Long-jawed orb weaver (Tetragnatha laboriosa) collected in Prince Edward Island National Park, Prince Edward Island, Canada, and photographed at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (sample ID: BIOUG18635-E12; specimen record: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_RecordView?processid=PEISP027-15; BIN: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_BarcodeCluster?clusteruri=BOLD:ACT6519)
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This is the jellyfish species Pegea socia. Pegea socia can often be mistaken for a similar species named P. confoederata. Of the two species of Pegea that can be found on the West Coast, P. socia is more likely to be seen north of Central California. It is distinguished from P. confoederata by its gold-colored pigmentation.
Image credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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Paleontologists have identified distinctive features of primate teeth that allow them to track the evolution of our ape and monkey ancestors, shedding light on a mysterious increase in monkey species that occurred during a period of climate change 8 million years ago. The inherited dental features will also help the researchers track down the genes that control tooth development, assisting scientists intent on regrowing rather than replacing teeth.
Image credit: Leslea Hlusko, UC Berkeley
The European Space Agency has given the makers of the newfangled Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE) €10m (US$11m) so they can afford to fire up the hardware within four years.…
NASA has released the first images captured by the Juno probe.…
5newsonline.com | UAFS Grant Places College Robotics Classes Inside Local High Schools 5newsonline.com FORT SMITH (KFSM) -- The University of Arkansas-Fort Smith announced a nearly $2 million in regional workforce grants that will be used inside of local high schools. "Here at UAFS the RWG, Regional Workforce Grants for us means a robot automation ... |
Crack-of-dawn conference calls, breakfast meetings, or even the fact that the office coffee maker is always turned off by noon are just a few examples of how the work world really is designed for early risers. Night owls, on the other hand, flourish on a different timetable.
This post originally appeared on LearnVest.
Night owls typically ride a wave of energy and alertness from afternoon to well into the night, says Robert Matchock, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at Penn State Altoona, who researches circadian rhythms in physiology and behavior.
Biological differences between early birds and night owls exist, says Matchock. The hormone melatonin, whose rise makes the body feel less alert, decreases later in the morning for night owls. Night people also have a higher core body temperature in the afternoon, which can be a sign of increased energy at that time, he adds.
http://vitals.lifehacker.com/how-melatonin-…
Most of us aren't extreme early birds or night owls but fall somewhere in the middle of these categories. But the time of day each of us tends to thrive in appears to be partly influenced by genetics. “Morning types wake up relatively early with little ‘sleep inertia,' or grogginess,” he explains. “They have their peak productivity early in the day.” Night types “tend to wake up later in the morning. If they have to get up early, there is generally a more severe sleep inertia,” and they reach higher productivity later in the day.
Unfortunately, you can't redesign the contemporary workday to suit your mole person ways, nor can you rewire the internal clock you were born with. But the good news is that you can still ace your job by doing a little shifting of certain habits and routines. Here's how to tap into your biology—and use a little strategy—to come out on top.
If you're a night owl with a day job, you likely arrive at work before your brain is fully alert, fuzzy about what tasks you need to accomplish. Instead of wasting the morning hours in an unproductive haze, create a morning to-do list the afternoon before, when you're energized and focused, suggests Anita Bruzzese, workplace expert and author of 45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy … And How to Avoid Them.
Make it as detailed as possible and prioritize what you need to get done. “Note where you left off, who you need to call, anything you can do to put things in order until your brain clicks on,” Bruzzese says. With a concrete roadmap for your morning, you'll be able to make it through your a.m. lull.
Take a shower, lay out your clothes, pack your briefcase and make your breakfast and lunch the night before the workday. Taking care of these routines can shave an hour off your morning and score you an extra hour of sleep every night. That can lead to dramatic improvements in a.m. reaction time, alertness, mood and productivity, says Matchock.
Though it's not a feasible solution for everyone, you may want to consider moving closer to your workplace, so your commute is only from the bedroom to your home office and you create more opportunity for morning sleep. “I once rented an apartment next door to my office and woke up at 8:30 for a 9 a.m. start time,” says Alexandra Levit, leadership consultant and author of “They Don't Teach Corporate in College. “A commute makes all the difference in terms of how early you actually have to get up.”
Not all job responsibilities require the same amount of brain power, says Levit. Night owls should use the a.m. hours for robotic tasks that don't require a lot of thought—like answering certain emails, bookkeeping, expense reports, looking at blogs or websites you follow, posting on LinkedIn and returning calls. When you get the mundane, but necessary, stuff behind you, you'll be primed to do your most productive work once your body and brain have had a chance to kick into gear.
Pair work that requires you to put your thinking cap on—a crucial report, presentation or brainstorming session with your team—with your peak energy windows. For night owls, that means the late afternoon and evening, but there is flexibility.
“Even scheduling difficult tasks during the late morning hours is better than early morning for night owls,” says Matchock. “I recommend the late morning before lunch or the very late afternoon, since there can be a drop in alertness, body temperature and glucose levels after eating a large meal—what we call the postprandial dip—making the early afternoon tricky.”
