Landing page

The landing page of any website is of incredible value, as it needs to pitch to the visitor what it’s all about, and try to grab their attention in a mather of seconds. When you’re introducing a new platform, with a new machine and new interactive apps & content – this is all but easy. For Cubify’s landing page we decided to focus on presenting the Cube firstly, and secondary are Apps, Partners & Content. Use the slider below to see before and after the redesign.

Cube page

Since we focus most on pushing the Cube on the Cubify website the next page that needed a lot of work was the Cube page itself. The 3D printer industry is only recently moving towards consumers, so any printer you find online looks incredibly geeky and is presented in a very technical way. With the Cube I decided to take a different approach, we identified the 6 main features and in a very friendly & visual way presented them on the page.

See the full size visual here | See the live page

Creation Store

Another big design change was implemented on the Store side of Cubify. At the initial launch there were very many borders, frames in frames and other clutter distracting the user from the actual content. In the redesign I focused on getting as much of that out the way, while keeping all the necessary information in the thumbnail, but only visible on hovering over it with your mouse.

See the full size visual here | See the live page

HTML5 & CSS3

Cubify is built with state of the art CSS, HTML, JQuery Magic, while designing Cubify we learned some lessons from the Twitter bootstrap, a great starting point for any web 2.0 website.

See for yourself

Work continues everyday, the list of upcoming features for Cubify hardly has and end to it, so by the time you are reading this the platform might already look different & have new features, it’s exciting right?

Have a look at www.cubify.com and snitch away an account while you’re at it

About The Eindhoven School

Disseny Hub Barcelona presents Systems Design – The Eindhoven School, set within the framework of the Interaction Laboratory programme of activities and, specifically, I / O / I. The Senses of Machines. This exhibition is based on projects by the Designing Quality in Interaction (DQI) group, who combine research, education and industry from a special perspective of design and its evolution.

This new event is linked to the exhibition, the ulm school, currently running at DHUB, in that it also prompts reflection on the development of systems design. In the case of the Eindhoven group, it is meshed with interactive elements.

The mission of the group is to portray the world as it might be, and to convey how industrial designers alter their perspective in terms of the design challenge. The future of design is uncertain because the designer’s responsibilities are changing. Previously, they centred on form and production but, when design products varied, so too did design. Now, with interactive products, a designer has to consider not only form but the temporal aspect of interaction and product behaviour; even the quirks of its functionality. Once the challenge of integrating form, interaction and function into design is understood, the next challenge is systems design.

To design such systems, the Eindhoven group advocates an experientially-based focus; that is, the experience of living with these systems as they design them, enabling them to make value judgements on the means required to achieve the desired results. In other words, the uncertainty of the method, and the complex nature of systems, calls for an approach to design research in which practice is used as the mechanism for understanding the process at hand, based on the relevant theory and a vision of what needs to be achieved.

Exhibition Information & more

DHUB, Barcelona

The latest beautiful example of this trend the Little Printer designed by Berg.

So what is it exactly?

Little Printer is a palm-sized, cube-shaped, cloud-powered thermal printer with an adorable pair of feet and a cute face.

And what does it print?

A personalized mini-newspaper–with content curated from partners like The Guardian, social media like Foursquare and Facebook, as well as stuff created by BERG itself–and output on a receipt-like paper strip no longer than 10 inches. “Each information source we think of as a personalised ‘publication’ that you subscribe to from a kind of ‘app store for paper,’ collated into a delivery that arrives at a chosen time,” Webb tells Co.Design. You “feed” Little Printer by selecting content via a remote-control-esque smartphone app, and then get your mini-newspaper delivered “once or twice a day.” Think of it like Flipboard, but without the screen.

Read all about and pre-order here.

So what does it do?

