Disruption

© 2011 Julian. All rights reserved.

Introducing Jayne Vidheecharoen

The Near Future Laboratory is going through a revamping and an expansion of sorts. There’ll be some changes for #2012 — new people, new projects, new initiatives, new strategies for global domination in the realm of thought-provoking unprofitable improbable unbuildable … Continue reading

© 2011 Julian. All rights reserved.

Weekending 11202011

Ack. Just a few short notes from the week previous. Well, we got some more clarification on the graph of possible-probable-desireable but I wasn’t able to spend as much time figuring out how to employ it as an approach to … 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.

Design Advances

I’m going to paraphrase something I read in a recent issue of The New Yorker that immediately made me think of things we bunch of folk in the studio are thinking long and hard about — doing advanced design, but even … Continue reading

© 2011 Julian. All rights reserved.

Opportunism

Completely understandable how the recent tragic events in Japan would translate into email from an electronics source containing *only parts and supplies and modules to make Geiger Counters. At the same time as it’s understandable, it’s one of those things … Continue reading

© 2010 Julian. All rights reserved.

A Wry Look At Wheels On Luggage

Why do I blog this? The idiom “wheels on luggage” has been one we’ve been exploring here, not so much to get the precise history of it (although that is interesting), but because of what it stands for. Change from … Continue reading

© 2010 Julian. All rights reserved.

The Paradox of Intellectual Property

Mine, not yours, buster. This might be an old one, but I just recently heard about it while catching up on my favorite economy and finance Podcast — the brilliantly home-spun Planet Money. In it they are talking about their project … Continue reading

© 2010 Julian. All rights reserved.

Features Aren't A Measure Of Innovation

A fix to keep a door from clanging against an adjacent utility pole. Observed in Seoul, South Korea. It’s too bad that the measure of results often must translate to quantities or business-y things, like numbers of meetings obtained or … Continue reading

© 2010 Julian. All rights reserved.

Slow Media Manifesto

“One might almost say that truth itself depends on the tempo, the patience and perseverance of lingering with the particular.” Via nettime and @bruces, we come across The Slow Media Manifesto, a 14 point statement capturing what slow media is … Continue reading

© 2010 Julian. All rights reserved.

*Wheels On Luggage

A short-hand expression used in and around the studio to describe that one, usually small, unexpected and deceptively obvious designed feature that makes an artifact suddenly transformatively useful/helpful/up-graded. The kind of transformation that makes you look back and wonder how … Continue reading