From 7 to 9 p.m., many night owls are firing on all cylinders. Take advantage your biology by reserving these hours for heavy-lifting tasks. That means taking work home, true, but it's worth it because you'll be more productive than if you tried to accomplish it at 10 a.m., says Elene Cafasso, founder and president of Enerpace, Inc. Executive Coaching in Chicago.
Dedicating one to two hours in the evening to tackle deep-thinking work tasks from home makes sense for a night owl—but put a limit on how late you'll stay up. “Working after midnight when you have to be in the office by 9 a.m. is counterproductive,” says Matchock, and it leads to sleep deprivation. That increases the threat that you won't be able to function at full throttle in the office the next day.
Since even an extra hour of shuteye can help a night owl function better in the morning, it may be worth it to see if you can change your work hours from 9 to 5 to 10 to 6. “Rather than fighting biology to match occupational time, we can change occupational time to match biology,” says Matchock.
While not all bosses will be understanding, it's not out of line at most workplaces these days to ask for a slightly different schedule to accommodate personal and family needs. “Sometimes folks request adjusted hours to avoid rush hour traffic or to accommodate child care,” says Cafasso. “What really matters is that you explain how this will help you get your work done more efficiently.”
Even better for a night owl is working from home, she says, even if for just a few days a week, so you have no commute and can take 20-minute power naps (research shows they help boost performance, says Matchock). Depending on your office culture, it can be a reasonable request in today's work environment. “As long as somebody knows how to get a hold of you, your boss might be open to occasional work-from-home days,” Cafasso says.
Six Ways Night Owls Can Thrive in a 9-to-5 Work World | LearnVest
Image via Getty.
The photograph of Iesha Evans at a Black Lives Matter protest has become an instant classic. Art critic Jonathan Jones assesses the image's impact, while photographer Jonathan Bachman recalls how he captured the shot
A great photograph is a moment liberated from time. If we could see what happened before and after this beautiful stillness and hear the cacophony of yells and arguments that must have filled reality's soundtrack at a protest in Baton Rouge against the taking of black lives, the heroic stand of Iesha L Evans would just be a fragile glimpse of passing courage. It might even be entirely lost in the rush of images and noise. Instead, Reuters photographer Jonathan Bachman was able to preserve a simple human act of quiet bravery and give it an almost religious power.
It is not just that time has frozen but that, in stopping its stream, the camera has revealed a near-supernatural radiance protecting Evans, as if her goodness were a force field. The heavily armoured police officers inevitably look slightly inhuman. They may have good reason to wear such all-covering protective suits and helmets, so soon after a sniper killed five officers who were policing a protest in Dallas but, in their hi-tech riot gear, they unfortunately resemble futuristic insectoid robots, at once prosthetically dehumanised and squatly, massively, menacingly masculine.
Continue reading...TRT World | Is it right to use robots to kill? TRT World It appears he was motivated to commit the murders by anger over police shootings of black men. He was killed by the detonation of a C4 explosive attached to a F5 model tactical robot made by Northrop Grumman's ... Some law enforcement experts believe ... and more » |
Wall Street Journal | Gunmen Targeted Police in Tennessee, Missouri and Georgia, Authorities Say Wall Street Journal After negotiating with Johnson for several hours, Dallas officers killed him using a bomb-disposal robot jury-rigged with explosives. In Valdosta, Ga., authorities said a man called 911 early Friday to report a car break-in, then ... John Bel Edwards ... and more » |
Astroboffins are excited about a newly-discovered dwarf planet, despite not knowing what it looks like.…
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"It's bad biology to argue against the existence of animal emotions ... Emotions have evolved as adaptations in numerous species, and they serve as a social glue to bond animals to one another. Emotions also catalyze and regulate a wide variety of social encounters among friends, lovers, and competitors, and they permit animals to protect themselves adaptively and flexibly using various behavior patterns in a wide variety of venues."
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This was taken just as the sunset colours begun to emerge behind Putney bridge, silhouetting a London bus on its way across. Putney pier can just be glimpsed through the arch of the bridge. The pink and magenta reflections on the ripples whipped up by the strong wind were lovely. A very London scene
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WALKIE TALKIE BUILDING LONDON
VentureBeat | Anki introduces tool that allows developers to hack its Cozmo A.I. robot VentureBeat Cozmo is a playful, intelligent robot with an essence of artificial intelligence. As VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi described it, it's “something like Eve the robot in Pixar's Wall-E animated film.” Anki cofounder and president Hanns Tappeiner explained ... Anki's AI-Powered Toy Robot Is Opening Cozmo Code To Anyone To UseiTech Post AI-Powered Robot Cozmo To Come with Easy-To-Use Development KitTop Tech News Anki Cozmo: AI toy robot gets open-source SDK for programming, hackingYIBADA English The Verge -NewsFactor Network all 29 news articles » |
Wall Street Journal | Gunmen Targeted Police in Tennessee, Missouri and Georgia, Authorities Say Wall Street Journal After negotiating with Johnson for several hours, Dallas officers killed him using a bomb-disposal robot jury-rigged with explosives. In Valdosta, Ga., authorities said a man called 911 early Friday to report a car break-in, then ... John Bel Edwards ... and more » |
The new smartphone game, Pokemon Go, is stirring controversy for its lack of data privacy. But that isn't slowing down its growth.