Filabot is a 3D plastic extrusion system. For example mostly any type of recyclable plastic, such as milk jugs, detergent bottles, soda bottles, shampoo bottles, product packaging, and many more,  can be processed through the Filabot to make usable 3D printing filament. This will allow for users to remake filament from an old print that is bad or not needed. The Filabot will grind, melt and extrude the plastic filament. It is a one stop shop for all the filament you could ever need.Plastic recycling and extrusion have been around since plastic was invented. How do you think the filament bought online is made? There are a few websites/ users that have started to develop this system, but none have brought it to the scale where it is simple and easy to use. The whole goal of the Filabot is to have a complete system that is affordable and reliable. Filabot right now is more then just an idea, we have tested our prototype system with great results. But we need your help! We need backers to help support the cause so we can make the best system possible. It is a bold and big idea but with your help we can create a device that helps user of 3D printers to become self-sufficient.

If like me you find this interesting go ahead and back-up these guys on Kickstarter.

I came across these interactive toys, was instantly sold. Where we had Lego growing up, kids these days play with smart phones, tablets and amazing toys like these Cubelets. The company behind the Cubelets is Modular Robotics, a spinoff from Carnegie Mellon University.

About the Cubelets Kit KT06

The KT06 kit (pre-order $160) contains 6 Cubelets that can be snapped together to make a variety of robots with no programming and no wires. You can build robots that drive around on a tabletop, respond to light and other objects, and have surprisingly lifelike behavior. But instead of programming that behavior, you snap the cubelets together and watch the behavior emerge like with a flock of birds or a swarm of bees.

Whats in the kit?

Action Blocks: 1 Drive, 1 Flashlight
Sense Blocks: 1 Brightness, 1 Distance
Think/Utility Blocks: 1 Battery, 1 Passive

More: www.modrobotics.com

How Do You Do 2011

Over 500 visitors, 50 digital heroes, 90 sessions on the most innovative projects and a sparkling finale. How Do You Do 2011 was a successful meeting and an inspiring day of sharing ideas at the STRP Festival in Eindhoven. How do you do 2011 was brought to you by Virtueel Platform.

Grab a chair and join us for How do you do, a day for, by and with top digital creatives. Get acquainted with the know-how of successful developers, artists and game and media developers in an informal setting. Choose from a wide range of experts who can offer a unique insight in their ‘making of’, showcasing awesomest-practices in Mobile, Art, Experimental, Gaming, Design, Web, Hybrid, Hacking and more.

More about How Do You Do 2011 here.

About the DDW Trend Book

Dutch Design Week (DDW) proudly presents Trend Book 2011. This third edition is a very special one, since DDW celebrates its 10th anniversary.

Within the scope of the theme “sharing and co-creation”, curator Zuzanna Skalska asked Dutch design consultancies and designers to invite their business relations to co-create the Trend Book’s contents by sharing their visions of the future and their views on important emerging innovations. The new Trend Book contains in all eight surprisingly varied chapters, all of them in-depth investigations into different aspects of (trends in) design.

The 2011 Trend Book appears in a limited edition of 2,000 copies.

Format 168 x 120 mm, 192 pages.

More info & ordering

Dutch Design Week

“This is the Voice of Energy
I am a giant electrical generator
I supply you with light and power
And I enable you to receive speech,
Music and Image through the Ether”

For more information on the project read on here, or get in touch.

WeTransfer is a free platform in transferring large digital files up to 2GB per transfer. They can transfer any type of file – such as presentations, photos, videos, music, documents and more.

Despoke, an UK design blog approached me for an interview as well as sharing my 3 favorite designs, so here it goes:

No. 1 Freedom Of Creation’s Electric Tigerland Shoe campaign for Onitsuka Tiger, a marvelous application of Rapid Manufacturing for the advertising industry. This shoe was 3D Printed and customized to fit each of the Onitsuka Tiger retail locations.

No. 2 Troika Cloud @ Heathrow Airport, a five meter long digital sculpture whose surface is covered with 4638 flip-dots that can be individually addressed by a computer to animate the entire skin of the sculpture, simply amazing.

No. 3 Bug Labs, envisions a future where CE stands for Community Electronics, the term “mashups” applies equally to hardware as it does to Web services, and entrepreneurs can appeal to numerous markets by inventing “The Long Tail” of devices. In short, the future of electronics.