25 Bad Design Habits

1. Taking Constructive Criticism Personally
2. Not Knowing Paula Scher, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand and Friends
3. Not Staying up on Current Events and Design News
4. Not Owning the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook
5. Charging too Little for Design Projects
6. Not Using Contracts to Cover Your Butt
7. Not Setting Deadlines for Projects
8. Doing Spec Based Work (If you like it you can pay)
9. Not Asking for a Down Payment before Starting a Project
10. Using Poorly Designed Fonts from Free Font Sites
11. Using Display Fonts as Text Fonts
12. Using the Comic Sans Font
13. Using too Many Different Fonts in One Design
14. Forgetting White Space is your Friend
15. Not Sketching Before Designing
16. Not Using Rulers on Screen
17. Relying Totally on the Computer, Especially for Kerning
18. Using Photoshop Filters After Your First 6 Months
19. Using Low Resolution Web Images for Print
20. Not Designing Logos in Vector Format
21. Making Logos Unable to Reproduce Well Small
22. Forgetting to Learn Keyboard Shortcuts
23. Not Saving Frequently
24. Not Backing up Files on an External Hard Drive
25. Not Getting Enough Sleep! Stop Drinking so much Red Bull!

Design for the Other 90%

The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in NYC had a show called Design for the other 90 %. The exhibition focused on designers who design products for 90% of the world's population that has no access to many of the products and resources we take for granted. Designers provided unique ways to provide better access to water, shelter, health and education. And here is a blog that has an interesting critique of the exhibition.

http://www.designobserver.com/archives/027474.html

Google Sightseeing

http://googlesightseeing.com

This is a great site for looking at peculiar observations using Google Earth. Here is an image of a swastika shaped military building in San Diego. The military is spending millions to change the image from above by creating some sort of . Another image in Mongolia shows a shape carved into the landscape of a man dancing. Google Earth has created a wondrous new way of sightseeing. Check it out.

RFID Tags

This is old news but the implications of RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology is significant from a technological perspective. More importantly, RFID has profound implications surrounding the right to privacy. RFID tags store information and data that can be retrieved very easily. Most passports use this technology to track the identification of the individual. Easy pass uses this technology to track and bill commuters on their passage through tollbooths. Credit card companies are starting to use this technology to track consuming and shopping habits. Imagine the power advertisers will have?

Snow World: Helping Burn Victims Using Gaming and VR

A joint research team at The University of Washington developed a VR game called Snow World. By playing this game, burn victims can reduce their pain perception by 50-90 %. The study of physiological aspects of pain has a long history, though the most prominent theory that explains how pain perception works is 'the gate theory'. The Gate control theory of pain is the idea that physical pain is not a direct result of activation of pain receptor neurons, but rather its perception is modulated by interaction between different neurons. To make a long story short, pain is experienced by modulating gates that turn pain on or off.

Brainstorming Application

Here's a site I found that helps you brainstorm with friends effectively.
http://www.molecularthinking.com/brainstorm/welcome

Seoul Nabi New Media Festival

Caspar and I grabbed a bus to Seoul this past weekend. I wanted to see Caspar's piece at the Seoul Museum of Art. He is in a show called Where Euclid Walked.
http://seoulmoa.seoul.go.kr/html/eng/exhibitions/search_result_detail.jsp?display_seq=2007-08-1
We also checked out the Nabi festival called pARTy, a corny name that stands for people, art, and technology. There was some interesting work. The best part of the show was an installation at the gallery (the rest of the show was at a theater complex). It was an experimental sound piece consisting of flickering lights that hung from the ceiling. The viewer brings in a box with headphones that looks like a geiger counter. The box reacts to the light frequency and creates different sounds in a way that encourages exploration and interactivity. I found myself weaving in and out of a landscape of morphing sounds. The performances at the theater were ok. I met Paul Miller A.K.A. DJ Spooky. He is a big art star who writes a lot about new media and experimental sound. He seems to have bridged the pop world and the academic world. Academics seem like him because of his ability to speak and write intelligently about his work as a DJ. The other interesting piece was a skate boarding performance in which the skateboards were wired with sensors that modulated sound. Professional skateboarders skated on a half-pipe to perform the piece. It was nice piece.