Pokemon Go has become a smartphone gaming sensation, generating $1.6 million in daily revenue by one estimate and boosting the market value of Nintendo. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks to writer Glen Weldon about the hit game and the playing experience.
And they're not unplugging from email and text messages when they do get away, an NPR poll finds. "So they're taking their stress along with them wherever they go," says a Harvard scientist.
Researchers fed a program 600 hours of videos and TV shows to see if it could learn about and predict human interactions — hugs, kisses, high-fives and handshakes. It was right nearly half the time.
Pokemon Go is the latest game to use something called augmented reality which combines virtual and real worlds on a smartphone screen. Released only last week by Nintendo, it is a runaway success.
Every time you visit a website, companies you've never heard of are collecting data about you and selling or sharing it with other companies. You can opt out, but few consumers are aware of that.
Ted Boutrous embarrassed himself in Huffington Post this week in an apparent attempt to "up the crazy" as the trial to seize Chevron's assets in Canada looms. It appears the "Big Lie" sickness of Donald Trump-ism continues to grow in America. The lawyer for Gibson Dunn, a firm known for its corporate attack dog efforts, has taken lying and slander to a new level. To Boutrous, giant fossil fuel corporations are the victims of legal attacks by environmental and human rights groups and the actual human rights violations or environmental destruction is either insignificant, or nonexistent in Ted's view. To top it off, Boutrous defender of Chevron worst global polluter ever is lecturing that "the ends don't justify the means." It's not a coincidence that Chevron will find itself in court once again in a matter of weeks trying to justify the unjustifiable - dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon over the course of decades.
Boutrous has now tagged himself as the kind of lawyer who blames the rape victim for dressing the "wrong way". Or the kind of lawyer who blames the black man shot by police for being where he shouldn't have been and "looking like a threat." He has the audacity to blame the people Chevron deliberately poisoned by intentionally dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Despite the fact that it is the largest oil-related disaster in history, which remains yet today in the form of almost 1,000 toxic waste pits, Boutrous claims there's "a lack of evidence."
To the families of the over 1,400 people who have already died of cancer in the Amazon Boutrous denies your suffering. To the indigenous communities wiped out by Chevron's operations (and Texaco) over decades, Boutrous never believed in you in the first place. To any environmental or human rights advocates who denounced the environmental "crime of the century" Boutrous says you are criminals.
For the record, here are but a few of the incontrovertible facts to which Texaco has already confessed and to which any non-corrupted lawyer would concede:
In fact, Chevron videos taken in 2005 and leaked by a whistleblower prove even the few pits Texaco claimed to have cleaned were still toxic years after the alleged "remediation".
Texaco argued for a decade in US Federal Court in New York that Ecuador was the proper venue for the case and agreed that it would honor the decisions of the Ecuadorian court system. However, on the first day of the new trial in Ecuador, Texaco insisted that the case should not be heard in Ecuador either.
Chevron's RICO trial specifically excluded any evidence of the contamination in Ecuador and in no way exonerated nor even suggested that Chevron/Texaco was not responsible for the contamination in Ecuador.
Chevron's key witness in its RICO case, disgraced ex-judge Alberto Guerra, received over $2 million from Chevron for his testimony, admitted to lying about alleged bribes from lawyers for the Ecuadorians, and admitted that he embellished his story to get Chevron to pay him more.
Forensic evidence obtained by analysts of the presiding judge's computer disprove any allegation of "ghost-writing" as the verdict was a document saved hundreds of times over a four month period and no external devices were attached (as Guerra claimed at one point).
In 2013, a US District Court found that Chevron had not shown that Amazon Watch had done anything wrong in relation to the Chevron litigation or that Amazon Watch had engaged in fraudulent conduct or furthered a conspiracy against Chevron. In an 11-page order, Judge Cousins quashed Chevron's attempts to open up Amazon Watch's files, and threatened sanctions against Gibson Dunn and Chevron if they reissued subpoenas unless they were "significantly narrower in scope to seek only highly relevant information and more carefully tailored to avoid infringing upon the organization's First Amendment rights."
None of this can be contested by Boutrous, no matter how much he may wish he could. And every single one of these facts are ones Chevron and Gibson Dunn hopes desperately that the public (and justices in Canada) will ignore or forget. Yet despite knowing them, and all those ethical guidelines Ted theoretically understands, he is willing to write that there's a "lack of evidence" against his client Chevron and the environmental NGOs asserting otherwise are criminals for doing so.
Like Chevron executives, who have spent billions to try to escape justice in Ecuador, Boutrous is impervious to shame. His firm has harassed people, threatened judges, bribed witnesses, falsified evidence (not the first, or second time), hidden information from the Ecuadorian court, and even admitted to opposing counsel in the U.S. that their motions were improper, yet filed them anyway. And it's within this context that Boutrous writes: "the ends don't justify the means."?!?
It's unclear which is a greater danger to our society, the ability for oil companies to intentionally and catastrophically pollute, or the willingness of large law firms like Gibson Dunn to cheat, lie and generally abuse the legal system in order to deny the existence of the continuing suffering of tens of thousands of people. Add to that the vilification and intimidation of anyone who dares to speak against them. Sounds like Donald Trump's ideal America to me.
