: barajas airport

I just had to share this. Upon arriving in Madrid on my way to the OFFF 09 festival in Lisbon, I awoke to a very bright morning and an amazing architectural treat that is Barajas airport. The new terminal was completed in 2006, cost 1 billion dollars, covers 8,180,572 square feet, and is beautiful.

Antonio Lamela and Richard Rogers are credited as the designers and architects. It was designed to maximize light, and create as much of a stress-free environment for air travelers as possible. Truly adhering to human centered design principals really shines through here.

One more very ineresting element of the terminal - it is as I said before 1 kilometer long. It uses support beams that thrust upwards to both sides at every 10 meters. Each one of these beams is painted a slightly varying hue from dark blue on one end to purple on the other. The effect is a graduated rainbow of sorts inside the building that stretches just about as far as the eye can see. You can also determine the location of your gate by the color patters. For instance, your gate number will also be assigned a color on the airport signage. BRILLIANT and FABULOUS! Its amazing what can be achieved when the way that humans interact with experiences is made paramount in the design. See pictures below.

: offf 09 - day 2

Robert L. Peters

This presenter started off his talk with a disclaimer. He said he was probably the only one there who would be using Power Point slides, and that he was probably old enough to be most of the attendees father. Regardless, his talk brought a lot of great and traditional ideas to the front. In particular, his thoughts as a sort of disciple of Marshall McLuhan reminded us all that there was something before the digital world and that it still has much to teach us.

I especial liked the Maxim for his company Circle Design Inc. Check out the site, there is also some great quotes from current and past figures that are both insightful and thought provoking.



You may or may not know his name, but you have probably seen or heard of his work. Probably best known these days for his work on the British über alterna-rock band Radiohead's video "House of Cards". He used experimental laser cameras, processing coding language, and a custom 3d rendering engine to create not just the video, but also an open source library of all the code for group experimentation of interactive projects. As far as interactive designer rock-stars go, he is it.

Aaron is very much a proponent of "group-think" and "crowd sourcing" for design and development. He said something quite interesting which is that the actions of the group average out the failures (failure being a key theme this year), and in the end makes it a better project. Not new I guess. Its something that all open source communities count on. I think the special point here is that it can be used to develop very pure interactive experiences. Something perhaps beyond functionality, and touching on a pure human experience and art.

Check out Bicycle Built for 2,000. It is an interactive experience of over two thousand voices collected over the internet compiled and singing "Daisy Bell". The end result is interesting, but even better is the ability to dig down into each note of the song to compare submissions.


Champaigne Valentine



And now for sometng completely different. Inspite the fact that these guys seem completely crazy, clients do pay them for work. Now I know who was responsible for the old Modernista site. Not really my cup-of-tea, but maybe some of you like this out there. This is a great example of a particular aesthetic completely overriding much if any that we usually associate with commercial interactive design. Also dissapointing for me was the lack of any focus on process or even philosophical basis for some of this work. I guess that might be the point. Not sure.

: for data viz junkies

View Election Margins

Regardless of your political associations, you will have to agree that this is an extremely simple, elegant and well designed solution for viewing election results from the NY Times. No surprises here I guess, since I think most have come to expect this type of execution from their great team of interactive designers.

In an election season with so many ups and downs as well as the amazingly thinly sliced and diced demographic results, its great to see it all in one place in a rich yet easily understood format.

I heard recently of the notion that Data Visualization as a medium for human communication is replacing or becoming more important than Narrative. Some believe that the form of Narrative is more appropriate for communicating ideas in a society with relatively small amounts of stored data or knowledge. With the modern advent of the digital database, and exponentially increasing amounts of storage capability as well as information that needs to be stored, a new way of communicating is evolving or is said to be needed.

It's an intoxicating idea isn't it? A new way of communication based on database information and an evolving visual language that is being formed by a global and collective army of designers and coders.

However, I think this misses some important points and can be easily understood by the example shown above.

Where in this visualization do we see the references to the historic and groundbreaking stories that define these candidates? Where are the human stories that created their character (or lack thereof depending on your perspective) or even these characters framed within our ongoing national conversation, or if you like, narrative?

: offf 08 video

Yet another post from the OFFF festival. Please excuse the very jumpy camera work especially in the beginning(big time amateur move on my part). I mostly just wanted to be able to give people a sense for what the whole experience was like with this. There are some Lisbon street scenes as well as a bunch of footage from the presentations. Enjoy!



Music Credits: Madredeus - Oxala (Telepopmix)

: offf 08

Hello everyone. I am writing you from Lisbon, Portugal where I am attending the annual OFFF 2008 festival. It is billed as the International Festival for the Post Digital Creation Culture.

What does that mean? I am not so sure myself, but I am pretty sure it will become more clear as the days go on. Today is the second day of the festival. Check out some of the presenters/links below for an idea of the type of participants from the first day.

And stay tuned for more, and a more thorough explanation.

Davide Gensler of KDU - http://www.thekdu.com/

DynType - http://www.ipb.pt/~vquelhas/research/index.php

Remon Tijssen - http://www.offf.ws/#/artists/fluid/

Random International - http://www.random-international.com/

Trafik - http://www.lavitrinedetrafik.fr/

All of Us - http://www.allofus.org/

Joshua Davis (he is a super nice guy actually) - http://www.joshuadavis.com/

Psyop - http://www.psyop.tv/

: offf 08 day 3

I know this is coming a little late, but I was without an internet connection for sometime after the conference, and was also on vacation.

The conference ended late Saturday night, and I am told it went into the morning hours with an after party. Wish I had the stamina to stay up and around that late, but I was still jet lagged and didn't see any reason to hang around ruining my ability to enjoy Lisbon on a beautiful Sunday.

In any case, here is the line up from Saturday. I post these because I think they give a great insight into the type of work being shown, but also as a resource for all of us as inspiration. Stay tuned for more.

Oh, and if you want to see and read more about the photos from above, head on over to my Facebook album.

BOOLAB - Motion and More

Agence7seven - The future is about big ideas!

Motion Graphics Panel - Onesize, GMUNK , MINIVEGAS, BOOLAB, Renascent

Group 94 - Great team in the Netherlands, also attended one of their workshops on Flash and HTML

the.ronin

Fallon London

: lisboa - visual language

I am fascinated by these subjects, and hopefully some of you will also find this interesting. I have learned over and over again (because it is something that is easily forgotten) that inspiration can and should come from anywhere and everywhere. For me as a visual designer and visual being, this always comes easiest from a sort of culture immersion experienced by traveling. I am able to take new things away with me and hopefully hang on to them for as long as possible.

The other side of this that interests me is how much can we really tell from a culture by the visual traces it leaves behind? Also, what are the real signposts of the changes a society may be experiencing versus those that are the detritus of a modern and global community participant?

It was not that long ago that Portugal was the backwater of Europe in terms of economy, development and market. A visual catalog from that point in time would have looked quite a bit different and less diverse. In the one seen below, we see a different story, and we see traces of an ancient past, alternating religious/cultural domination, street art, and modern marketing.

Is it possible to view these and get a raw sense for the culture as a whole? Is it possible to look at these and know what the best way to communicate to this market would be?

All good points to think about and discuss. "Hint, hint. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink." Enjoy.