Now on newsstands, this month’s issue of Communication Arts has an agency feature on Hello. The feature tells the story of Hello’s beginnings, which shaped the way we work today. It also includes full-page spreads of our work with clients like Herman Miller, TaylorMade Golf, simplehuman and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). It’s an honor to be featured in a magazine we’ve been reading for over 15 years and one of the most influential design publications out there.

Every year our friends at Dwell hold the largest design event on the west coast, Dwell on Design. We can’t wait to attend this year’s event and we invite you to join us on June 25th where Hello’s CEO/Creative Director, David Lai will be sharing tips and insight in a panel on designing playful spaces for modern homes. Read more on David’s panel in his interview with Dwell.

Dwell on Design, a three-day design event, is celebrating conceptual design and international talent this year with over 300 exhibitors. With home tours through both east and west LA to explore, presentations by industry experts and exhibitions that feature the latest modern design ideas, Dwell on Design is the event to “go big and find design.” For updates on the event, follow Dwell on Design. See you Saturday, June 25th!

We designed our very own Hello USB drives made from molded rubber. You can pull the bottom smile off and plug it into your laptop. We like looking down and getting a friendly “hello” from our USB. They finally landed at our studio today, have a look.

While in Japan, we paid a visit to the newly opened Herman Miller flagship store in Tokyo. Located in the Marunouchi shopping district, the store was designed by Torafu Architects. We browsed through a wide array of items from classics like Eames molded plywood chairs to limited-edition House Industries wooden toy blocks. The space is inviting and we liked testing out the different chairs in the “Try a Chair” zone.

Outside the new store, next door to Tiffany’s.

Limited-edition House Industries wooden toy blocks. You can only buy them here.

Lots of Girard pillows, Noguchi lamps, and Nelson clocks.

Eames chair pyramid stack.

Have you seen one of these before? Wish we had room in the suitcase.

The store has a relaxing “at home” atmosphere with areas designed especially for trying out pieces of furniture.

Some of our photos of typography while roaming the streets of Tokyo. The neon is very cool and it’s ingenious how the type is stretched out on the ground so it’s readable while sitting in a car driving down the street.

In the Minority Report, browsing through interfaces with gestures was a thing of the future, something cool that we could imagine someday and watch on movie screens. We’ve come a long way since then. Fluid Interfaces, a group at MIT Media Labs, recently paired JavaScript with Microsoft Kinect in order to create what they call “Depth JS,” a web browser extension that allows users to browse any web pages with Kinect, bringing the technology in Minority Report to life.

Looking back at the evolution of site navigation, we’ve gone from monitors, mouse + keyboards, to trackpads, voice recognition, multitouch and gestural interfaces. As cool as they look, gestural and even multitouch interfaces aren’t always the most efficient solution when it comes to web browsing and interface navigation. Imagine gesturing in mid-air to navigate through detailed menus and zooming in and out of maps – it could be tedious or physically limiting. Even with developments like the iPad, which people have credited as one of the most intuitive tools available for web browsing, the device still has add-on keyboard accessories, indicating that touchscreen capability isn’t always the fastest way to input or access information.

In his TED talk last winter, John Underkoffler, the Minority Report science adviser and inventor of g-speak, the real-life version of the film’s point-and-touch interface, predicted that this technology would be available in standard computers in five years. However, it seems that with the advent of Kinect and iPad, the “future” of the interface is now and we’re already looking towards more advanced technologies, including smart surfaces that allow us to interact globally and across multiple platforms, similar to concepts that the Microsoft Office Lab presented in their Future Vision Montage. Watch the Depth JS video below.

In this week’s Adweek feature, we were given the chance to redesign one of four iconic logos: Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Twitter. As avid tweeters, we decided to go with Twitter and design a dynamic logo that changes based on user behavior, altering from followers’ tweets, to trending topics, to tweets from people you follow. Our logo represents a social network of connections between followings and shared interests that make up the 140-character communication tool that 100 million people use today. See our logo redesign here.

Check out Live Unframed, an online experience we just launched featuring Yves Béhar’s new SAYL chair for Herman Miller. We collaborated with Herman Miller and fuseproject to design and develop the site, sharing the story of the creation of SAYL from concept to the finished product. Browse and discover concept sketches, behind-the-scenes video, and a ton of prototype and production photos.

Below are some photos from the unveiling of the SAYL chair at the official launch party.

Introducing Béhar’s SAYL chair.

From prototype…

…to the finished product.

We collaborated with Herman Miller and fuseproject to introduce Yves Béhar’s newest product: the SAYL chair.

Inspired by the principles of suspension bridges, the SAYL chair was designed in tribute to “live unframed.” In the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing an online experience that will take you behind the scenes with Yves Béhar and the making of SAYL. Stay tuned for updates.

As Herman Miller’s digital agency, we visited the Eames House in the Pacific Palisades a while back. Now we are proud owners of our very own Eames House (although it is a bit smaller and made out of wooden alphabet blocks) by House Industries. What a great combo: architecture + toys.