Perpenduum

Mmm GIF art

David Goligorsky — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 18:10:02 +0000

SixthSense, by Pranav Mistry—Still awesome, still vaporware

Christian Eager — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:13:46 +0000

This TED Talk is from November 2009. It shows some of the awesome possibilities of augmented reality—way beyond that of Nearest Tube or Yelp’s Monocole.

In the talk, Mistry says SixthSense will be open-sourced. Five months later, it’s still vaporware.

ONull

David Goligorsky — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:40:56 +0000

ONull is written in Java and uses Processing as a graphical engine. Awesome vector generator that rasterizes an image to give you a vector output file. You can choose the squares, crosses, circles, etc. or you can import your own vector to use as the “pixels.” Excellent tool.

Usual Suspects

David Goligorsky — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 08:00:47 +0000

This is a photo from Playboy, June 1961. It shows George Nelson, Edward Wormley, Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Charles Eames, and Jens Risom casually seated next to their famed creations all in the same photo shoot. It’s just about 2010, which means nearly 50 years have come and gone from the time of that iconic photograph and nearly every recent architecture & design periodical I pick up is littered with Eames chairs inside, Bertoia chairs outside, and Nelson tables and clocks in every nook and cranny. They’re fantastic pieces and I am a staunch proponent of “timeless” design.

The image above has been passed around and passed around again. That’s not what this post is about. Instead, I hope some of the readers will post a comment with a punch list of designers that are our contemporaries. A group that you could envision sitting down for a photo shoot together. [If you’re reading this post from the main page, you’ll have to click on the post title to get to the permalink page for commenting.]

Hope you’ll take on the challenge.

Olly Moss

David Goligorsky — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 18:48:28 +0000

Some great illustration work by Olly Moss.

Product Development Building Blocks

David Goligorsky — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:49:50 +0000

It’s been about a month in a new apartment and I’m finally made a moment to unpack some last items. In the process, I grabbed some of my filled Field Notes and revisited some dog-eared pages.

I went to a good talk late last year where the person organizing this lecture series shared a list he keeps that highlights the building blocks of product development. I jotted them down and they’re transcribed below. If you’re aware of these points in your own projects and working to resolve them, you’re likely on your way to a rewarding effort.

Vision
Urgency
Honesty & respect
Competitive
Collaborative/communicative
Obsessive
Driven to leadership
Total commitment
Ownership
Constructive conflict
Drive for closure
Admist mistakes and move on
Pursuit of truth

Recycled Houses

David Goligorsky — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:23:33 +0000

The New York Times ran a slideshow of homes built by Dan Phillips. Mr. Phillips creates houses from salvaged materials ranging from branches to corks to wine bottles to picture frames. These are apparently low-income homes somewhere in Huntsville, TX but they look phenomenal. (Thanks for the tip, Molly.)

Amy Sly

Eric Silva — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:32:06 +0000

Photograph by Amy Sly

Honda Motocompo

David Goligorsky — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:56:53 +0000

Honda’s Motocompo was a 49cc two-stroke scooter that was designed to fit into the trunk of the Honda City back in 1981-83. It folds up into a little rectangle and it really lovely. The ad campaign at the time featured London ska band, Madness, and the marketing photos are priceless.

Perpenduum turns two

David Goligorsky — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 02:25:44 +0000

I know it’s been quiet on the Perpenduum front for a bit but it’s only because we’ve been so busy that we’ve even forgotten our birthday! Perpenduum was registered two years ago on August 21st, 2007.

(Birthday Cake from Andreas’ Flickr photostream. Take a look at his fantastic online portfolio. Particularly liking his video showing the most used words in the Billboard Top 5 during the years of each presidential administration from 1950 to 2006. He’s incredibly talented and a real Gentleman.)

An Adult Soft Drink

Christian Eager — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:04:01 +0000

This 10-second Canada Dry commercial from the 1960’s is to the point. It doesn’t imply improved looks or a lifestyle improvement—although some of their longer ones do.

Check out the whole AdView collection, from Alpha-Bits to Yuban Coffee on iTunes. It’s an archive of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History at Duke.

via Coudal

Remembering Julius Shulman

Eric Silva — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:37:12 +0000

Julius Shulman, architectural photographer.

Via Rachel Kester.

Sour 日々の音色

Eric Silva — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:29:36 +0000

Interesting new video from Japanese band SOUR. Directed by Masashi Kawamura, Hal Kirkland, Magico Nakamura, and Masayoshi Nakamura.

