I’m excited to announce the launch of a new blog, Type/Code, with a handful of fellow designers here in New York City. Here is the “official” press release:
Type/Code is a collective of like-minded, emerging designers, developers, and artists that came together after a series of collaborations while studying at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Each member holds their own set of specialities and interests ranging from custom lettering and graphics, to creating compelling experiences, all the way to writing efficient server code. As a group we work to realize the possibilities created by the seamless integration of technology and design.
Type/Code is:
Andrew Mahon
Axel Esquite
Erik Carter
Lev Kanter
Ryan Riegner
Lucas Sharp
Zeke Shore
The Type/Code Blog will focus on all of the things that we find interesting. Primarily, we will post about design, art, technology, our own work, and commentary on others’ work. Content will range from web and print design to games and new forms of interaction. In addition to our own posts, we are actively soliciting a range of contributors whose ideas we think you might like to hear.
A few months ago I was approached by the Boston based social network Going.com, asking if I might be interested in helping to design and develop their first mobile application. Going.com is focused on letting users find interesting places and events, and connect with other users based on who is going where, and when. Since their core mechanic involves pushing users away from their computers, branching into the mobile world was their logical next step.
Let me start out by disclaiming that I had never designed anything for mobile. Ever. The closest that I had come to mobile was doing web interface design for the mobile start up Zingku a few years ago, back in the SMS days… before any graphical user interface was realistic for mobile devices.
So I had to sell myself to this potential client as honestly as possible. I know user experience design, I know graphical user interface design, and of course, I have used a mobile device plenty. Maybe it was my charm, more likely it was my ‘lower-than-normal-I’m-learning-this-as-we-go’ price quote, but they decided to let me take a crack at it.
My essay on Perception and Digital art was recently displayed at the Aronson Gallery at Parsons School of Design. While the essay mostly explored criteria for the critical evaluation of artwork within rapidly evolving mediums, it led me to a project idea.
Art and technology have always influenced each other as artists respond to the evolving tools that are available to them. The only thing that has changed since the dawn of the information age is the rate at which technology is advancing. The side effect of this is that we start to see projects that have arguably been constructed purely because the possibility of their creation exists. As we transitioned into the digital era, the philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said “the medium is the message,” which feels like a limiting assertion when more and more of today’s art is driven or inspired by the digital technology that defines it’s medium, rather than an idea outside of its own medium. As technology progresses exponentially, allowing ‘the medium to be the message’ is akin to allowing a representational painting to entirely describe ones understanding of the physical world around them. While a representational painting can provide an abstracted visual interpretation of the physical world, artists of the Neo-Concrete, Op-Art, and Space and Light Art movements (among others) have shown us that art is capable of providing more possibilities. Art is capable of providing us with insight into our actual perception of the world around us, rather than just an abstracted representation of it.
Digital Art seems to be at greater risk of becoming a pure demonstration of it’s own medium, as tools and processes become available faster than messages beyond ‘look at these new possibilities’ can be conceived by those with the means to execute them.
This past semester at Parsons I had an assignment in one of my classes to design a concert poster. Let me walk through the whole process from the brief to the final poster, and explain the steps that I took, and the decisions that I made along the way.
The Brief
The band I was going to be designing a concert poster for was the Bristol England based trip-hop group Portishead. The final poster was to be 18” by 24” and include extensive information about the show’s venue, barbes, in Brooklyn NY. The “client” (actually my professor and the rest of my class in this situation) wanted to explore a couple different concept directions that we could then pair down to a final design that felt the strongest, refine that a bit, and get it ready for print.
With the start of the new year, I thought I might showcase some of the more brilliant work my peers have been doing in the Communication Design and Technology department at Parsons School of Design over the past few months. These guys never stop inspiring me, and it’s an honor to be working with them.
Andrew Mahon
Interaction designer Andrew Mahon recently did an algorithmic music visualization for a song by the Apex Twin. He built this with the C++ library Open Frameworks and Open GL, mostly as an exploration in algorithmic animation, but the results are very engaging. This piece is the culmination of a whole series of algorithmic animations that he has been experimenting with, which can all be seen on his Vimeo page. You can also follow Andrew on his Tumblr blog for a constant stream of musings, ideas, and inspiring imagery and videos.
As Google Friend Connect goes out of private beta, I thought I would provide some comments on Google’s new attempt to change how people interact on the web. I had a chance to integrate Goggle Friend Connect into my latest project, Billboard For The People, and gain some insight into where this service holds value, and how I think it should evolve in the future.
It is with great pleasure that I announce the launch of my latest project, Billboard for the People: A Public Celebration of Progress. Deroy Peraza, over at Hyperakt Design Group had the brilliant idea of channeling all of this positive energy surrounding the election of Barack Obama into a grassroots effort to congratulate our president elect with a massive billboard in New York City.
The idea is pretty simple…
Step 1: We all donate some money over at BillboardForThePeople.com. If you are feeling inspired and generous, and can toss in some serious coin, fantastic! However, even if it’s just a few dollars, every little bit counts.
Step 2: We tell all of our friends about this initiative, and hopefully raise $25,000 by December 15th… Be sure to Digg it, join on FriendConnect and Facebook, etc, to help spread the word.
Step 3: We install a beautiful congratulatory billboard in Manhattan designed by Deroy Peraza, and the good folks over at Hyperakt, just in time for Obama’s inauguration, and welcome him into the White House with style.
After doing so much design work for Web 2.0 start ups, I made this satirical start up investment pitch video about a year ago, but never really pushed it out. Now with the market in the hole, it seemed appropriate that I offer the tech industry a few ideas… Venture Capitalists, feel free to get in touch.
Saturday was the opening of The New Hope exhibit in Geneva, Switzerland, which I had the honor of doing a piece for with Hyperakt Design Group. After gaining international attention for an Obama poster designed by Deroy Peraza at Hyperakt, the studio was asked to do a full series inspired by Obama’s message of hope, to be exhibited at the Flux Laboratory in Geneva. I contributed a Flash-based interactive piece called Kids Vote 2008 which explores kids’ perspectives on the election through an interactive cloud of comments on the two presidential candidates. While the piece is currently being projected at the Flux Laboratory, it can also be experience online at:
I was responsible for the interaction design and front end development of this piece, and with a two week deadline, was left with little time for sleep over the past two weeks. However, with the site live now, and on display in Geneva, all the hard work feels pretty good.
While it is a little too early to hear any direct feedback from the show in Geneva, Kids Vote 2008 has already started to get some attention around the web, with a “Fresh Picks” feature on the website Moluv, a mention on the Communication Arts website, and a blurb on E-Creative.net.
