the things we think but do not say

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

Starting tomorrow at 8am, I will become the new Lead Designer for the Chicago Transit Authority. I accepted this newly created position a couple of months back and I gave me notice to my studio (IDEO Chicago). While I thought it would be best to give me office the benefit of an extended lead time (mainly as I wanted to finish my final project properly and on good terms) I think that two months is way too long. After the announcement, everyone was initially sad to hear the news, then very soon after, people were like, ‘Are you still here?’…

I can say though, that my final project was a blast and the final presentation was a hit with the client (some very sweet doctors and administrators for a new children’s hospital in Orlando). My final day at IDEO was a huge rush of very many mixed emotions. Excitement, sadness, some disappointment and then huge excitement again. For seven years, landing in Chicago just before turning 25, IDEO became my life, my work and in many ways, helped define who I was. It was a crucible in which I learnt everything I know about what design means, what it’s capable of and what immense impact it can have to society. I will look back upon my time there with great fondness and never forget that I was lucky enough to have worked some of the brightest and best in the world.

So, wanna know more about this new CTA gig, huh? We to be honest, there’s only so much I can tell you as I still don’t know what it will all entail. Will I find frustration at the speed of bureaucratic process? Probably. Will I have a chance to have real impact here? Most definitely.

I still can’t quite believe that I managed to make this transition from design consultant to public servant. Did you know that the CTA carries about 1.5M people a day! Holy crap that’s a lot of people. And from what I’ve seen, many of them look about as happy as these people in the photo.

Watch this space. Wish me luck!

Hubwear in Chicago magazine

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

Hubwear is nearing the close of its second year and it’s been a thrilling ride. But let me back up a second since some of you might not know what I’m talking about.

Hubwear is the project that I created with my finacee and partner Sara just under 2 years ago. It’s a website that sells t-shirts (currently) to urban travelers that have a story to tell. And watching it happen right in front of my very eyes, it’s grown and grown and become a real business, with real products and real customers.

Back at the beginning in April 2006, it grew from a tiny stem cell to what’s now a rather healthy young kid. And to take the child analogy even further, when I started working on Hubwear at the beginning without anyones help, it was a scrawny, ugly kid with little to no sense-of-self or direction. It was a spotty, acned pre-teen. But once Sara got on board, the rebellious brat got a rude awakening and got sent to Excel boot camp! Suddenly, orders were being recorded in a timely fashion! Shipments of shirts from American Apparel were flying in just in time for finishing. Rigorous quality control was finally in place and there was a dramatic drop in errors and wasted product. Our spotty pre-teen was finally growing up and getting ready for high school.

Last year we got a lot of good blog links, referalls and endorsements (most notable was by Springwise ) and this year has seen more of the same. But just in the last week, we got our first major, printed publication!

Chicago Magazine included us in their Christmas Gift Guide this year and we’ve been bombarded with orders. (Irconically enough, here’s a link to the feature on their magazine’s site

There’s just something about being printed, on paper, in a real magazine that somehow gives any product legitimacy. Even in a time where Web 2.0 interconnectivity is everything, having our t-shirts in magazine means we can reach an audience that might never have seen our concept before. This year, Chicago Magazine. Next year, Lucky!

So, Horray for Hubwear! Horray for good press! And here’s to a thrilling 2008!

iPod touch

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

I got a new iPod touch today and boy is it a sweet piece of tech..

Now the number one question that I expect to answer is this: “Why didn’t you get an iPhone dude?”

Well the answer is complicated. I have a a corporate phone from work and they’re unsurprisingly, not supporting them. For one, AT&T is holding up transfers of corporate work accounts from ‘personal’ phones like the iPhone (weird eh?) plus there’s no real MS Exchange server support for it either. This would mean that all I’d be carrying around in my pocket would be a cellular web browser to get my Outlook email and appointments. Not that smart, when really, my Blackjack does a very competent job of that.

For anyone that has a corporate email phone like the Blackberry, the iPhone just doesn’t quite handle it all that well. For everyone else, it’s bloody amazing.

