Big news in the design world today: well-known designer Bill Stumpf, best known as one of the designers behind the now infamous Aeron chair, has died at the age of 70. For those outside the profession, for designers this is a little like hearing of the death of a famous film director. Imagine if you heard that Ridley Scott Steven Spielberg had passed away. Same difference.
From the interviews I’ve read over the years, Stumpf sounded like a classy individual. He’ll be missed by the profession.
For most Americans, today has to feel uncomfortable. At least I know I feel out of sorts. Five years ago when a co-worker informed our design group that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, the first words out of my mouth were that we were under attack. There was no question in my mind that there was more to come, and sadly I was correct.
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A couple months prior I purchased a sketch pad. Nothing special. I usually only sketched in the office or in private; never in public. That day and the two that followed would be different. After purchasing the pad I went to a small used book store where I usually only stopped in to get some chai. This time I decided to stay and sketch on that new pad.
Usually when I sketch, I sketch product. And the first two pages are sculptural pieces based on product influence (I was taking a metal sculpture class at the time). And then I started drawing the image below.
Just read a Reuter’s article on C|Net (Link) about the Second Life security breach I mentioned earlier (reLink) and am once again amazed at the poor journalististic effort to get the facts straight. Here are some mistakes:
“Second Life,” the fast-growing online site where hundreds of thousands of people play out fantasy lives online…
Not entirely true. This implies that Second Life is only about “fantasy lives”, yet many people – myself included – do not hide our real life identities and instead use Second Life as a testbed for ideas.
…letter to its 650,000 users this weekend that its customer database, including names, addresses, passwords and some credit card data, had been compromised.
Yesterday, while going through some bookmarks, I came across an old link to a Quicktime VR of the Hadron Collider at CERN (a really cool little toy – Link). Serendipity must be in the air because while stopping into the Digitally Distributed Environments blog today, I read an update to some panorama posts (Link) that have been going up there lately, and this one included a link to some Second Life QTVR scenes over on Panogames (Link).
I’m relatively certain I’ve seen these already; I’ve surfed through Panogames a few times. But I don’t think I’ve written about either of these. Actually, it’s the Google Earth tutorial that caught my eye, because it raises the possibility of creating environment spheres for rendering realistic CG images. Anyway, if you’ve not seen them or want to learn how to make them, check out the links for images and how-to’s.
And just last night I posted a comment on Fred Wilson’s A VC blog that advertisers would find more ways to get their usually-worthless messages to the masses. I’d say this qualifies: LED-embedded clothing.
The way this video plays, makes me want to move to the hills.
Put up a “No Trespassin'” sign.
And buy me a gun.
