Studioclues – Industrial design blog and portfolio site

A few weeks ago Google announced Google fonts and the Google font directory. Being a very novice web designer I typically use the standard system fonts or web safe fonts. These fonts are common on most machines and are usually safe to use on web pages as you know how they are going to be displayed. You know these fonts as Veranda, Copperplate Plate Gothic, and Arial, etc. I was aware that their have been ways to get around this but I thought they were a bit clumsy and somewhat unreliable. Well Google has announced the Google font directory which seems to me like a pretty exciting thing. Not only does Google typically make things better and more user friendly, but also I see the look of the web visually changing now. You can expect to not be looking at the same fonts that you have been used to. Information will continue to spread but the characters that represent that information will now be able to evolve visually at a much faster rate. Of course the fonts will only be limited to open source fonts, but they will available for commercial and private use on any site. Obviously they have made it very easy to implement already as I changed this font in a matter of minutes.

This post was written in Lobster, a Google font.

Read more here.

We had a local IDSA Happy Hour hosted at Keytech, a local engineering and design firm. The host, Jeremy Davage organized a sketch competition on concepts for a better light rail. Here is my entry into the competition. Click on the image for a larger view.

Some quick sketches practicing arrows. Because stuff always needs to articulate, right?

A few months ago I did a friend a favor and illustrated some fitness concepts he was looking to market. Various types of concepts. Click on the images for a larger view.

Besides Industrial Design specifically, I tend to get involved and have a passion for issues on operation,process improvement, and workplace environmental impact. As designers it is our job to always find the faults in what exists so we can find a better way to create or do something. I love some of the points that this video brings up about the change in the workplace and how companies like Google are redefining effective ways to motivate their employees.

This very well done ten minute video by Daniel Pink cites 50 years behavioral science research demonstrating that monetary compensation can only get limited results out of people. What really motivates is mastery of skill and the creation of a “larger” purpose that extends past 40 hours of week at work.

An amazingly simple and entertaining illustration accompanies.

Via core77

Auto desk has announced an entirely new drawing program called Alias Sketch.And with my brief experience with it, I would say it might be a game changer when it comes to tablet sketching programs. I have never seen a drawing programs integrate vector and raster and have the flexibility of working between the two. Interface is also phenomenal.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=14963386

Building off of my previous post about combining the Wacom pen and mouse into one device. How can you combine the digital pen and mouse into one cohesive and well thought out device. For many design tasks I prefer to work directly on screen using the tablet pen. However when switching to web browsing or email related tasks it is obviously much easier to move to the traditional mouse.

I think the answer might lie around some sort of secondary support that helps the user glide across the work surface when in mouse mode.

Some sketch exploration from tonight…

Recently Gizmodo.com got a hold of a supposedly next generation iPhone left in a bar by some careless Apple employee. A lot has been said of the new aesthetic shown below. It is somewhat of a departure from the flowing, highly curvaceous back uni-body design of the original iPhone and 3G iPhone. The new form is now an extrusion with a metal bezel around the edge. A three piece design as it appears. But now the back seems to be covered with glass or plastic as it appears. Beautiful, yes maybe. But turn over your iPhone if you have one. Turn over your 3G or 3GS and typically you will find a multitude of scratches around the area which makes contact with the table. It’s inevitable.

The current G3 iPhone , when launched, was unveiled as a faster and slicker (G3 actually) version of the original phone. The back housing was changed from aluminum in the first version to a highly complex sculpted plastic form in the g3 version. Both generally good looking. But the plastic housing actually takes scratches more easily that the original aluminum version. A step backward in functional progress. But neither of these three designs were designed for the mobile world.

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I think we have all seen this before, human faces or bodies likenesses incorporated into products by mistake or by accident. You see it a lot in car headlights and taillights and sometimes some array of buttons on an electronic product seems to form a face on the top side of a remote. Or in the case of the Ikea lamps below the proportion and silhouette of a person is all that is needed. My thoughts on this idea and process are positive. Why not use the human bodily and facial gestures to emphasize the function or character of the product.   Human bodies and faces subtleties are easily picked up by other humans and convey a lot of messages.  I was sketching around on this little wireless security camera on the right and it evolved into this little guy that had a stern little stance like he was watching  me. Waiting for me to  screw up so he could rat on me. Quite expressive actually.