Aarni's personal notes on design
Are we just tiny beings living in a miniature world? Sydney photographer and filmmaker Keith Loutit seems to think so. He is the pioneer of the tilt-shift / time-lapse technique. Amazing video examples at http://keithloutit.com/.>
Small Worlds Project: Hulkamania. Pause while a clip is playing to share it.
Tilt Shift Video by Keith Loutit | Twitter | Facebook
Freedom of Creation is a Finnish-Dutch design and research company. They use 3D modeling and 3D printing techniques for design and production. They've created items like furniture, shoes, lighting, bags, jewelry, and phone cases. Some of their products are available for online purchase.
They showcase their 10 years of work during Helsinki Design Week 2010 at Cable Factory.
More at http://www.freedomofcreation.com/
Idea campaigns are online brainstorming events collecting ideas around one specific question. This spring our company was invited to arrange an internal idea campaign for a B2B organization. Over 200 employees were invited to ideate.
The main goal of the idea campaign was to make the employees aware of sustainability from their customers’ point of view. The campaign question was “How can we help our customers accomplish their environmental goals?” For inspiration we made customer interviews that were available as videos at the campaign website.
We used our online campaign tool for the whole process. Employees could share ideas on a specific site, anonymously. The ideation period was two weeks during which we got over 120 ideas.
A team of experts evaluated the ideas and selected 20 for voting. The campaign participants were then invited to pick up five ideas that they thought were the best. All this was still done anonymously.
Finally three most liked ideas and their presenters were rewarded. The next step will be to put the best ideas into practice and use the other ones selectively in future initiatives.
An idea campaign does not have to be a one-off event. You can use it as a regular part of your innovation process with customers, partners, and employees. The more diverse the group you engage the more wide-ranging the results will be.
Photo Mat Walker
There are more tools and techniques available for creative work than anybody could have imagined 100 years ago. So are we more creative? That is a hard question, but I know that having limitations is not always a bad thing.
Here are some examples of constraints that have boosted creativity:
Some designers challenge themselves by setting deliberate constraints. For example iPhone has inspired moviemakers, advertisers, and amateurs to use the phone’s video camera for their work.
Why do limitations enhance creativity? People seem to be at their best when they have a problem to solve. Limitations force you to overcome obstacles using your wit, not the myriad of tools that are available today. That stimulates creativity.
mymuesli2go - A muesli commercial made and edited with iPhone 4
