When I say thin, I mean VERY thin – graphene is one atom thick (almost transparent). And when I say strong, I mean VERY strong. For its very low weight, it is 100 times stronger than steel, as stiff as a diamond, and yet also flexible and even stretchable.
But its other characteristics are most interesting. It conducts heat and electricity with great efficiency (faster at room temperature than any other known material), and it charges and discharges 100x to 1000x faster than traditional batteries.
Right now, it’s expensive.
… so what is human existence? It’s actually pretty simple. We are dead stars looking back up at the sky.
Wong [VP, Google Creative Lab] is guided by what he calls “the four Ps: purpose, people, projects, process.” The way he sees it, those four are in descending order of importance, and if you get each stage right, the ones that follow become clearer—and decision-making is easier.
“If you choose the right purpose, then certain people will be attracted by that. They will be motivated and unified. You need less management oversight. Those people will then conceive and execute products, products that fit the purpose. The process fills in the open spaces. But strong purpose ties it together. You have to excavate the purpose first.”
[…]
he notes, that very top tip needs to be something everyone embraces—more than what the company currently produces, he argues, it needs to be a goal, or as he puts it, a story. “You need to make a trip to the future and bring a souvenir back,”
[…]
“Talent is the most important thing,” Wong says. “The manager era is gone. You now have lots of senior people who are constantly selling to their reports. Your staff can leave. They have the option to go. That’s why purpose is so important. It’s the best way to keep talent.”
The turn-of-last-century British artist William Morris once said you can’t have art without resistance in the materials. The computer and its multifarious peripherals are the materials. The code is the art. […] If coders don’t run the world, they run the things that run the world.
David Burton’s sketch-noted.tumblr.com makes me want to become better (and faster!) at sketching. Via @iaintait
The task is not so much to see what no one has seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.
— Erwin Schrödinger
It’s a sad way of looking at it, but it does ring true. Makes (horrible) sense, too: if you don’t have what’s required to improve, lower the base line. Cut from the bottom instead of adding to the top.
But the fee model comes with systematic costs that are not immediately obvious. Here’s the thing: in order for fees to work, there needs be something worth paying to avoid. That necessitates, at some level, a strategy that can be described as “calculated misery.” Basic service, without fees, must be sufficiently degraded in order to make people want to pay to escape it. And that’s where the suffering begins.
Bill McGee, […] summarized his findings this way: “The roomiest economy seats you can book on the nation’s four largest airlines are narrower than the tightest economy seats offered in the 1990s.”
In Japan, a forest bathing trip, called Shinrin-yoku, is a short, leisurely visit to a forest.
Studies support claims of the benefits of Shinrin Yoku. These have demonstrated that exposure to nature positively creates calming neuro-psychological effects through changes in the nervous system. […]
Every study so far conducted has demonstrated reductions in stress, anger, anxiety, depression and sleeplessness amongst the subjects who have participated. In Japan there are now 44 accredited Shinrin Yoku forests.
What if Egyptians actually had a written language, then started using emojis, and that’s all that’s left?
Worth a revisit: nyti.ms/Z0cQ4X
I believe a big challenge we are facing — in regards to both our wellness as well as the longevity of our planet — is to collectively move to a more emotional platform where value creation isn’t primarily evaluated on the basis that numbers need to increase.
If we all could find strength to detach our poisonous addictive minds from ‘only if’ and find peacefulness in the pourity and beauty of ‘what is’ — the kneading of reality instead of fantasy — I believe we can stop sinking and, more importantly, love sound.
I hate to break this to you, but:
numbers aren’t real.
Aut tace aut loquere meloria silentio
Project Jacquard makes it possible to weave touch and gesture interactivity into any textile using standard, industrial looms.
Everyday objects such as clothes and furniture can be transformed into interactive surfaces.
Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
Matthew 10:16
I’m alright.
My dad is also.
We actually came away from the whole experience without a single bruise.
Magic, weird or common?
I don’t know.
