The Chip Shop Awards are different to most awards out there. It has no rules. It has no regulations. It has no baggage. So if some of your best ideas are yet to see the light of day because they bombed in research, you have not yet won the client concerned, or they haven’t a hope in hell of getting passed the regulators, then the Chip Shops are for you. Check out some great work here
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Watching anything in slow motion is cool, thats why lots of adverts, websites and films have use this effect.
Imagine you’ve hired a slow motion camera for work, then imagine that you’ve shot all the footage you need and there is still time before you have to return the camera.
Well this is what Action Figure did - Slow motion
A blog entirely devoted to the Ampersand!!
At the weekend I went to see this exhibition at the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. It features more than 100 posters charting the history of the games and their eras through design, including prints from post-war London 1948, remarkably modern designs from Melbourne 1956 and works by David Hockney and Andy Warhol. Tokyo 1964 and Mexico 1968 are my favourite, but take a look for yourself…
Netlife Research illustrate several misuses of Web 2.0 interface elements in their 2008 Bad Usability Calendar. You can download a PDF of the calendar and print it in your office as a reminder of what not to do.
Great ad for Nike Football, shot from a first person perspective by Guy Ritchie
Dangerous Mike and I have spent the weekend at a tinker.it workshop, learning about Arduino. It’s a simple yet powerful board with a microprocessor that can be programmed using a language similar to processing.
Pretty soon after you’ve created your first working circuit, you start to realise that the possibilities are limitless. It can accept a variety of digital and analogue inputs, and can feed back to a computer, or be used to control any number of devices.
Already it has been linked up to numerous Flash applications, used to create a glockenspiel that plays a tune based on the magnetic strip on the back of your favourite credit card… Or you could use it to control a espresso machine, using a Wii remote. If you really wanted to.
And to think, some people waste a beautiful sunny weekend by going outside and sitting in parks or pubs.
While researching something completely different, I discovered there’s a whole community out there dedicated to collecting and documenting pencils and erasers. Even though I’m only casually interested in them, it’s still fascinating to see the variety of designs out there and how things have and haven’t changed. I also learned interesting but useless trivia like the origin of the electronics company Sharp’s name - it’s from their first product, the EverSharp mechanical pencil, from 1915. I was also surprised by how long ago the first mechanical pencil was invented. They may seem like a ‘modern’ product, but they were first invented in 1822.
Some select pencil sites:
- Wooden pencils: Pencil Talk, Brand Name Pencils
- Mechanical pencils: Dave’s Mechanical Pencils
- Erasers: Joy of Erasers, Erasersworld
We love this. Architect Adam Kalkins changed this compact container to an Illy Caffe. In 90 seconds it turns into to a fully furnished and functional space with a kitchen, dining room, bathroom, bedroom, living room and library. All materials used are recyclable or recycled, great!