rent-a-purse

By leo | Published: March 19, 2008

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Ever wish you could always stay up-to-date with the latest trends in fashion? Bags to Riches will rent you the latest purse – for $30-$300 – for a month, along with damage insurance, so you never have to commit to a single thousand-dollar bag – or worry about scuffs. If only fashion could be regularly rented out, we could all have the latest, pressed, new and fashionable clothes for cheap – and anyone who is worried about fitting in could just wear them months after they come out. Rental designer fashion could also motivate manufacturers to make more durable products, and to take back their designs to re-use valuable materials in new products instead of allowing them to be thrown away. With fashion rental staying on top of the latest trends can finally become a socially and environmentally ethical way to shop!

Posted in blogogracy, customization, fabrication, fashion, marketing, soft/glowing | Comments closed

pod docks

By leo | Published: March 18, 2008

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how far have we come? ipods are supposed to be the best design of today, yet they’re more plain than a walkman was twenty years ago. just look at the walkman docks of 1984: they were colorful, re-configurable and even transformer-like.


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webs of influence

By leo | Published: March 17, 2008

I’ve been interested in depictions of the evolution of ideas and cultural movements since posting about Timothy Stotz’s amazingly complex evolutionary diagram of 500 years of art. Here are some other inspiring diagrams of evolution, culminating in the genealogy of Linux distribution, which is the clearest and most accurate because it’s built in to the language itself.
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Alfred H Barr Jr’s book cover for Cubism and Abstract Art depicts the evolution of modernism through an evolutionary tree, using red text to separate influences external to the art world.
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The revised Bushy Tree depicts the influence of visual computing environments on each other in a similar evolution, this time populated exclusively by software.

The Evolution of Linux is one of the most logical to map, since the open source licensing makes influence explicit.

Posted in 2d, art, traceability, visualization | Comments closed

edible utensils

By leo | Published: March 14, 2008

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we’ve seen edible cups, and now edible spoons made of bread by tim simpson. there’s something elegant about making everything that touches your mouth edible, and certainly it’s more sustainable than plastic spoons. but how long do they last?

Posted in fabrication, food, futurecraft, materials, soft/glowing | Comments closed

form ignores function

By leo | Published: March 13, 2008

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yesterday at takashimaya in shinjuku i bought two things: can you guess what they are? they are shiny, plastic and white. i think they are even better designed than apple products: they reveal nothing about their function at all. below is naoto fukasawa’s humidifier sold through his brand +_0, whereas the apple above is just a little box. can we get any more abstract?

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visualizing influence

By leo | Published: March 12, 2008

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timothy stotz has made a stunning diagram called ‘the flowering staircase‘ to depict the chains of influence in european art from 1435 to 1935. the single image (4 MB download) links well-known painters and sculptors who were in direct contact, collaborated, and influenced each other positively or negatively. while most evolutionary diagrams (aka cladograms or tree diagrams) have a single root, mapping the evolution of ideas and culture can be impossible in two-dimensional space. in this diagram, several artists appear more than once because of their influential role in multiple artists’ work – regardless of location. it would be amazing if all cultural production were linked in this way to its influences and its offspring.

Posted in 2d, art, visualization | Comments closed

layered media

By leo | Published: March 11, 2008

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one of the best aspects of mashups are the way that collective intelligence can be leveraged to add meaning to web-based media. overstream is a web-based subtitle tool for youtube videos that allows anyone to contribute captions for existing videos. this has a lot of significance for the hearing impaired, as well as anyone who doesn’t speak english. this kind of layered media is a good way to enrich media without obstructing the original content. maybe one day this can be built into a browser – a kind of social lens that shows you the world wide web through someone else’s eyes.

Posted in augmented reality, blogogracy, open objects, universal design, visualization | Comments closed

non-service

By leo | Published: March 10, 2008

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for a while now hotels have provided the option to opt out of fresh towels – but tonight i got to tokyo’s grand prince takanawa hotel, which has gone one step further: you can opt out of room cleaning altogether and you get an incentive in the form of $10 a day you can use to buy food and drinks during your stay. it makes sense for me, for them, and above all for sustainability. how many other services can be replaced with incentives to spare waste?

Posted in energy, environment, marketing | Comments closed