I don’t know anyone who has received an unexpected skid while driving in 110-120km/h, resulting into flying off the road into the forest. So all I have to go by is our experience. Which resulted into little drama. We experience little force and an evidence to that is that the airbags didn’t deploy.
According to Wikipedia, rollovers are uncommon and we were lucky: “Rollovers are not very common, but lead to greater rates of severe injury and death”.
The 5 most prominent learnings from this experience is that:
– My dad is awesome.
– Audi build extremely good vehicles.
– Great effort most have gone/go into keeping the side of the road free from dangerous objects.
– When extreme situations occur, some people transforms into brilliant guardians and servants.
– Generally, people carry a lot of fantasies and fear in regards to accidents. People, generally, also like to indulge in an exercise of ‘what if?’. These fears, fantasies and ‘what if’s’ are then projected onto others.
Special thanks to Per-Erik at Assistancekåren in Hudiksvall. A true hero. Second shout-out goes to the nurse in the car behind and the 10+ military soldiers in the van infront — whom all stopped and took care of us and the scene in a very… effective, professional and militant way. Thirdly: ambulance and hospital personal, car rental clerk, car mechanic and insurance customer service representative. Thank you. You have all been absolutely brilliant.
I’m somewhat curious to know what initiated the erratic behaviour. I’ve spoke to the mechanics who investigated the car, and they can’t find anything given the state of the vehicle. I have a strong suspicion that something in regards to the rear right tire failed in some way.
Following the accident I was a bit nervous that injuries would be evident first in a couple of days. So I was a bit cautious (and curious) when I yesterday, 52 hours after the accident, stood on the starting line of Broarna Runt — a 5k race in Skellefteå.
I’m happy to report that I didn’t feel anything and was able to in a relaxed manner execute the race. A lovely PB of 17:50.
I have since March been able to updated the following PB’s: Marathon (3:09:46), Half Marathon (1:27:38), 10k (39:47, done during the Half Marathon) and 5k (17:50).
My car might have ended up in the junkyard, but I feel like i’m still running in the fast lane.
I knew I would enjoy it (I’ve done so in the past), but I could never have predicted that mowing the lawn while listening to Tobias Jesson Jr. would sparkle so much pleasure.
A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle.
— Jeff VanderMeer
“Once projects get into build mode, then often decisions will be made for operational and developmental reasons rather than being based around the customer.” The psychological shift to factor in design as an everyday cost still hasn’t taken place in many businesses, according to Grinyer: “We still don’t spend enough. Business stakeholders understand that design is a good thing, but in my experience we’re not at the stage where they see it as an operational cost.”
[…]
“In our modern world we’ve developed something that looks awfully like the left hemisphere’s world. The technical becomes important. Bureaucracy flourishes. And the need for control leads to a paranoia in society that we need to govern and control everything.”
If straddling the qualitative and the quantitative is the key to successful innovation in business, it seems CDOs and other board-level creatives have to swim against the tidal drift of wider culture.
McGilchrist, in his speech, draws on a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant but has forgotten the gift.”
without their own vision, luxury brands are merely lending credibility to technology firms, […] this strategy risks aligning the luxury sector to closely with a technology industry whose values and processes — rapid prototype and release — are at odds with centuries of fine craft and connoisseurship. […] Luxury is in the business of joy, desire and exquisitely crafted execution and heritage brands must remain true to this as they lower their drawbridge to technology. […] Digital experiences offered by luxury companies should be elegant, brand differentiated and driven by people’s behaviours, desires and emotional sensitivities. Indeed, the sector must take hold of its digital destiny by innovating from within; retaining control of aesthetic, story and craft; and integrating digital talent right into the product design teams.
By Daljit Singh:
www.businessoffashion.com/co...
I ran Kungsholmen Runt today (a half marathon race here in Stockholm). I’ve had some issues with my right leg the last couple of weeks, meaning; preparations hasn’t been optimal. So really pleased to have managed break a bunch of PB’s today. Truth to be told I intentionally overcooked the first 10k to get the sub 40 in the bag… had I not done that I think my finish time would have been closer to 1:25. Official finish time 1:27:38.