Now, this leaves me with two possible iPhone routes: hack one OR get one and take myself off the corporate plan. And while I’m happy to give throw money at Apple, I’m less excited at giving money to AT&T again.

And hacking the iPhone is just too fraught with danger since there is now an established cat and mouse game between Apple and the hacking community to one-up each other.

While I could potentially live with a hacked iPod touch that didn’t work every now and, I couldn’t live with a temperamental cellphone. It’s just plain irresponsible of me to have an dodgy iPhone just because I wanted one so bad.

So the iPod touch it was for me.

Tragically for me, only a few weeks ago I was the happy owner of a recent, fully functioning iPod nano 8gb. It was black, tiny, and very easy to lose. Which is exactly what I did coming back from New York in the back of a cab leaving La Guardia. And not only that, I managed to lose in the same little bundle my pair of kick ass in-ear headphones by Shure which I got custom fitted ear molds. Ugh.

Clearly, losing two iPods in less that four months is not funny, so I have to be super vigilant with this one. Having your car broken into is not anyone fault, per se, but forgetting stuff in the back of a cab is.

I’ll give a better report of my findings as I learn them.

Incidentally, I bought this today and it came preloaded with the 1.1.1 firmware update.

NEW UPDATE:

The first real, full review of the iPod touch by PC Magazine is here. Still looks pretty solid. I wants it.

Oh thank God. I might not have to buy the iPhone anymore. The iPod Touch has every feature I’d want from the iPhone without the phone part!
WiFi web browsing, Google maps, NYTimes, Coverflow, multi touch photos…

iPod Touch FTW!

UPDATE!

Holy crap they’ve just leveled the pricing for the iPhone and the new iPod Touch. Argh! And the most shocking news was the price cut for the iPhone - $200 off. What a slap in the face for anyone that just bought one just yesterday.

UPDATE!

An open letter to early adopters of the iPhone have been written by Steve Jobs. The one letters asks that they be forgiving to Apple for screwing them over. A $100 free gift certificate to Apple stores has been offered as some form of compensation, but obviously, this mainly benefits Apple more than anyone. Hmmm.

Some more thoughts on the iPod touch:

For me, the iPod touch has pretty much everything I’d want from an iPhone without the need for a new cellphone bill. So as much as one converged device would be pretty sweet, paying about $1200 a year to AT&T is something I’m glad to do without. I’ve been very fortunate you see and recently joined the corporate cell phone plan through work.

I’m probably going to be rocking my Samsung Blackjack for the next 18 months, so in the mean time, the iPod touch awaits. For me, three major barriers exist for my iPhone adoption:

1. Microsoft Exchange Server support with full ‘Direct Push’ email is lacking for the iPhone. This could be fixed in the next few months.
2. I’d have to get a new account and phone no. with AT&T with the iPhone and then get that migrated over to the corporate plan. Probably doable.
3. I already have a freaking phone! And it’s being paid for! I want to throw my money at Apple, not AT&T. This one is hard to swallow. AT&T can go bite me as I’ve never had so many dropped calls until I moved to their networks.

One aspect to the iPod that makes me so personally excited for its release is its WiFi capability. For me, this could mean that from the comfort of my couch, I could read the NY Times, check in on my Flickr page, reply to my GMail and type into my blog. Most of what I use my laptop for at home is casual browsing. I don’t have a fully functional PC at home any more, so this little fella might just be all I need.

But earlier today it hit me! A killer app that I might actually kill someone for (at least gratuitously injure).

Can someone please write a application that lets me control iTunes remotely from the iPod touch. And I don’t mean, can I play my mp3s from my iPod. No. I mean, can I control the library of mp3s that’s sitting in my house, attached to a dumb PC, from my iPod touch? Please?

This would an incredibly compelling way to utilise the WiFi hooks and its massive touch screen! Most home owners have a stationary computer. Often it is hooked up to the main stereo system in your home. Currently, there’s been very few options to control your music library and have it play through your main stereo.

Apple released the AirPort Express which has AirTunes, which lets you use your laptop to control your music collection remotely as it sends the audio signal wirelessly to the stero. But a laptop is hardly that convenient to carry around your house. For a lot of people, your laptop is your only computer and then you’re back to square one again: controlling what’s playing by returning to the physical heart of the collection. I want to have something that lets me see my collection, control it, but not necessarily be standing right next to it.

