designer

Today's show title is the design credo of Milton Glaser, the celebrated designer responsible for turning the "I <3 New York" graphic into a world-recognized symbol.

That ethos is also the inspiration for today's discussion topic about Apple's "faux-real" user interfaces that Tom Hobbs at Fast Company believes is stunted by skeuomorphs, or elements of design that retain parts of its inspiration.

We'll look at how Apple's desire to show off the look of its products may be hindering its principal innovations, why the Amazon Kindle uses its own basic layout to create a more immersive environment for its readers, and how apps harnessing nostalgia like Instagram and Hipstamatic are holding back the next evolution of technology.… Read more

The Golden Gate Bridge turned 75 this past weekend, with a spectacular fireworks show to celebrate.

Unfortunately, some of us were home with spring colds and could only listen mournfully to the endless booming while imagining the historic show that was passing us by. Luckily, though, there's another bridge birthday happening in the Bay Area, with a related light-based extravaganza which, if all goes according to plan, should be pretty amazing -- and pretty hard to miss.

As our friends at Wired noted recently, artist Leo Villareal and his supporters want to honor the neighboring Bay Bridge on its 75th birthday by festooning it with 25,000 individually programmable white LED lights. "The Bay Lights" project will create a gigantic, shimmering "light sculpture" that responds to environmental stimuli such as the underlying water, the overriding traffic, and the surrounding weather, and will remain in place for two years.… Read more

Here's a high-tech dress that's tailor-made for the red carpet.

Emily Steel, a student of industrial design, digital photography, and fashion at New Zealand's Victoria University of Wellington, has stitched together a garment using slide film, LEDs, and a LilyPad Arduino, a set of sewable electronic components. … Read more

The California Institute of the Arts just north of Los Angeles has produced a whole lot of top animators (Pixar and Disney chief creative officer and "Toy Story" director John Lasseter being but one of them). And why not? The school, after all, was founded by Walt Disney himself.

CalArts' School of Film/Video features two animation programs, "experimental" and "character," and earlier this month the Character Animation program showed off work by its BFA students, at the 2012 CalArts Character Animation Producers' Show. We thought we'd share two of the shorts that won prizes at the event, to give you a sneak peek at some of the talent that may well be creating the animated features of the future at Pixar and other studios.… Read more

The Williamson Gallery at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., recently teamed with neighbor and NASA/Caltech affiliate the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to create an exhibition of photos that dazzles one with the visual extravagance of the cosmos.

"The History of Space Photography" features 150 images, selected by guest curator Jay Belloli and several consultants at JPL. Most are from the last 50 years or so, but some date back as far as the 19th century.

The exhibition wrapped up its inaugural showing at Art Center earlier in May, but it's scheduled to begin a tour of science museums in India this November, and will touch down at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in New York next year. (Space fanatics should get started on those travel arrangements now.)… Read more

The list of installations for next month's Beam electronic and analog music festival in West London has brought a playful and mysterious piece of art to our attention -- a surprising cocktail of high and low tech.

Sound artist Mike Blow is on the Beam bill, and his recent piece "Torch Song" combines a microphone-and-laptop setup with light sensors to create a control panel that lets its user "play" a building -- using flashlights.… Read more

Jonathan Ive, Apple's senior vice president of industrial design, won't say what his company is working on, but he believes it's extremely important.

Speaking in a sprawling interview published today by the Daily Telegraph, Ive couldn't decide which Apple product he'd most like linked to him. He told the Telegraph that choosing a device with knowledge of Apple's future product launches just isn't so easy.

"It's a really tough one," said Ive, who was knighted today in the U.K. "A lot does seem to come back to the … Read more

With technology making itself all but unavoidable in an increasing number of areas, a special university program designed to get undergraduate art majors up to speed with computer science and programming has received a grant from the National Science Foundation.

The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) -- founded by Walt Disney in the early 1960s and now one of the nation's top art schools -- announced this week that it had received nearly $112,000 to put toward its STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) curriculum.

"As artists increasingly employ technology, it is essential that arts institutions … Read more

Yes, artist Luke Jerram's most widely known piece may perhaps be "Play Me, I'm Yours" -- an artwork that temporarily distributes actual full-size pianos on the streets of major cities for anyone to play. After all, it's been featured in hugely populated towns like New York City and Los Angeles. But his body of work displays a particular fascination with science and technology.

One sculpture, for instance, is based on the seismogram generated by the 2011 Japan earthquake. Others draw from data visualization as well: charts of the ups and downs of the Dow Jones … Read more