Anatomy of Apple Design from Transparent House on Vimeo.

By Transparent House

Microsoft Interactive Installation from MODE Studios on Vimeo.

Convert is a very nice and simple application to do conversions on your iPhone. Sure you can find dozens of free apps that do just that, but if you watch this making of video you understand why it’s worth to pay for it.

Convert Design Evolution from tap tap tap on Vimeo.

It’s called Timetable and features 10 embedded colored lights that, like a reverse progress bar, once you have set the desired duration, light down as the meeting goes on and play a message at the end:

“This meeting is now complete, please leave the room in an orderly fashion”

I love both the design of the table, which looks cool and sleek, as well as the concept! We all know how often meetings get out of control eating up whole mornings!

I recently found out that in the oldest and most expensive mall in Milan, “La Rinascente“, a sort of “Design Supermarket” in front of the Duomo has opened for tourists and design enthusiasts who want to discover Italian design and, possibly, buy something to bring to their homes.

I think the idea is as brilliant as its implementation. “La Rinascente” choose lots of pieces suitable for everyday life, for as little as 9 euros you can buy design accessories for your home, produced by top class designers such as Alessi, Kartell and Nespresso.

If you’re around Milan this summer, you have to check this out!

I found extremely interesting these two posts about kinetic typography (ONE – TWO), as I always loved typography as a way to create beautiful designs without creating graphic heavy pages or slides.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2J8KJDsqqY

The main problem when designing a website is that you have to use a standard set of characters, as if you use the fancy ones that only you have installed in your computer, you’ll see a beautiful website while the rest of the world will see it in Verdana.

The solution may be to transform some of your fancy lettering in pictures, but this creates slow pages to load. Sure, you can just create an image for the header and other main sections headers, but it’s still a patch.

Typography can help even with the standard set of characters, if you’re able to play with sizes. Think about tag clouds. No matter what the character is, they immediately tell you something: what’s the main topic of the blog/website.

Do the same thing with title and sections, play with height and width. Be lettering express what’s important and what’s not.

Kinetic typography takes all this to the next level, but adding animations and music to carefully crafted characters, enabling the author not only to convey a message, but also to let viewers live true emotions.

Indeed great typography worths a thousand pictures.