Using an Apple remote to control your iTunes is simple and cheap solution, but your control is very limited to play, pause, next track. The only other solution that exists that I know of is the Sonos. This is the solution that I’d love to have but can’t afford. For $1000 (including the $400 remote) it gives the user the ability to see, control and direct what’s being played from your computer. And yes, its a luxury to have a colour screen just for your music remote control, but it’s bound to be a great experience. Your computer can now just sit still, chill out and pump mp3s to a stereo.

With the iPod touch, I might finally be able to have something as cool, as visual and as powerful as that Sonos without paying $1000 for this one experience. It means changing your perception of the iPod from being your entire music collection, to simply being a window into your library. A sexy, 3.5″ touchable window.

Another UPDATE!

iPhone details-0394

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

Ugh.

Whenever I think I’m free of it’s grasp, I realise that it has still got a hold on me.

Why oh why must I be haunted by you?

Why must you be so damn attractive?

Why must you be such a compelling experience?

Ugh.

I thought the other day, wouldn’t it be cool to show someone your latest photos on this thing? It sure would dumbass. That’s what Stevie J wants you to think! But wouldn’t it be cool to just keep up on just those few blogs and sites you read each day without booting up your laptop? Yup. But wouldn’t it be cool to be able to only carry one device that had a camera, mp3 and phone in it? ARGH!

Damn you iPhone. Your day of reckoning will come…

post its (photo by Hunter Wimmer)

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

Starting in the Fall, my girlfriend, partner and general ‘best-thing-ever’, will be teaching a class together at the School of the Art Institute. It has the fancy title of “Innovation Workshop” and it’s a seven week continuing studies class, mixing degree seeking and non-degree seeking students.

Funnily enough, at this point there’s no one registered for it, but hopefully in the next few weeks there’s been hundreds of people clamoring for pearls of wisdom. I’m waiting patiently for the right moment to shout, “Come on people, this class isn’t going to teach itself you know!”

I work as a designer at IDEO, which is leader in the field of design and innovation and when I was approached by the head of the school of continuing studies for the SAIC it quickly became clear that I would need some help. And this is where my partner in crime comes in. Class, meet your co-lecturer, Sara Cantor.

Now Sara works as a Researcher and Retail Planner at RTC, a retail design and strategy company. Also, with her Masters in Design Planning at the Institute of Design, she is not only uniquely positioned to talk about innovation strategy, but she still maintains many of the principles from her graduate degree.

What I’m excited about with this class is the opportunity for Sara and I to work together in a completely new way (teaching as opposed to running a business together). I’m looking forward to seeing how our fields of expertise, namely design and research, will play together to create a fair and open discussion about innovation. And lastly, I’m really excited to see how our students will be.

Our hopes are to open the students’ minds to an understanding that innovation and design are powerful forces and they are shaping the world around them everyday.

iPhone details-0383

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

I’m over the iPhone. For real.

For the weeks and months leading up to the release I was getting more and more convinced that my life would be pointless without the Jesus-phone in my hands.

Between the hype, the growing excitement, the slow leak of information and the tremendously in depth interaction videos released just days before it’s launch, the iPhone broke new ground all over the place.

I could blame the fact that I’m a designer or blame that fact that I have Golem-level desires for ‘precious’ objects, but I wanted this phone more than any other object in recent memory. It was getting unbearable to be without one in my possession.

But the weirdest thing happened. I got a chance to finally play with one the day after the launch, and I found myself realising a few things.

1. It’s amazing.
2. I don’t need it.
3. It’s amazing.

And then I took a breath and found myself totally over it. Honestly, I think that because I’d read and seen everything about it for so long the final meeting strangely held no more surprises for me. Somehow I’d over cooked my own enthusiasm for the damn thing.

I tried flicking my finger through iTunes album art, flicking my way through contacts, pinching and prising my way through photographs and Google maps. I even tried typing. They were all as amazing as I expected.

