Dublin Web Summit

For the last few days the Curve Creative team have been at Dublin Web Summit. We were responsible for a lot of the design for the conference and were also covering the event over the two days. Below are a selection of photographs to give a taster of the what we shot. There are many many more to come which will show up here and on the Dublin Web Summit Facebook. Make sure to check back soon.

Design Week Ireland 2011

One of Ireland's most notable events and one that's very relevant to us is the Irish Design week. The line up of events is due to kick off next week. Starting on the 31st of October the events run from the North of ireland to the very South and continue to the 6th. From Belfast to Cork, and everywhere in between, the island will be playing host to range of activities that cater to all ages. Even we are getting involved!

iPod is ten

The iPod. A device that has changed the world, created cultures, defined a generation, influenced a new society is now ten years old. Originally slated, no body thought the iPod would catch on. How wrong they were. I don't need to go on to say anymore about the success of the iPod. Everyone knows.

But now, ten years on people are moving on from the iPod with it's predecessor the iPhone. It's kind of sad really. The original iPod, which became the iPod classic, is exactly that, a classic. A design icon. I was just old enough to experience and remember the beginning of the iPod revolution. I can't imagine being a kid today and not having been around for the first iPod. Kids today are coming in at iPod 6th gen or more and have no idea where the iPhone came from.

Scott Amron is a kick-ass designer

Scott Amron's is one of those designers that makes you want to slap yourself in the face. Some of his concepts are so plain obvious you really have to ask yourself why no one has ever thought about them before. I have stumbled over his ideas on various sites before but it wasn't until recently that I found out these never-been-done-before-ideas were coming from the same guy. 

His concepts range from coat hook light switches to carabiner keys. I urge you to have a snoop around his site and see what else you can find. Keep reading to see some of my favourites. 

IDI Best of Graduate Design 2011 / IDI Awards

There is still time to catch the IDI Best of Graduate Design Exhibition. It is open till November 5th in the NCAD Gallery. Make sure to check it out to see a selection of works from across all of the design colleges in Ireland with some of the exhibitors up for awards in this years IDI awards this Thursday in the Sugar Club.

You can check out the IDI Awards here

Planned Obsolescence - The Light Bulb Conspiracy

Planned obsolescence is one of those evil things companies do to make you keep buying their products. Now someone has made a movie about it!

First of all for people who may not be familiar with with this concept, planned obsolescence is when companies intentionally give their products a shortened lifespan so you will come back and buy the newest version. The main example given in Cosima Danoritzer's 'The Light Bulb Conspiracy' is the light bulb, where planned obsolescene is a main factor in the manufactures business plan. By drastically shortening the lifespan of the light bulb they can guarantee the consumer will keep coming back to buy a new one.

Lytro - The Impossible Camera

We are intrigued by the new Lytro Camera. Lytro suggests a radical change to the way we will take pictures from now on. No longer will we need to assure our pictures are in focus before we snap the shutter. Lytro allows you to adjust the focus afterwards. The idea of never having blurry photos again is tempting but at the same time will this take away an essential element from photography. Will this change the art in a way that it truly won't matter what you capture at the time, you can just fix it later? Despite the sleek design we are dubious about this new direction for digital photography. We love photography at Curve and although this is an incredible advancement in photography tech we don't really hope that it catches on too much. This kind of technology will probably be great in your mobile phone for snapping pictures of friends or on a night out when you don't want to spend time focusing and making sure the picture worked, but for pros we're not sure if this will be desirable in cameras. The idea of having a level of control that means you can refocus your shots afterwards does seem like it would be super useful, kind of like the level of control brought about by the introduction of shooting in RAW, however...

Dublin Web Summit Oct 27-28th

Dublin Web Summit is one of the biggest tech events in Europe. Founded by Paddy Cosgrave the Dublin Web Summit has grown at a fast rate over the last year and the upcoming event is to be the biggest yet. Featuring over 100 speakers and 1500 guests with speakers from Skype, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Google and many, many more it is shaping up to be an action packed event. We have been doing some work with the DWS team leading up to this event and we are looking forward to seeing it all coming together. For more information check out www.dublinwebsummit.com

Jonas Pfeil's Ball-Camera

At Curve we love photography and we've always loved the idea of being able to create our own panoramas using something similar to the google street view cameras. This ball-cam student project does exactly this. Designed by Jonas Pfeil the design requires the user to throw the cameras in the air. The ball-cam then snaps pictures on an array of mobile phone cameras at the highest point in its path. These can then be stitched to create a 360 x 360 degree panorama just like street view. The ingenious idea of putting this is a ball also gets around the problem of needing the camera to be high enough to get a good view. We'd love to try one of these out. It would be great to throw around at a big event. Imagine throwing this around the crowd in a football stadium! Hopefully Jonas can gather some interest in this and bring it to market.

You can see more information on his site here and see a video of it in action after the jump. 

Steve Jobs

As a designer I can't remember when I didn't know who Steve Jobs was, for a lot of other people they may not of know who he was but they may well have been using products he was responsible for. After the last few weeks of media saturated with images and articles about Steve Jobs I think the world is much more aware of who he was and what he did. Anyone who uses an Apple product now will have heard the story of the genius behind it.

I have read a lot about Steve over the last couple of weeks. A lot about how he has changed the world, how he was a visionary, an Einstein of our time and other stories of how he was an incredibly hard person to work with. We've heard the good and bad sides to him but that doesn't change the fact that he has had a profound and lasting affect on life as we know it.