I just finished reading ‘Madness, Rack, and Honey’ by Mary Ruefle. It taught me that the passion present in the creators act of making is infectious. Content, intent, execution and measured success are all, inevitably, subordinate to the love injected while putting it together. Done with love = spreads love. E=mc2.
This amazing video footage by Kalle Ljung from Antarctica placed my mind far away from the office environment in which I’m typing this. A lovely little mental trip. Thanks Kalle.
There’s a rhythm in rush these days. Where the lights don’t move and the colors don’t fade. Leaves you empty with nothing but dreams. In a world gone shallow. In a world gone lean.
But there is a truth and it’s on our side. Dawn is coming open your eyes. Look into the sun as a new days rise.
Jose Gonzalez
[…] the net would never be as important as electricity […] he is widely believed to be planning a major announcement on 30 April […] if the rumour mill is correct, Musk has set his sights higher – on new battery technology that would make it possible efficiently to store the quantities of electric power needed to run modern homes. If he has indeed managed to do something like that, then it would be a game-changer on an epochal scale.
Wabi-sabi represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”. It is a concept derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence, specifically impermanence, the other two being suffering and emptiness or absence of self-nature.
Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetry, asperity (roughness or irregularity), simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes.
Kintsugi (Japanese: golden joinery) or Kintsukuroi (Japanese: golden repair) is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.
Many people aren’t able to extract gratitude from being; barely have enough time to attendant the mystery of their fears.
If you want to imagine how the world will look in just a few years, once our cell phones become the keepers of both our money and identity, skip Silicon Valley and book a ticket to Orlando. Go to Disney World. […] “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” he says [Tom Staggs]. “That’s how we think of it. If we can get out of the way, our guests can create more memories.”
LA Marathon turned out being a lovely race. Not everyday I run a marathon, and even less common for me is breaking 6 PB’s on a single run.
Official finish time is 3:09:46. Race report will follow at some point.
Screen grab from Strava.
On Sunday I’m running the LA Marathon. As I’m typing this I have finally reached my last mental pre-race stage: when nevousity changes to excitement. I’m stoked!
This is my fifth marathon. That’s five more than most do and four more than most of those few.
However, I’m still curious. I’m still learning. I’m still ironing out my routine and approach. I’m still in process.
I’m not smart enough to master anything after 4 attempts, and I tend to look beyond the horizon of ‘done it’ or ‘made it’.
For this marathon I’m going to try a new approach for the last stint. Some people claim that the last stint is the race; that the first 30k is merely transportation to it. I sort of agree with that.
The last 12k is all about combating sore muscles, negative thoughts, doubt and pain — having your mind fight your flesh as you leaning towards your personal limit for that particular day on each and every step. Breaking through barriers of disbelief.
In the mist of all this mental shenanigans, It’s easy to be fooled and engage in a futile conversation and dialog with oneself.
This time around I’m going to give a blind ear to the voice of the mind and instead reach inside for emotional connections and locate strength.
Dig for gratitude, gratefulness and love.
To help myself accomplish this I’m going to written a list of names on my left forearm. Each name will be allocated a 5 minute time-slot during which my thoughts will be with them.
I will be with these people, because of them I care and from them I can extract calmness, courage and strength. Something I will need no matter if I’m flying out there on Sunday or standing on the side of the road experiencing calf cramps.
Wish me luck.
—
Worked like a charm. Below is a photo my arm post race
Seems like LA Marathon will be a hot one; being grateful for all the treadmill threshold runs I’ve done without a fan.
Extremely grateful that the Stockholm Stadium track is open for the public. Extremely surprised I was the only one using it this morning. I though we were having a running boom ;)
All of these devices [tabled, smartphones, desktop, laptop] require a lot of attention: pull them out, turn them on, open an app, repeat. Smart watches, on the other hand, enable instant, even peripheral, access to the software and information we’ve made part of our lives. By virtue of being on our wrists, smart watches are not just immediately visible but always on (us). This change in form factor changes our relationship with software once again. Software designed for our wrists works best as timely, glance-able information. As Google’s wearables team articulated at Google I/O last year: “Phones often distract us and take us out of the World. Wearables provide much more compact experiences that are as short as possible and as fast as possible.” Think actions, not apps.
