We Made This

Linksplats

After reading this article over on the Creative Review blog, we were reminded that we'd been meaning to do a bit of research into QR codes.

QR (Quick Response) codes are a bit like barcodes, but instead of needing a barcode scanner to read them, you can use a mobile phone camera (either one with the software built in, like the Nokia N95, or by downloading a code reader onto your phone). The QR codes generally contain a machine readable version of a URL, so that your camera decodes the image and opens up the relevant website in your phone's web-browser.

It's essentially a physical hyperlink, or 'hardlink'. (So if you use your phone to take a picture of the code above, it should shoot your phone's web-browser across to the best design blog in town.)

This tech is big in Japan (where mobile technology is generally a few leaps and bounds beyond ours), having been developed in 1994 by Denso Wave. But it's gradually popping up over here, and will probably become more and more popular as phone technology catches up. (Nokia pre-installs code readers on its N93, N93i, N95 and E90 phones, and this page from their site lists places you can download readers for their other phones.)

If you're not rocking a Nokia, Kaywa produce one of the leading code readers, which you can try installing on your phone – though it doesn't work on iPhones yet. (But if you've been naughty and have a jailbroken iPhone, you can download the iMatrix reader.)

You can also create your own QR code over with Kaywa.

(And the Kaywa blogs are pretty informative too: mobile.kaywa.com and www.kaywa.com/vnews.)

People are finding all sorts of interesting ways to play with the codes. Here's just a few of the bits we've discovered so far:

Semapedia is encouraging people to create QR codes as stickers to put up at physical spaces, linking back to the relevant Wikipedia articles. (The Semapedia site has also got a useful drop down list of phone makes and models, linking to the code readers that work with them.)

The Creative Review article mentioned up top is about Emma Cott, who creates clothing with codes that link to your online profiles (Facebook, MySpace etc.)

On a bit of a sidenote, we reckon this area is potentially a gold mine for networking events. We've always wanted to be able to pass a scanner across a crowd of people at a party to see who's who. We can really see a market for a small smart badge versions of QR codes, so that you can advertise yourself to a room. And since you get to choose which webpage the badge links to, you're in control of the information people can access about you - it could be a page you've posted just for that event, your business website, or even something entirely unrelated...

There's another Facebook application "Add to Friends" Gear which does a similar thing, creating some rather dubiously designed stuff that features links to your profile.

For those with a little more fashion sense, you can pick up The Invader, a limited edition scarf, which is a collaboration between Kaywa and Office Lendorff.

2d-code.co.uk is a blog with lots of stuff about QR codes, including a story about how you can screw with your QR codes to make them look more intersting, as they allow for up to 30% deterioration of the code while remaining readable. Which means the BBC could stick their name into their code.

qrcode.es is a Spanish site all about QR codes, inluding a feature about using them as an updated version of laserquest in a battle round a shopping store, and a short story competition, where you have to create short stories (just 100 characters including spaces) that can be embedded in QR codes.

They also do some t-shirts and products, inluding this baby's bib which decodes as "My parents are freaks. Please, adopt me!". Which is, frankly, genius.

And finally, there's a (currently fairly shallow) Flickr pool of people doing interesting stuff (stamps, stickers, artworks) with the codes .

We love these little linksplats.

Admittedly at the moment they tend to be ham-fistedly stuck onto adverts and posters rather than properly integrated, which looks rubbish; but hopefully as people start playing with them more and more, they'll start to appear in more refined and witty ways.

Black is the new white

Google (in the UK only) has slipped into a little black number today.

There was a lot of coverage when the search page Blackle was set up, allegedly saving power by leaving pixels ‘unlit’ in black instead of Google's usual white, but it turned out that most modern computer displays use the same amount of power no matter what colour the background is.

So instead, Google are doing this to raise awareness of Earth Hour, which is taking place this evening at 8pm GMT. You can read more about it on this page from Google.

Motion graphics

Mmm, Saul Bass goodness.

We're just doing a bit of research ahead of a bit of work Alistair's doing with some Central Saint Martins students over the next few weeks, and we need your help.

We're looking for the best / most interesting bits of motion graphics we can find, whether they're from television, film, music videos, online, wherever. The only important thing is that they're principally typographic. Alistair's started to put a few bits together on this You Tube page, and it would be fantastic if you could drop us any links or recommendations.

Thank you thank you.

Designs of the Year

The new Brit Insurance Designs of the Year show started last week at the Design Museum, taking over from where the old Designer of the Year show left off in 2006. We went along on Saturday to take a look, and we'll tell you all about that in just a moment.

But first, a gentle rant.

The show is, as you can hardly have failed to notice, sponsored by Brit Insurance. They've stuck their name right in front of it. The awards that go with the show are sponsored by them too. They're called the Brit Insurance Design Awards. And frankly, that's just rubbish. Instead of being mutually beneficial, it's mutually detrimental. It makes the Design Museum look cheap, happy to bend over, grab its ankles and get its elegantly shaped butt branded by its corporate master; and it makes Brit Insurance look greedy and egomaniacal. Instead of making the event and awards the most important thing, they've made their sponsorship the important thing. And that doesn't make us like them much.

