Went to Art Center again today in Pasadena to review portfolios of the graduating class. There was some great work and it was really nice to catch up with old friends.

We spoke at the Art Center Interaction Design Symposium tonight to share some of our work with students. Many thanks to Tanja Diezmann and Nikolaus Hafermaas for inviting us.

We just finished holding a creative workshop for Boeing over the past 2 days to share with their team our process and to give them an insight into the way we work here at Hello. There were about 27 people that attended from all over the U.S. and we got to show them some of the R+D work we do here in the studio as well. It was a lot of fun and can’t wait for the new 787 Dreamliner to come out!

We had our traditional pumpkin carving today for Halloween. Look who dressed up for work…

Look out it’s a pirate!

Emily thought she could camouflage herself with the pumpkins. Nice.

Trevor won the grand prize wii at our 10 year party. He looks pretty happy. Szu Ann came in second with her Flip motion camera, and Barry with his pair of tickets to Universal Studios. But hey who’s keeping score?

Today we celebrated our 10 year anniversary by throwing a beach party. There was a BBQ, water balloons, ultimate frisbee, and lots of sunshine.

Grill master Scott makes some mighty tasty burgers. The bad news is we forgot the hot dogs but the good news is we brought fried chicken.

I think this was the most exercise we got all year.

In celebration of the Olympics, today we had a wii bowling tournament in the studio during lunch. With teams of two we were quickly destroyed by winning powerhouse of Christine and Sasoon.

A new Hammer Museum exhibit opened this week on the architecture of John Lautner. We went to the opening party tonight and there was quite a line to get in. The video walk-thrus of his houses were quite nice and wish we had more time to check out the scale models and drawings on display. We’re designing a new web site for the Hammer and very excited to be working with them.

The Chemosphere house by John Lautner.

Check out the driver waving to the crowd as he’s making donuts, now that takes skill.

Wish we had one of these in the studio.

An F1 car in a real-life exploded view, a work of art.

Pit Lane Park, hosted by BMW and Intel, kicked off this season in Istanbul. We designed interactive touchscreens and quizzes for the park last year and we’re excited to do it again this year. Over 30,000 people attended the event in Istanbul and it will be headed to Poland, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Russia, and Singapore. We’ve also been cranking on a new online game experience for the Intel BMW F1 team called youbethedriver.com. Stay tuned as it’s set to launch soon.

This year’s Art Center Design Conference was titled “SERIOUS PLAY.” Speakers included John Maeda (formerly of the MIT Media Lab), Phillip Rosedale (creator of Second Life), Paula Scher (Pentagram), David Macaulay (The Way Things Work), Petra Blaisse (Inside Outside), and Eames Demetrios (Eames Office). One of the most enjoyable talks was by John Oliver from The Daily Show, funny guy.

Outside the Art Center College of Design - South Campus in Pasadena

We also got a chance to participate in a hands-on studio session with Tim Brown (President and CEO of IDEO) focused on redesigning airport security. Granted it was a very hard task to accomplish in 2 hours, the exercise gave us all a nice insight into the IDEO design process and how to get people to collaborate and brainstorm.

My group acting out some of the airport security scenarios.

One of the group’s prototype for airport security made with Playmobil toys.