The amount of pleasure and gratitude I generate and connect with from a 15k 5am feb run tells me that life is easy. Taming the mind is hard.
The second verse of James Vincent McMorrow’s song Red Dust goes like this:
Someone is ringing a bell
It chimes through this shimmering shell
That once was my vision of birth
Now is my vessel and curse
Beautiful.
His performance of this very song at Lowlands festival in 2012 might just be the ringing bell that gets your vessel to shimmer: youtu.be/1ZrRekHR7ZE
Goose bumps.
The biggest obstacle to creativity is breaking through the barrier of disbelief. A lot of people have good ideas, but it’s an entirely different thing to precipitate that vision into something tangible.
— Rodney Mullen http://youtu.be/DBbmNAZWq-E?t=5m12s
I love my mom. She lives in California, so I love how technology brings us closer together, too. But sometimes helping her cope with her hardware and software can be challenging. Comedian Tommy Johnagin, on his album “Standup Comedy 3,” has a hilarious bit about providing tech support for his own mom.
subtraction.com/2015/01/23/t...
I love this part:
I’m not smart enough to be dumb enough to work backwards and understand the amount of things you did wrong in a row […]
and
She asked me, “how does the wireless router plug into it?”… I need you to repeat that question mom, and I need you to pay attention to every word in it…. wireless. They called it wireless.
Neue has won the contract to design Norway’s new passports. The concept for the chosen tender offer is called “Norwegian Landscapes”.
Earlier today I went to Fotografiska (The Swedish Museum of Photography) here in Stockholm. I got extremely taken by the Before They Pass Away project by Jimmy Nelson. Wonderful work that truly resonated with me. Unfortunately the exhibition was in one of the smaller spaces. I truly hope I get the change to experience all of the material at some point.
For more information visit www.beforethey.com
The third record was Soundgarden’s Screaming Life EP. Jonathan Poneman was probably the biggest Soundgarden fan in Seattle. So we join forces to put out that record, and then we open our offices and put out all sorts of legendary stuff.
– Bruce Pavitt, founder Sub Pop Records
If it’s a Nine Inch Nails record or a remix or How to Destroy Angels or film, really the first step Atticus and I do is spend some time thinking about what limitations we want to place on ourselves.
Potent summary of the last decades of design www.wired.com/2014/12/disapp...
Via @robertlenne
It was -18 Celsius outside and I got above message.
April 19, 1955
Dear Mr. Calt:On March 22nd you wrote to me asking for some notes on my work habits as a copywriter. They are appalling, as you are about to see:
1. I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home.
2. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years.
3. I am helpless without research material—and the more “motivational” the better.
4. I write out a definition of the problem and a statement of the purpose which I wish the campaign to achieve. Then I go no further until the statement and its principles have been accepted by the client.
5. Before actually writing the copy, I write down every concievable fact and selling idea. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform.
6. Then I write the headline. As a matter of fact I try to write 20 alternative headlines for every advertisement. And I never select the final headline without asking the opinion of other people in the agency. In some cases I seek the help of the research department and get them to do a split-run on a battery of headlines.
7. At this point I can no longer postpone the actual copy. So I go home and sit down at my desk. I find myself entirely without ideas. I get bad-tempered. If my wife comes into the room I growl at her. (This has gotten worse since I gave up smoking.)
8. I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts.
9. If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy.
10. The next morning I get up early and edit the gush.
11. Then I take the train to New York and my secretary types a draft. (I cannot type, which is very inconvenient.)
12. I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft. After four or five editings, it looks good enough to show to the client. If the client changes the copy, I get angry—because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose.
Altogether it is a slow and laborious business. I understand that some copywriters have much greater facility.
Yours sincerely,
D.O.
D.O. stands for David Ogilvy. In 1948, he started what would eventually be known as advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather
One of the hardest things for non-designers to understand about design is that it’s a process. A messy, long, iterative process.
