Two Strange and Awesome Events (Images from designartnews.com)

So I'm at the final month of my college degree. After finishing my demo reel for the umpteenth I'm feeling great. As many of you know, I like art. I like it very much. I also like intricate designs for festivals, if you didn't catch that in my recent posts. So, let it be known that this pattern will continue for quite some time.

The first show that I saw was The Horn of Plenty To Lowered Ceiling.

 This show, curated by Gosse Osterhof, was about the pieces of Jonathon Monk and his jigsaw mentality. Born in Leicester in 1969, Jonathan Monk isn't a young up and comer like many of events tend to showcase. No, he is already established, and this is his first solo effort in Holland. Monk visited Amsterdam and saw The Horn of Plenty as a 19 year old, quickly becoming inspired by its free nature. Designws' Tim Voss made a great point in that the charm of Monk comes from the fact that the exhibit is woven from his crazy stories. Where the normally silent atmosphere of a museum is now a game.

From Designws 

From Designws

Another event was Joep Van Liesshout's stage design for Opera Tannhauser. He was invited by Sebastien Baumgarten to design the set for the July 25 edition of the show that took place during the Bayreuther Festspiele. The Festspiele is very prestigious due in part to the fact that it founded by the composer Richard Wagner. Since its conception, the House only showcased Wagner's music and only during the summer festspiele.  Every year festspiele makes one new production that will be carried on for  five continuous years.This time it is Tannhauser, and Lieshout, alongside Baumgarten, Chris Kondek, and Nina Von Mechov, looked to make it one to remember.

Here are some images from the show (from Designws)

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Fruits at the Vivid Gallery

Hisakazu Shimizu presented an exhibition at the Vivid Gallery entitled Fruits. This was a great showcase of the designer's work. The pieces represent fruit in some sense or another, showing its versatility and flexibility. For example, there are melon-shaped porcelain clocks, as well as lamps shaped and colored like fruit. According to Designws, he Shimizu was fascinated with the juxtaposition of fruit, a borderless product of nature, being expressed within the vein of "pop culture", in the form of manmade constructions. Shimizu actually works for Canon's in-house design team, and has worked with lines such as the Canon IXUS camera. He has also developed works under the nickname "Sabo Studio".

Photos by Daisen

Fruits Wall Lamp

Fruits Table Lamp

Watermelon Clock

Bucky Fuller & The Spaceship Earth

This exhibit shows a biographic overview, if you will, of Richard Buckminster Fuller's work, from Dymaxion House to the Geodesic Domes. The exhibit was curated by Lord Norman Foster (who has worked with Fuller in his last 12 years), and Luis Fernandez-Guliano, professor of Universidad Politechnica in Madrid. Outside of architecture, the exhibit also includes photographs, drawings, and films. The biggest piece in the exhibit, in my opinion was the reconstructed Dymaxion Car #4, as I believe that the effort was worth it.  In case you all are wondering, Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was a futurist, inventor, engineer, and was the second president of Mensa International, an organization for those with high IQ. His most widely recognized works probably include the geodesic domes in the 50's. The first thing that many of my friends have noticed was his famous Spaceship Earth structure at Walt Disney World. That piece is just so amazing that words can't describe. Overall the exhibit was a great tribute to a great and creative man. Thanks, guys.

Both of these exhibitions were done last month, and I was a bit late in the party, but I figured that this blog shouldn't go without mention of these two awesome shows. 

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Business Plan Research (part 2)

So, If any of you have been reading, I made a post about some aspects that certain business plan developers  believed was most important to present within a business plan. In this post, I am going to talk about what I am going to put into my business plan. Now, lets take the first guy, Mark Zwilling. He talks of ten turnoffs to potential investors, and I found that some of them are right. For example, I will obviously have an executive summary to sum up my business without being too wordy. Speaking of words, I will make sure of it that people look for errors in my writing before I formally present the business plan.

Secondly, there are the guys from Growthink. They have an extensive list of what one should consider when building their business plan. Outside of the obvious (executive summary), Lavinsky made a great point about industry anlysis. Think about it. I am starting a business in the gaming industry. How much of a fool would I look if I said that I won't bat an eye to EA and Activision, as they aren't the leaders in the industry? Know your industry (and articulate it properly), and your investor will know your business, simple as. Another form of analysis that I will keep in mind is the customer analysis. My business plan is more focused towards small businesses in Central Florida. If I was in front of an investor, I would mention the websites that they frequent, the general hobbies that many small business owners do, etc. This information will tell the investor that I know my market and who I am selling my services to. If I don't mention this at all, like the executive summary, I don't have a plan.

