Thursday, February 19, 2015

Keyboards Of Yesteryear

It's amazing to find those little bits of history that people don't recognize happened because a better more popular system occurred later on.  How did you get to this blog? Look down. I bet you used a keyboard at some point, am I right?


A keyboard is nothing more than an evolved printing press. A printing press is an evolved stamp... all the way till you get to handwriting. Except not quite. For decades people have hailed the Gutenberg press and the first modern printing press. WRONG, SO WRONG.



The Chinese had been doing it way earlier. 


The Chinese printing block is a feat of design when considering it was designed and in use hundreds upon hundreds of years ago 


Thursday, February 12, 2015

Back On Form

It comes a time in every design teams year when you need to plant fresh seeds in order for the next years design crop to grow. We took some time to ready our idea fields for this years ideas and the saplings are already beginning to flourish.


We also updated our sources to creative design projects and we were surprised to see that a large part of design is now passed around by Social Media? So we took to some social media and were pleasantly surprised!

A main hub for creative design and innovation is the popular platform pinterest. Pinterest is a great site, quick and easy to find what your're looking for and a great way to get lost in a dreamy world of products on the market or products yet to come... SERIOUSLY WE COULD SPEND ALL DAY SCROLLING!!

Recently we found this little gem of Chinese design link through Pinterest! 

This is the winning concept for the Chinese Pavilion at the Expo Milano 2015 designed by Tsinghua University.


We instantly fell in love with it and we hope you have too. Critics describe it as the 'The energy of life floating about a field of hope and dreams' and 'A building that is loud yet gentle, arrogant but shy'. Quite a mouthful! We prefer the word Awesome!

It's difficult to not be mesmerised by the detail and the extravagance that has been put into this building. It looks huge but still somewhat light and fluttery.

For a country (China) regularly mocked for making cheap landfill products that are distasteful, this is an outstanding showcase what it can achieve and we certainly want to point out that there is a lot more to come!


We don't usually look much into architecture but we increasingly find that it helps in material and shape design of our OEM projects. It's an area that is defined by successful and unsuccessful and it's easy to take away the successful aspects and implement those into products, graphics or anything creative.


So as our little sampling ideas grow and develop throughout the year, let us all remember that those abstract ideas that we usually think don't apply to our design, they can actually offer great inspiration in terms of shape, styling or even just refresh your creative juices when your in a rut (happens to the best of us).


Did you know Mindsparkz/ODM has a pinterest page. Why not check us out? We also have a range of social media! Click any of the links and join or 2015 journey and beyond!

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