The visual impact of these Suicide Awareness posters are already very high – but what I really liked about them are also perhaps the depth behind. The core message on the posters read: “Help yourself”- and it’s so cool that the falling men/women were rescued by the outline that they were cut from – the concept here isn’t simply a superficial visual trick to grab attention, but gels really well with the message itself.
The winners of the IDSA 2007 are out – here’s the link to a gallery of goodness in product design – see if you get inspired by some (hopefully many) of them!
[Some winners shown above in the picture: The HomeHero Fire Extinguisher – the stylish and yet functionally expressive design encourages home owners to display rather than hide them, ensuring its reachability when seconds matter; The Aliph Bluetooth Headset packaging, which highlights the product instead of hiding it in layers of packaging; The Universal Toilet, a student design concept that aims to remove the excessive maneuvering a wheelchair user has to go through even in current toilet designs].
I know the title doesn’t make sense, but really, someone should implement this in ALL cinemas – how often do you see people so excited about this usually-boring time? That’s probably an even more engaging experience than the movie itself!
This strip by Tom Fishburne really nails it, doesn’t it?
(Greenwashing is a term that is used to describe a company, government, or other organization that advertises positive environmental practices while acting in the opposite.)
The superlative description on its homepage (seems it is already defunct) – “Newest functional innovation in the handkerchief since the Dark Ages! Dont call it a handkerchief, call it a NosePouch!” amused me. At the same time it also makes me want to dismiss it as yet another entry in “one-of-those-inventions”. But, (perhaps influenced by my current runny nose), I reconsidered and questioned myself – why was my first reaction to dismiss it? What was the gap between this and those which I’d exclaim “why didn’t I think of that”?
Does it not solve a problem? Well I think it does – the pouch-design would help to contain the goo from a case of bad flu. Even while many have converted to tissue papers, there are still the steadfast handkerchief group – so marketing may not be an issue either. Could it be simply down to the unpolished presentation and web design? Probably.
It really matters how you package it.
If you’re the kind of person who notices little things and likes to know why are things a certain way – this might be a neat gem. The Color+Design blog has compiled a list (actually, now two) of some of the trivia behind why specific colors are attributed to a certain item or notion: why is the envy monster green? Why does the leader of the Tour de France wear a yellow jersey (and why does the Italian one wear pink)? Why is the US dollar the greenback?
If these questions-and-answers fascinate you (as they are for me), be glad that there are over 20 of them right here!
Mmm, it’s amazing how art can lift even the most ugly and stinky (literally) dump truck into something that – *gasp* – one might even look forward to, as evidenced by how New York city has to shuffle its truck schedules so that more people can see the truck murals (they have covered 6 of them with artwork):
“We’re going to rotate them so more neighborhoods can see them,” said John A. Liszewski, the commissioner of the Public Works Department for this city of about 200,000. He would like to see the rest of his fleet undergo makeovers if his staff can attract more private sponsors.
Now if they could apply that to trains, light rails, trams, buses too…
Wow, Google Earth suddenly doesn’t feel all that fun at all now that I’ve seen HongKong Edushi in 3D. With a striking resemblance to a SimCity style of urban cartography, it makes it seem like the website itself is the destination, rather than simply a representation of a real place (man, maybe I’ve got a dose too much of Jean Baudrillard).
Anyway, it’s fun, it’s zoomable, it’s navigable, and it’s all in intricate, 3d, glorious details! Go on, you know you want to play!
Most of us have mobile phones – they have become so pervasive in modern life that mobile phone usage rate in some major cities like Singapore and Hong Kong have passed 100%, and in Luxembourg, the figure actually stands at a whopping 164% (1.64 mobile phones for every person).
And yet, many of us still keep a house phone – some may keep them because of latency or legacy (some old friends may only have that as contact), but most of the time the reason is more economical – phone charges on the mobile phone is much more expensive than a residential land line, and so it still makes sense if there is moderate to heavy usage of telephones while at home.
T-Mobile recognized this, and came up with the mobile phone that can “roam” across both cellular and home WiFi networks.
When it’s in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it and dial it the same as always — you still get call hold, caller ID, three-way calling and all the other features — but now your voice is carried by the Internet rather than the cellular airwaves.
These phones hand off your calls from Wi-Fi network to cell network seamlessly and automatically, without a single crackle or pop to punctuate the switch. As you walk out of a hot spot, fewer and fewer Wi-Fi signal bars appear on the screen, until — blink! — the T-Mobile network bars replace them. (The handoff as you move in the opposite direction, from the cell network into a hot spot, is also seamless, but takes slightly longer, about a minute.)
It’s about time! Works with any router (great!) – but with T-Mobile’s, you get some advantages like the router prioritizing your call so downloads won’t degrade the call quality.
I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, and I do hope it comes to where I stay. That will sure save some money!
[via New York Times]
Nokia has launched the 7500 Prism model in China, positioned as a fashion phone with a very unique keypad composed of diamond-shapes (alright, if you are that particular, diamond shape from triangles). It’s certainly a fresh approach to the standard keypad – some blog sites have been calling it fugly, but I actually quite like it. Not sure about the actual product/finishing, but from the glam shot, it gives a rather sculptural quality to an otherwise ordinary handphone.
I’m not sure where the designers got their ideas from – I’ve just put together some images that could’ve been the inspirations – clockwise from left: the Prada store in Tokyo designed by Herzog & de Meuron, a classic ladies Chanel handbag, and the Bank of China in Hong Kong. Or maybe… since this positioned as a fashion phone presumably targeted primarily at girls, it just stems from the old adage “diamonds are a girl’s best friend”?
