s_index_01

Welcome to 418QE, musings on design.

Design and Transformational Change

By James Caldwell | Published: September 14th, 2009

Presently I am enjoying a informative workshop headed by Peter Jones of reDESIGNreSEARCH. Once a month a diverse group of us discuss how to best organize and assist people and organizations to make positive change using different methods of dialogue to engage them. Most of the time these discussions are limited to a three hour timeline and we rarely revisit them, but the topic of design and transformational change has recently overflowed into a few extra sessions.

da Costa Talent Launches Website

By James Caldwell | Published: September 1st, 2009

da Costa Talent recently decided that they needed an online presence. They have expanded over the years to the point where they have numerous agency clients (talent) that need to be quickly referenced by their industry clients. In a time where businesses are connected online, images of their talent on their own office walls was no longer severing their purpose.

Spineless eBooks

By James Caldwell | Published: August 25th, 2009

Ever look at someone’s bookshelf? It is one of the first things I do when I enter a room with lots of books at eye level. I start scanning the spines of the books and reading their titles. But until the other day I had never really noticed all the different logos that represent the various publishers.

The Seven Laws of Interfaces

By James Caldwell | Published: August 1st, 2009

On July 28th I attended a talk given by Dr. Carlos Scolari about the Seven Laws of Interfaces. Carlos is a professor at the University of Vic in Spain. He is a media ecologist and a semiotician; he is a teacher and researcher and also holds a position at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. For the last few months he has been working at sLab as a visiting professor in Toronto.

Unique Circles

By James Caldwell | Published: June 12th, 2009

This Thursday June 11th I attended a lecture entitled ‘Tools of an attention trader’ at KDMI (University of Toronto) given by Greg Van Alstyne who is an Associate Professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design. For the first half he lectured about various aspects of what a designer does and his toolset and in the second half he conducted a workshop.