‘See What You Mean’

Clerkenwell Design Week

Tuesday saw the start of the Clerkenwell Design Week and 'See what you mean' headed down to check it out. With events and locations spread throughout Clerkenwell there was plenty to keep us busy.

The Farmiloe building was chock full of contemporary design from the likes of BoConcept, Dyke and Dean, Plumen et al, and the former Victorian glass works makes for a unique backdrop.

The House of Detention also served as a unique space to display works, showcasing some of the world's most exciting up-and-coming design talent. A personal highlight here were Katy Goutefangea's screen printed cushions with geometric patterns.

We ambled round various showrooms including Vitra who had lots of new designs such as the en-vogue standing desks alongside classics like the Eames lounge chair. Here is the full list of showrooms.

With an almost overwhelming array of places and things to do/see it's impossible to fit everything in on one day, but well worth trying.

Thursday, May 23rd, 2013

Congratulations Steffan!

The D&AD student awards have been announced and we are pleased to wish Steffan Cummins congratulations from all of us at 'See what you mean' for picking up the 'Best of the year' award.
Steffan has interned with us a couple of times whilst studying, and is always a great addition to the studio bringing endless passion and enthusiasm for design.

See Steffan's winning video below, and see the full project on his blog.

Monday, May 20th, 2013

The History of Typography

This excellent animated short by Ben Barrett-Forrest about the history of typography contains 291 Paper Letters, 2,454 Photographs and 140 hours of work. Well worth the effort, and most definitely worth a watch.

Wednesday, May 08th, 2013

Telling an engaging story

We’re helping The Crown Estate build a picture of what they do.
A backdrop to bring conversations to life. It’s not about bullet points and cold facts. A picture encourages you to talk in anecdotes – human stories that people can relate too. For the audience, it keeps everything in view. They can see how it all fits together and what makes your offer compelling.

Here’s Richard drawing an overview of Rural & Coastal activities on our whiteboards.

Thursday, May 02nd, 2013

Can’t say Title

If you watch the video above, from Sebas & Clim, you may notice that the client logo has been pixelated out. As part of their contract with whomever the client is, Sebas & Clim can show the video without voice over or brand logos. It is a neat way to get to show your work when a client would like to keep it under wraps. A side product I found of having no voice over was that I focused more on the great animations and production of the piece.

You can read a more detail on the subject of 'How To Make Sure You Can Show Work In Your Portfolio' over on motionographer.

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

Foursquare infographic

Foursquare recently released a cool visualisation tool that allows you to see 12 months of your check-ins. With a few options of how to view your data you are sure to gleam some new knowledge of your habits. Use the tool yourself here.

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

Disney: HideOut

It's always interesting to see what people are creating in R&D departments, especially if the department is at Disney.

Hideout is a small projector that enables interaction between what is projected and the physical world it is projected onto. With hideout books come to life and video games are playable with real objects.

Hideout cleverly uses infrared-absorbing markers which are invisable to our eyes but not to the camera.

Watch the video on the Hideout page to see it in action.

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013

Hello Lamp Post!

Studio Pan have won the Bristol ‘playable city’ competition launched by the Watershed. Their entry 'Hello lamp post' brings Bristol street furniture to life. The public can interact with lamp posts, post boxes etc by texting the numbers displayed on the objects to special phone number. They will then get a question text back from the object.

It sounds like a great way to explore the city and we look forward to seeing it in action over the summer.

You can see more detail in the full proposition PDF

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013

Pinterest to Apple TV

A quick update to our Pinterest / Apple TV inspiration wall. See the previous post here seewhatyoumean.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/inspiration-wall.html for how to set it up.

The Pinterest RSS feed only supply low resolution images which isn't great, but there is a way to get the high resolution images from Pinterest.

To get the bigger images you need to pass your RSS feed through pinterestfeed.appspot.com/ then use that URL for your ifttt recipe.

It's as easy as that, now you can get high resolution Pinterest pictures on your Apple TV.

Monday, December 03rd, 2012

The Infinite Jukebox

"For when your favorite song just isn't long enough."
The infinite jukebox breaks songs down into beats, the song is then played beat by beat, but there is a chance it will jump to a different part of the song if it sounds similar. This results in songs that can go on forever, or a lot longer than the original. The visualization used shows the beats and the possible transitions of each beat. Built by Paul Lamere.

