A DIFFERENT TYPE OF AGENCY

As a collective, The Factory Interactive is fueled by a passion for developing enduring messages conceived through a marriage of design and technology. At the core, we are explorers of possibility and architects of memory. We create rich immersive experiences that increase message retention and reward the audience. Our mission: give personality to products, resulting in a stronger, more effective brand.

_{February 21, 2009}
Everything can be beautiful – Unexpected Inspired Design _{By jason}

Good designers can transform the most utilitarian of experiences into inspired experiences. The designers below have taken this mantra and transformed the mundane into moments of pure desire.  Through their eyes they re-imagine the world around and we are luckier for it. As Henry David Thoreau said “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

Pixelnotes by Duncan Wilson

A collaboration with Sirkka Hammer. A wallpaper consisting of four layers of varying grey tones on a bright primary backing. Each layer is perforated in a grid format and backed with a tacky adhesive similar to ‘post-it’ notes. Pixelnotes is inspired by the way we work within a space. The walls become functional, an integrated noticeboard that documents our activity within the room.

The 360 Paper Bottle by BrandImage

The 360 Paper Bottle is a sustainable vision of the future. It is the first totally recyclable paper container made from 100% renewable resources. Versatile in its range of consumer applications and made from food-safe and fully recyclable materials, it decreases energy consumed throughout the product life cycle without sacrificing functionality. It is paper packaging that stands up to all liquid categories.  According to Jim Warner, the managing director of Brandimage “responsible design leads to a deeper understanding of a brand within the physical content of the world, its category and the  human beings that use it.”

Filed under: Design — Tags: Design, inspiration — @ 8:09 pm

_{February 12, 2009}
BumpTop – the desktop re-invented _{By jason}

Most of those who know me will know that I live for design and scout the web for creative inspiration. Today I stumbled across this video on TED by speaker Anand Agarawala: Interaction designer; software developer and inventor.

His project BumpTop, is a user interface that takes the usual desktop metaphor to a glorious, 3-D extreme, transforming file navigation into a freewheeling playground of crumpled documents and clipping-covered “walls.” . Inspiring, humbling and very, very cool. Check out the video below and then cruise on over to the site for more info.

BumpTop Photos:

Filed under: Design — Tags: Design, interaction, interface, software, TED — @ 9:28 pm

_{February 5, 2009}
Inspiration: WordPress Customization Examples _{By jason}

The explosive growth of WordPress has spawned a number of homogeneous sites all utilizing the same boring, header, footer layouts.  However as more developers discover the power of WordPress, the platform is being adapted and customized in new and inspiring directions. Here are a few I’ve stumbled upon, (special thanks to freelancefolder for the original inspiration for this post).

Many of the themes below utilize a number of the WordPress plug-ins (there are over 4,100) to achieve their customization goals.

Carolina Jesus

Carolina Jesus

This is the portfolio site of Video Game Environment Artist, Carolina Jesus. It is by far my favorite custom WP theme.

Alamo Basement

The Alamo Basement

The Alamo Basement is the portfolio site of Illustrator, Kelly K. The header graphic is a creative flash animation, with thumbnail graphics of Kelly’s illustrations below.

fabrikade

Fabrikade

Fabrikade (pronounced as fab-ri-kayd), is an ecommerce site conceived with the aim to showcase Singapore and foreign indie design labels via the World Wide Web. The site utilizes the WordPress Ecommece plugin and paypal for transactions.

Thomas Haemmerli

Thomas Haemmerli

Thomas Haemmerli is a Swiss Author whose (non-English) web site features an incredibly crisp, clean and bright design. There is a nice CSS design to the comment form fields, but otherwise you wouldn’t specifically know that the web site is primarily a blog (other than the dated posts).

The Rubicon

theRubicon

The Rubicon is global portal for people engaged with the mission of The Salvation Army. According to the site “theRubicon provides a gathering place where opinion and discussion, education and disagreement, community and common cause, news and calls to action can find a venue for expression.”

Conclusion: The sites above rpresent the tip of the iceberg and we can look forward to seeing even more creative ideas in the future. As you can tell we here at TFI have been building, and customizing WordPress powered sites for some time now and think that it’s the Cat’s pajamas. So if you’re looking to implement WordPress into your next project give us a ring, and we’ll show you just how far you can take this amazing platform.

Filed under: Design — Tags: CMS, CSS, custom, Design, wordpress — @ 7:46 pm

_{January 29, 2009}
The Designers Republic – RIP _{By jason}

Today I am truly saddened by the closing of the prolific and influential Designers Republic. Founded in 1986 by Ian Anderson in Sheffield England, tDR became well known for their colorful, manga infused post modernist design style. Often imitated their work could be seen in a variety of media including Logo Design, Typography, Web design, Video Games, Music Videos and more.  Their client list was equally diverse ranging from for Coca Cola, Orange and Nike to Fluke, Gatecrasher, Aphex Twin and Issey Miyaki.

As a young designer (at the time) the level of creativity and daring generated by tDR had a huge influence on me as well as many of designer buddies. The work, while many times colorful and playful, due in part to the use of manga inspired icons and avatars, also had a more sobering undertone of ironic ultra-consumerism.  Statements like “Work Buy Consume Die”, “Robots Build Robots”, “Buy nothing, pay now”, and “Kill Your Self” (a design, with the words ‘Kill Your Self’ repeated backwards all over a man’s body and face) all forced the viewer to question the deeper meaning.

In Ian Anderson’s own words “We’re more interested in questions than answers. There is no one truth. In Disinformation we Trust.” The irony of course is that the same specter of anti-establishment, pop-consumerism that built tDR’s portfolio came to call on them in the end.  tDR influenced a whole generation of designers and showed many of us that visual, Brain Aided Designs can, in the words of Luke Wroblewski, “move people into meaningful interactions.”

According to Creative Review “a seemingly perfect storm of cash-related issues ended the company, but Anderson says it will rise again in another form.”

It’s a sad end for such a great British design house but I know that I am not alone in the hope that tDR will be reborn is some form or another.

RIP tDR..you will be missed!

Filed under: Design — Tags: agency, Creative Review, Design, designers republic, Ian Anderson, RIP — @ 11:51 am

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