Ted Boutrous is not an idiot, but he has demonstrated absolutely no moral compass whatsoever. In the fever to defend his client a company that admitted to the deliberate pollution in the first place he has gone completely off the deep end. And he has embarrassed himself in the process. That's probably why he (or his staff) have obsessively deleted every comment to his post on Huffington a delicious irony from a "First Amendment lawyer."
The notion that anyone would accept his premise when Chevron has lost every legal contest apart from Kaplan's (which is still under appeal, and was just handed another major blow by a recent SCOTUS decision about the use of RICO in such circumstances) is frankly preposterous.
No, we can't afford to sue Ted and Gibson Dunn for their acts of libel and intimidation, and they know it. The system of justice here completely favors the Chevrons of our society. That's why they are infuriated that the people of Ecuador actually persevered. Despite all Chevron and Gibson Dunn did to prevent it, they couldn't stop the $9.5 billion judgement against them. They won't be able to stop the action to enforce that verdict in Canada to seize Chevron's assets there, but Ted Boutrous and his buddies intend to get much richer trying.
Ted's post is a sign that the Chevron attack dogs are foaming at the mouth the closer we get to a trial in Canada (it begins in September). Last year, when the Supreme Court of Canada sided unanimously with the Ecuadorians to allow them to sue to enforce their verdict, it sent shock waves through Chevron's board room. The phone calls to Gibson Dunn have probably been non-stop ever since.
Ted Boutrous is using Huffington Post to spread more lies that Chevron hopes will sow more doubt about this case. "Perhaps there is no evidence in Ecuador after all." That's what they hope journalists or justices in Canada will think. Perhaps global warming is a hoax, too. "I read on the internet," says Donald Trump. That is the era we live in.
Anyone can appreciate the irony when Ted Boutrous calls Trump out for his racist comments about a judge while he dismisses Ecuador's entire judicial system, local communities and indigenous peoples as either too corrupt or too "unsophisticated" to make a just ruling based on the overwhelming evidence in the Amazon. Trump doesn't appear embarrassed, but Ted certainly has been.
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BLMUtah posted a photo:
Although Factory Butte is famous for its OHV areas, few realize that the area is also a popular site to view wildflowers in the spring when Factory Butte is in full bloom.
Read more: Chevron, Chevron Ecuador, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Theodore Boutrous, Corruption, Big Oil, Environment, Toxic Waste, Contamination, Injustice, Indigenous People, Ecuador, Pollution, Legal Fraud, Green News
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Read more: Carbon Emissions, Carbon Tax, Clean Energy, Climate Change, Climate Change Denial, Energy, Environment, Fossil Fuels, Fracking, Global Warming, Global Warming Deniers, Green News, Green News Report, Renewable Energy, Video, Democrats, Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Democratic Convention, Green News
iTech Post | Anki's AI-Powered Toy Robot Is Opening Cozmo Code To Anyone To Use iTech Post The artificial intelligence robot Cozmo from Anki has the potential to boost a robotics revolution among the masses. The Verge reports that Anki's small artificial intelligence (AI) robot, Cozmo, is based on advanced engineering and ingenious software. Anki introduces tool that allows developers to hack its Cozmo A.I. robotVentureBeat AI-Powered Robot Cozmo To Come With Easy-To-Use Development KitTop Tech News Anki Cozmo: AI toy robot gets open-source SDK for programming, hackingYIBADA English The Verge -Digital Trends all 27 news articles » |
Can robots understand our feelings? Globes There was a renowned researcher named Paul Eckman, who defined six basic emotions anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise and disgust. The uniqueness of these feelings is that they are physiological and shared by both humans and animals. |
Hollywood Reporter | Michael B. Jordan Posts Powerful Response to Police Shootings: "This Must Stop!" Hollywood Reporter My mission is to channel my anger and energy - along with my love and hope for the future into actively finding solutions. Change will take all of us, we can no ... He was killed when authorities detonated a bomb dispatched by a robot. Before he died ... and more » |
And they're not unplugging from email and text messages when they do get away, an NPR poll finds. "So they're taking their stress along with them wherever they go," says a Harvard scientist.
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There are plenty of proven techniques that can help parents soothe the sting of the needle. And guess what? A parent's attitude can matter more than the actual pain of the shot.
Otto Schoetensack Scientist of the Day
Otto Schoetensack, a German industrialist turned anthropologist, was born July 12, 1850.
Researchers fed a program 600 hours of videos and TV shows to see if it could learn about and predict human interactions — hugs, kisses, high-fives and handshakes. It was right nearly half the time.