My 2014 running campaign started with a new and exciting approach: a heart rate monitor, a low-glycemic diet and a running pace dictated by whatever 155 heartbeats per minute gave me.
After 4 months my Garmin racing predictions were scary and my weight was the lowest it’s ever been. I felt great.
These race predictions from my Garmin 620
To evaluate my new approach I had registered for a lab session in February and then two races in May: a half marathon to experience my lactate/anaerobic threshold, followed by Stockholm Marathon three weeks later to see how I performed over the longer distance.
The summer was scheduled for speed development and the overall goal for all of this was to do a sub 3:15 at Berlin Marathon in September.
Photo taken during the lab session… In hindsight, I think it’s fair to say that casting Tom Hardy as Bane in Dark Knight Rises was a mistake.
Being in the lab was good fun. I did two tests: one to determine my lactate threshold (increase effort over time while taking blood samples) and one being a so called “max” test (which means running until you fall of the belt).
On the 29th of April I did an easy 33km jog on 2:37:34. Average pace 4:46/km with an average heart rate at only 146 bpm. It wasn’t a flat course either. Elevation 329 meter.
This was without preparation (such as carbohydrate loading, glycogen-depleting and tapered training), without race adrenaline and in the morning on an empty stomach.
At that point in time, a sub 3:15 wasn’t unrealistic, and with 4 month left to Berlin Marathon I starting to think that I should target a ‘just above 3:10’ instead of a ‘just under 3:15’.
I was in my best ever form. Every part of my mind and body was with me… besides my achilles tendon… she decided to give in just a few days after that peak and just a few days before I was about to run the first race.
I aborted the half marathon half way. I felt strong but I wasn’t able to run on the intended pace (4:10) without my achilles saying no.
The marathon I aborted on km 29.
Bummer.
Most of the summer ended up being rehabilitation instead of speed work. I only ran 109km in May, 47km in June and 112 in July. Nothing like the levels pre-injury [below].
…
I increased the training again in August and September but without have had a longer stretch of continuity I reached the Berlin Marathon starting line with very low expectations.
My race strategy was to keep a pace of 4:44/km, but not letting my heart rate surpass 155 bpm until the later stages of the race. So no faster than 4:44/km or 155 bpm. A 4:44/km pace would give me some margins to be able to lose a few minutes at the end of the race and still shave of a minute or two from my 3:27 PB.
Someone told me a few years ago that the first 30k in a marathon is just transportation to the real race. It’s so true. It’s only when you reach kilometre 30 you know if you’re having a good day or not.
When I passed the 30k mark I was still in extremely good shape. So good that I was overthrown with deep emotions. Tears were not far off. I almost felt like stopping. The ‘I made it!’ sensation was that strong. This was my 4th marathon and I had never felt this good at this point in the race.
A few km later I had to start digging, which slowly crescendoed into 3 – 4 less glamorous kilometers at the end. Having to fight for just 15 – 20 minutes in a marathon is a blessing.
That’s me pushing for the finish.
I passed the finish line on 3:22:48. For a couple of minutes I really couldn’t understand what just had happened. I was so convinced that I would have a horrible race, but instead I had a lovely one executed perfectly — just on the edge of what my body and mind could deliver on the day.
I had been very even. My 5k splits were: 23:59, 24:06, 23:46, 23:56, 23:55, 24:06, 23:59, 24:31.
First half was done in 1:40:57 and second in 1:41:51.
My average pace was 4:48… that’s maybe my only disappointment. According to my GPS watch i kept 4:44/km as intended.
But all of this belongs to the past.
No rest for the wicked.
For 2015 I’ve decided to have my yearly marathon penciled in early to be able to shift my focus onto the half marathon distance. This means I now need to keep up with marathon preperations throughout the harsh, cold, dark Swedish winter. Thankfully a sunny LA Marathon awaits me in March.
