Morro happening in Modern Art Museum in Rio tonight

This evening in Rio a group of good friends, Marcelo Damm, Rafael Roldão and
Renato Mosci present to the public their excellent sofa called Morro and its
otoman, Morrinho. The name refers to the favelas in Rio and the design uses
recycled materials in its composition. The final design has the colored and
relaxed spirit of Rio.

The opening is at 19h at Novo Desenho store in the Modern Art Museum, a kind
of Brazilian Design Forum shop in Rio.

For more information, check www.designdequinta.blogspot.com

Degree Exhibition + talks in Umeå

Quoting twice

Yesterday I was browsing through "the art of looking sideways" and on the
first pages I bumped into a quote by Michel de Montaigne:

"I quote others only in order the better to express myself". 

So here I point to Rachel Hinman's blog where she talks about the power
of place, to better express my thoughs on why Mapping Experiences.

My favorite topic on her text is: The web is great at things... not places
If we view the world as a series of nouns and categorize them into the three
basic noun-types of people, places and things; as web developers and designers,
we’ve spent the lion’s share of our focus on creating sites and systems that
help us understand ‘things’. Search, the most popular and one might even
argue the universal interface for the web, leverages our semantic (the words
or language we use to describe something) to find ‘things’. Books on Amazon,
a song on LastFm, a movie on BitTorrent, a pair of Hush Puppies on eBay –
‘things’ own the web. We’ve also devised clever ways to unlock the power of
things on the web with features like peer reviews, associated product
recommendations and price comparisons.

The web is undeniably great at things, and some might argue it’s pretty good
at people, too. While most lack the grace, subtlety and dimensionality of human
relationships, social networks have provided glimpses into how to begin to
grapple with the complexity of ‘people’ on the web. ‘Place’ is the web’s Achille’s
heel – at least on a PC – simply because information is locked in the PC context.
Restaurant reviews are tough to access unless you know the exact name or
address. Maps and bus schedules.

get excited, make things

Yesterday we hosted an Interaction Design Summit here in Umeå and
the 24 hours before were a frenzy of preparations and creative work
to make some special giveaways to the speakers. It was a collaborative
work from the second year students, a really beautiful effort, with everyone
giving their time and sharing ideas. Our goal: make something unique and
personal and get the WTF factor from them.

The packages

in detail

the crumpter

Rahul likes the Crumpter

a very special implant

the collection

Telling stories with a Logo

This morning while having breakfast I saw this logo for the first time on a
TV advertisement. The simplicity and the clever use of typography in it are
just fabulous. Steven Heller, famous design critic wrote about it , and in his
text he quotes the author of the logo, Brian Collins from Collins design NY.
Mr. Collins says that the idea behind the word game with Me and We was to
make the individual effort still present in the collective movement, which is
very interesting.

I initially had interpreted it in another way, one that shows that it takes just a
little movement (like turn a letter upside down) to transform individualism and
self-centered attitudes (Me) on collective awareness and effort, (We).

Whatever the interpretation, the important is in the power of a good idea. To
convey the idea of change and community in such a minimalistic form is a
work of great talent and well used.

wecansolveit.org