fb81 posted a photo:
Here's another shot from my ? flight above New York last week with @flynyon. The stunning views combined with the lack of doors certainly made for an experience that I will never forget! A number of Midtown landmarks including the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and 432 Park Avenue are visible in this shot. ? by @benjaminrgrant (at Empire State Building)
Haaretz | Israeli Tech Could Offer Non-lethal Alternatives to Dallas' Killer Robot Haaretz But, it seems, the future is here. The use of a police robot loaded with explosives to kill Micah Xavier Johnson, who shot and killed five police officers during a protest march in Dallas last week, has brought an international ethics debate over the ... and more » |
World Driverless Car Market Forecast to 2022 - Growing Demand for Smart & Automated Vehicle Systems - Research ... Yahoo Finance Driverless cars are automated cars which feature all the major competencies of traditional cars. The driverless car is also known as autonomous car, robotic car or self-driving car. Increased road accidents are a major driving factor for technology ... and more » |
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From the hidden colours of the moon to Bonnie Doon, and Tarantula Nebula to Saturn, these spectacular images of the universe are the finalists in the 2016 CWAS ‘David Malin' awards. The annual competition, which celebrates the best astronomy images taken by Australian photographers, is part of AstroFest 2016. The winners will be announced on 16 July. An associated exhibition opens the following day at the CSIRO Parkes Observatory visitors centre, and a second exhibition will also travel to selected venues around Australia
Continue reading...Currently designated 2015 RR245, the giant ball of ice and rock lies nine billion kilometres away in the the most distant reaches of the solar system
A dwarf planet half the size of Britain has been found tumbling through space in the most distant reaches of the solar system.
The giant ball of rock and ice lies nine billion kilometres away on an orbit that swings far beyond the realm of Neptune, the most remote of the fully-fledged planets in our cosmic vicinity.
From cycling initiatives to a 40-storey LED billboard, the capital of Malaysia is home to punk artists, Ramadan bazaars and food that speaks of its roots
Sprawling medley of unending malls
Continue reading...The iPhones snapped away at the pair presenting onstage. Every few seconds, another hand shot up from the hundreds of people packing the audience and captured the blocks of text that danced, shimmied, and shaked across the screen. At times the squiggles, waves, and strands of type popped out of the screen in 3D animation, causing the person sitting next to me to nod to himself and say, “These guys are insane. So good it hurts.” It was a rock star reception for designers Kjell Elkhorn and Jon Forss, better known as Non-Format. The duo have developed a passionate, “hurts so good” following thanks to their ability to use all elements of graphic design to construct images that both challenge conventions and look harmonious.
Kjell Elkhorn and Jon Forss met in London in the 1990s and formed their studio in 2000. But then a girl from Minnesota came along and, as happens, Forss reconsidered his living arrangements. Smitten, Forss followed her to Minnesota in 2007 and Elkhorn ultimately moved back to his native Norway. However, they have continued to collaborate from separate offices seven time zones apart. Their work across a range of medias and subjects has led to jobs for the likes of Uniqlo, ESPN The Magazine, Warner Music, and Wieden and Kennedy. We caught up with Elkhorn and Forss to discuss how Non-Format operates despite the distance, why it's important for creatives to needle the status quo, and how they design their typefaces.
Jon Forss: It was a bit of a perfect storm really. We had started working together on a few freelance projects, which we both enjoyed. These were mostly music packaging projects for The Leaf Label and Lo Recordings. We knew the working chemistry was good and we were pleased with the way our work seemed to be going, but we weren't too sure about how to take the next step.
Kjell Elkhorn: And then Tony Herrington paid us a visit.
JF: Yes, Tony was the Editor-in-Chief of The Wire, which is a monthly music magazine. It's been going since the very early 1980s. In 2000, or thereabouts, the editors of the magazine bought the title from its owner. It was a bit of a bold move on their part, but it meant they would have complete control over the magazine. It could remain independent and they really wanted to make a go of it.
EK: So, the reason Tony paid us a visit was to offer us the job of art directing the magazine. Another bold move because, well, we hadn't designed a magazine before. According to Tony, this was one of the reasons he wanted us to work on it. To breathe some new life into it. This was right at the beginning of a new century so I guess they were all feeling quite optimistic.
JF: Of course we could see that this was likely to be a big challenge for us, but we jumped at the chance. I think we said we'd do it if we could completely redesign the magazine. I don't think there was much hesitation. They agreed, so we jumped at it. It seemed like just the nudge we needed to start up a new business together and make a clean break of it. The next thing we knew, we were officially Non-Format.
JF: I'd met a girl who lived in Saint Paul, Minnesota and, after a few years of traveling back and forth between the UK and the U.S., I ended up emigrating to Minnesota. Big move, obviously, and potentially disastrous to the business. But by this time Kjell and I had been working together for seven years and there was some interesting new technology that seemed to offer the chance of keeping the working relationship going despite the six time zones between London and Minnesota. Skype had been going for a few years. We were used to working with clients from all over the world, so email was our main method of corresponding. It was business as usual, except for the actual sitting next to each other part.
KE: This was in 2007. The same year Die Gestalten Verlag published our monograph, Love Song, which certainly helped to boost business during the first few years. In 2009, I decided that I probably didn't really need to be based in London, so my family and I packed up everything and we moved to my native Norway, bringing the total number of time zones between Jon and me up to seven. Between 2009 and 2015 we continued to work together as a two-man team and then we found ourselves in negotiations with the Norwegian design firm ANTI. They're a much bigger agency than Non-Format, with something like 70 or more employees. In October of 2015 we merged with ANTI, so now I work from the ANTI office in central Oslo, but Jon still works from his studio in the U.S.
JF: Before the merger, Kjell and I were being offered projects that we simply couldn't handle as a two-man team. We had to turn down some incredible opportunities, but now that we're partnered with ANTI we know we have the kind of creative and professional support and expertise needed to handle any kind of project that comes our way. It's exciting.
