Field of Light

Excellent lighting designer Bruce Munro will present his Field of Light installation at the Eden Project in Cornwall, England, this winter.The installation, consisting of 6,000 acrylic tubes containing optical fibres, is inspired by the way the desert flowers after a rainstorm.
For more details see de zeen design magazine

What is graphic design then?

Entry for the ‘What is Graphic Design?’ competition run by the ever so talented Veerle.

Rather than going for the obvious approach of nice image and some airy fairy copy about graphic design, I went for the more tongue in cheek approach of this.

The winners were graphically very good, but some a little too predictable!

funky lighting

Love this lighting which allows you to create changing forms and patterns on walls and ceilings. See shado website for more of their great design ideas.

There’s a famous seaside place called Blackpool

That’s noted for fresh air and fun, And Mr. and Mrs. Ramsbottom, Went there with young Albert, their son.

They didn’t think much to the Ocean: The waves, they was fiddlin’ and small,

There was no wrecks… until now

Festival of light - Lyon 2007

A giant Newton’s pendulum which gradually changes colour as the balls touch one another in simulated kinetic rhythm can be found in the centre of Lyon’s Presque île for the light festival on the 8th and 9th December.

On the banks of the Rhône, hundreds of light cubes in changing phosphorescent shades decorate the terraces of Guillotière.

A impressive snow shaker dome has appeared over the famous statue of Louis XIV in Bellecour sporting the new slogan ONLY LYON.

Voitures du futur

Une competition de création automobile pour les marques italiennes Fiat, Alfa Romeo, et Lancia a donné lieu à des lignes futuristes et très esthétiques.
Cliquer sur Design competition pour plus d’images.

angelodesigns

Voici une manière raffinée de présenter les cartes postales de cet été, à condition de les selectionner, les écrire et se les envoyer soi-même !

visitez le site de Angelo Designs

The newest addition

It’s been a long wait, but he’s finally here: Ethan Roy James Barry came into the world on Monday 16th July at 01.43am, weighing in at 7lbs 15oz. Have to say that I’m really proud of Abbie and the way she coped with the whole birth - an experience that will last a lifetime.

So, what’s in a name? Ethan originates from the Hebrew Eythan and means constant, firm, strong and long lived. The name actually appears in the Bible as 4 minor characters - the most significant of which was Ethan the Ezrarite whose wisdom was surpassed only by Solomon.

This first week has passed in a flash and reminds me to make sure I make the most of every moment (though changing nappies at 2am it’s hard to think like that!).

So, there we go. Short and sweet with quite big feet.

Solution to IE6’s ‘Click to activate Flash’ problem. A slightly geeky post.

I am not one to really talk about techy stuff (even though that is what I spend a lot of my day thinking about), but thought this might be helpful to others out there who have been wrestling with this issue.

The issue in question occurs in Internet Explorer (surprise!) when a flash movie embedded into a web page would only play once the user clicked on the movie to activate it. This is down to a security update that Microsoft released - initially as an optional update.

The workaround involves abandoning the traditional method of embedding Flash movies in a web page ( object or embed for example) and instead, using Javascript to bring the Flash movie in. A very useful guide to a number of workarounds can be found on Adobe’s website.

Flash used to be unaffected by the differences in the way different browsers displayed a web page. It’s a shame that, yet again, Internet Explorer is causing a few headaches.

Loopy Lighting

Love this wild mass of flimsy tubing that gives out incandescent light. Visit the 2 Jane website

Do Ré Mi

For all budding musicians, these glasses are a must. Tap out your favourite tunes over a glass of milk...
You can purchase them from this site

Why Fair Trade Begins at Home

Recently we created a promotional brochure for Farm Crisis Network. Entitled ‘Why Fair Trade Begins at Home’, it highlights the importance of supporting your local farmers. We often think of Fair Trade as a cause to ensure suppliers in developing countries receive a fair price for their produce - this is a good thing, but we can easily overlook farmers in the UK who also face hardship.

One way you can help farmers in the UK is to shop with care. This means not shopping at Tesco’s for starters. Try a local farmers market or buy your veg using a market garden box scheme. Yes, it will cost a little more, but you WILL notice the difference in taste and you will be helping to ensure that food suppliers receive a fair price.

After all Fair Trade begins at home.

ding

J’adore ce produit ! Pour quelques idées de plus visitez ce site de design produit allemand

New York New York … so good they named it twice

A week in New york City is just what the doctor ordered to recharge the creative batteries. This town is buzzing with life, excitement and new trends.

The Cooper Hewitt Museum on current design trends across all areas of modern living is small but stimulating, and definately worth a visit if you’re on the Museum Mile. Particularly at the moment as it is host to the National Design Trienniel. See their site for details : design museum NYC

The Apple Store on 5th Ave is a must for all Mac junkies. Funny how time stops when you descend into the the circular glass elevator… And how your purse seems lighter when you emerge X hours later.

Artistic expression is everywhere.... From a memorial wall of ceramic tiles for lives lost in 9/11

To a monument to the art of recycling in East village !

A TwinFish Retrospective

Thought it would be good to share a little about the design of our site and to show how the design has progressed (in our eyes at least!!) over the last couple of years.

The original version of the site was launched not long after TwinFish Design was born as a company. Technically it was a mix of css, html and tables. Using Dreamweaver and Fireworks to put the site together was (mostly) a pain-free process. The navigation design was chosen to reflect the squares that feature in the full version of our logo. The navigation also made use of Fireworks menu feature.

Due to the Bi-lingual nature of TwinFish the original site was split into two version - english and french. This meant coding the site up twice - made easier using Dreamweaver templates.

The ‘fish’ also made their debut on the original version. Not particularly grand by any means, a simple flash animation added a certain ‘quirkiness’ that has been tamed a little now.

The first site was static - ie. any updates had to be done through Dreamweaver and then uploaded to the server via FTP. This made the portfolio a little time consuming to update - so much so that we didn’t.

Version 2 of TwinFish Design was a much bolder effort. Featuring full CSS / XHTML code running on a CMS (Textpattern), the site served our needs much better. The trickiest feature at the time was the graded navigation bar! Again, the site was Bi-lingual and was split over two sites. It was at this point that we realised how unproductive this actually was in practice.

Version 2 also featured a blog or journal. This was managed as a sub-site, but without the language split. It’s at this time we discovered comment spam…

At this point we were using CSS and XHTML in client sites and could see the benefits. Putting a list of what we wanted out of version 3 of the site was a long, but productive process. Near the top of the list was a flexible and easy to update portfolio section. Now, with version 3 of the site (the one you are looking at!) the whole site is dynamic - running on the ever so fantastic Expression Engine. Also, by combining english and french means that we only have to update one version of the site!

As for the ‘fish’, well we’ll see…

Lyon’s Light festival (Fête de la Lumière)

Another fabulous show of lights in Lyon this year for the traditional festival on the 8th December. Despite driving rain and a bitter north wind, thousands of people took to the streets to watch, hear and even smell (!) the show. This year at the place des Celestins there was perfume in the air as the lights played off the fountains to eerie music. Website for info on the Lyon Light festival

Christmas comes late in France

It’s the 5th December and I’ve just been asked to produce a Christmas card for a company which has to be ready for dispatch on the ......2nd January.

This is quite normal. In fact Christmas is more of a “fête” or celebration spreading to the new year and French companies will send out their greetings cards until the 30th January.

So no panic; there’s still plenty of time ! Here are a couple that have just been finished.