Saturday 30 October 2010

Photoshop CS5 - 3D feature!


While Photoshop CS5 has included a number of extraordinary features, the 3D features have taken another giant leap with a fantastic feature called Repoussé. Which allows you to create 3D text. Working in 3D in any application is processor intensive. It will use up RAM extremely quick. Older machines would have crashed all the time so as machines have become increasingly powerful, software continues to as well.

The Flintstones 50th anniversary - 8 wacky inventions



Yabba Dabba Doo! The Flintstones are 50 years old, so we've put together a blog in their honour. As we design and manufacture our own products we thought it seemed fitting to share a few of the Bedrock's wackiest contraptions.

Wednesday 27 October 2010

This week we love... Envirophone



I'm sure many of you are aware of Envirophone by now. For those of you who don't Envirophone offer a safe and reliable way to get cash for your mobile phones.

Envirophone take their Environmental responsibilities very seriously. They believe in a sustainable environment and that is why reuse is always their first port of call in the recycling process.

95% of their mobile phones are reused. In most cases they’re refurbished and sold to developing countries where they can play a major part in helping to develop communication networks. The reuse of mobile phones offers a valuable infrastructure in these countries.

If a phone is beyond economic repair then they send the phone off to a recycling plant in the UK where it’s broken down and valuable metals and components are extracted.

As well as paying out over £70 million to the consumer they've also managed to offset over 3,000 tonnes of carbon and have paid out over £3 million to charities and the education sector. They actively believe in giving back to the local community which is great to see a company not just saying it but doing it!

So is it worth trading in old phones for cash? Well I recently traded in two old phones and received £33.61 for two old phones.

Nokia 6500 Slide £32.55
Nokia 1100 £01.06

Instead of leaving unwanted phones in your draw, why not earn some easy cash and do something great for the planet.

HTC vs iPhone



Any time soon your network provider will phone saying your contract is soon to expire and you can upgrade to a new phone.

Age 103 And Still Designing.



103 year old Eva Zeisel continues to astound. The Hungarian born designer just doesn't won't give up. In addition to being enormously talented, her life story is as interesting as her work.

Sunday 24 October 2010

Protomold CUBE


If you’re involved in plastic design you may have heard of Protomold. If not, they’re a Rapid Injection Molding outfit. You can send them your 3D models and have a prototype created super fast for as little as $1795.

The cube is essentially a box of nothing, that is, if you only consider what’s in the box. If, on the other hand, you consider what’s on the box, it’s a box crammed with useful information on how (and how not) to achieve the best possible results from injection moulding.

It’s Protomold's new sample part; a nifty little piece that ships flat but folds into a 63.5mm cube using living hinges and two kinds of moulded-in clips (locking and non-locking). The part shows some of what can be done in a straight-pull mould, and the clips and hinges are just a few of the many sample features scattered across the surfaces of the cube.

My protomold sample CUBE arrived in the post last week and its really cool. If your eyes light up when somebody mentions plastic design or want an interesting purple cube sitting on your desk, they have a free sample they’ll send you. It shows you good and bad practices and what to consider when creating an RIM part. If you are a Product designer or just interested in design I suggest to order one! They're free and super cool!

Tom Kelly-Lord
Spinninghat.com

Can design save the world?



Last week myself and a few colleagues headed down to the Design Museum, to see the Sustainable Futures exhibition – Can Design Save the World? A new exhibition that:

"presents key examples of how design can deliver a more sustainable future. The exhibition examines not only the objects themselves but also the infrastructure in which objects are produced and exist. At a time when designers and architects are under pressure to ‘think green’ and education establishments are placing greater emphasis on sustainability in the curriculum, this exhibition highlights how design can, literally, help save the world."

Can Design Save the World? That’s the question the Design Musuem ’s Sustainable Futures exhibition attempts to answer through examining the objects on display. Taking a selection of projects, existing or are in the making, this exhibition presents key examples of how design can deliver a more sustainable future. The exhibition examines not only the objects themselves but also the infrastructure in which objects are produced and exist. At a time when designers and architects are under pressure to ‘think green’ and education establishments are placing greater emphasis on sustainability in the curriculum, this exhibition highlights how design can, literally, help save the world.