KE: Generally speaking, both of us try to work a normal eight-hour day, starting in the morning. Sometimes we have to work longer days though, when it gets really busy. There's usually an overlap of a few hours towards the end of my day and the beginning of Jon's day when we can catch up on projects and hand things over.
JF: When I start at 8 a.m. in Minnesota, it's 3 p.m. in Oslo. This works out pretty well for the most part but sometimes Kjell will work really late so that we can both work on something face-to-face, with Skype on in the background. On other occasions I'll work really late so that I'm still up when Kjell starts his day. I can't say I enjoy pulling an all-nighter but sometimes it's simply the only way. We often joke that we need someone based in Tokyo or Melbourne to cover the other third of the globe while we're trying to have a life. Maybe there are some amazing designers on the other side of the world that want to pitch for ANTI Oceana. Only kidding. Mostly.
KE: It's really not as challenging as it might seem. Sure, it's a pain not being in the same room sometimes but Skype pretty much solves that problem. The time zone difference is more of an issue, but even that has its advantages sometimes. There's nothing quite like waking up in the morning and finding that there's been some real progress on a project during the night. A lot can be achieved in two shifts.
JF: From a creative standpoint it all comes down to its purpose, but from a technical point of view everything starts in Adobe Illustrator. We've always regarded custom typography as a great way to inject our own personality into a project. There's a real sense of ownership if a piece of design features a typeface that no one else has. It's often the case that a new typeface is needed for a specific task, like an advertising headline, or a logotype, or some other application that requires certain words to be created. As a result, we have a lot of typefaces where we've only created the characters needed for a specific task. Like on music packaging, for example. We'll create a new typeface for the band name, or the title and nothing else, which means we can concentrate on just the letters we need, which frees us up to be quite experimental knowing we don't have to worry about creating, say, a ‘G' or a ‘Q' that works within the character of our new typeface.
KE The problems start when a client sees a particular typeface of ours out in the wild and requests something similar for a new project. We often go back to the original files and realize we don't have the letters we need. That can be a challenge. But we like a challenge.
JF As a boy when I was thumbing through Letraset typeface catalogues, my father, a sculptor and furniture designer, was instilling in me the idea that part of the responsibility of designing, or creating anything, is to strive for something new. It's always been second nature to me to think of design as an opportunity to be experimental and to challenge preconceptions. I don't regard design as merely a problem solving exercise. I think of it as a problem seeking exercise.
You've submitted concepts to clients like ESPN: The Magazine that you felt the editors were going to think is too edgy — and they did. Do you always take such risks in similar scenarios or do you also evaluate which client is worth the risk and which isn't?
KE: Well, we certainly don't want any of our clients to feel we haven't pushed far enough. We assume they all want to be surprised by something new and you can't deliver that unless you're constantly pushing beyond expectations. We'd rather a design solution was rejected for being too avant garde than too conservative.
JF: With the ESPN example, I think we sent over quite a few options. Sometimes a really unusual solution can make a slightly less unusual solution seem quite conservative by comparison. Including ideas we know will be rejected has a way of shifting the yardstick in our favor.
What city in the world has the strongest vibe and inspiration for you today?
JF: I do love Tokyo. It's one of those places that seems so crazy to me that it sort of makes sense. I think there's quite a bit of an overlap between the Japanese psyche and my version of a British psyche. We're both quite reserved and introspective but at the same time we have a voracious appetite for the new and the slightly eccentric. The Japanese approach to graphic design and typography, in particular, is hugely influential, as I mentioned earlier. There's a certain sensibility that rings true with me. I think it's the way they balance expression, emotion, and minimalism.
KE: I'll have to add Hong Kong too. Both Tokyo and Hong Kong are cities that are quite familiar to me by now, yet they always feel completely alien at the same time. In so many ways these two cities exemplify the difference between Japanese and Chinese culture, yet as a designer, it's the way they've merged together with western culture that makes them so special. They both provide amazing visual feasts, but where Tokyo feels refined and sophisticated, Hong Kong imbues a raw brutality; from the skyscrapers that are clinging to the rugged hillside to the intoxicating street markets. Never a dull moment.
KE: I think it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Actually, we did start off designing music packaging, so I suppose it was inevitable that our work would naturally attract similar arts and culture work. It was only after we became known for expressive typography that we started to get advertising work for industries outside of arts and culture. We started to open up into more of a fashion and lifestyle arena. Now we're handling projects for a much more diverse set of clients. We have ANTI to thank for that.
KE: We've worked quite closely with a few photographers over the years, but we're quite fond of using stock library shots too when it feels appropriate.
JF: What's nice about stock photos is that we don't have to worry about being precious with them. They're ripe for experimentation. Corruption. On their own they're often a bit cheesy or clichéd so you're sort of forced to use them as very basic raw material. A starting point for something more interesting.
KE: I guess you can say we approach image-making in much the same way as we approach typography in that we search for interesting expressions that might suit a particular project we're working on. Sometimes that ends up as traditional commissions, sometimes full-on collaborations with photographers, and sometimes we simply use what we have at hand and work the problem until we arrive at something that excites us on some level or other.