Sorry for the short post, but I feel that with a few of those rules (and yeah, I didn't mention more, guys..) given by the aforementioned businessmen, I believe that anyone can get that investor impressed. Thanks for reading.

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Business Plan Research

So, I'm in my final month in my Masters' program, and I am in the process of making my business plan. I needed to get inspiration and education from somewhere, so I figured, "why not" and looked up some great business development professionals. The first one I looked up was a man by the name of Mark Zwilling.
He is the founder of Startup Professionals, a contributor to Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and Business Insider, an advisory board member of numerous startups, and many other important business occupations.

In Zwilling's Top Ten Investor Turnoffs Around Business Plans, he mentions a few things that investors are looking for. One, is the executive summary. Investors will flat out ignore your business plan if it doesn't have an executive summary, which is quite obvious if you think about it. What's a business if you can't sum it up and give the reader some sort of perspective as to what he is reading? Another important component of a business plan is your grammer. As he said, don't embarrass your english teacher, because the second your prospective investor sees a period set where it shouldn't be, you can kiss that investment goodbye. Another important thing that the business owner must consider is whether or not his business plan is too wordy. Noone, not even investors, like gigantic word blocks, especially when the word blocks aren't needed for the business plan to work.

Overall, Zwilling's Forbes article was a delight to read, and if you didn't read it, here it is. http://blogs.forbes.com/martinzwilling/2011/02/04/ten-top-investor-turnoffs-around-business-plans/ . Now, there is another great business development professional. Well, professionals.

Jay Turo and Dave Lavinsky are founders of Growthink, one of the nation's biggest strategic advisory and investment banking firms right now. Within a 10+ year career, Turo has been advising dozens of middle market, corporate and emerging clients. His big-name clients included Porche, Deutsche Bank, McKesson, Infospace, Samsung, & Paramount Pictures, while his emerging clients include names such as Accelerant, C8 Medisensors, Dakim, DCIP, Free Conference, Fresh Games, Green Medical, Integreon, L3D3, Mobeze, MyPublicInfo, Nolatek, Ometric, Pocketsonics, Precision Time, Raise Capital, Recoup IT, Research Scientists, Sandel Medical, Spring Medical, Telverse, Thrombovision, XCOM Wireless, and Xorbent. Dave Lavinsky isn't the kid in this partnership, either. The man has developed over 100 business plans and has managed over 150 client engagements across all of  Growthink's practice areas.

Well, they both have offered their insight on what they think the key components of a successful business plan is. According to both businessmen, there are, like Zwilling, ten key components within a business plan. One is the executive summary. According to Lavinsky, "The Executive Summary must communicate to the prospective investor the size and scope of the market opportunity, the venture's business and profitability model, and how the resources/skills/strategic positioning of the Company's management team make it uniquely qualified to execute the plan.". (Lavinsky, 2011)

The next three component were company analysis, industry analysis, analysis of customers, and analysis of competition. The one keyword in all three of them was the word analysis. You must analyze as much as you can in order to convey to your investor the notion that you have a backbone and the business mind in order to turn profits. Then you have the marketing plan, a document that details how your business will reach their intended market. Key components of that include

• A description of the company's desired strategic positioning
• Detailed descriptions of the company's product and service offerings and potential product extensions
• Descriptions of the company's desired image and branding strategy
• Descriptions of the company's promotional strategies
• An overview of the company's pricing strategies
• A description of current and potential strategic marketing partnerships/ alliances

Next up are the operations/design and development plans. They detail the internal strategies to build everything from concept to reality. According to Lavinsky, you must be able to layout what functions are required to run the business, what milestones must be reached before the venture can be reached, and how quality can be controlled.

Then you have the financial plan, the management team, and the appendix. The financial plan simply lays out the profits and and revenue structure. Like the executive summary, if your investor doesn't know how you're going to make money, well don't expect anything to come from that meeting. The management structure demonstrates that your company has the human resources need to be successful. And finally the appendix supports the entire business plan. According to both Turo and Lavinsky, it is important to place financial projections in your appendix.