Via Jon Taplin.

Thomas Birke: Bladerunner Tokyo

Christian Eager — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:49:02 +0000

Still from Bladerunner

Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner (1982) is one of few films whose futuristic visions have aged well—the corporations, fashion, and technology, are all plausibly in humanity’s trajectory—albeit not by the year of the film’s setting, 2019.

We might, perhaps, achieve the architecture. These photos of Tokyo by Thomas Birke bear a striking resemblance to the art from the film. He shot in large format (8×10), looking for density, the city’s organic nature, and, above all, the city of Bladerunner.

Tokyo Rainbow Bridge

See the full set on Flickr.

via Hivelogic

Oregon Manifest

David Goligorsky — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:20:23 +0000

Oregon Manifest is the red letter event in the capitol of the bicycling world. This event spans from October 2 all the way through November 8th, promising six weekends of celebrating of the art, craft, and community of bicycling.

Of the events, I’m most excited about the Constructor’s Design Challenge. This is a competition that invites extreme ingenuity to bicycle building that aims to smash together a Venn diagram of combined performance, utility, and aesthetics. Registration is open until July 31st and we’re already seeing a phenomenal list of legendary frame-builders rising to the occasion including Vanilla, Independent Fabrication, Richard Sachs, Ira Ryan, and other favorite builders of mine. What’s more, the event is being judged by Rob Forbes (the founder of Design Within Reach,) Sky Yaeger (cycling industry visionary and creative mind at Swobo), Ron Sutphin (president of United Bicycle Institute), and Bryant Bainbridge (product creation at Specialized Bicycles.)

The grand prize of the Constructor’s Design Challenge is an incredible bespoke suit from Timothy Everest, the tailor for Rapha.

As you can see, this is going to be a monumental event!

Hetchins

David Goligorsky — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:02:57 +0000

Needed to put this up. Beautiful English frameworks. Apparently, in the days of PRO cycling yore, frame-builders couldn’t put their marques on their race bicycles. A frame-builder eager to have their bicycles stand out from the crowd in the PRO peleton would have to have a high performance race bicycle with distinctive and unique geometry. Hetchins accomplished this with the curly chainstays as far back as 1932 and it became a trademark feature of the company that holds to this day.

LOT-EK Architecture Firm

David Goligorsky — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:31:44 +0000

Really like the work of LOT-EK, particularly the renovation of the Miller-Jones Studio. My favorite bit is the bedroom storage wall comprised entirely of bent sheet metal office storage units from flat files to lockers to cabinets. As austere as it is playful.

Peel P50: Smallest production car in history

David Goligorsky — Fri, 29 May 2009 03:54:37 +0000

Peel Engineering Company produced 50 of these microcars during the early 1960’s on the Isle of Man in the United Kingdom. They are the smallest cars ever to go into production. It’s got three wheels, one door, a 49cc engine with a three speed manual transmission. A Peel P50 could do 38 mph at max speed and weighed in at 130 lbs with a claimed fuel consumption of 100 miles to the gallon. Kind of amazing. Check out this article about the car in the Daily Mail. There have some great photos.

Make The Girl Dance - Baby Baby Baby

Eric Silva — Mon, 18 May 2009 23:49:33 +0000

ALEX WIPPERFÜRTH, Thursday, May 21st at Stanford University

David Goligorsky — Thu, 14 May 2009 05:16:17 +0000

The next speaker in the David H. Liu Lecture Series in Design at Stanford is Alex Wipperfürth.

The talk will be at 8:00pm on Thursday, May 21st, 2009. It will be in (Braun Hall, Building 320) in Room 105 at Stanford University. Hope to see you there!

Wipperfürth is a partner at Dial House in San Francisco. He is the author of Brand Hijack, and upcoming books, The Co-Creation Myth and The Fringe Manifesto. Dial House is part think-tank and part creative hot shop. The client list is diverse: from fringe (Napster, Doc Martens, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Jones Soda, Red Stripe, Altoids) to cutting edge (Current TV, New Yorker Magazine) to blue chip (Diageo, IBM, P&G/Clorox, Toyota, Coca-Cola). Projects range from innovative strategy, innovative research, meaningful creative expressions with DIY production to brand innovation. In earlier work, Wipperfürth had interviewed actual cult members and people in "consumer cults" (like Apple or Harley-Davidson fanatics) and made fascinating insights about their similarities.