JF: The more our job resembles play, the happier we are.
Check out additional work from Non-Format on Behance.
President Obama has tried to diversify the federal judiciary by appointing more black judges. Data show black federal district judges are overturned on appeal 10 percent more often than white judges.
Designed by committee, this year's biennial can feel cluttered and overwhelming. But it's worth fighting to find the good stuff amid the piles of rubbish
Was there ever a biennial or a triennial, a Manifesta, Documenta or any other big art shindig that made total sense, whose art was at perfect pitch, whose catalogue was a joy, the theme transparent?
Stupid question. There's rubbish everywhere in the latest Liverpool Biennial; strewn about the floor, swept into corners, accumulated at the foot of pillars and left on windowsills. Old tissues, nasal sprays, bits of packaging, beer cans, fag-ends, soiled receipts and shopping lists for the chemist and forgotten dinners you name it. Someone said they found a $5 bill on the floor of Tate Liverpool. It's probably worth about 50 quid by now.
Related: 'We took on the Tories and won!' … why Liverpool's striking schoolkids are back
Related: How Mark Leckey became the artist of the YouTube generation | Charlotte Higgins
Continue reading...Designed by committee, this year's biennial can feel cluttered and overwhelming. But it's worth fighting to find the good stuff amid the piles of rubbish
Was there ever a biennial or a triennial, a Manifesta, Documenta or any other big art shindig that made total sense, whose art was at perfect pitch, whose catalogue was a joy, the theme transparent?
Stupid question. There's rubbish everywhere in the latest Liverpool Biennial; strewn about the floor, swept into corners, accumulated at the foot of pillars and left on windowsills. Old tissues, nasal sprays, bits of packaging, beer cans, fag-ends, soiled receipts and shopping lists for the chemist and forgotten dinners you name it. Someone said they found a $5 bill on the floor of Tate Liverpool. It's probably worth about 50 quid by now.
Related: 'We took on the Tories and won!' … why Liverpool's striking schoolkids are back
Related: How Mark Leckey became the artist of the YouTube generation | Charlotte Higgins
Continue reading...with each passing hour of the day, the project reveals different aspects of its sand flats location, that serves as a meeting location illuminated by the sun.
The post marc van vliet sets floating observatory on the dutch flat sands appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.
on the grounds surrounding a former aviation school in the netherlands, the dutch artist has erected a 13-meter-tall bear called 'conibeer'.
The post florentijn hofman builds behemoth bear from conifer tree branches appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.
Pierre Faucheux L'Ecart absolut
inside terrell place, ESI design has realized a 1,700 square foot reactive installation that captures the bustling pulse of the building.
The post giant motion-activated media reacts to passersby in washington DC office building appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.
Goshka Macuga's uncanny android is just the latest in an army of artist's robots that began invading 100 years ago with one question: what is it to be human?
The androids have arrived, at least a century after modern art prophesied them. Artificial humans are advancing from the screens and pages of science fiction into our art galleries to look their flesh and blood cousins eerily in the eye.
Artist Goshka Macuga, shortlisted for the Turner prize in 2008, has created a talking android for her latest exhibition at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin. It has black hair and bushy beard and talks philosophy: an intellectualtake on the Action Man toys I used to play with as a child. Macuga's robot has all the spooky uncanniness of a synthetic person with a realistically moulded face and bionic arms. Most robots have futuristic names, or cosy ones to suggest they are cute and friendly. Macuga's creation is called To the Son of Man Who Ate the Scroll.
Continue reading...Goshka Macuga's uncanny android is just the latest in an army of artist's robots that began invading 100 years ago with one question: what is it to be human?
The androids have arrived, at least a century after modern art prophesied them. Artificial humans are advancing from the screens and pages of science fiction into our art galleries to look their flesh and blood cousins eerily in the eye.
Artist Goshka Macuga, shortlisted for the Turner prize in 2008, has created a talking android for her latest exhibition at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin. It has black hair and bushy beard and talks philosophy: an intellectualtake on the Action Man toys I used to play with as a child. Macuga's robot has all the spooky uncanniness of a synthetic person with a realistically moulded face and bionic arms. Most robots have futuristic names, or cosy ones to suggest they are cute and friendly. Macuga's creation is called To the Son of Man Who Ate the Scroll.
Continue reading...the living breathing bubble responds with light and sound when touched.
The post ENESS' sonic light bubble installation in melbourne responds to human interaction appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.
Network Rail has published an inclusive design strategy in a bid to make Britain's rail network more accessible for disabled people.
The Spaces and Places for Everyone initiative is a commitment to making sure that design thinking is “deeply embedded within Network Rail as an organisation” according to its chief executive Mark Carne.
A built environment accessibility panel has been set up. It uses co-design principals and is made up of disabled passengers who are also experts in inclusive design and can provide technical and strategic advice to project teams.
The new inclusive design thinking has been prompted by Network Rail-commissioned research, which finds that 67% of disabled people who travel, chose to travel by rail. Of these, 24% felt their journey would not be an easy one and 33% said they would use the train more if it were more accessible to them.
Carne says: “Most of today's railway was designed during the Victorian era when attitudes towards disability were very different. Since then, access for disabled people has been tagged on at a later stage, rather than being part of the initial design strategy for our railway. We know it has not been good enough in the past, and we need to make it easier for disabled people to plan journeys and travel by rail.
