Well lads, they are slick, that’s for sure. NONOBJECT are an American company that pride themselves on creating profound new design experiences which are emotionally compelling and meaningful. NONOBJECT, with its beautiful brand aesthetic and admirable ideals was founded in 2006 by the award-winning teamsters Suncica Lukic, Branko Lukic and Steve Takayama - all impossibly talented in their fields. They have defined NONOBJECT as ‘the space between you and the object’. They are releasing the NONOBJECT book sometime soon. In their own words, ‘It is the first of it’s kind - the first of a new genre of design fiction… By deliberately creating objects that cannot exist - because the material is not yet available, or the business plan, or the manufacturing process, or the infra-structure to support it, or even the human sensibility - it becomes possible to explore the meaning of design at a more profound level and to think more richly about what is and what might be’.

Whatever you make of the design fictions, however you assess their relevance, worth or credibility … they are beautifully rendered and in my opinion, worth a look. Saying that I am a sucker for anything presented using literate design-language, controlled typography, clean images and muted shades of grey …

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I love Canadian illustration and design. In fact, I quite like Canada in general. I like their national psyche as I understand it. As a quick aside … after all I am musing on the joys of the horizontal scroll today … I learnt an AWFUL lot about the Swiss national psyche this week as it is represented by the People’s Party, the largest political party in Switzerland. BBC world service did an excellent extended audio piece on what the Swiss people think constitutes the ideal Swiss citizen. Some pretty hairy quotes were thrown into the arena. Unfortunately I can’t find the original audio piece so I’ll link to a short video instead.

Anyway, back to some ’serious’ design issues. The purpose of this particular entry is to celebrate horizontal scrolling when viewing design portfolios. Two Canadian design companies that really pull it off in my book are Concrete and The Movement. For whatever reasons, and I am sure they have been well documented by interaction designers across the globe, I really enjoying viewing sequential images on a horizontal plane, especially when the movement is endowed with a smooth sense of flow. I find it a very rewarding interaction which affords me a real sense of progression through a body of work. Why don’t we scroll across more? Perhaps there are serious back end concerns that compromise SEO issues etc. Can anyone tell me? Sheena would have known.

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Watched an incredible show last night - Bruce Parry’s Tribe. He was living with the Penan tribe. The nomadic hunter-gatherer Penan are one of the last such groups in South East Asia. Out of the 10,000 Penan living in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, Borneo, only 200 nomadic people are left. In the programme, the Penan tribe bemaon the loss of their life-sustaining jungle to the onslaught of the logging industry. It is heartbreaking stuff.

Also couldn’t resist sticking this little film up - as the heading suggests it’s the tale of another bike modified to support a good cause. The video tells its own story so I don’t need to go on too much. Nice editing and music too.

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