Ironic by design

Was I the only one to spot the irony in this?

CITY DESIGN COMPANY NETS AWARD FOR HELPING FIRMS TO CUT PAPER USE

Graphic design company Alder and Alder has scooped the award for best environmental company in Devon at the first annual Federation of Small Businesses Awards. The firm launched a five-step leaflet called Today and Tomorrow, which aimed to show businesses how to market themselves in a more environmentally-friendly way.

This is not a joke.

Design quote of the day

Ultimately, we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we design are the "things" that we sell, rather than the individual, social and cultural experience that they engender, and the value and impact that they have. Design that ignores this is not worthy of the name. - Bill Buxton's personal mantra

Help. I need a blog post.

So, for the first time I am making a double post between the Design Innovation blog and Verticalbones. My assumption is that few of you actually use the sidebar links ->, so if I truly find some interesting things around design, I should probably post them here as well. It takes time to maintain three blogs so I believe I've earned the right to pilfer some thinking and finds.

Tell me if I am completely off-base or not. Also, I can probably say some things here that I can't or wouldn't on the work blog.


I was completely taken by the whole "packaging" of the Help Remedies brand. Smart. Irreverent. Sustainable. They even offer help for those of you who are just bored or horny. Love the t-shirts.

Ambient Intelligence Chapter

I suppose I'm a geek at heart, or at the very least, I acknowledge my inner geek. I was programming BASIC on my Atari home computer shortly after I owned my first bike. I have suffered gadget envy. I lived with MIT students when going to school at BU in Boston. I would have quit my job at Crayola if the MIT Media Lab had an available spot during our visits there.

So perhaps it makes sense that I did draft a chapter for an upcoming book on Ambient Intelligence. My chapter will stick out like a sore thumb among the other chapters drafted by research scientists at innovation centres throughout Ireland. Keep in mind, this is an academic publisher, and my approach was much more paper than essay. If any of this sounds interesting to you, have a read, and let me know what you think.

User-centred Design and Development of Future Smart Systems: Opportunities and Challenges (PDF, 218KB)

Eat your veggies

Maybe they should use this image to inspire kids to eat their vegetables. Too incredible not to post the image.

Till Nowak has created a masterpiece “Salad”, a fantastic digital image of Alien made out of vegetables. His tribute to HR Giger and Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

via Laughing Squid

Blow job

Now, am I the only one that has never done this with a public restroom hand dryer? It appears that the Wandsworth company still markets this as a hand and face dryer, with the equally silly name, "Bunnie Hand and Face Dryer."

The jury is still out on the Dyson Airblade, but it does filter out the shite before blowing it on your hands ... or if it could, your face.