Just a quick pointer to Ethan Leander Timm’s “Presenting Systems” article (Link) over on CG Architect. Initially I was taken in by the first paragraph:

Potentially, photorealistic architectural presentations may confuse an audience more than clarify. By implicitly claiming to look “real”, they could actually hinder some creative conversation between architect, client, and the general public.

With the over-emphasis on tools and technical abilities these days, newly-minted designers seem to be forgetting what their job really is: to be creative. They are not and nor should they aspire to be computer/software technicians. Hence, I thought the article was going to be about that topic. My mistake.

The article is really one big technical explanation and example of how to use a variety of software tools to present what seems to me to be a final presentation (don’t ask me what it is they really have to discuss after one of these intricate presentations; if an Industrial Design project gets to this level, most of the discussion is complete). That’s cool. And it’s a neat article. But I’ll trade this one for a nice write-up explaining why industrial designers should be concentrating more on Creative Thinking than Technical Skills. Anyone?

If you caught my earlier post on designer Nate Lynch (Link) and my wanting to showcase designers here on a weekly basis, you’re expecting this post. Unfortunately you also know it’s a short-lived effort since the designers on the Core77 design forum effectively showed no interest. No matter. The above images – three individual verticals I’ve composited – are the work of designer Travis Baldwin (Link).

To be honest I haven’t paid much attention to artwork inside pop-up windows and I’m betting many of us don’t. Our loss. Seeing the tiny artworks individually and enlarged it’s apparent how much effort go into them. I like these.

Thankfully, Travis alerted me to a thread he posted over on Product Design Forum dot com (Link) that go into more detail about his work. Very cool.

{Image Copyright © Travis Baldwin}

I’ve very much enjoyed the articles I’ve read on online magazine The Escapist (Link), but unless I’m diligent I tend to miss an issue, and I’ve missed quite a few actually. That’s not good because the articles are often well-written and insightful. So this is notification to anyone else out there in the same boat that there’s a new issue (#27) online and ready for review.

Not sure what The Escapist is? From their “About” section:

The Escapist covers gaming and gamer culture with a progressive editorial style, with articles and columns by the top writers in and outside of the industry. A weekly publication, its magazine-style updates offer content for a mature audience of gamers, entertainment enthusiasts, industry insiders, and other “NetSet” readers.

Okay, maybe the subject matter isn’t for everyone. But it sure is a nice-looking production. Plus, did I mention it’s free? No? Well, it’s free. So if you don’t think you might be interested in this stuff, check out the main article, “Despite All Our Games“, in the current issue anyway and see if maybe there’s something in there that is worth your time. After all, you may not be a gamer, but someone you know probably is.

Nice chance to insert some awesome bits of architectural and furniture design courtesy of the peeps over at MoCo Loco.

The above image is the Mikimoto Ginza 2 store going up in Tokyo. Schweet. For more info and images on it head over to ML’s entry on the work in progress (Link).

And the image below, according to ML, is “Rainer Mutsch’s abstract re-interpretation of Wenzel Hablik’s (1881-1934) historical “Salon of Itzehoe”. O-kay. All I know is that it seems like someone has been pretty heavily influenced by low-poly videogame design, and reminds me of RCA’s PSP polymesh people project I posted about earlier (Link).

It also reminds me of a chair design project from my “foundation” year in art school. Fellow industrial designer – and last I heard, Little Tikes employee – Jeff Gatto created a foam chair from rectangular blocks and painted it to look like concrete. When called to introduce his design, he jumped into the air to take his seat and the class let out a collective gasp assuming incorrectly that he was in for a hard landing. It was a very cool idea. Too bad Rainer’s chairs aren’t similarly comfortable (“made of plastic and MDF”).

Anyway, it’s kinda interesting to me how in some ways these two can share similar shapes, but the top one might be considered an “organic” building while the furniture would definitely come off as “inorganic”. Interesting considering my post yesterday declaring Lego’s to be biomimetic.

{Images source: MoCo Loco}

Well, I guess it should come as no surprise that news of Lawrence Lessig’s virtual world appearance in Second Life has hit Boing Boing (Link), the site co-edited by like-minded science fiction author and previous SL visitor Cory Doctorow. Wonderful.

You can read an earlier post of mine (Link) where I comment on both Lessig’s and Richard Epstein’s essays (posted last year on the MIT Technology Review website). Perhaps that will explain why I’m less than enthusiastic. In the meantime, I intend to do some reading. But I have a feeling that I won’t find much in Lessig’s writings to cover my issues with the problems I detail in that post.