king talk

Nachdem die Wände unseres Büros immer noch ein wenig kahl waren, haben wir uns vor Weihnachten daran gemacht sie mit selbst gestalteten Postern zu schmücken. Dazu haben wir unseren decoded-Generator abgewandelt, in unsere envis-Farben gerückt und fertig waren 3 Visualisierungen der bekannten “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” Rede von Steve Jobs (Stanford University 2005).

The new year has just started and already a new WEAVE is out!

This time, we contributed an article on storytelling and its importance for interface- and interaction design. Stories are essentially causal connections – the very thing that our brain uses to memorize things. Therefore they play an important role in almost every step of the design process.

Besides, we also teamed up with the publishers of WEAVE and PAGE to bring you a full day of hands-on training in processing and generative design. The workshop will take place in Hamburg on the 10th of June. You can sign up on this page (German).

If you follow this blog, you know that we are sometimes giving lectures and workshops at universities. Since then, we’ve been asked over and over to hold a similar workshop for non-students as well. And we are going to do exactly that.

On November 18/19, we will meet with ten participants in order to explore the possibilities of code as a design tool. We’ll learn how to get started with coding and how to use it to create stunning artworks.

If you are unsure about how code could possibly be of interest for a designer, just look at the corporate design of decoded conference.

It would be great to see some of you at the workshop! More information and a registration form can be found on the workshops website (German).

We have just been notified that our installation »Quasar Interactive« has won a Quality Seal at the Europrix Multimedia Awards 2010. We’re proud to be one of the few among the 300 entries from 30 countries to receive this seal.

If you don’t know what Quasar Interactive is, here’s a little video walkthrough.

The whole design concept of the decoded conference is based on a graphic coding of words. The code creates generative forms which represent the name of the speaker, mottoes or any text you want.

The visual coding concept consists of few specified rules for each single letter. The basic geometrie is based on a triangle, each corner stands for a letter within the prompted word. All characters are located on a specific angle of a circle depending on the last position. Triangles are always built on two existing corners together with the currently created vertex. Furthermore this means that new triangles always have a same side with the previous triangle. For shaping the generative appearance the triplets of letters are therefore more important than single letters.

Color and shapes are based on the letter frequency in german. The letter »E« (17,4%) occurs more often then the a »Q« (0,02%) for example. For this purpose the guiding principle is, that less frequent letters need a more noticeable graphical change. Coming back to our example the »Q« has a more saturated color than the »E« which is setting an emphasis within the whole generative structure.

If you want, you can try to type in your own name:
http://decoded-conference.com/generator