29 February 2008

Brit Insurance Designs of the Year

An exhibition of the 100 best projects of design of the year in the Design Museum in London.

I liked very much some of the projects, especially in the Interactive session. Although, I was a bit disappointed with the Graphic Design session. I was expecting a bit more in terms of experimentation, new materials, print process...

The projects that interested me most were:

- Sketch Furniture, by Front
The group Front have developed a process to turn "air" sketches into real furniture.
Watch the video
Read more in the Front website

- Your house, by Olafur Eliasson.

This book was designed by Olafur Eliasson who relates the experimental narrative of reading a book to walking through a house.


- Sharkrunners, by area/code
Sharkrunners is an online game created for the 20th anniversary of the Discovery Channel's Shark Week.
In the game, players become virtual sharks researchers, but the sharks in the game are the real white sharks with GPS, which provides the position and movement of the real sharks.
Play the game

- Private View Exhibition for Trussardi, Palazzo Trussardi Alla Scala, Milan, by Paul Cocksedge
An exhibition at the Salone del Mobile in Milan. The walls are covered with a filter that for human eyes it appears black. People discover the hidden objects using their mobile cameras or digital cameras.

- The Replenishing Body Kiosk, by Ross Phillips

An interactive video installation where visitors were invited to make a one-second video recording which become part of the video portrait.

Showstudio website

15 February 2008

Animated Exeter


We went for this event especially for the Quay Brother's talk, which was very quick and superficial.

Besides the talk, there was an exhibition with their work (the puppets and models) which was really interesting see the scales and the quality of the models and scenario. We could see the effort they put in details and the choice of materials.

We also watched the session of their short films ("Quay Brothers: a short Collection"). Some of them, I've seen in DVD before, but of course the experience is different in big screen. The movies were: "The Comb", "Street of Crocodiles", "This Unnameable Little Broom", "The Mascot" and "Are we still married?". What I most liked was "The Mascot", a story of a puppy that try to steal an orange but everyone wants that orange and try to get from him.

Other talks we attended:
- Pitch Perfect (with Marion Edwards, Matthew Sagar, Tim Searle, David Freedman and Lucy Murphy)
- Animate & Educate Conference, with Curtis Jobling (Bob the Builder, Frankstein's Cat)