KonzeptioNerd

Beautility

More timeshift-blogging (i.e. finishing a draft months after it was current news). … I guess the first time I looked at UNIQLOCK was back in 2005 just after its release. And in truth I was, well, underwhelmed. The featured fashion by UNIQLO does not match my style and the hypnotizing beauty of the dancers totally [...]

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Don’t Touch

With half a free day in London on Sunday, I skipped into my favourite Science Museum. After five minutes or so I realized my mouth was hanging open in a rather stupid manner. But that was fine, as in most other museums, I catch myself after five minutes muttering agck agck under my breath. The [...]

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Yes - but, wait, no

You cannot fully evaluate any creative work unless you know the constraints within which it was created.
… said Jesse James Garrett on his blog yesterdy.
First reaction: sympathetic. Ah, the temptation to present a newly launched project with a caveat in the lines of “but, of course, the client insisted … and then the lead designer [...]

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Bottle business - how user testing might have saved my shirt

If you’re familiar with German meeting rooms, you probably know the single serving Granini juice bottle that are often part of the catering: stubby little glass bottles with wide necks and nubbed bodies. There’s a typical gesture to drinking Granini from those small bottles. Grab the neck with your right hand. Place your thumb firmly [...]

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To name is to create (on Mark Bernstein on Wikis)

Mark Bernstein asks interesting things about Wikis these days, for example: is it possible to link ironically, or lyrically, in a wiki?. Mark argues that “to name is to link” and that “a link to SomePage goes to that page; it can’t easily lead to a commentary or a rebuttal or an alternative or an [...]

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see #3 conference

Visualize Information
Third see conference in Wiesbaden, yesterday. Cool location Caligari FilmBühne), relaxed atmosphere, nice conference.
The see series focuses on the visualization of information and the organizers, web design agency Scholz & Volkmer, managed a lineup of resounding names, engaging speakers:

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Banging Things into Shape

Norbert Bolz’s “design manifesto for the 21st century”, bang design makes a good companion read for Sterling’s Shaping Things. Bolz writes in reaction to developments similar to those Sterling picks up: The future of the thing in the age of its digital taggability1, and the “body in the age of its technical reproductability” (p. 135).
bang [...]

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What you want (to be)

At first I thought, Paul Arden’s It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be was your average load of motivational mumbo-jumbo. One reason for this may be the misleading German title, which translates exactly to It’s not who you are, but who you want to be, putting the whole thing [...]

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Shaping Things

I think I first read about Shaping Things on Peter Merholze’s blog. And at any rate, the prospect of reading Bruce Sterling (whose fiction writing I appreciate) on (product) design was quite appealing. However, I guess I need to adopt a different strategy if I hope to get anyone to click through my Amazon links [...]

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