Fill your boots

By Cassie Doherty, 2010-08-31 12:15:05

Are you guilty of using unnecessary—and pretentious—business jargon? It doesn't make you seem any cleverer, you know, but some of us just can't help it: paradigm, mindshare, blue-sky thinking, granularity, calendarise, and even stupid expressions like 'open the kimono' and 'boil the ocean'. Unsuck-it can help you stop with the buzzwords (or at least find some new ones to annoy your co-workers). Go on, drink the Kool-Aid ...

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Semi-Snapshot: Nick Roope gets noisy

By Design Daily Team, 2010-08-24 09:27:00

He's the tallest person we interviewed at Semi-Permanent and he also had the best shoes. Nicolas Roope, of Antirom and Poke fame, shares his social media wisdom and tells us why interesting ideas are no longer good enough.

Hit the big time

By Cassie Doherty, 2010-08-23 15:18:01

Got the mid-winter blues, stuck in a rut, don't know where your life is going? Don't worry: this could be Your Big Year. A worldwide competition that's part of the UK's Global Entrepreneurship Week in November, Your Big Year's extremely lucky winner will embark on a 12-month, all-expenses-paid tour of the world, meeting celebrities and entrepreneurs, learning new skills and rolling up their sleeves for some volunteer work. Attend a conference in New York, take a limo ride in Vegas, learn photography in Africa, scuba dive in Australia, teach English in Ecuador, visit the Taj Mahal ... The aim is to encourage global citizenship and social responsibility through entrepreneurship. Whatever: it would sure beat surfing the net, watching telly and wondering how long till Labour Weekend.

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Semi-Snapshot: Jessica Hische and her crazy Uncle

By Deirdre Robert, 2010-08-20 17:37:40

As unassuming and down to earth in person as she was in her presentation, illustrator and typographer Jessica Hische reveals to Design Daily her master plan for getting 50% off Karen Walker gear and tells us why sociology and psychology are deeply embedded in her illustrations.

Semi Snapshot

By Design Daily Team, 2010-08-20 15:47:36

Semi-Permanent is in full artistic and creative swing, and it couldn't have got off to a better start than with typographer and artist Jessica Hische, who wowed the crowd with her works and words, and also made them laugh more than a few times. We spoke with Semi attendees during a break to find out their highlights so far and who they're most amped about seeing.

The hidden side of everything

By Matt Cooney, 2010-08-19 12:29:45

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfC-ZHJ4A5U

Here’s the trailer for the film version of Freakonomics—bound to be a summer blockbuster, in the Idealog offices anyway. It looks like it’s out on iTunes before it’s in cinemas; perhaps they’ll even release it globally then. Now that would be freaky.

Sir Peter’s bum film review: a writer’s perspective

By Peter Griffin, 2010-07-02 11:47:33

Imagine you’ve had a massive fight with the taxman over how much you owe, then the Prime Minister specially picks you to come up with a plan to re-engineer the department. That’s the sort of gift Peter Jackson was handed when John Key asked him to report on the New Zealand Film Commission.

Today, give something you love a hug

By Matt Cooney, 2010-06-29 11:17:12

What day is it? That’s right, it’s World Industrial Design Day. So find something you love and let it know how you really feel about it. This year, Icsid, the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, has chosen the theme “Industrial Design: Humane Solutions for a Resilient World”. The plan is to remind us all that design can indeed save the world, or, in Icsid-speak, to “facilitate collaboration within the industrial design community with the goal of producing tangible solutions to world problems”

The geek Tri-Nations is a game of two halves

By Hadyn Green, 2010-06-22 13:47:40 | 2 comments

Our man inside the Code Blacks reports from the floor of this year’s FullCodePress

The man who makes grown geeks tremble

By Julie Starr, 2010-06-18 10:33:14

FullCodePress is back this weekend—and this time a US team is here with some serious star power.

‘The mysteries of the pixel aesthetic’

By Matt Cooney, 2010-05-27 10:16:36

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mqAZ06dwKU

Meet Pixel, a cool ten-minute documentary on the heyday of the mighty dot.

The Jonze boy

By Matt Cooney, 2010-04-21 09:50:47

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdRaf3-OEh4

Good to see that Spike Jonze hasn’t giving up making music vids just yet. Here’s his spot for LCD Soundsystem’s new toon, ‘Drunk Girls’ (what’s not to like?)

Meet an angel, get advice and maybe some money—for free

By Vincent Heeringa, 2010-03-18 11:10:00

Idealog presents a rare opportunity to meet angel investors and mentors—for free. But hurry, we're only taking 80 people.

Bigger, faster, more productive

By Peter Griffin, 2010-03-11 16:20:53 | 2 comments

An entrepreneurial dream team is set to finally give Kiwis the internet as it should be—fast and uncapped. Oh, and lend a hand to our Australian cobbers too.

Taskforce rips open CRIs' agenda

By Vincent Heeringa, 2010-03-04 11:38:00

The weird world occupied by the Crown Research Institutes has finally been set right with a ground-breaking report by businessman Neville Jordan.

NZ Institute thumbs down Key's agenda

By Vincent Heeringa, 2010-03-03 06:59:00 | 3 comments

Rick Boven of the NZ Institute may be late to the party but he's come dressed in black. The latest statement from the Kiwi think tank gives a ringing thumbs down to the government's plan to catch Australia by 2025

Tarantastic

By Matt Cooney, 2010-03-02 11:11:11

If Quentin Tarantino had spent 20 years trapped in branding hell, his first film might have looked something like Logorama. The full version is a 16 minutes long, complete with car chases, a hostage crisis and an apocalyptic Los Angeles—check it out at the official website.

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Back to the backbone

By Vincent Heeringa, 2010-02-23 22:44:00 | 1 comment

A new report by IBM and the Univerity of Auckland into the state of Kiwi innovation reveals two surprising facts, and one dismally old one

From office paper to toilet paper

By Su Yin Khoo, 2010-02-23 17:37:23

It is now possible to recycle your monthly reports into something more useful

Rives - The Word Wild Web

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-19 17:31:23

One poet's journey from page to stage, with pit stops in HTML, travel, weird fortune, memes, happiness and other fancy stuff.

Mark Pesce - Dense and Thick

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-19 17:26:39

It may be hard to believe, but we're only just at the very beginnings of the web revolution. In the first fifteen years (1994-2009), the human world of culture and civilization was sucked into the black hole of cyberspace. Now the real world is poised to follow.

Kevin Rose — a Baroque aria

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-19 14:42:13

More like a blessing than a performance, Kevin will perform a baroque aria by Handel with his signature emotional depth and subtlety.

Bek Hodgson — Designing for Participation

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-19 13:51:01

Most everyone has something of value they long to share or contribute. Whether an artisan is seeking out a market for their handmade goods on Etsy, an unpublished author finding an audience on Blurb, or a hungry mind adding context and relevance to a Wiki page, empowering participation is invaluable.

Amy Hoy — Double click to edit

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-19 11:42:05

Watch out, there's a plague afoot! A plague of what, you ask? A plague of same-y-ness! Blogs, apps, sites—they all look the same. The web has become a place of templates rather than innovation. That means big wins are available for he and she who would dare to break the mould. Learn how to break out of the same-y rut, catch your accidentally copying, and create sites and apps that dare to be different. It'll be just like Zero-Based Accounting, but fun.

Daniel Burka — Iterative Design Strategies

By Ben Kepes, 2010-02-19 10:33:24

User interface design is an iterative process — the design of Digg and Pownce have been a study in evolution and adaptation. This talk will inspect the why and how of these iterations by looking at specific case studies from the two projects as well as previous client work Daniel has tackled.