“We are committed to changing this, and doing what is necessary to make sure that inclusivity is deeply embedded in our culture. Only then will our railway be a place where everyone can travel equally, confidently and independently.”
Some of the changes have already begun to roll out. At Birmingham New Street an area for guide dogs to go for a wee has been created, while at Reading station an audio guide has been created by Microsoft so that visually impaired people can find their way out of the station and around the town.
Meanwhile at London Bridge lifts and escalators are being redeveloped to improve access and these are expected to open to passengers this summer.
The post Network Rail launches inclusive design strategy appeared first on Design Week.
Dutch consultancy Tinker Imagineers has designed a new exhibition space for Nestlé, 150 years after the food company was founded.
To coincide with the anniversary, Nest is located in founder Henri Nestlé's first factory from 1866 in Vevey at Lake Geneva, Switzerland.
The factory, which opened in June, has been renovated by Switzerland-based Concept-Consult Architectes, which has added a glass roof and steel construction to the building as part of the €45m (£38m) project.
Tinker Imagineers, who became involved with the project two years ago, hoped to balance the industrial design of the factory space with more “organic” interiors, according to partner and founder, Erik Bär.
Beneath the glass roof sits a hovering platform covered in white fabric that overlooks the rest of the exhibition, “reflecting an almost timeless world”, says Bär.
The white stretched fabric installation is made up of ten different exhibits, including a 3D body scanner that shows what happens to different food types inside the body using an avatar.
Nest is split into past, present and future zones, where visitors can do everything from look at a prototype of the first Nespresso machine to try out an interactive table, known as the “forum”.
“Since Nestle is criticised quite a lot in the media I thought the best thing they could do was something they didn't have in the original concept…to dedicate a zone completely the challenges in producing food for eight billion people,” says Bär.
The forum is designed to explore global issues, such as agriculture, sustainability, water and food production, as well their potential solutions, he explains.
Each theme is represented by a different icon and colour, which light up trails on the table and provide information about the selected topic on a screen.
Tinker Imagineers has also explored the artistic side of exhibition design with the project. In the middle of the central atrium is a life-sized tree decorated with more than 1,200 flowers handmade from different Nestlé product packaging, such as Nescafé.
The most important element of the exhibition for Bär was to make each zone look and feel completely different, he says.
“In the past zone we looked back at early cinema techniques which worked quite well…and then gradually things get lighter and more modern. It's the variety that I am happiest with.”
All photos: Mike Bink
The post Nestlé celebrates its 150th birthday with interactive exhibition space in Switzerland appeared first on Design Week.
An exhibition exploring the work of dyslexic designers will open next month, with the aim of presenting dyslexia as an alternative way of thinking rather than a health condition.
Dyslexic Design is part of this year's Designjunction, the annual design exhibition which takes place in London, Milan and New York.
The exhibition will show the work of designers with dyslexia from disciplines including product, fashion, illustration, home décor and fine art, such as Sebastian Bergne, Kristjana S Williams, Terence Woodgate and Tina Crawford.
It aims to explore the “connection between dyslexia and the creative industries”, says Designjunction, looking at the positives as well as the challenges that can come from working with the learning difference.
The exhibition's main goal is to “take away the stigma of dyslexia and reveal it as a gift”, say the organisers.
For example, it will look at how dyslexia affects a person's lateral and visual thinking, and therefore creativity, and how the learning difference can prescribe “unusual three-dimensional thinking”.
The exhibition's founder, and one of the exhibitors, Jim Rokos, says: “It is my belief that I am able to design the way I do, because of my dyslexia and not despite it,” he says.
“I [want] to remove the unwanted and unwarranted stigma sometimes associated with dyslexia and in doing so change perceptions of it. We believe dyslexia is something that drives and inspires creative thought and design,” he adds.
Debates will also take place in the exhibition space, around how dyslexia is perceived in design education, whether it should no longer be classed as a disability and seen rather as an alternative brain structure, and how it affects a person's lateral and visual thinking.
Deborah Spencer, designjunction's managing director, says: “I had grown up with dyslexia and I believe it played an integral part in leading me down the path of art and design.”
Dyslexic Design takes place 17-25 September, as part of Designjunction, which runs from 22-25 September 2016. Tickets to Designjunction are £12 in advance or £15 on the door, and will grant access to the dyslexia exhibition. A percentage of ticket sales will be donated to the British Dyslexia Association. Find out more about the exhibition here.
Designjunction, now in its sixth year, is part of the London Design Festival, and takes place at a new venue in King's Cross this year, based around the theme of Immersed in Design.
The post New design exhibition hopes to remove stigma associated with dyslexia appeared first on Design Week.
WT Journal posted a photo:
London sunset, with a view towards the Shard.
MarkAHirst posted a photo:
Assassin bug (Fitchia aptera) collected in Kouchibouguac National Park, New Brunswick, Canada, and photographed at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (sample ID: BIOUG21781-C02; specimen record: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_RecordView?processid=SSKOA2054-15; BIN: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_BarcodeCluster?clusteruri=BOLD:ACV2565)