graphic design_2

 

Everyone needed to take another one's portrait to translate it into a poster. Some type elements should be taken from the portrait we wrote on each others some weeks before.

graphic design

We finished with a great class on graphic with the swiss designer Christian Altmann today. See his work here.

The task was to design a cd cover for "Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburgische Konzerte". These are the results.

portraits

Finished our photography week. Did not expect such a high level as none of us is a professional.
Next step will be to translate the photos to a poster related to that person

Gestural interfaces in operating rooms

When I did my diploma thesis on Augmented Reality in interventional medicine, I did some research at the TU Munich. Those guys still do really interesting stuff, like this concept about gestural control of content in an OR scenario.

paper emotions

Task: Communicate one out of nine different given emotions with cut-out pieces of black paper.

This one is fear.

processing (introduction = 1); {

Yesterday intro class on processing. I never imagined programming could be fun. Am I turning geekier every day?

Hope I can show some spectacular results soon...Currently its more like a grey dot moved by the mouse. Ah, and the background changes due to the position.

Wednesday talks. Multitasking.

Wednesday talk at UID: "i think sketch therefore i am" It was about how sketching can improve the creative process, by supporting the right half of your brain. Interesting, no revolutionary thoughts though.

Actually I was interested in the guy next to me - using two iPhones simultaneously. I couldn't resist asking him why: He is splitting up the tasks he performs on them - one, with a phone contract for calling (the older one) and the newer 4G for internet and other stuff. Hm.

He also did some photos with one of them while text-messaging with the other. I actually worked on multi-tasking issues in consumer electronics, but this did not reveal to me.

some impressions

fall turns to an end in Umeå. It gets colder and darker every day...I heard, the river will be completely frozen during wintertime. There were people having a picnic on it once. Cozy!

portraits

Crash-course on portrait photography this week. One of my classmates shared a link to a documentation on Annie Leibovitz - probably one of the most famous photographers of our days...quite inspiring!

--> see the video here.

so cliché :)

Legobrick ideation! Love it :) I don't want to tell too much - it's on a exhibition we will have in about 4 weeks...

reflect!

After studying 5 weeks at UID, we did a reflection on it ( In the IxD programme we reflect A LOT! ) What to keep, what to tweak...Actually the tweaks predominated :) Seems we are a pretty critical class! Good thing, though. 

how to crash a euro-palette with a forklift

There was a presentation of a one week workshop about car-security at UID today. One of the groups built a full-scale model of a car cockpit - with a camera projecting content to the field of view. Impressive!

The whole workshop was a collaboration of all the 2nd year master students at UID. That meant, that transportation designers, product designers and interaction designers grouped and worked on different concepts for 5 days.

After working on a few car related projects in the past, some of the stuff was not totally new and mind-blowing, but there were some really interesting approaches, that will be discovered in following projects at UID.

I passed by the project room from time to time, and it seemed to be great fun...Some guys attached a car seat on a manual forklift and crashed it against a europallete to see what happens...They used a human dummy (he was actually missing at the presentation :) )

Arduino!

Started with Arduino today. Finally! Can't wait to do fancy interactive installations :) We will continue with programming in Processing as well - so soon it will be more than a LED controlled by a potentiometer...I think I will post some updates on my nerdskills from time to time.

It would be sooo great to have a graphical developer environment for Arduino...I guess it would make it a lot easier to start up (but it would take away the geek-factor)

Memories on celluloid

Right before we left to Umeå, a friend of Jassi and mine gave us a disposable camera to take some memory pictures. Even if we both own digital cameras and smartphones we used it and took it with us. Today we take it to a shop to develop the pictures.

I can not even remember the last time I was so curious and excited to see pictures! As it is some four weeks ago when we took the last picture, I can not remember all the motifs and people who are on them.

I have to say, this is a beautiful, and sometimes even thrilling experience, that got lost over the years due to technological progress. I am wondering if there is a way to do something on this?

Worked on machines. Did stuff.

 Finished with the workshop introduction. Refreshed my skills on real machines. It was great fun to create something tangible with your own hands :)

Even if not all the stuff is doing something or is functional. The orange thingy is a 'Tomte', which means Santa Claus in swedish. It is made from a round PVC profile  Every UID student has to do it in order to get the license to turning and milling machines.

I had nice talk about it with some of my classmates - this thing almost could serve as some sort of identifier for all UID students, as it was done for years by every single student at the school. Every single Tomte is similar, but still different in the details, as it is handcrafted and not perfect.

After doing the Tomte, we all had to do a metal clamp, which was slightly more challenging because of the material. Did not work with metal for years!

We also had to do something out of wood, to get the license on the planning machins, band saw, table saw etc...I don't have a picture of the result yet, as I am still searching for a prominent position :)

map of creative process

Interesting infographic on creative process by Melike Turgut.
Would be nice to have it interactively connected with some content developing.

I am actually wondering if it could be a program that traces the steps in your creative process and visualizes it. Some sort of interactive log.

WLAN in every bus in Umeå

In Umeå every bus now has a free Hotspot. Nice, especially if you still have a German contract :)

workshop introduction

For the next two weeks the first year IxD students get an introduction to the wood and metal workshop. Didn't work on 'real' machines for a while - good to get a brush-up on that!

On the left you see DOLF, our booking system for used materials. At UID you can use every material, even for private purposes and pay in the end of the term everything you booked on your DOLF account.












Simply a great thing - even if some people at UID complain about some details. Okay, it could have a nicer interface :)

the cube

 Jassi and I finally moved to our final flat. All our stuff fitted in this box for the last 4 weeks.