And there you have it. Some guys that I have read about and learned from. Hope my business plan is enough to convince investors now. 

 

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Design Parade 6

     This is another design festival that is awesome in every single way. Running from July 1 to October 2 (according to Designws), this festival contains a few notable designers (most of them up-and-coming). Established designers like Stefan Diez and Moustache made appearances. Stéphane Arriubergé and Massimiliano Iorio formed Moustache  a while back and their eccentricity is infectious. I love the way they take furniture design to a totally different direction.

And Stefan Diez is a designer who is well-versed in industrial design. He has his own studio in Munich and his clients include Authentics, Biegel, Flötotto, Merten, Moroso, Schönbuch, Thonet  and Wilkhahn, according to thonet.de. His work is isn't essentric, moreso, it's the little things that make the pieces that much more unique.

Diez (azuremagazine.com)

The most interesting things for me though are those young designers. It is always great to see something fresh and new, especially when it comes from a kid fresh out of college with their heads held high and all that jazz. The designers in question included: Emilie Colin Garros (France), David des Moutis (France), Jean-Baptiste Fastres (France),  Marc Ferrand (France), Max Lipsey (The Netherlands) Lea Longis (France), Caroline Perret (Germany),  Erasmus Scherjon (The Netherlands),  and Brynjar Sigurdarson (Iceland).

Now according to last week's post, three of the designers (Sigurdarson, Garros, and Fastres) won this year's edition of the Design Parade. Their designs were insane and the plaudits were certainly deserved. Here are the designs.

Fastres' Variations Upon An Electric Kettle; Photo by Véronique Huyghe

Sigurdarson's Tool Light; Photo by Véronique Huyghe

Award of the Public: Garros' Tension Collection; Photo by Florient Albinet

I have to say, I am not the biggest fan of Garros' Tension Collection. My favorite was the Tool Light. I find that Sigurdarson understood the concept of form and function with this thing, and it shows. Another thing that kind of attracts me to it is its simplicity. It looks like anyone can use this. Not to knock Fastres. His Electric Kettle designs are sick. I prefer the odder variants like the light blue one on the image above. 


Some of the guys who didn't get mentioned before were rock solid as well. For example, David des Moutis' Balance piece was outstanding. If you haven't seen it, you should, you'll be thanking yourself. Pauline Deltour's Office Accessories In Extruded Aluminum is also a really tricky and creative piece. Essentially the project was trying to study aluminum and how it implements extrusion (it's in the title), which in her words, allow for a section without limit in length and without any deformation. The actual place looked great. Here are some images from Designws.com.

Overall, this event looks like a winner. Expect me to be there next year!

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Some New-ish AutoCAD News

One, there's the news that you can submit your ideas to the AutoCAD Design Team. They are looking to start a new experimental website to gather more of your ideas and rank them by your voting. You can suggest ideas to change existing features as well, and view/vote on other ideas. This is a great way to build the AutoCAD brand in my opinion. There are some things that I've encountered some designers kinda irk about, so I can't see this failing. Here's a quote:

“Your suggestions help make AutoCAD (Mac & Windows) better, so let us know what would make AutoCAD easier to use, more enjoyable and help you be more productive.

The Design team might drop in from time to time to get inspired, and we may use the data submitted to help drive customer activities such as focus groups at our offices, AUGI CAD Camps,and events at Autodesk University.

If you'd rather more of a conversational approach check out the AutoCAD discussion groups at http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD/ct-p/8


The AUGI wish list forum is another great place to submit your ideas and vote on them http://augi.com/community/autocad/aut­ocad-wishlist/”

So there you go.

Next article...

I looked up an article regarding free DWG viewers. The first one is pretty cool. It's a Windows-only desktop application called AutoCAD TrueView. AThe first thing that I noticed was that not only could you view 2D and 3D DWG files but there were layer features, visual styles, measurements and print/plot of the full application. Another awesome aspect of this viewer is that along with AutoCAD 2012, you can also read DWG files from the early eighties, as a matter of fact, you can convert the files to work with other versions~!! According to the Between the Lines, the viewer also allows for one to create DWF and PDF files. Though it's 270mb, it's extremely powerful considering the promises.

For the mobile fans, don't feel left out. There's an app for you as well.