Wednesday, November 14th, 2012

James Burlinson's C.V.

The illustrations of James Burlinson are fantastic, unique and make my eyes happy. Currently looking for work James has created a great C.V. which has a nod to 8 bit art and an infographic feel to it. If it landed on your desk/inbox it would be hard to ignore.

Wednesday, October 31st, 2012

Sketchbots

One in a series of great animated videos from Google to promote their Chrome Web Lab at the Science Museum, London. The experiments include a robot that draws your portrait taken from your web camera in sand, as well as universal orchestra, teleporter, data tracer and lab tag explorer. See them all in action on the Chrome Web Lab website.

Wednesday, September 26th, 2012

Font Awesome

Font awesome is a typeface of icons designed to be used with twitter bootstrap. The typeface comprises of 220 icons which are free to use commercially. A great resource for designers and especially web designers due to the CSS integration. A very useful font to add to your arsenal.

Tuesday, September 25th, 2012

5 million bicycle journeys

This is a pretty cool animation created by visualisation specialist Jo Wood. It shows the first 5 million journeys pedaled in the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme.

Wednesday, September 19th, 2012

iPhone created in CSS3

One for all you web devs, a great tutorial on how to create an iPhone using a single element and CSS3.

What's really great is being able to play around with the code at any point during the tutorial.

Monday, September 10th, 2012

Grid - A Simply Remarkable Spreadsheet

Grid app from Binary Thumb Corporation looks set to make spreadsheets simple, clean and collaborative. Watch the video about to see it in action.

Thursday, August 30th, 2012

Branch

Branch describe their experience as the online equivalent of a conversation across a dinner table.

Branch allows users to grab something from online, whether its an article, a tweet or a photo and 'branch' a conversation from it.

Head of Product Josh Miller says, "Between articles, blog posts, and tweets, the internet is dominated by monologues. So we want to build a home for dialogues online, by combining the intimacy of a dinner table conversation with the power of the internet."

Attempting to create an experience that's more human? Gets the thumbs up from us!

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

The Alternative Rugby Commentary.

As a child who grew up on a diet of Nes & Master system I'm a sucker for some 8-bit animation. The animation is from Fraser Davidson and promotes The Alternative Rugby Commentary.

Monday, August 13th, 2012

Google Fiber

Google is launching high speed fiber internet (in America) and have made a video that shows the evolution of the internet. It's a cute video with some nice touches and plenty of charm. See the Google fiber site for some more videos.

Friday, August 03rd, 2012

LOVESPORT

To celebrate the Olympics Studio AKA have put the LOVESPORT animations online! The animations are fantastically simple but highly effective.

There will be a new animation daily so keep visiting www.studioaka.co.uk

Thursday, August 02nd, 2012

Collaborative animation

This Exquisite Forest is a new take on the classic game of exquisite corpse. In the exquisite forest each tree represents an animation, and each branch takes the animation in a new direction. Users can create their own animations to build from the previous animation all based on a set theme.

The project was conceived by Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin, and produced by Google and Tate.

Friday, July 20th, 2012

Ford Keyfree login

Ford have developed an app to make logging in to all your online accounts effortless. The app allows you to enter your passwords one last time, your smart phone then acts as a key to unlock the accounts. Clever stuff, and I for one would love not to have to remember all my passwords. It works via bluetooth, which raises some security concerns, but if they can get it secure then this could be amazing. Love the animation style in the video too.

Friday, June 22nd, 2012

Windows AirPlay mirror to Apple TV

One new feature I liked in the forthcoming OS X Mountain Lion release is the AirPlay mirroring. Mirroring allows you to show your desktop on your Apple TV.

But what about Windows users? Well, AirParrot from Squirrels fills the gap. Once installed you can share your desktop to your Apple TV with ease, hurrah!

Monday, June 18th, 2012

infogr.am

infogr.am is a service that allows you to create web based infographics in your browser. You simply pick a design you like, add your data then share or embed infographic. Looks like a great tool to build quick infographics on the fly.

Check out the samples on the infogr.am website.

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

Any Touch

Ayotle in partnership with Digitas Labs have developed Any Touch - A tactile object prototype. Using a DSLR camera and a 3D depth sensor the software can detect object and gestures. This allows the user to interact with digital experiences. Check the video to see it in action.

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012