Design is about solving problems. Here’s a good example. Around the world people still fetch water in buckets, carrying them long distances on their heads. This limits the amount they can carry and isn’t great on their spines. With a simple design like this even kids can move fifty gallons of eater and have fun doing it.
The Q-Drum
TriFilm Productions | YouTube | Apr 09
If you’re interested in helping make the Q-Drum available to more people, visit their website at http://www.qdrum.co.za/
For those of you over 40, this is how books used to be produced. They called it “craftsmanship”. The goal was quality, not profit. Esthetic value, not mass-market expediency. You could take one of these things and put it on your shelf (called a “bookcase) where you and your guests could admire and read it any time you wanted. You could loan it freely or even give it away as a Christmas present. Maybe someday, when we reach a new level of technology, we will rediscover the wonder of these simple documents so lovingly made and beautifully designed…
Pictorial Webster’s
John Carrera | Quercus Press | 2011
________________________________________________________________________________ John Carrera is Proprietor of Quercus Press: Letterpress and Bindery in Waltham, MA.
Massoud Hassani grew up in Kabul, Afghanistan at a time when kicking a soccer ball in the sand could get you killed. So like artists everywhere he used that experience to create a solution which was both beautiful and useful. Hassani is planning a show at MOMA in New York. Strange how even war can produce remarkable art…
A Sculpture That Clears Mines
Massoud Hassani | TED | Nov 12
________________________________________________________________________________ Massoud Hassani is an artist and designer who grew up in Kabul Afghanistan. Mine Kafon will be part of the collection MOMA (New York) and Hassani will also have an exposition in there in March 2013.
When I ride a bike where we live I am in direct competition for space with cars and trucks. They always win. Years ago the idea that people would stop smoking in public places was considered radical, impossible, crazy. Today providing well lit and safe bike paths everywhere is considered too costly, politically inconvenient, impossible. As gasoline prices and healthcare costs continue to rise that thinking will go up in smoke along with cigarettes…
I’ve been trying to get this point across to clients for 40 years…
Deadlines
Café Communications | 28 Sept 11
________________________________________________________________________________ Café Communications designs and executes communication solutions in Central and Eastern Europe.
This may strike you as a bit esoteric but the idea that a robot can grip and pick up virtually any object by using ground coffee and a balloon is pretty remarkable. If you think I’m going bananas here, watch this video…
You may not be an aeronautical engineer but this video will interest you anyway. When we were sailing we learned that the reason we could go from here to there was because Bernoulli said we could. Turns out he may have been wrong. Or at least our understanding of what he said may be wrong. If all this sounds a bit odd just watch this fascinating video about how to fold paper and make it fly better than a butterfly…
“The Paper Airplane Guy”
Will Smith and Norman Chan | Tested.com | 27 Mar 12
________________________________________________________________________________ John Collins folds paper airplanes for a living, and recently designed a plane that broke the world record for longest flight. Here, he shares a few of his secrets and favorite creations.
Now students, this video shows the manufacturing of a book. That’s “book”, defined as a written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers. A book is something you read in order to gain knowledge, learn about history or ideas, to experience another’s dreams or share personal experience. Books are not a a digital gadget. They do not glow in the dark. They come in millions of colors and forms and they are often full of marvelous illustrations, drawings, photos or diagrams. If you ever have an opportunity to hold a book in your hands you should take the opportunity to see what a joyful invention they are. Unfortunately the opportunities for doing that are coming to a close…
Raphael Boguslav is the subject of this video. Until he died in 2010 he was one of the world’s great calligraphers and type designers. He worked for years in New York and later in Newport, Rhode Island. I am particularly taken by his comments about the time it takes to do good work. I would suggest this is true of all creative efforts, always contradicted by the imperatives of clients who cannot understand why things take so long and cost what they do. Today’s master craftsmen are programmers. Their palette is the computer. The tools are code. But the time and perseverance required to create good work have not diminished…
A Disappearing Art
Raphael Boguslav | YouTube | 2010
Note: Embedding this video has been disabled. However it may be viewed at YouTube.
The pace of change brought about by new technology is staggering and the rate keeps getting faster. I am typing these words on a computer that was unthinkable 25 years ago. Today one person can do the work of dozens in a fraction of the time with greater accuracy and complexity and do it, as I did, on a sailboat cruising the Bahamas. This is possible because of technology, inventiveness and our relentless drive to improve how we do things. Nevertheless, this progress does not come without cost. A look back at how things used to be done reveals some of what we have given up in the quest to digitize our way to the future…
A Short Film About Letterpress
Danny Cooke | Vimeo | Jan 12
____________________________________________________________________________ Film-maker, Director of Photography and Editor, Danny Cooke works as a freelance film-maker, cinematographer and editor based in South-West England.
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