We decided to see what kind of assets – icons, images, sounds – ship as a part of the iOS operating system on a new iPhone. We found some 5,000 beautiful little “things” – some familiar, some not, all of them as a collection fascinating. A whole world in there.

So we thought it deserved an animation.

(Click image above to launch.)

ADG… Read the rest

Pre-visualization / concept comps for an iPhone auxiliary screen. Use cases are for remote monitoring / light interaction with iPhone (via Bluetooth or WiFi) in conditions where iPhone is either difficult (or illegal) to interact with.

Modeled using Sketchup Pro / Cinema 4D. Renders via Maxwell Render. Post compositing with Photoshop CS6.

Earned Attention is a new book / eBook out by Klaas Weima that includes interviews with 50 “visionaries” in fields related to interactive marketing, advertising and design including Guy Kawasaki, Joseph Jaffe, Pete Blackshaw, Tim O’Reilly, and Tim Smith of ADG (me).

Earned Attention

Click for video

Interesting in that the “book” manifests as a printed volume, an eBook, an iPhone app, a blog and a few other formats that leave you with no excuse not to take a look.

The iPhone and iPad versions of the book include the original podcast interviews. Not sure if they are all in English, but most probably are; I was interviewed while in Amsterdam.… Read the rest

So I’m not a hard-core Quora user – there are certainly many – but of the very few answers I’ve posted to Quora one of them somehow became amongst the top-ten most up-voted answers on the site. Touched a nerve out there I guess.

In an interesting and somewhat anachronistic move, the Quora folks decided to take the top voted answers of the past few years – from their website – and compile them into a rather nice hard bound volume, the so-called “Best of Quora 2010-2012“.

You evidently can’t buy this thing, they only sent them out to the original authors (although I have heard of one or two showing up on eBay).… Read the rest

Congratulations to our client Earth Networks for their recent 2013 SXSW Appy win for best weather app. It’s pretty hard to compete in a field with 3,500 other direct competitors, but they delivered.

The winning app – WeatherBug for Android – was created by the stellar internal dev team of Andrei Ponomarenko and Peter Liaw. The UI refresh was designed by ADG.

Despite this being a relatively minor refresh to the prior WeatherBug client the response – in user ratings, user adoption, and total device use – has been outstanding.… Read the rest

Maybe one of the best definitions of “applied design” that I’ve seen: The Museum of Modern Art in New York opens a show titled “Applied Design” in March, and the show description is great.

“There are still people who think that design is just about making things, people, and places pretty. In truth, design has spread to almost every facet of human activity, from science and education to politics and policymaking, for a simple reason: one of design’s most fundamental tasks is to help people respond to change. A designer today can choose to focus on interactions, interfaces, the Internet, visualizations, socially minded infrastructures and products, 5-D spaces, bioengineering, sustainability, video games, critical scenarios, and yes, even furniture.… Read the rest

WeatherBug is a leading source of weather information and a top destination for consumers worldwide. Through their website, desktop application, smartphone and tablet applications, more than 22 million users turn to WeatherBug for accurate weather data each month.

WeatherBug approached ADG to conduct a brand and product audit of their digital product line and design a next-generation look and feel that could translate across all platforms. We produced a wide range of design comps and full-motion visualizations introducing unique new ways of depicting weather using time and location-based motion graphics, including a new concept of weather-as-story.

During the course of the strategic design project, WeatherBug asked ADG to perform a tactical UI refresh of their flagship mobile product: WeatherBug Elite for Android.… Read the rest

Thanks to Shannon Kalkstein we had a great Red Sky Interactive reunion of sorts at Grumpy’s in San Francisco – our traditional watering hole literally in the shadow of Red Sky’s old building at 921 Front Street (the old Goody-Silverstein building, amazingly still standing).

After almost 15 years, it felt like we had just walked out of the office next door: everyone is still doing great work, still fired up, all look fabulous.

It was great to hear how far most have traveled, and grown, and – in a couple of cases – sired (very handsome) offspring: hopefully all budding designers, strategists, creatives.

If you’re a Berkeley Haas School of Business alumnus and aren’t aware that the holiday party is back this year, here is the invite: HAN SF Holiday Party.

December 12, 2012 (12/12/12) at The University Club on Nob Hill, San Francisco (entire 3rd floor – great views).

At least two of us from ADG will be attending. Hope to see you there!

… Read the rest

Attending Asymconf, IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, January 30, 2013. Will also be attending the Storyteller Workshop day before. If you’re interested in the “state, history and future of innovation as seen from a California perspective,” as presented by ex-Nokia analyst, Harvard MBA Horace Dediu, consider. Should be a great conference. Dediu is a compelling interpreter of data and trends – especially relating to the mobile industry and Apple in particular.

Asymco website is here.

Conference website is here.

Horace Dediu’s excellent Podcast, The Critical Path, can be heard here.… Read the rest