At the Museums and Web conference last week, the Bauhaus Workshops for Modernity website we designed with the MoMA won a Best of the Web Award. Out of the 12 categories, Bauhaus took home best exhibition site.
We’re happy to share that we’ve been nominated for the Webby Awards for Sony Altus, the online experience showcasing Sony’s wireless multi-room music system, also featured on the Sony Style blog. The People’s Voice Award polls are open today. Vote for us here and don’t forget to tweet your votes.
One surefire way to tell when people at the office are swamped is when they start breaking out the Lean Cuisines and Hot Pockets for lunch. Stress levels are high when our candy bin starts running low. It’s understandable and we all go there from time to time.
Last night we saw “What’s on Your Plate?” a documentary at the Hammer Museum that made us step back and think about those occasional unhealthy lunches. The documentary follows two eleven-year-old girls in New York City as they explore and question food activists, farmers, storekeepers, and their families about processed food everywhere, from markets to school cafeterias. One of the girls, Sadie, has a family history of high cholesterol, which she overcomes throughout their discoveries about food from government-subsidized farms versus small, locally grown farms.
The documentary hammers home the point that if we care about our health and the small farms that grow local, fresh food, we need to shop at Farmers Markets or order produce from organizations like Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) – which some of us at Hello do.
There are a good number of organic restaurants nearby that serve locally grown food, such as X’otik Kitchen and the Green Truck that’s only a phone call away. Every Tuesday there’s a Farmers Market in downtown Culver City. We enjoy the great produce and food selections there, but when projects pile up the visits to the Farmers Market dwindle. The film was a good reminder to be more mindful of what we put on our plate as well as the importance of local Farmers Markets – they provide healthy, natural food from local sources and promote community interaction, of which L.A. could always use more.
We’re back from CTIA Wireless where our concept movie for Kyocera’s UFO (User Friendly Object), was displayed in the Kyocera showcase.
To all smartphone users, the screen is of utmost importance. Users obsess over screen protectors, or brag about LCD technology and larger screens because that is where all functions take place. What if we didn’t need to rely on just the screen?
Our UFO concept explores the idea of a touch-sensitive, illuminated bezel that can be customized for interactions and functions. Most users can relate to the annoyance of a pop-up menu taking up the screen while using an application. By making the bezel a functional space that complements and extends upon the phone’s screen, users see the information they want clearly, with no clutter. App-specific functions such as a camera shutter or zoom can be controlled by intuitively touching highlighted areas of the bezel.
Thinking past the restrictive screen and exploring the entire physical aspect of a phone could enhance the future of mobile interaction.
Flux kicked off its third annual screening series at the Hammer Museum last night, where we went to see OK Go’s elaborate music video “This Too Shall Pass,” as well as the other excellent short films offered.
Rhiannon Evans’s stop motion animated short, “Heart Strings,” charmed us with a very human love story between two rag dolls. In L’Ogre’s “Hold Your Horses – 70 Million,” band members reconstructed famous paintings in a hilariously witty performance. The program ended with OK Go’s music video. We appreciated the meticulous hard work and talent required to shoot the video. Eighty-five takes and 89 setups is no easy feat, not to mention the coordination and timing required for syncing the people, music, and machine together. The video has reached almost 10 million views on YouTube, but it was a different experience to watch it on the big screen.
Sony’s Rocket Project campaign trailer is featured on YouTube’s homepage today. With just 33 days left, the Rocket Project team shares their goals and inspirations in this video. To keep up with the team’s progress, check back on the Rocket Project web site we designed for daily updates.
We’re winners of the Communication Arts Interactive Annual for the Herman Miller web site! We designed the site as a living system with a modular grid. The site is visually-driven to create an intuitive experience for users to browse, search, find products, and plan or design a space. Communication Arts Interactive winners were selected based on designers who pushed further to produce fantastic work. We’re honored to be included.
This year Herman Miller was chosen as an All-star of Fast Company’s annual issue, “The World’s Most Innovative Companies.” All-stars are chosen based on those who continued innovating amazing design despite the grim economy. Congratulations guys!
We partnered with Sony to develop the online hub, The Rocket Project, in collaboration with 180 LA for this exciting, community-driven campaign that asks the question, “Can a VAIO launch a rocket into space?”
It turns out a Sony VAIO notebook has more processing power than the first rocket to land on the moon. Eight ambitious high school students led by Tom Atchison, founder of the Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation, will use their new VAIO CW and F series laptops to design and build a 25 feet tall, 500-pound rocket that will attempt to reach the stratosphere.
Follow the story with day-to-day coverage, photos, and videos on the rocket’s progress. 41 days until blastoff!
The Otis College of Art and Design web site we designed is featured on siteInspire’s showcase in education, where sites were selected from around the world. See it here.
