Why the New Google Maps is the Most Honest Form of Cartography
Is the hot dog vendor who stands on a street corner as worthy of inclusion as the bank on the same corner? That decision still lay with mapmakers—in this case a giant internet company. Google’s solution to the problem was to remove itself from the equation. Its map maker tool, much lauded for its use in creating usable maps of North Korea and now slowly being rolled out in other countries, allows users to mark locations in a Wikipedia-like fashion.
The new product goes further. It says on the tin that this is map is made for you: “a billion maps, one for each user,” as Google’s lead map designer, Jonah Jones, told TechCruch. What about advertising? Of course Google will use your information to serve you ads. That is what it does. And as on other Google products, ads will be clearly marked.
The idea of “mental maps”, or how individuals see the world, is an old one, used by artists and ethnographers and New Yorker cover designers. What Google has done is to bring the mental map to a service used by several million people. With one for every user, maps can never again lay claim to—or even give the illusion of—neutrality. Despite its restrictive nature, such a map frees us to see the world anew.
Read more at Quartz
Warby Parker is an amazing brand. Even though they say the product is the most important thing, it’s the attention to making online shopping that much more personal and easy that ticks all our boxes. Customers get the feeling that the brand is acting in our best interests: value for money, but still tasteful, and convenience without the extra cost, with a social agenda to boot that makes us feel good about ourselves.
We love the attention to design and a nod to fashion; the acceptance that beautiful objects made beautifully is important to us, and that at its core, it is a social enterprise. We want Warby Park to go GLOBAL, they’re doing all the right things.
Hear Neil Blumenthal speak at last year’s PSFK Conference on Vimeo…
Forensic Artist Proves That Women Literally Don’t Know Their Own Beauty
A new addition to Dove’s Real Beauty campaign asks a forensic artist to draw two sketches of women—one based on their own description, and one from a stranger—with shocking results.
Beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder. Studies have shown, though that when the beauty in question is a woman’s own, and the beholder’s eye is theirs as well, only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful. Dove has long been working toward shifting that paradigm with the alternately lauded and derided Real Beauty campaign. The brand’s latest effort at changing self-perception attempts to do so through eyewitness testimony.
Recently, Dove hired former police forensic artist Gil Zamora to illustrate some psychologically revealing sketches. In a campaign created by Ogilvy Toronto, a series of women described themselves to Zamora in minute detail, from behind a curtain. The artist in turn created composites as though trying to identify a criminal. Next, each participant was asked to describe another woman present. The results are dramatic and sort of moving.
good:
Illuminating Brooklyn’s Sky in Solidarity With Boston
- Lucky Tran wrote in Community, Creativity and Boston
After the bombings in Boston yesterday, the security response was huge in New York. Manhattan was in lockdown, with police swarming everywhere, and people were told by the authorities to run and hide inside their homes. So we decided to stay in Brooklyn and project on one of it’s most iconic and most loved buildings: the Brooklyn Academy of Music. BAM didn’t know about it, and at first security was suspicious, but as soon as they saw the message, they embraced us with approval. Even police officers who drove by gave us a warm nod and beep. It was a sweet moment when we saw a plea for peace trump the rules…
TacoCopter: Flying Robots Deliver Tacos To Your Location (if you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area)
What the Huffington Post says…
The Landmark Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong is serving a L900 Jimmy Choo package till early May. It includes afternoon tea for two at the MO Bar, meticulously handcrafted in exquisite shoe and handbag shapes. Jimmy Choo, of course. And after the tea, check into the Mandarin 9200 square-foot L900 Suite for a night and select a pair from Jimmy Choo’s new 24:7 capsule collection.
Price tag for the splurge? Approximately $1,500 US.
via The Cool Hunter
“Not your typical weekend cottage…”
LM Guest House in Dutchess County, New York by New York-based Desai/Chia Architects, is a 2,000 square-foot (approx. 187 Sqm) house on a working farm that had no existing buildings.
A clear homage to Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, beautiful detailing and a conversation-starter on the effectiveness of modernist architecture today.
via The Cool Hunter
A Design Film Festival 2013: The Human Scale
Anonymous, Singapore, is holding another A Design Film Festival. It will be held at the School of the Arts on 15 - 16 June 2013. Tickets will be available from 1 May 2013.
(by madebyanonymous)
Graphic Artist: A Common Name setting up an urban geode… nice work…
when you don’t have a ladder, ask a friend @gokuo #friends #streetteam #streetart #urbangeode #sf (at SOMA)
Nice white-on-white…
Working a white on white test with a new pasting method #geodes #urbangeode #whiteonwhite #streetart
Service Design and User Experience: Same or Different?
via Engine Service Design on Vimeo
‘liquidglide’ non-stick bottle by david smith and MIT
david smith and a team of engineers at MIT may have solved the final puzzle piece to the perfect barbeque. ‘liquiglide’ is a design for a bottle that is coated in an FDA-approved substance, so that ketchup (and other condiments for that matter) just slides right out when you tilt the bottle -
no smacking required. the team would like to introduce the ‘super slippery’ substance to numerous other bottles, as it works with many types
of packaging such as glass, plastic and can also be applied in any number of ways, including spraying the coating onto the inside of vessel.
the project is a contender in the design museum’s ‘product’ category for the sixth annual designs of the year alongside:
bang & olufsen ‘beolit 12’ - cecile manz; colalife - simon berry; faceture vases - phil cuttance; light field camera - lytro; little printer - berg; oigen kitchenware - jasper morrison and japan creative; olympic cauldron - heatherwick studio; plug lamp - form us with love; surface tension lamp - front; switch collection - inga sempe and legend; tekio - anthony dickens;
child vision glasses - josh silver; color porcelain - scholten and baijings; e-source - hal watts; kiosk 2.0 - unfold studio; papa foxtrot toys - postlerferguson; pier hardy travel sprays - frederic malle; replicator 2 - makerbot; and the w127 lamp - dirk winkle.
performance architecture - construction with clothes by dantiope
intervention 01
‘performance architecture’ is conceived as an international ideas competition aimed at choosing proposals for five
temporary urban interventions in public spaces featured as controversial by the citizens. the installations intend
to draw up architectural and urban strategies that, by reviving performance art approaches, provide new directions
as to the roles of architects, artists and designers - while promoting alternative urban practices to the construction
of monuments and other traditional structures by facilities, activities and happenings.
the 2012 exhibition in guimaraes, portugal includes ‘construction with clothes’ by dantiope, ‘bodyphonic’ by DOSE collective,
‘fountain hacks’ by like architects, ‘agricultural mountain’ by IUT and ‘unidade’ by pedrita studio + ricardo jacinto.