The application is called AutoCAD WS, a web/mobile-based DWG viewer with collaboration and markup. According to Between the Lines, not only can you run this application with any desktop with a browser supporting Flash, it is also available on mobile application on Apple and Android devices. All this requires in an internet browser (Chrome, Safari, Explorer, Firefox with flash). This also supports offline synching so you can take your drawing even when you don't have an internet connection. This app supports 2D DWG, real-time collaboration, AutoCAD integration, and unlimited file storage (AWESOME). In addition to editing and sharing in real-time with DWG files and you can also upload other file types like ZIP, Doc, and PDF as file storage.

(thanks goes to Between the Lines)

I know many colleagues who love to use AutoCAD, so I'll mention this to them!

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Yet Another Odd (as in cool) Tech Story To Discuss

So, after my Valve post, I looked up some other news. This bit of news is a day late, but it's still something I've been kinda waiting for.


Google Adding Search By Voice, Pictures

San Francisco (CNN) -- The plain Google search box will soon be able to handle more than taps on a keyboard. 

Google is bringing features pioneered on smartphones, like voice and image search, to its flagship product, the company said at a news conference here on Tuesday.

The speech-recognition tool began showing up as a microphone button on the right-hand side of the Google.com search box for some visitors on Tuesday. It will only be available on Google's Chrome Web browser for now, but Google executives say they hope other software makers implement the technology to support the feature.

Like on Android or the Google application for the iPhone, people can click the mic icon on Google.com, and say a phrase or question into their computer microphone.

The speech technology attempts to account for accents and context in order to transcribe the recording into text. This produced mixed results in my testing, speaking in plain English or with a faux Cockney accent.

The image-search feature will start rolling out in the next few days, said Johanna Wright, a Google search director. "Every picture has a story, and we want to help you discover that story," she said.

Image Search can, say, look at a family vacation photo and figure out where it was shot, or help explain images that become Internet memes, such as Lolcats. The recognition technology applies a bunch of Google's proprietary algorithms to photos, but facial recognition isn't one of them, executives said in an interview with reporters.

People using newer Web browsers will be able to drag an image file from the desktop onto the search box. Additional features are available to those who install the Google Toolbar in Firefox.

Google Instant, the immediate suggestions offered when a user is typing into the search box, will debut on Google's image-search section "in the coming weeks," said Google exec Amit Singhal.

To complement Google's quest for high-speed Web surfing, the company plans to roll out a feature called Instant Pages. It will sometimes load the top search result on your computer before you click on the link, so that the page pops up instantly once you do.

The feature will only be available in Chrome, starting with the beta version 

of the software later this week.

That many of Tuesday's announcements will initially only be available in Chrome limits their reach. In May, Google controlled 65.5% of the U.S. Web search market, according to comScore, but Chrome only had 12.5% of browser usage -- far behind Internet Explorer

and Firefox -- said research firm Net Applications.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/06/14/google.voice.search/index.html?hpt=te_r1

So, it took very little to get me interested in this article. So Google is essentially going to bring what smartphones already had (voice recognition) and add it to Google Chrome. This function is going to be fun to use, especially considering I primarily use Chrome. Voice Search will only be on Chrome for the time being, because obviously other software makers haven't implemented this yet. One question that has risen from this issue is whether or not British (more specifically English) accents will be recognizable with this new feature.

Personally, I would love if there was a search based on tone. There are some songs I hear sampled (mashup fan, here), and I can't get my finger on the title, nor can I get the lyrics. In that case, I only have what I hum, and if I could search via hum or something, it'd be cool stuff.

The Voice Search wasn't the only new thing that Google was introducing. The successful company revealed at a media event, that they will add new things on the image side of Google. Search by Images will allow for users to search for images when we either point at an URL on a web-based image or we take an image from our own finder window or what have you, and drag it down to the image box. For example, if I have an image of the Waterfalls sculpture, and place it on the Search by Images box, I will then see search results regarding Lloyd Frank Wright's famous piece of architecture.

Google Instant, which arrived last year, if I recall, was that kooky function in Google search that allowed for automatic recommendations right as you type. Well, Google has come through with an improvement over this. You see, even though you had automatic search recommendations, you still had to wait a while before the top image downloads. Google Instant fixes this problem, so that you can get a quicker load speed for your screen.

Overall, this is some stuff I'll be keeping a close eye on in the coming months, especially info regarding Voice Search.

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