Apart from the occasional trade show design or tour piece we graphic designers don’t often get to delve into the realms of interior architecture or space planning. Industrial design concepting also looks like a fantastic place to play, trying to match your mad scientist schemes to real world problems, and create something that looks awesome along the way.

Loving this three wheeled camper concept from German industrial designer Cornelius Comanns. Based around an existing Piaggio model, the ‘Bufalino‘ offers some great solutions for the individual traveler. Particularly like the washing line out back and the detailing on the fold down seat/bed. Stick a board rack on it and I’ll take one!

Matt

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Back in June I posted a blog about Apple’s new iAd network which allows developers to embed highly interactive advertising within their Apps.

Now up and running the platform is receiving mixed reviews. An article in the LA Times says both Unilever and Nissan have been impressed with results with customers spending up to 10 times longer interacting with the iAd than with comparable online advertising.

On the other hand Apple’s control over the process of creating the ads seems to be causing a few issues as the industry is not used to this - and projects are taking longer to roll out than expected, according to The Wall Street Journal .

Matt

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While semantic search engines have been around for a while, Hungarian based newcomer iGlue is set to launch an interesting product this September.

Semantic search engines attempt to understand the context of what you are looking for to deliver results which are more relevant. iGlue seems to have taken this a step further by offering a search within the page you are reading. A bookmark hangs inside your browser and with a click gives you a semantic search of that page, matching people, places, etc. to it’s database and displaying the results (images, maps, videos and text) in a separate window. This adds a rich media layer to whatever you happen to be reading and means you don’t need to search again for background information.

Check out this interactive example .

Matt

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On July 1 Apple plans to launch it’s new mobile advertising network for iPhone and iPod touch devices called iAds. According to Apple “iAd offers advertisers the emotion of TV with the interactivity of the web, and offers users a new way to explore ads”, with the advertising experience taking place within apps rather than redirecting users to a browser window.

When you select an ad it will take up the screen using HTML5 and from there the user can interact with and explore the ad.

This comes after Apple bought the advertising network Quattro Wireless earlier this year. Google are also looking set to enter the mobile advertising arena (on their Android platform) with an agreement to buy mobile advertising firm AdMob.

IT research company Gartner put the global mobile advertising business at $13.5 Billion by 2013 due to the increase in smart phones and other mobile devices.

Matt

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The Augmented Sculpture is an instillation piece jointly produced by German design agencies Grosse 8 and Lichtfront for the recent interior design showcase Imm Cologne 2010 (Cologne, Germany). Light and 2D patterns are projection mapped on to the structure’s 3D surface with beautiful effect.

Matt

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Furniture giants Ikea have come up with an interesting guerilla campaign currently running in the subways of Paris. The company has set up mini Ikea environments featuring the actual products and using traditional billboard spaces to add context (and further products). A great way to showcase to comfort and (hopefully) the durability of their products, whilst making life a little more pleasant for the commuter. Nice.

Matt

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The Amazon Kindle is starting to become a new and exciting trend as a replacement to books and the traditional newspapers.

For those of us who still like to feel and touch newspapers and books this is sad to see.  However, the Kindle is a cleaner, environmentally friendlier option that also eliminates the clutter of books.  For our generation and our parent’s generation having bookcases of books, magazines, encyclopedia britannica and journals was something you cherished and even bragged about; nowadays the clutter of these material things is increasingly becoming less within the younger generations.

Thou it is hard for me to say lets embrace the Kindle as this is the sign of things to come in our digital age.

Folksey

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My road trip lead me to Rotorua for the annual tough guy and girl challenge.

The full course is 12 kilometres (7.5 miles), (two 6km laps),and is based on an “Army type obstacle course”. You can run, walk, push, crawl or climb through a variety of natural and man made obstacles.

The course includes water trails, a spiders web net climb, mud slide, crawl under barbed wire, a tricky wire rope bridge, unbelievable native bush trails, paddock running, swamp crossing and more mud. The course has been designed for you to complete and have one of the most memorable experiences of your life.

Well it certainly lives up to the description, one of the guys managed to re-engineer his bottom on a rock sliding down a mud bank, the rest of us were finding mud traces for days and nursing very sore legs.

Sorry about the music, it was a you tube auto selection.

Andy

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Being creative types we understand the importance of knowing how get the best from yourself, how to ween out the best ideas and think clearly. The Economist has launched an interesting online campaign in Europe called the thinking space initiative which explores how it’s readers get their ideas and allows you to submit your own ‘thinking space’. The site showcases the thinking space of a diverse group of people from business strategists to musicians, and it looks pretty fine too…

Matt

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Nigel

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