/spare to heavy/dense, just by varying the pressure applied to the pencil and the speed of one’s hand.

How the common app treats drawing.

A common thread among drawing apps for iOS is a disregard for simplicity and a disinterest in creating joyful experiences for their artist-customers. For instance, to make a mark of variable weight (as described above) in the typical drawing app, I would:

1. Begin drawing a line.
2. Stop.
3. Open a menu.
4. Drag a slider to change the line weight.
5. Close the menu.
6. Continue drawing.
7. Go to step 2.

The common approach is to interrupt the user’s flow (that vague thing that happens between intention and execution) with menus. For expert users — the ones who create elaborate, detailed compositions for magazine covers and are able to devote large blocks of time to crafting their compositions — this is ok. For the busy person looking to make a quick sketch during the mundane moments that happen while engaged in public transportation or queuing up for coffee, this is not ok. The common approach is to make the simple aspects of drawing feel like a hassle.

Vellum’s approach.

So how can the act of drawing on a touchscreen feel more natural? In Vellum, I’ve attempted to make simple-drawings as simple to make as possible. Some strategies taken:

• Removing menus (reducing their number to a bare minimum).
• Using the speed of one’s finger as a substitute for pressure — slow gestures produce different marks than fast ones. A single gesture can have slow parts and fast ones.
• The accumulation of marks happens quickly and can be beautiful. This visual feedback is positive and helps create a joyful experience for the user.
• Delayed marks in Ink mode help make the experience of drawing beautiful. Slow gestures cause the ink to bleed into the canvas, a calming time based effect.
• Reducing the number of tools in the toolset to a bare minimum. When I aim to make a quick sketch in the physical world, I only ever carry pen and paper. I don’t believe that one needs dozens of brushes, pens, pencils to produce a “quick sketch.”

My process: how software development informs design.

Vellum 1.0 offers 3 possible drawing modes: Graphite, Ink, and Scratch. Each responds to input differently; graphite and Ink allow for additive drawing, while Scratch allows one to draw in a subtractive way.

The iPhone is an especially resource constrained device. The specific marks of each tool emerged through iterative experimentation and testing on various devices (primarily an iPhone 3GS and a first-generation iPhone). The behaviors of each tool are intended to embrace the underlying technology.

For instance, the mechanics of Ink mode are based on a drawing tool I developed in 2004 called Droom Zaacht. A straight port of it would have been too resource-intensive on a first-gen iPhone to be practical. The version implemented in Vellum is stripped down, retaining the spirit of the original tool, but less fancy with regard to time-based motion effect.

I’m learning TileMill, a wonderful design tool for making custom slippymaps from data. Above are screens from a minimal map I made from OpenStreetMap data. I’ve since taken this offline, since mapbox was charging an arm and leg to host this thing.

• Pink dots are every point of interest that OSM knows about
• Roads, buildings, road labels, and building labels are from OSM
• City labels are from Natural Earth
• Neighborhood labels are from Zillow
• It took about 4 hours to render tiles for zoom levels 10 to 18 for New York
• It took about 12 hours to upload

Self portraits made with kinect and processing

I am experimenting with folds and maps.

I wrote a processing sketch to map crowdsourced iPhone logs from crowdflow.net.

Some screens from Vellum for iPad, a drawing app I wrote last year but never released. It was focused on replicating the formal aspects of natural media, while making every mark beautiful, even if you’re not good at drawing. I’ve since contributed it to a new creative code venture that some colleagues will be launching later this year.

Fiddling with vector fields for a new project.

• GitHub-like system for drawings: fork any drawing, create new work based on original work. 
• Follow a drawing, artist, or curator: allow curation in addition to creation.
• Like a drawing.
• Something to defeat/discourage NSFW content
• Missions consisting of simple, sol lewitt-style, instructions to complete. What are the emergent properties of a community making such drawings?
• Badges 
• User-contributed inks, brushes, and papers. 
• Marketplace: a system in which users can sell custom inks/papers to other users.
• Web client (free)
• Device clients (paid)

I’ve been writing drawing software on and off since 2003. Here are some noteworthy highlights.

2004 — Droom Zaacht

Sample drawings from my first drawing app, Droom Zaacht, courtesy of the fantabulous Auriea. Try the demo.

2005

A program that iterates over the recorded gesture of its user.

2007

Another program that iterates over the recorded gesture of its user. This was a collaboration with graphic designer Joe Gilmore. The resulting motion graphic was projected on a public screen in Millenium Square, Leeds.

Output from a pen tablet-responsive drawing system.

2009

A program that lets one draw 3-dimensional forms in the style of MOS’s winning entry in PS1’s Young Architects Competition. If one were to put such a tool online, could the design of architectural forms be crowdsourced, a la Amazon’s Mechanical Turk?

A simple tool for making stippled drawings. You can try it here.

And, if you came here via vellumapp.com, you’re likely aware of my iPhone app for drawing. It is currently at version 1.0 and very much a work in progress. I’ll write about the design of Vellum at a future date.