This is a grim trend that's been happening wherever sponsorship occurs (Carling Academy anyone?). Don't get us wrong, it's a very good thing that corporate sponsorship exists. It makes stuff happen, in bigger and better ways than would otherwise be possible. But, please, let's restore some sense of modesty, elegance and sophistication to the way it's done. Wouldn't the Designs of the Year show, as supported by Brit Insurance, sound far better? Patronage, not prostitution*.

Rant over.

The show itself is a great mix of work arranged by discipline: Architecture, Fashion, Furniture, Graphics, Interactive, Product and Transport. You might question some of the entries, but it's a really valuable opportunity to see what's being going on across the design spectrum in the past year. It's also great to be able to play with some of the entries, including the Nintendo Wii, Toshio Iwai and Yu Nishibori's TENORI-ON digital musical instrument, and Ross Phillips' Replenishing Body Kiosk (pictured above, being used by some kids in a much looser way than intended).

In the graphics section, we were particularly pleased to see the Butt Book nominated - it's a compendium of Butt Magazine (that link is not at all safe if you're at work), designed by Jop van Bennekom, and we've noticed it being the 'inspiration' for rather a lot of work recently.

Winners in each section, and one overall winner, will be announced in March.

* The fact that Peter Saville's "THIS IS NOT A BROTHEL THERE ARE NO PROSTITUTES AT THIS ADDRESS" sticker is one of the graphics entries feels deeply ironic.

D&AD President's Lectures

We have a bit of a love/hate thing going on with the D&AD lectures. Sometimes they're utterly brilliant, with compelling speakers who talk with passion and wit about their work. Other times they're boring and banal displays of rampant self-love.

But it looks like the current president Simon Waterfall has done a bang-up job by inviting some really interesting speakers to come along for the 2008 series, and he gets extra points for nicking the Pecha Kucha format for one of the talks.

The line up is:

13 March
Nick Bell, graphic designer, and creative director of Eye magazine

17 April
The Pecha Kucha night, with speakers from Digit, Hi-Res!, Poke and AllofUs amongst others

30 April
Bob Greenberg from R/GA, creative genius behind the motion graphics for Se7en

22 May
Sir Christopher Frayling, rector of the Royal College of Art

5 June
Amsterdam based graphic design group Experimental Jetset

Apart from Nick Bell, who's speaking in Manchester, the talks all take place at Logan Hall at the Institute of Education in London (near Russell Square).

The way we live now

So, cheerio to 2007, and hey there 2008, how you doing?

With the predictable glut of articles and features about the year ahead currently littering every magazine and newspaper you pick up, kudos to The Guardian for deciding to run with a pre-emptive review of the noughties, and particularly so for designing the article (in the G2 section) so beautifully. We highly recommend you nip out and pick up a copy.

We wanted to link out to the whole feature from here, but interestingly the Guardian Unlimited website has chopped it up into separate segments, and has also somehow forgotten to provide a link to it from their homepage.

Which is odd.

But as such, it rather neatly demonstrates how print media can still do some stuff far better than online media. Don't get us wrong, we love the Guardian site; but it can't (yet) present an article with the same pace and elegance as the newspaper.

For those of you who can't get your hands on a copy, here are links to the elements of the feature:
The way we live now
The event
The face
The meal
The look
The soundtrack
The celebrity
The building
The fertility panic
The art
The book
The internet
The big Melt
The TV
The Superpower

And here's hoping that the parts of the Guardian site still wearing their old clothes (as all the articles above are) soon switch into their shinier threads. (Compare and contrast: the soundtrack article above in old clothes and in new clothes.)

Massive hair growth

Like just about every other designer in town, we've been loving the image bookmarking site Ffffound! which started up this year. We're not heavy users (you can see our meagre selection here), and there's a fair amount of crossover with our blog; but we do love the way it seems to represent the visual zeitgeist.

Our favourite image so far is the shot above, taken by Flickr user Dubstyle (also known as the illustrator and designer Luke Worley) as part of his Whiskerino set.

Whiskerino is an annual beard growing competition, curated by web designer Michael Eades. The rules are that you start cleanly shaven on November 1 2007, and then grow your beard, agreeing not to shave in any way for the duration of the competition, which runs until at least February 29 2008. Contestants then post an image of their growth to the site at least once a week, with various themed image days to spice things up. It's mainly happening stateside, with only six beards going on in the UK so far.

It might be a bit late for Blighty to catch up now, but how about next year gentlemen?

Best flipping screen saver ever

Just loving this from 9031.com. An old-school flip clock as a screen saver. Yum yum yum.

Via Design Observer and Viewers Like You

Pictobrowser

We're very much liking this application – it lets you choose some of your Flickr shots (by set, tag or group), and post them on any blog or website. And it's ridiculously simple too.

To get your version, all you have to do is click the Info link on the bottom right, create your code, and paste it into your blog or website.

Good work interwebs.

Via Coolhunting

Expedition's new identity and website

We've just finished putting together the new identity for award winning civil and structural engineering firm Expedition (you can read more about it here).

They're a really inspirational gang, doing bridges, skyscrapers, airports and more, as well working on TV programmes and teaching on various projects (two of the company's directors, Chris and Ed, run the RDI Summer School); and they wanted an identity that captured the sense of play that infuses their work.

Our friends over at Sennep then took the identity and put together a fantastic website that is equally playful.

All round goodness.