The fact that next years marathon preparations sneaked in on this side of the new year has resulted into a new PB for total kilometers in a year. This came as a surprise. In 2012 I ran 2012km. I remembered it being… a big undertaking. This year I just happened to beat it and I’ve been injured.
Screen grab from Strava
So far this year I’m up to 2001. So just one run away from breaking it. I will probably end the year on something closer to 2100.
However, I have to add, most km covered in 11 month still belongs to 2012, which actually also is 2012km.
For the most part of my vocation as a Designer — a maker and shaper of digital services and experiences — I’ve been given the advice to specialise; to clarify my role and what I offer.
In hindsight, it’s easy to see that this advice wasn’t directed to me as an individual and for the well-being of my career. It was a favour, disguised as a suggestion so that less friction would be involved when trying to pigeon-hole me into the traditional invoice cycles and the conveyor-belt like approach applied by the industry to deliver billable results to clients.
I’m stubborn. I’m quality driven. I’m also a maker. So, these attempts were futile.
Somewhere along the way this industrial approach began to burst at the seams; businesses started to ask for more flexibility, firms started to question the quality of work that got shipped. You could say that our customers’ expectations got higher, and our traditional methods didn’t deliver.
It became more and more evident that what had worked really well for advertising and traditional design firms wasn’t applicable 1-to-1 when the medium was digital; Where a customer interacts and participates with the result. Where the delivery is something that lives on. When what you create is an experience for many more senses in many more scenarios and situations.
Along with this maturity, the… “advice” to specialise got replaced with curiosity on my thoughts on how to execute a project with fewer handoffs and more collaboration. Invigorating.
We are still very much in this maze. A growing scale of brave firms and hero clients are in the forefront to find a healthy and sustainable balance between control, fear, competence, experience, ownership, authority, innovation, guarantees, speed, flexibility etc and so on.
Thankfully, help is on the way.
The entrance to Hyper Island in Manchester
Initiating change
In 2011, Hyper Island was about to run a 32-week pilot for a Digital Media Management program in Manchester together with Teesside University. It was designed to prepare students for a leading role in the media, creative, and digital industries.
Due to various reasons (mainly a lot to cover over a short period), the ambition was to merge the learning outcomes for design and technology into the same module.
Given my involvement, knowledge and insight into the Hyper Island methodology, in combination with my multifaceted interest with design and technology, I was asked to interpret the learning outcomes and design a learning experience which I also would facilitate.
I was given a lot of trust and a very long leash, which I gladly accepted.
A unique and almost unreal opportunity: What type of co-workers would I like to have in the future? What type of designers would I like to design?
Today, the perspective I get when writing this is giving me a sense of acrophobia, but back then it was more a matter of hitting the ground running.
The result became a module titled ‘Creative Problem Solving’. A learning experience to give the students an understanding on how to get insights into how people interact with digital products and services, their needs and experiences, and how to design them to be both effective and intuitive.
The learning was based on the methodology commonly referred to as Design Thinking, the basis being: define the problem, research for a solution, ideate with others to come up with the best options, create prototypes, choose the best solution, roll it out and learn from its success.
Riccardo Rotesi (right), DMM student 2013, presenting ideas to Simon Waterfall (left), the Vice President and Creative Director at OnCue, over Skype.
I’m extremely proud that my interpretation of the module caught the imagination of the director and program managers at Hyper Island and lead them to researched this further and ultimately launch an entirely new program, titled Digital Experience Design.
It’s unfortunate that the very type of designer the industry tried to suffocate, is today the type that is very much sought after. The type they promoted, are today abandoned. I liked to believe that the very purpose of agencies were to accumulate and curate talent, not eliminate.
Given my personal experience and reflection on my career to date, it’s clear that talent curation and direction of an industry still need actors such as Hyper Island to inject oxygen into the ongoing change and evolution.
Now let’s embrace and welcome these multifaceted t-shaped designers with open arms and active ears. Let’s give them space and trust to fuel the change. Like with all great endeavours: let’s give it a leap of faith.
“Until you learn to play what you want to hear, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
– Billy Gibbons, guitarist and lead vocalist ZZ Top