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"I am troubled by the devaluing of the word ‘design’. I find myself now being somewhat embarrassed to be called a designer. In fact I prefer the German term, Gestalt-Ingenieur. Apple and Vitsoe are relatively lone voices treating the discipline of design seriously in all corners of their businesses. They understand that design is not simply an adjective to place in front of a product’s name to somehow artificially enhance its value. Ever fewer people appear to understand that design is a serious profession; and for our future welfare we need more companies to take that profession seriously."
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Doctor Who in Comics: 1964-2011 takes place at the Cartoon Museum from July 27th to October 30th, features over 100 works and is the first to showcase the Doctor in his many incarnations, demonstrating how the character has evolved in comics over the last 47 years. The museum hopes that during the exhibition the public will help solve the mystery of who created a number of early comic pages including iconic images of the Daleks and Davros.
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"Africa has experienced an incredible boom in mobile phone use over the past decade. In 1998, there were fewer than four million mobiles on the continent. Today, there are more than 500m. In Uganda alone, 10 million people, or about 30% of the population, own a mobile phone, and that number is growing rapidly every year. For Ugandans, these ubiquitous devices are more than just a handy way of communicating on the fly: they are a way of life.
"It may seem unlikely, given its track record in technological development, but Africa is at the centre of a mobile revolution. In the west, we have been adapting mobile phones to be more like our computers.. In Africa, where a billion people use only 4% of the world's electricity, many cannot afford to charge a computer, let alone buy one. This has led phone users and developers to be more resourceful, and African mobiles are being used to do things that the developed world is only now beginning to pick up on." -
"The types of advertising that the Guardian runs is often a cause for friction with readers, as shown by this year's annual survey of 4,660 readers, which will be published on our Sustainability site. According to the survey, 53% of print readers oppose advertising for fashion brands that rely on cheap foreign labour. The most disliked form of advert is for music with offensive lyrics that includes homophobic or sexist material. Interestingly, online readers strongly object to religious and political advertisements.
There are other ethical reasons for turning down advertisements. The Guardian dropped advertisements for sex chatlines from The Guide nearly a decade ago. When News International's apology was published on 16 July, the Guardian announced it would give to charity the revenue from the advertisement"
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Linden Tibbetts describes the thought processes behind a new web tool. Worth reading the whole post for an interesting link to another project…
"One evening, waiting in line to order Indian food, I was lost in thought about an event-driven programming problem when something clicked in a funny way. As nerdy as “event-driven programming” may sound, the concept is really quite simple. During the execution of a program, the programmer has some idea about what types of events may happen. For example “a user clicks a specific button” or “a new message is received by your inbox”. Knowing what these events are, you can then attach a bit of code that runs the same way every time an event is encountered. Its very much like cause and effect, except as a programmer you’re free to be creative with what effects match up to each cause."
Design Studies at Dundee
Design thinking in practice
