design

Imagine creating a giant kaleidoscope -- nearly 60 feet from end to end -- and using it to make a video expressing the beauty of collaboration, brainstorming, and community.

That's exactly what branding agency We Are Pi did for the TEDxSummit, which took place recently in Doha, Qatar.… Read more

My vision for the best iOS game ever created: a platform-jumper in the spirit of Doodle Jump, but with a flying pig who bounces ever-skyward on a series of pickle slices.

Genius, right?

Unfortunately, I don't know the first thing about programming, so it's not likely my vision will ever become reality.

Or so I thought, until I got my paws on Sketch Nation Studio. This free app lets you create iOS games -- right on your device -- using your own ideas and artwork, and even allows for the possibility of publishing them in the App Store.… Read more

The latest iPad and its "resolutionary" display have made ever-smaller pixels all the rage, but here's a sculpture that boldly and beautifully goes in the opposite direction.

"Patterned by Nature" (see video below) is made up of 3,600 tiles of LCD glass -- each roughly the size of a laptop screen -- and is 90 feet long and 10 feet wide. The giant sculpture hangs in the several-story atrium of the just-opened Nature Research Center in North Carolina, a new wing of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Each LCD can display various levels of blue-gray transparency, from clear all the way to opaque. And the matrix as a whole is used as a giant screen of sorts to show 20 different animations of different natural phenomena -- a flock of geese swooping through the atrium, say, or the pattern of rain splashing into a pond.… Read more

Salamander Designs offers a vast range of quality audio-video entertainment furniture, and has recently expanded its Chameleon Collection of corner-style and extrawide cabinets.

Salamander's four-door Quad cabinets are designed to accommodate today's large flat-panel TVs, both visually and structurally. New product offerings include contemporary and traditional styles.

The corner cabinets are available in nine different styles, including 20-inch- and 30-inch-high versions and a 30-inch-high version with grillework designed to conceal a center-channel speaker. Salamander AV cabinets are available in a vast array of woods and configurations. The cabinets are built with premium-grade materials and construction techniques. Salamander's … Read more

Adobe Systems is about to begin a difficult -- but smart -- transition.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company will overhaul its core software business in May when it launches a subscription service called Creative Cloud, which bundles its new Creative Suite 6 products with a swath of other products and services. To make it a success, it'll have to convince customers that it's a better value than traditional software licensing.

Here's an indicator of how hard the change will be: A CNET survey in March showed a frosty reception, with 41 percent of respondents viewing Creative Cloud negatively, … Read more

Adobe Systems first showed a few paws, then a tail, then a couple ears and some whiskers -- but now the company is letting the complete Creative Suite 6 cat out of the bag.

After a series of sneak previews and early announcements, Adobe now is detailing the full CS6 line, the meat and potatoes of Adobe's business. It's important to a large number of people involved with photography, videography, design, and publishing on the Web or on paper, and it's set to be arrive within 30 days, Adobe announced today.

But CS products aren't cheap, … Read more

Oscar Lhermitte wants to give city dwellers back their stars.

With his project "Urban Stargazing," the London-based product designer and graduate of the Royal College of Art has craftily used LEDs, fiber optics, nylon line, and giant slingshots to beat back light pollution and reconnect people with the aeons-old mysteries of the night sky. His "triangulated structures" stand in for the constellations that have fired human imagination for so long but that are now so often drowned out in metropolitan areas.… Read more

Looking for a gift for that science-minded someone (or your science-minded self)?

MIT alums Jesse Louis-Rosenberg and Jessica Rosenkrantz (aka design studio Nervous System) recently announced a new line of jewelry -- "Ammonite" -- inspired by patterns found on the fossilized shells of ammonites, ancient relatives of the octopus.

Rosenkrantz, who studied biology and architecture, and Louis-Rosenberg, who studied mathematics, say they used "a simulation of dendritic solidification to make suture-like patterns" for the pieces. Wikipedia helpfully adds that "when materials crystallize or solidify under certain conditions, they freeze unstably, resulting in dendritic forms."

And Crave even more helpfully chimes in that the supertechnical translation of "dendritic forms" is "very-cool-looking fractally patterns which -- when worn on your wrists, earlobes, or around your neck -- will make you the envy of everyone at the Science Nerds Ball."… Read more

There have been a few video camera announcements coming out of NAB 2012, but this one from Blackmagic Design is a surprise.

Called the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, it promises to put professional feature-film-quality results in reach of those on a tighter budget. However, at $2,995, it's by no means inexpensive.

This camera's got a lot going for it, though, including a superwide dynamic range, a large high-resolution 2.5K sensor, and full compatibility with Canon EF and Zeiss ZF mount lenses. The 5-inch touch screen on back can be used for direct metadata entry as well as … Read more