The majority of the products I had heard of or seen online before however it was great to see them for real and hear the history behind the design. This included products such as;

The life Straw: LifeStraw is a point-of-use water filters designed by the Swiss-based Vestergaard Frandsen for tourists and people living in developing nations. LifeStraw Personal filters a maxium of 700 litres of water, enough for one person for one year. LifeStraw Family filters a maximum of 18,000 litres of water, providing safe drinking water for a family for more than two years. It removes 99.9999% of waterborne bacteria, 99.99% of viruses, and 99.9% of parasites. LifeStraw Personal kills 99.9999% of waterborne bacteria and 98.5% of viruses.


One laptop per child: OLPC mission is to create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.


Sustainable Futures – Can Design Save the World?, Design Museum, London

31st March 2010 until 5th September 2010

Tom Kelly-Lord
Spinninghat.com

Super Mario Bros celebrating 25th birthday!



Having been brought up playing Nintendo, Mario has been a good of friend on mine throughout my childhood. It's the biggest game series of all time, and Super Mario is 25 years-old today. To celebrate, we've jammed a selection of facts on the world's greatest platform hero. So spray your golf hat red and find a pair of dungarees because its Mario time!

1. Mario was originally a carpenter, not a plumber. He's also appeared as a doctor in the 1990 puzzle title Dr Mario and its sequels.

2. Mario was originally known as Jumpman. However, when Nintendo's US office were trying to think of a better name in time for the American release of the game, they were interrupted by their landlord Mario Segale, after whom they christened the character.

3. The look of Mario is all about the graphical limitations of the hardware at the time. He has a hat, because realistic hair was difficult to portray, a moustache to accentuate his nose, and dungarees to make his arm movements more noticeable. In Super Mario Bros, he wears a brown shirt below his overalls – a look that was swiftly abandoned.

4. Mario was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and appeared in the game designer's first ever title, the 1981 arcade platformer, Donkey Kong. Miyamoto was hired as a graphic artist by Nintendo in 1977, and was given the task of designing a game after several of the company's early coin-ops had failed to make an impression on the lucrative arcade market. Donkey Kong was created using the hardware behind an older arcade title named Radar Scope, which sunk without a trace in the US. Miyamoto ditched the shooting theme and added an ape and rolling barrels. Success naturally followed.


5. In contrast, Bowser, the key antagonist of the Super Mario Bros series, has also appeared as a good guy. He helps Mario in the 1996 title Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.





6. Super Mario Bros was preceded by the 1983 arcade platformer, Mario Bros. Designed by Miyamoto and Game Boy-creator Gunpei Yokoi, it's set in the New York sewer system and introduces Mario's brother Luigi.

7. Donkey Kong Jr, the 1982 sequel to Donkey Kong, is the only game in which Mario officially stars as the antagonist. He has trapped poor Donkey Kong in a cage and the ape's son must rescue him. In the game's promotional material, Mario even gets a specially twirled moustache, highlighting his evil nature.

8. Bowser was originally sketched as an ox by Miyamoto, but his drawings were misinterpreted by animator Yoichi Kotabe as a turtle. The duo worked together on the latter idea and the Bowser we know today was born. He's definitely a turtle, though, and not a dragon as some assume.

9. The evil version of Mario – Wario – first appeared as a nemesis in the Game Boy title, Super Mario Land 2. He was designed by Hiroji Kiyotake, who also created Samus Aran, the heroine of the Metroid series. Wario's name blends Mario with the Japanese adjective 'warui' meaning evil.

10. The first Super Mario Bros game has sold 40.24 million copies, although that figure is skewed by the fact that it was bundled with the Nintendo Entertainment System console. It was until recently, however, considered the best-selling game of all time. It has been pushed into second place by Wii Sports on 41.65 million units.

11. In the 1984 Nintendo Entertainment System game Golf, Mario made his first appearance in a sports sim. Kind of. The original character merely resembled Mario, while the later NES Open Tournament Golf specifically featured Mario as a golfer. He appears on the cover in red and white striped overalls, with a blue starry shirt. An awesome outfit.

