FlyPod Blog

Dieter's 10 Commandments on good design

The endlessly impressive Dieter Rams' 10 principles of design:

1. Good design is innovative.
2. Good design makes a product useful.
3. Good design is aesthetic.
4. Good design makes a product understandable.
5. Good design is unobtrusive.
6. Good design is honest.
7. Good design is long-lasting.
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly.
10. Good design is as little design as possible.

Copyright Dieter Rams, amended March 2003 and October 2009 

http://designmuseum.org/design/dieter-rams

Apple's iPad - the perfect device for galleries, museums and cultural spaces?

To date, mobile devices in galleries, museums and cultural spaces have been difficult to use, aesthetically unappealing and technically underwhelming. There have been some fine attempts using PDAs (remember them?) and for special uses Ookl is great, but the iPhone, iPod Touch and now the iPad represent a quantum leap in what is now possible for cultural spaces to offer their visitors.

In the UK, museums have been painfully slow off the mark, it has to be said, and those few apps that are available are basic and sometimes shabby. As museums and galleries usually have lots more audio, video, images and text than they can sensibly offer the visitor as (s)he walks around, the content costs to take advantage of this technology should not be huge and more and more people are bringing their own hardware.

What is needed is decent software (apps) that are easy to use, meet museum needs and are reasonably priced. Watch this space as we plan to develop our own. 

Blogging again

Previous blogging attempts (not confined to a work project) have quickly descended into a general purgative but I am determined to make this one about social media in general and the fine work we do under the names Fly Industries and FlyPod in particular. I say 'we' because it is sometimes Mike Greenwood (especially Parliament) and sometimes Angela Hind (especially Royal Opera House) and a bunch of designers and sound editors and presenters like BBC Radio 3's divine Lopa Kothari.

Right now we have work on with Parliament and Royal Opera House  - mostly in the podcast line of things -and social media consultancy / digital marketing at Kew (twitter, Facebook and YouTube especially). I've also made a few films for Kew and sorted their library of video material ready for the web. I am also doing some film work for UNICEF but that will be the subject of a future post

Bethan's Fund Auction

A site for friends who run a charity to help babies and young children. The site will be aunctioning works by lots of great artists including Stella Vine. www.bethansfund.org

Oval Music

Charlie Gillett's quirky label features a selection of music from Ian Dury to Lene Lovich. The brief was to make a site that would be found by anyone wanting to licence such tracks for adverts and give them the information they needed to complete the transaction by phone. The site had to be easily updated and carry soundfiles as well.

Since launch, I am pleased to say it has consistently topped  relevant Google searches (whereas before it was invisble) and the site has led to new business for Charlie http://www.ovalmusic.co.uk

Get Creative Consultants

Screen writing courses for everybody. Big names spill the beans on how to write for telly. This site is a Mo Fly production as well. Dorothy Stiven, a self-confesed technophobe, maintains and updates it herself without problems using the simple interface. http://www.getcreativeconsultants.com

Foodster

The much loved food and recipe sharing network is now on Typepad and joins the Mo Fly network of sites. As far as I know, Foodster was among the first - if not the first - food blog and recipes from it are featured in the book Digital Dish
http://www.foodster.net