ShantiNiketan is known as “little India”—it's a small cluster of retirement homes in Central Florida that was planned for Indian Americans. It's meant to be a space for people who cannot grow old in their homeland because their lives are rooted in the United States. “Because of the very unique culture, food, and religion, Indians find it very difficult to retire in a mainstream retirement community,” says Iggy Ignatius, who was born in India and founded ShantiNiketan in 2008. “But for those who want to come here, I can tell you this is heaven for them.” We went inside ShantiNiketan to speak to the Indian Americans who live there, and to understand the appeal of moving to a place that's steeped in the culture of your birthplace.
Johnson Banks has unveiled seven potential brand identities for Mozilla, as part of its ongoing “open-source” rebrand.
The search for the not-for-profit software company's new identity was first announced in June, and it has been taking feedback from the Mozilla community and members of the public since then.
Seven initial themes were created by Johnson Banks, all exploring different facets of Mozilla's advocacy for shared and open-source internet access and software.
After further refining these themes in response to feedback that suggested “upping the positivity and doing more with the whole principle of ‘open'”, seven visual identities and their accompanying assets have been made available to view on the Mozilla Open Design blog.
The designs include everything from a simple typographic mark to a modern version of its former Dinosaur logo, and public comments on them are already coming thick and fast.
“Our work on the narrative has changed a lot as we learn more about them,” says Michael Johnson, founder and creative director of Johnson Banks.
“It's debatable whether some of our other clients, either blue-chip or not-for-profit, could handle this but this is unprecedented as an approach. Perhaps it will push others to be more open.”
We outline all of the proposed design concepts below.
This abstract eye design plays on the not-for-profit's former Dinosaur logo, which is still used internally.
The consultancy has experimented with Mozilla's name, using intertwining letters inspired by circuitry and tribal patterns.
3) The Open Button
This button pictogram is designed to represent Mozilla's commitment to making the internet “open to everyone on an equal basis”.
4) Protocol
Alluding to the not-for-profit's longevity, this symbol is intended to show that the not-for-profit is “at the core of the internet”.
This concept highlights Mozilla's place within “the enormity of the internet”, forming an “M” symbol out of a series of 3D grid systems.
Another simple typographical mark, this “impossible” design gives a nod to computer graphics and optical illusions.
As an extension of the former dinosaur logo, this visual identity builds a character out of isometric shapes, also spelling out the name “Mozilla”.
The post Johnson Banks reveals first designs for “open-source” Mozilla rebrand appeared first on Design Week.
At the Museum of Skateboarding, Russian artist Kirill Savchenkov turns the urban skater into a rōnin-style warrior engaged in a boys-only martial art
London has a new Museum of Skateboarding. But before you dust off your Vans, be warned: this is not a public institution on the South Bank dedicated to outsize shorts, broken wrists and the unseasonal wearing of beanie hats. It's in an art gallery.
The work of Russian artist Kirill Savchenkov, the “museum” opened at London's Calvert 22 last week. Addressing the deathlessly hip sport mock-anthropologically, it's an exhibition that gazes back, as if from the near future, to a fantasy New Skateboarder culture in which the urban skater is a kind of warrior monk or rōnin on wheels.
Related: Bristol skateboarders take on 'skatestopper' defensive architecture
Related: Skating on the South Bank: my nights getting wrecked in the undercroft
Continue reading...London-based Mettle Studio has created Proximity Button, a wearable device worn by dementia patients to alert their carers if they wander further than a safe distance.
Wandering is a common side effect of dementia, and Mettle's design aims to instil confidence in patients' carers. The device works using radio signals emitted to a carer's phone via the Proximity Button app. The signal is lost if the patient wanders, and an alarm is raised as a warning.
The look and feel is simple and lightweight, with a focus on comfort and discretion, using a magnetised fastening to snap onto the wearer's clothing. “We didn't want anything to look too explicitly medical, we wanted it to be a bit more towards the agnostic tech end,” says Mettle Studio creative director Alex Bone. “That's why it's more plain, and we wanted to have all the places and weight on the inside, to make it less noticeable.”
Mettle Studio was approached by Proximity Care to work on the project in November last year, and created the hardware designs and the accompanying app. The UX and UI were created to be as simple to view and use as possible. Bone says, “The UI and UX was heavily geared towards simplicity. We stripped a lot of features out to make it more simple, as the target user wasn't necessarily expected to have a smartphone as standard. We had to assume no prior knowledge, so the app is designed with a step-by-step tutorial and allows you to see pretty much everything on one page.”
