Design as Strategy

1300893388_master © 2012 Julian. All rights reserved.

A Screen-y FutureScape-y 2025

Sony put up these FutureScape videos — little design fiction films that introduce us to a conflicted world in the year 2025. This is design fiction par excellance at least insofar as we are effectively transported to this world as best … Continue reading

Fosta Reading Convenience Newspaper Wednesday February 29, 09:13:06 © 2012 Julian. All rights reserved.

Convenience

We made a newspaper through our friends at RIG‘s lovely Newspaper Club service. We — myself, Nick Foster, Nicolas Nova and Rhys Newman — collaborated on this. (Rhys did the lovely drawings, by the way.) We printed a hundred or so. They’re … Continue reading

Tuesday January 03, 15:06:53 © 2012 Julian. All rights reserved.

A Few Things The Laboratory Did In 2011

LOS ANGELES Projects * It was a year of mostly audio creations ahead and around of Project Audio for Nokia. Some very exciting little bits of design, fiction and design, fact. These will continue into 2012 with some more public … Continue reading

© 2011 Julian. All rights reserved.

Short Note — The Product Design Venn Diagram: Updates

This is maybe even less than a short note to point to a little more conversation that @bruces and others are having regarding the Hubberly Venn Diagram I mentioned a few blog posts ago. @AnneGalloway took some fast-furious notes of … Continue reading

© 2011 Julian. All rights reserved.

Weekending 10302011

Oh, okay. Last week I was in London. There was some fun, cool Nokia stuff going on — besides Nokia World, which I didn’t attend only because there were also other things going on, including this event at the Design … Continue reading

© 2011 Julian. All rights reserved.

Weekending 10232011

Okay. Maybe we will get back into the swing of the weekending note. This one won’t be comprehensive, but a note nonetheless to note a few things. First, something I found while flipping through the Internet that got me thinking … Continue reading

© 2011 Julian. All rights reserved.

Why Good Design Isn't Eye Candy

An acquaintance of The Laboratory I met while in London that last time is a design consultant guy who told me this story about Eye Candy. Him and his studio/team were offered a commission of work. It was design work, … Continue reading

© 2011 Julian. All rights reserved.

Kitchen of the Future

I wonder about the various settings and contexts used to re-imagine what the world might be like in the future. Often times those contexts, objects, environments are associated with what wealthy people would like for themselves in order to drive … Continue reading

© 2011 Julian. All rights reserved.

IxD 2011 Designing Advanced Design Workshop

The problem that occurs when a clever, *advanced idea is inserted into a machine that is already optimized for itself — for efficiency. Just because it’s bright and clever and has colors doesn’t mean that it can find a place … Continue reading

© 2011 Julian. All rights reserved.

Design Culture Lab: Ethnographic Fiction & Speculative Design Workshop

A Call for Papers for an intriguing sounding workshop expanding upon and evolving the Design Fiction ideas. This full-day workshop aims to explore how grounded ethnographic and action research methods can be transformed into fictional and speculative designs that provide … Continue reading

© 2010 Julian. All rights reserved.

Weekending 12122010: Clarity via Complexity

A week spent last in the Nordic EU discovering the knots and twists and snarls and kinks of the imbroglio that goes along with executing on damn good design. On the one hand there was the work of workshops meant … Continue reading

© 2010 Julian. All rights reserved.

Northern Nordic

Just a quick note to remind myself that I’m in the northern Nordic for the week, translating and workshopping and clarifying much of the work that has gone on in the studio over the last many months. It’s quite interesting … Continue reading