Ukoko

Diesel have been running this international, giant sized art competition for 5 years. The premise is simple: Paint, draw, photograph or design something to go on a really big wall. The results are then displayed, on location in fantastic places from Barcelona to New York….. and it’s finally come to the UK, specifically Urbis in Manchester.

I must admit I’m a bit disappointed by the choice of location. This isn’t because I’m a soft southern bastard and would’ve prefered a London location - although I am and I would have - but because they’ve chosen some unusual building shapes and striking urban environments in the past which gave a real sense of dressing a space. With Urbis, you get a rectangle on the side of an exhibition centre that’s not especially dissimilar to a standard advertising hoarding and you can’t help feeling it’s going to look like an advert whatever you do. Still, creativity likes nothing more than something firm to push against, it’s a great brief and opportunity to show off your work and ideas.

More info on the links below

http://www.diesel.com/cult/wall/manchester/

Manchester Deadline: 18th May 2008
Exhibit: June 12th - July 20th
Canvas Size:29×18m

A pair of Docs, DMs, Doc Martens…. immortalised in song by Alexei Sayle, worn with pride by workers, skinheads and Brighton queers, the iconic Doctor Martens have launched a new design competition with the winner going into a limited production run. So many options I just can’t decide what to enter….

Just discovered the awesome WPhone, a plug-in for WordPress which formats your admin nicely on iPhone/iPod Touch. Haven’t given it the full run through yet but seems to have solved a few Ajax hassles I had. Given the sudden rise to dominance of the iPhone as a mobile browser (number 1 in US, number 2 in UK) it’s an excellent complement to ContentRobot’s iWPhone plug-in, which displays the public side of my WordPress blog neatly in an iPhone stylee.

With recomendation and shared bookmarks like stumbleupon and ffffound! and listings sites from the dreamer to phirebrush all vying to fulfill our every spare desire for inspiring design and interaction, it’s easy to forget the gems that turn up when you step outside and just look in the local charity shop. This guy found box of 35mm slides of old advertising posters from the fifties and sixties and took the time to scan and share them on flickr. Glorious.

FFFFOUND! is like having a mate who sends you amazing, interesting & inspiring images. Hundreds of them. Every day. And, if you’re an aesthetic ephemera junky like me, you probably can’t get enough of it either.

Basically it’s an image-bookmarking service that allows users to post and share their found images and it dynamically recommends others to tickle your fancy. The “everyone” feed is a cornucopia of eye-candy from FFFFOUND! and enough to trigger a good hour or so wasted a day.

Currently invite only, but you can still get the public feed.

FFFFOUND.com

While trying to track down a particular game for a project I have in mind, I found this from Finnish developer Petri Purho - but the site has gone down. For one year Petro a grand plan: to create games in 7 days (12 in a year) and it produced one of the simplest and most beautiful games I’ve ever seen - Crayon Physics Deluxe - reminiscent of the complex mousetrap like drawings some of us drew as kids.

Petro’s tenet that all games should be made “within a 7-day limit, …. made by me alone and test some new form of gameplay” might not be everyone’s cup of salmiakki but it seems to have produced some fantastic results, earned him the respect of his peers and got him nominated for numerous awards - I just wish I could find the games now!

Jaarko Laine did a short interview with Petri Purho in 2007 which gives more detail but the relevant links from there are dead now. Pixelrage a download link, but as I’m Mac based, I’ll have to wait till I’m back in the studio and can borrow a PC to have a go.

Oh well, I’ll have to make do with the highly addictive flash games at the Science Museum’s Launchball site, part of thier Launchpad section, and made by the folks at Preloaded