Monthly Archives: March 2012

MM Paris

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MM Paris received the Tokyo Type Directors Club award in 2012 for Björk’s Biophilia CD artwork, book and iPad application.
http://creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/july/the-return-of-bjork

more intriguing is Björk’s Biophilia app, which was created in collaboration with interactive artist and app developer Scott Snibbe, and the musician’s long-time design collaborators M/M (Paris). The app opens with a kind of manifesto on nature, music and technology, written by Björk and the Icelandic poet and author, Sjón, and narrated by Attenborough. Once the intro has finished, users can interact with the cosmos shown by using the standard Apple stroking and pinching techniques. There is also a menu that allows access to the individual songs. Like the Radio Soulwax app, Biophilia makes good use of the unique aspects of the iPad and iPhone, particularly their interactive elements. It again places visuals at the forefront of the music experience, providing yet more proof of the creative possibilities that technology is opening up for artists and musicians.

Not that Björk is entirely turning her back on the joy of analogue, however. In the shop on her website, you can pre-order a copy of Biophilia: The Ultimate Edition. For a cool £500, you will receive a lacquered and silkscreened oak-hinged lid case, containing the ‘Biophilia Manual’ along with 10 chrome-plated tuning forks, silkscreened on one face in 10 different colours, stamped at the back, and presented in a flocked tray. Each fork is adjusted to the tone of a Biophilia track, covering a complete octave in a non-conventional scale.

“…but much of nature is hidden from us, that we can neither see nor touch. Like the one phenomenon that can be said to move us more than any other in our daily lives: sound. Sound, harnessed by human beings, delivered with generosity and emotion, is what we call music. And just as we use music to express parts of us that would otherwise be hidden, so too can we use technology to make visible much of nature’s invisible world. In Biophilia, you will experience how the three come together: nature, music, technology. Listen, learn, and create.” — Sir David Attenborough, intro to Biophilia

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collaborative alphabet with inez van lamswwerde and vinoodh matadin http://www.mmparis.com/thealphabet/index.html

 

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collaborative scarves with Kanye West

Last Fall, Kanye West asked m/m (paris) to design the album packaging for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. West had commissioned George Condo to create a series of paintings featuring the characters who populate his musical fantasies.During the creative process, m/m (paris) created a series of hand drawn ornamented frames to adorn the powerful and iconic Condo paintings.Playing with the many possibilities of combining the paintings and the frames, m/m (paris) and Kanye West wanted to find a luxurious expression of their creative efforts —and decided to use the most striking combinations and transform them into voluptuous silk scarves.

http://shop.mmparis.com/categories/kanye-west-scarves/

Building Creative Confidence

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Excerpt from Ted Talk on Creative Confidence 2012, might be a topic worth addressing in method chapter.http://blog.ted.com/2012/03/01/building-creative-confidence-david-kelley-at-ted2012/

David Kelley starts off his story in third grade, at Oakdale School in Ohio. His friend Brian was making a horse out of clay. One of the girls sitting at his table looked over and said, “that’s terrible! That’s not what a horse looks like.” Brian’s shoulders sank, he wadded up the clay and threw away his horse–and Kelley never saw him take on a project quite like that again.

This type of thing happens all the time. People often become uncomfortable around creativity — and yet surely creativity is not the domain of only a chosen few. And so, Kelley set out to understand this phenomenon and think about how he might counter it. One of his first stops: the Stanford psychologist, Albert Bandura, who developed a step-by-step process to help people overcome their phobia of snakes. An unexpected consequence of this methodical journey: overcoming fear in one domain subsequently gave people new confidence in other areas of their lives, too…

Then he puts his own wish to the audience. Don’t divide the world into “creative” and “non-creative,” he urges. Let people realize they are naturally creative. “Let their ideas fly; let them achieve what Bandura calls self-efficacy,” he concludes. ”When people regain that confidence, magic happens.”

ideo.org

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Ideo has started a non profit connected to the Gates Foundation amongst many other NGO’s. Designers both in-house and beyond can apply to participate.

Founded in 2011, IDEO.org has been busy creating change where change is desperately needed. Take a look at some of our recent projects and get as excited as we are about designing solutions for social impact around the world.

https://www.ideo.org/projects/history

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The Ripple Effect project: Innovations solutions to improve access to safe drinking water.

Social innovation seeks to create transformational change in under-served, underrepresented, and disadvantaged communities worldwide. At IDEO, we use design thinking to address issues such as poverty, nutrition, health, water and sanitation, economic empowerment, access to financial services, and gender equity.
Our projects involve clients in both the private and public sectors. To help them develop effective solutions, we create not only products and services, but also the entire system that supports them. This often means spending considerable time in the field, living and working with the people we’re striving to assist. We routinely partner with local leaders (who act as our trusted advisers) to ensure that all concepts and solutions are practical, culturally appropriate, scalable, and sustainable.
This means that before introducing anything new, we figure out what really matters to the target population—and what will motivate them to accept and adopt our solution.

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IDEO.org worked with the Bezos Family Foundation to design a campaign about the importance of early learning and engaged parenting, with a focus on supporting families in low income communities.
https://www.ideo.org/projects/early-learning-with-the-bezos-family-foundation/completed


“We’re trying to turn everyday interactions into opportunities for brain development. Shopping at the grocery store can be like a visit to a museum and singing can be the new reading. It all helps promote brain development.” Robin Bigio Ideo Fello
The latest brain research shows that the more parents engage with their children during the first five years of life, the more prepared they are to learn once they get to kindergarten. Many of the children showing up for kindergarten who are unprepared to learn live in low-income families. By providing tools, information and assistance that parents need to be their children’s first teachers, we can help low-income parents build their children’s brains, and create a future of more and better opportunities.

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Frameworks for improved nutrition
http://www.ideo.com/work/frameworks-for-improved-nutrition/

Obesity in the U.S. has reached record-breaking levels, especially among children and teens. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), an estimated 17% of children and adolescents aged 2-19 are overweight. Resulting from an imbalance in the number of calories consumed and those expended, this epidemic involves genetic, behavioral, and environmental factors that could lead to serious health problems later in life.

The CDC, a sentinel for global health and wellness, strives to provide people with reliable health information and the benefits of strong public and private partnerships. Recognizing the growing obesity epidemic, the CDC and the Academy for Educational Development engaged IDEO to conduct a workshop relating to research done around lower-income women and exercise. The brief workshop led the CDC and IDEO to another congressionally mandated project for social impact—looking at fruit and vegetable consumption among tweens.

Currently undergoing this sixteen-week project, IDEO and the CDC are examining ways to change the habits of an entire generation of tweens—a group far more likely to change attitudes and behaviors about health before they become life-long issues. To date, IDEO has begun observations with a number of stakeholders and change agents, including nutrition experts, participants at the Edible Schoolyard, and children and staff members at 826 Valencia, a non-profit organization working at the forefront of examining new models of tutoring and tween behaviors. While still in the early phases of development, and with final deliverables still undefined, the team is looking at communication, product, or service design possibilities to promote wide-scale change and prevention in the battle against youth obesity, and the promotion of fruit and vegetable consumption.

Ira Glass on good taste

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We get into creative work because we have good taste. But there is a gap, what you do is not so good but your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you are doing is “crappy” this is where most people quit. Everybody goes through this phase. The most important thing you can do is to do a lot of work. You create the deadline, it’s even better if someone else is expecting the work from you. It’s only by going through a large volume of work that you will catch up and the work you are making will then be as good as your ambitions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY