Clerkenwell Design Week

Tuesday saw the start of the Clerkenwell Design Week and 'See what you mean' headed down to check it out. With events and locations spread throughout Clerkenwell there was plenty to keep us busy.

The Farmiloe building was chock full of contemporary design from the likes of BoConcept, Dyke and Dean, Plumen et al, and the former Victorian glass works makes for a unique backdrop.

The House of Detention also served as a unique space to display works, showcasing some of the world's most exciting up-and-coming design talent. A personal highlight here were Katy Goutefangea's screen printed cushions with geometric patterns.

We ambled round various showrooms including Vitra who had lots of new designs such as the en-vogue standing desks alongside classics like the Eames lounge chair. Here is the full list of showrooms.

With an almost overwhelming array of places and things to do/see it's impossible to fit everything in on one day, but well worth trying.

Congratulations Steffan!

The D&AD student awards have been announced and we are pleased to wish Steffan Cummins congratulations from all of us at 'See what you mean' for picking up the 'Best of the year' award.
Steffan has interned with us a couple of times whilst studying, and is always a great addition to the studio bringing endless passion and enthusiasm for design.

See Steffan's winning video below, and see the full project on his blog.

The History of Typography

This excellent animated short by Ben Barrett-Forrest about the history of typography contains 291 Paper Letters, 2,454 Photographs and 140 hours of work. Well worth the effort, and most definitely worth a watch.

Telling an engaging story

We’re helping The Crown Estate build a picture of what they do.
A backdrop to bring conversations to life. It’s not about bullet points and cold facts. A picture encourages you to talk in anecdotes – human stories that people can relate too. For the audience, it keeps everything in view. They can see how it all fits together and what makes your offer compelling.

Here’s Richard drawing an overview of Rural & Coastal activities on our whiteboards.

Can’t say Title

If you watch the video above, from Sebas & Clim, you may notice that the client logo has been pixelated out. As part of their contract with whomever the client is, Sebas & Clim can show the video without voice over or brand logos. It is a neat way to get to show your work when a client would like to keep it under wraps. A side product I found of having no voice over was that I focused more on the great animations and production of the piece.

You can read a more detail on the subject of 'How To Make Sure You Can Show Work In Your Portfolio' over on motionographer.

Foursquare infographic

Foursquare recently released a cool visualisation tool that allows you to see 12 months of your check-ins. With a few options of how to view your data you are sure to gleam some new knowledge of your habits. Use the tool yourself here.

Disney: HideOut

It's always interesting to see what people are creating in R&D departments, especially if the department is at Disney.

Hideout is a small projector that enables interaction between what is projected and the physical world it is projected onto. With hideout books come to life and video games are playable with real objects.

Hideout cleverly uses infrared-absorbing markers which are invisable to our eyes but not to the camera.

Watch the video on the Hideout page to see it in action.