English | Deutsch English | DeutschI saw this article yesterday and it really moved me.
What happens when you combine a centuries-old craft tradition with high technology? Well, when you combine origami with space flight you might just get something both conceptually and poetically beautiful that rivals anything sci-fi or fantasy could anticipate.
You can kind of imagine that magical moment when the astronaut tosses a paper airplane down towards the earth and it falls away from the spaceship towards the blue globe. Or the person that picks it up on the ground and wonders where it came from. As designers, we can design those kinds of magical moments.
Consider the possibilities of using traditional technologies and metaphors to complete new tasks and create new …
Can we judge a city by the types of drugs found in its drinking water?
We’re all familiar with the phrase “we are what we eat;” Now we might be able to claim that, through the absorption of trace elements of other people’s drugs into our municipal water supply, “We are the the drugs we collectively take.”
Water recycling is largely localized; as Wired Magazine says; “People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. …
Recently, many of my favorite t-shirts have been dying. They’re all about the same age, from a particular manufacturer known for their sweatshop free products, and most have meaning to me that transcends the intrinsic value of the t-shirt itself. One is from my most recent drive cross country and features a large Hatch Show Print logo on the front. Another is one I printed while in grad school as part of my thesis work, it’s now fit for a 7 year old but totally inappropriate for me (unless, of course, belly shirts come back into style). This has led me to think about mortality in physical objects and memories. When the tangible traces of my memory disappear, what will …
Curiosity is a core characteristic of every good designer. It’s something we look for in our new hires, stress internally through the course of each of our projects and demand of our clients.
Curiosity is also a necessity when approaching a design solution. Simply confronting a problem using directed, known and narrow contextual inputs will result in work that is safe and sometimes effective, but doesn’t break any cross-cultural barriers or establish new behaviors. In counterpoint, conducting research into analogous or unrelated fields can break open new methodologies and inform final design work in new and meaningful ways.
New media, particularly web-based tumblelog blogs like ThingsMagazine or ffffound, have extended the reach and scope of our curiosity. Resources like …
I spent last weekend up in Portland Oregon at the North American Handmade Bike Show. It’s the third year I’ve gone and it’s been really interesting to see how the event has changed and grown.
As I walked around the exhibits this year I couldn’t help categorizing the bikes by trend, creating a typology of themes in the show. Broadly speaking, I see 3 categories at play. The first would be multi-geared road and mountain bikes, steel with exquisite paint jobs. The second category is composed of fixed-gear bikes. These are purist machines; one gear, limited functionality and a whole lot of flash.
The third, and perhaps most exciting category, contain the utility bikes. There were more …
So this is my blog…
It’s called Total Design.
But what does that mean?
Here at frog we typically work in small teams. Our roles are flexible and constantly evolving. Any given project we take on requires a specific and diverse breakdown of skills, from research to strategy to engineering to design.
The wide range of required skill-sets, combined with a limited number of team members on each project, creates a need for extreme agility. Each team is typically comprised of members with a wide breadth of experience juxtaposed with deep knowledge in specific disciplines. The organization and management of those teams requires a different understanding of group dynamics and flow than is typically needed in more traditional, hierarchal business structures. …
This site is protected by copyright and trademark laws under U.S. and International law. All rights reserved. © 2008 frog design inc. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Site Map