According to Bone, the device is currently in production and should be released in around November this year.
The post Mettle Studio creates wearable “button” for carers to find wandering dementia patients appeared first on Design Week.
With a new design studio and a communal house in a Japanese village, Airbnb has announced its ambitions to change the way we live, travel and share space. Some say the company are venturing into urban planning are they?
Since its inception, Airbnb the website that allows people to rent out their homes for holiday accommodation has been a contentious issue in cities. It's a cost-saving convenience for travellers and a money-making opportunity for homeowners, yet a source of ire to scores of traditional hotels and guest-houses.
Some have accused the global home-sharing initiative which operates in 34,000 cities of playing a part in gentrifying neighbourhoods, as more Airbnb listed properties means fewer available homes to live in, thus pushing up prices. Mark Tanzer, chief executive of the Association of British Travel Agents, has also criticised Airbnb's contribution to growing tourism numbers as a threat to historic cities around the world. Meanwhile, a number of city governments have implemented restrictive permits and regulations to curb the practice and its negative impacts.
Related: Which cities have the oldest residents?
Continue reading...Not to give away the average age of our design studio but we think our deep-seated love of cult 1980s movies could make an amazing visitor attraction. Who doesn't want to fly on a bike with ET in front, go Back to the Future in a DeLorean or shrink in size to meet Gizmo face-to-face?
Just think how great it would be arm yourself with proton packs to fight the Marshmallow Man or journey through the labyrinth to the goblin city.
With strong cinematic plots, iconic music and amazing special effects that live on in our memories well beyond they should for grown adults, this decade of movie magic could translate into an experience with mass appeal.
I would translate horse racing game Escalado onto a local high street, get people riding large fibreglass horses while groups of volunteers turn a giant cog which makes a giant plastic sheet vibrate and the horses move forward.
This will mean nothing to 95% of people reading this, but for those of you who have never played one of the greatest toy games ever, get onto Ebay and buy yourself one in full working order. It will cure your Pokemon Go habit, period!
It will make our high streets much more vibrant. Town centres need giant Escalado to take up the Woolworths and BHS slack.
A book I read recently that would be a cool visitor experience is David Egger's The Circle. It's about how a young woman finds a job in Silicon Valley with a company like Facebook or Apple (perhaps The Circle refers partly to Foster's new building for Apple).
The visitor experience is a kind of digital journey from ordinary small town life through a series of transformations to a crazy world of total digital connectivity, where every piece of information has to be shared and every experience is transformed into data.
The data is endlessly churned by algorithms and represented by an almost obligatory social media.
As a visitor experience it would start with an ordinary home from the 1980s and end with an immersive digi-scape where data surrounds you, weaving into your life and shaping a strange and often unwished for destiny. Like Dave Egger's book, it would be strange but all too familiar.
The post What work of fiction do you think could inspire a great visitor experience? appeared first on Design Week.
A new study shows that Neptune's exotic clouds and violent storms are driven by a combination of cosmic rays and sunlight
It is the last stop before Pluto and 4.5bn kilometres from the Sun, and yet Neptune has some of the wildest weather in the solar system. Winds of over 2,000km per hour (nine times faster than Earth's fastest winds) whip up extreme storms, and exotic clouds (made of ammonia, methane and hydrogen sulphide) come and go. The methane in Neptune's atmosphere absorbs red light and makes the planet appear blue to us. Meanwhile the high-level cirrus-like clouds, made of frozen methane, give the planet its ever changing pattern of bright white dots and dashes.
Related: Neptune's first orbit: a turning point in astronomy
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This week we will be looking at fascinating examples of urban planning - a major focus of the Where We Design chapter in our new book “Overview”. To start off, here is one of our favorite shots of the radiating streets that surround the Plaza Del Ejecutivo in Mexico City, Mexico. If you have examples of other cities that you think might look particularly mesmerizing from above, please let us know in the comments!
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... value wilderness for its own sake, not for what value it confers upon mankind. . . . We are not interested in the utility of a particular species, or a free-flowing river or ecosystem to mankind. They have intrinsic value, more value--to me--than another human body or a billion of them.
