Extraordinary Machines

I first presented Extraordinary Machines in 2011 at Typo the international design conference in London and Berlin. EM came from of my on-going obsessive curiosity with AI and what it means to product experience design and real people. It’s a discussion about designers. About how and in which directions the 21st century designer needs to push themselves to adapt to what’s here and what’s coming in terms of material, context and frame of mind. And it’s about design. That essential human act where we render ambition into something simple, useful and inspiring. And it’s about complexity, booming exponentially all around us, and moving faster than we ever could hope to. Each year while I maintain the basic theme I adapt it to whatever I’ve learned from the world, my own practical design experiences and where our collective curiosity seems to be leaning. The whole thing has been fascinating. Presenting in Berlin’s House of World Cultures alongside Erik Spiekermann and in London with Chip Kidd (the master) at the University of London, where I attended in the 1980s, was surreal. Recently though I’ve been enjoying specialized “un-conference” settings. In 2012 I was invited to present inside the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) planetarium, in Portland, where I projected on the 360 degree planetarium dome above the heads of 150 or so ultra-relaxed and open-minded attendees (they do Daft Punk laser shows in here after all). By lowering my voice, relaxing a bit and inviting interaction throughout the crowd and I were able to ditch the one-to-many conference artifice and meet somewhere in the middle. The vibe was humanizing and just plain fun. I plan to share Extraordinary Machines again in 2016 at OMSI once HoloLens ships. Currently I’m working on ways go deeper and make EM a 2-way street.

Typo London
Typo Berlin
Portland Design Week
Design Speaks (OMSI)