Shapesifter

random notes on design, the universe and everything

My (super low-budget) emergency triangle signage at the 2009 Car Art festival in Delft. Custom typeface by Lotte Nijman.

Project backpocket

Sketches and prototype (paper, rubber band and staples) for a minimal wallet I’m working on intermittently. I’m sick of my thick wallet, so I’m aiming to make somthing that is highly usable, but stays as close in dimensions to a stack of bank cards and bills.

The goal: a wallet I can put in my backpocket and not notice it’s there.

C.V. experiment

I thought I’d try something different from the standard A4 with a dull summary of positions.

Four timelines represent the most important parts of my life so far: Work, Education, Activism and Fun. The years get wider towards the present as those say more about who I am now than when I just started university.

PDF in English or Dutch.

A seasonal project I’m working on :)

See www.eastr-ecc.org!

Of ebooks, iPods and weblogs

The web has been abuzz the last few weeks with Amazon’s release of the new Kindle 2 and – to a lesser extent – with its would be competitors like the Plastic Logic reader.

In the printed press, this saturday’s The Economist asked “Is this the iPod moment?”

I don’t think so. Not quite yet. Steve Jobs famously dismissed the notion of an ebook reader as hopeless because “people just don’t read anymore.” He may be right when talkin about books, but how about other written content? I follow a bucketload of blogs and other news-feeds through RSS, I subscribe to a daily newspaper and when I take the train to work each day, I pick up a free copy of Metro. I read my ass off, and many do so with me.

But it seems to me the keyword here is convenience. The value in a printed paper is that it’s quick, skimmable, guaranteed up-to-date, and reads comfortably anytime, anywhere. My RSS feeds are also quick, skimmable and guaranteed up-to-date, but my laptop is hardly comfortable to read long articles on – let alone anytime, anywhere.

An epaper device could deliver this beautifully. But this needs a move away from a focus on books. Books I get for my birthday. Books go into my well-filled bookcase to impress friends and family when they visit. Books have lasting value for me, which justifies printing them on dead trees.

Magazines, papers and blog posts don’t have that same value, but I would love to be able to mix and match those different sources into a sort of personal daily paper to take into the train with me. With local news from my trusted Dutch daily, science news from The Guardian, technology and business from The Economist, design articles from selected blogs and so on.

I’d pay for that. I’d pay for the device, and I’d pay for (partial) subscriptions to news and analysis. I think many would do so with me. That would make an ‘iPod moment’.

So Amazon, forget the books. Plastic Logic, make a smaller, consumer-version of your reader; I’m not gonna lug a letter-sized device around with me all the time.

And Steve, help me out here?