Platformer Yuki writes:

Last week  Durrell Bishop from Luckybite (http://www.luckybite.com/) visited the agency and gave an interesting talk on connecting the physical and digital world together.

 
Durrell has the viewpoint that  "Design is a combination of communication and function, and designers do not  choose to use communication to help products function." His works have a deep insight into the relationship between a user's perception and the way  the product is visualized. Durrell believes an object should readily communicate its actions/possibilities to its users.

 
After his fascinating talk we had a little workshop with him. The brief was "choose one space and create a game  with it".
Here are some of games we created.

Chocolate ball  shooters:

 
Make super-long  Earl Grey tea:

 
 
There was a reason behind this fun brief.
Durrell believes "A game is a visualisation of a system. It's what products should be like and we can find many potential ideas by carrying out this activity".
You can see this theory at work in his  latest product, BirdBox.
(http://www.luckybite.com/luckybits/index.html)

Thanks again to Durrell for a great talk and a fun workshop. 

What makes daily life so agreeable in America is the good humour and friendliness of Americans. Optimism is necessary for the country’s social peace and economic prosperity.

On this day (Jan 31st) in 1947, Simone de Beauvoir wrote:

What makes daily life so agreeable in America is the good humour and friendliness of Americans. Of course, this quality has its reverse side. I'm irritated by those imperious invitations to 'take life easy', repeated in words and images throughout the day. On advertisements for Quaker Oats, Coca-Cola and Lucky Strike, what displays of white teeth – the smile seems like lockjaw. The constipated girl smiles a loving smile at the lemon juice that relieves her intestines. In the subway, in the streets, on magazine pages, these smiles pursue me like obsessions. I read on a sign in a drugstore, 'Not to grin is a sin.' Everyone obeys the order, the system. 'Cheer up! Take it easy!' Optimism is necessary for the country's social peace and economic prosperity.

From America Day By Day, a diary of a four month tour of the USA taken by the French existentialist and feminist in 1947.