12. Nintendo composer Koji Kondo provided the iconic soundtrack to Super Mario Bros. The main theme, known as 'Ground Theme', is one of the most recognisable pieces of game music ever recorded. The tune remained in the Billboard ringtone charts for 125 weeks and has been performed in concert by live orchestras.

13. Super Mario Bros was the first game to be set in Mushroom World, Miyamoto's long-running and ever-evolving fantasy kingdom. When Mario 'eats' a super mushroom he grows in size and ability. Miyamoto denies that he was influenced by Alice in Wonderland, and instead claims the idea came from enchanted foodstuffs in myths and folklore.

14. The original Super Mario Bros 2 was designed as a tougher version of the first game and released to support the Famicom Disk System, a new add-on for the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was considered too difficult for Western release, though, so the US and Europe got a tweaked version of the 1987 title Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic instead. The game was hastily refitted with Mario characters in a sort of digital cut-and-shut job. In 1993, the genuine SMB2 was finally released in the West as Super Mario Bros: the Lost Levels, part of the Super Mario All-Stars collection.

15. A Q Score survey in the early nineties revealed that Mario was more recognisable to American children than Mickey Mouse.

16. The new Chain Chomp enemies in Super Mario Bros 3 look like steel black balls with razor sharp teeth. They were inspired by an incident in Miyamoto's childhood when a neighbour's dog chased the terrified genius, before it was yanked back by its chain.

17. Elsewhere, the Whomp characters from Super Mario 64 were inspired by a mythological being known as the nurikabe, a 'wall ghost' that misdirects or impedes travellers at night.

18. ...and the versions of the ghostly Boo enemies found in Super Mario 64, are based on the wife of the game's co-designer Takashi Tezuka. As Miyamoto explained in an interview with Nintendo Power magazine: "Mr. Tezuka got an idea about putting his wife in the game. His wife is very quiet normally, but one day she exploded, maddened by all the time he spent at work. In the game, there is now a character who shrinks when Mario looks at it, but when Mario turns away, it will grow large and menacing."

19. Released in 1989, the Game Boy title Super Mario Land was the first major Mario game to be developed without Miyamoto. Producer Gunpei Yokoi didn't do too badly however: the game shifted over 18 million copies. The game also introduces a new female character, Princess Daisy, replacing Mario's usual love interest, Princess Peach.

20. The 1993 movie, Super Mario Bros, was Hollywood's first attempt to create a video game tie-in. Starring Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper it was a critical and commercial failure, which conspired to give the game a darker, more adult veneer. Apparently, Dustin Hoffman was interested in the role of Mario as his children were fans of the game.

21. Since 1995, the voice of Mario has been provided by American voice actor Charles Martinet. He also voices Wario and Luigi.

22. The Wii hit Super Mario Galaxy was inspired by a tech demo known as Super Mario 128 shown at the Nintendo Space World event in 2000. The demo showed dozens of teeny Marios walking around on a slightly curved surface. During the Gamecube era Galaxy designer Yoshiaki Koizumi thought that entirely spherical levels would make an interesting environment for Mario, but Miyamoto was apparently unconvinced at first. Finally, Koizumi showed off several test levels and the project was greenlit for Wii.

23. The Super Mario bros series is in the Guinness Book of Records as the most successful gaming franchise of all time. It now boasts global sales of over 240 million units.

24. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games.

25. Footage from Super Mario Bros 3 appears in the climatic scene of appalling 1989 movie, The Wizard, about an emotionally withdrawn gaming champion. As this was the first chance that US Nintendo fanatics would get to see the game, the movie effectively acted as an advert for the release. Personally this is my favourite all time Mario game but have still to this day have never completed it. The final world is impossible!


I downloaded an app for my HTC from the android market however is slightly disappointing. If you know of any good Mario apps, let us know!

Tom Kelly-lord
Spinninghat.com

This week we love... Angry Birds



My colleagues have been playing angry birds on the iPhone for a while now while I eagerly waited for the release on my HTC desire.

See I knew the mobile game Angry Birds was kind of popular, and it appears very popular with the Android smartphone brigade. I tried to download Angry Birds for Android to my HTC on the day it was released but kept getting unavailable.