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Conservationists are not crying wolf there really is a global wildlife crisis and many animals will disappear from their natural habitats within our lifetimes.
Occasionally wildlife issues wrest the headlines from other crises and there are a few fleeting moments in the lime-light to make the case that protecting nature is not a luxury but essential for securing the future of the planet's inhabitants human and animal.
One such headline-making topic is wildlife crime. Estimates of the illegal trade in wildlife products for 2009 of as much as U.S. $20 billion placed it fourth behind the trafficking of drugs, people and arms in terms of value for the criminal gangs and terrorists masterminding it. Wildlife crime is no peripheral issue; it leads to political, economic, social and environmental instability, undermines the rule of law, destroys human livelihoods, and lays waste to our natural heritage.
The plight of elephants is well documented and the international community is responding through the appropriate channels. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) established in 1973 regulates, monitors and, in some cases, prohibits international trade in animals and plants. The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) signed in 1979 aims to preserve those animals that cross borders on their annual migrations.
With the issues capable of attracting attention in the highest echelons of government and institutional architecture in place, why then does the problem persist? What are the missing ingredients for an effective solution?
What is needed is a more “bottom up” strategy where conservationists join forces with local people. Where such approaches are tried, they work. With communities on board, seeing tangible benefits for their local economy and environment, the tables can be turned on the poachers. Crimes are no longer seen as minor transgressions. With local communities acting as advocates for conservation, pressure can be exerted on politicians to allocate resources to protecting wildlife, and on courts to start imposing penalties that are real deterrents.
Among those tangible benefits is secure and sustainable jobs. Wildlife tourism is a great money-spinner from safaris to whale-watching and generates significant foreign currency earnings and employs thousands of people. The challenges are significant those actually doing the dirty work receive only a fraction of the $2,000 per kilo that ivory commands as a finished product in Asian markets, but still a fortune for a poacher who sees no alternative offering similar rewards.
The experience of CMS indicates that the best approach is to involve local communities, following the rules of engagement developed by the World Conservation Union's Sustainable Livelihoods Specialist Group. CMS has financed projects based on the fundamental principles of ensuring that benefits accrue to the community (and that compensation is paid for loss of crops or livestock to predators) and that local stakeholders assume responsibility for implementing agreed measures.
One project bringing together all key governmental and civic stakeholders aimed at protecting the Cross River Gorilla, Africa's rarest great ape found on the Cameroon-Nigeria border. Local inhabitants' understanding of the need of using forest resources sustainably was enhanced through the establishment of ten “Village Forest Management Committees” to encourage participation in the management of the local environment. As well as focusing on raising awareness of young people, the project also included training in alternative livelihoods such as beekeeping.
In Gourma, Mali, a project for protecting elephants built communities' capacity to manage their resources effectively, one element being setting up vigilance networks where local people assume an active role in tackling poaching. Not only does this protect elephants, but it also provides employment to the young people in the community.
At their most recent Conference of the Parties (Quito, 2014), CMS Parties adopted the Central Asian Mammal Initiative, to conserve Saiga Antelopes, Argali Sheep and Snow Leopards. After the loss of 200,000 Saigas to a devastating disease last year, efforts to protect this species have to be redoubled, not least by combating poaching. Male Saigas' horns are much prized in traditional medicine, but most illegal taking is done to satisfy local demand for the animals' meat. In the Ustjurt Ecosystem, home to the antelopes, the Association for the Conservation of the Biodiversity of Kazakhstan has equipped a yurt which tours the region and from which information material on sustainable livelihoods, business plans, employment opportunities and micro-loans is distributed.
In Tajikistan, CMS is working with the NGO, Panthera in the Pamir Mountains where five community-based conservancies have been set up for Snow Leopards, to address illegal trade and human-wildlife conflict. Providing predator-proof corrals for herdsmen's livestock has helped eliminate retaliatory killing of the cats.
We cannot turn Africa into a continent of beekeepers that was a solution suitable for unique local circumstances; we can, however, devise innovative ideas that prevent local people from turning to poaching and convert them to the cause of conservation. It is in the hearts and minds of people at the grass roots as much as with ministers in the corridors of power and poachers in the field that the battle against wildlife crime has to be fought and won.
Dr Bradnee Chambers is the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Environment Programme's Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals.
visootuthairam1 posted a photo:
Student and elephants come back to home at elephant village.
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