The site where an Android fan could grab Angry Birds for Android before it hit the Android Market was overloaded; however eventually Angry Birds for Android hit the Market and I now have my copy of the full version for free.

Apparently the makers of the multi-platform Angry Birds, Rovio announced via Twitter that Angry Birds for Android hit 1 million plus download on its first day of release, which shows that it is one very popular game.

This of course means that over a million Android owners are now playing Angry Birds on their chosen Android smartphone, and no doubt working their way through the 150 levels of green pig killing as quickly as possible. Personally I’m at world1, stage3 level 12 and I'm a little stuck! Any pointers would be great! The past few tube rides have been quite aggrivating trying to do this level. Someone will probably come along and do it first time!

None the less is a great way to kill time on my journey to work. I give Angry Birds two thumbs up!

Tom Kelly-Lord
Spinninghat.com

iHouse - Grand designs Live 2010

Grand Designs Live at the NEC hosted a Home of the Future demonstration with several new ideas presented by TV presenter Lee Baldry.

We’ve all watched sci-fi movies that predict how we'll live, sleep and enjoy ourselves in the future including the so-called 'intelligent home'. Sadly progress to these ideas is slow and 'travel pods' have yet to appear and neither have personal robots. But homes are getting more intelligent - and there are more and more gadgets coming on to the market designed to make our lives a little bit easier and less time consuming.

An oven that never forgets: I’m not sure how it does it, memory oven, but this oven will remember how crispy you like your lasagna and how juicy you like your roast chicken so you don’t need to worry about cooking times.




Waterless dishwasher: This nifty little Electrolux prototype doesn’t use any water or soap but cleans your dishes using sonic waves.






Non-touch, non smell toilet: Sensors near the toilet will lift the lid for you on arrival and close it again on departure. Once you are finished it will wash, massage and dry you - eliminating the need for loo roll - and then vacuum flush, keeping all smells at bay.






Secure wardrobe: If you want to keep your possessions private this wardrobe has finger print recognition on the drawers. This would no doubt be popular with teenagers wanting to hide things from the parents.






Clothes refresher: This Electrolx equivalent to Febreeze is designed to refresh your shirts by passing then between two panels in the machine, which does something clever like steam it or pass negative ions through it. Very handy if your shirt isn’t quite dirty enough for the wash but could do with a little freshen up.

Steamy windows: No more curtains or blinds. Just press the remote control and your windows are frosted.

These have been around for a while, although predominately confined to the board rooms of the most flash companies. A small design flaw is that they work by sending a five volt current through the glass when the windows are clear, and it is ‘off’ when misted. I think it would be a better idea to switch this the other way round.

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Tutorial: How to make simple vector iPad



With the release of the iPad it seemed fitting to do a tutorial on how to make a realistic and simple version in adobe. This tutorial is for adobe illustrator CS3 and up.

Monday 4 October 2010

How to make a simple Vector Badge



Hi everybody,

today I will show you how to create a simple vector badge using Adobe Illustrator. It doesn't matter which version you have, all the tools that will be used are available on all versions.

Sunday 3 October 2010

This week we love... Magnetic Man


Every so often you find a song that you can't stop playing and you can't get out of your head. Well at the moment mine is Magnetic Man - I need air, and oh boy is it a good tune. A song this distracting deserves a bit of praise and attention, it would be rude not to share.

Back to the future Re-release!


Who's up for some rather exciting and wonderful news?

Saturday 2 October 2010

The team visits the Shoreditch Design Triangle

This year at the London Design Festival we knew we couldn't miss out on the Shoreditch Design Triangle, which is great as its right outside our door! Composed of different shops, galleries and independent studios in the Shoreditch neighborhood, this group was home to some of the best designs showcased in East London. Its a great source of inspiration for us, and an excuse to get out the office and have some fun as well!



Spinning Hat celebrating Pac-Man 30th Anniversary


It was 30 years ago the world went pixel crazy over that pie-chart looking yellow circle with a piece missing for a mouth. Hours of sweaty button bashing, sipping down a gallon of Pepsi and inserting coin after coin into the machine just to get on the score bored in the local arcade. Well we can safely say games have moved on a lot since the 80’s, but the game still lives on in the hearts of gamers and is among the most famous and significant arcade games of all time...