And while my argument for wanting it so bad, ‘it’s the most seamless integration of devices ever’, I realised that I just couldn’t get excited enough to replace all my current, separate devices. I have a phone. I have a music player, I even have crappy access to email through my phone too! Clearly with the iPhone the subtle, restrained industrial design makes it a pleasure to hold, but it’s really in the interaction design that makes this device come to life in your hands. But for me, $600 is a lot for me to pay to improve the ‘experience’.

While there has been a lot of research white papers and experimental prototypes shown of multi touch technology, more notable by Jeff Han from NYU, it was Apple who were the first to show how it could be really used and where the benefits were immediately obvious.

Let it be said, this is a totally landmark device here. It makes all other products that come anywhere near this category look so… pre-iPhone.

So while I happily recognise it’s immense awesomeness, for me I feel freed from its grasp. I’m over the iPhone. At least for the next few months…

ps.

Posing for me here is a friend’s iPhone. He was kind enough to let me take these closeups of this beautiful object. The full gallery is here. Enjoy!

It’s been a long time since I made any mention of Hubwear, but the site and the business is doing just fine. Sara, my girlfriend, partner and all round best-thing-in-my-life, has become a major part of the company and we’ve refocused and clarified a lot of what Hubwear means. We’ve got a brand spanking new site and it’s a hundred times clearer to navigate, explore and shop. It was a little too art house for mass consumption. Kudos to Sandy Weisz, our wonderful website designer.

But there’s more. Today I have fantastic news as Sara and I were interviewed in Gridskipper.com (the urban travel guide) the othere day and the post went live! We discuss at some length, in which city we’d like to be imprisoned Odd question, it might seem, but it yielded some interesting questions about where we’d go to eat, shop, hang out. Thanks to Brittany Belgardt for the opportunity to talk.

As with any small business, one hopes that each year leads to new and a exciting opportunities. I have a good feeling that this year will be a good one for us.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I got myself a new camera body about a week ago and after some 5500 exposures I think I can give it a short assessment.

But before I get into that, I wanted to give a shout out to my favourite camera gear store in the city; Calumet Photographic. Not only do all their staff have a great amount of experience to impart, but they’re very good at scaling their knowledge appropriately, from teaching newbs like me, the basics of how to use a two head lighting kit to giving their recommendations on the latest pro gear. Plus they let you rent which makes things like $1700 lens seem a little more affordable.

Ok, back to the gear list:

Canon EOS 1D Mk III
Canon EF 16-35L f2.8 (rented)
Canon EF 24-70L f2.8 (rented)
Canon EF 70-200L f2.8 IS (rented)
Spare battery for 1DMk III
Four 4gb Lexar 133x CF memory cards
Domke F2 bag

So what worked and what didn’t? Actually, everything worked out great! The only time I had anything that was close to a equipment fault was due to my incompetence. I thought the auto focus on my 70-200 was broken, so I tried turning the body on and off a bunch of times, then mounting and unmounting the lens… then I remembered that there’s a switch on the lens itself that turns the AF off. Ugh.

After a full weekend of shooting, my favourite lens was the tremendously heavy 70-200L f2.8 IS. It had the reach I needed to get some great close ups of detailed facial expressions during the performance at Pitchfork but also has the added bonus of getting people to move out of your way, since it’s so freaking large. The lens is white and with the hood attached it’s about the length of my arm. Let me tell you, it’s very hard to dance along to De La Soul’s, “Rock Co.Kane Flow” with it hanging off your neck.

Ok, now onto the new body: it’s ridiculously good. I’ve never owned a tool that performed with such purpose and conviction. Almost every aspect of its design and operation has been optimized for the task at hand, and that task is always to get the shot: battery life is over 2500-3000 exposures per charge, ISO is readable in the viewfinder, the viewfinder is HUGE and bright, the vertical grip has a complete replication of the control layout, the blackout time in the viewfinder is a barely perceivable 80ms, and a huge array of custom functions to tweak and adjust the controls to your preferences.

Now there’s been a huge ruckus all over the internets about the new Auto Focus system built into the MKIII, and while I have yet to do any definitive tests, I am pretty satisfied with how it’s been behaving. A great source of relief to me so far, is how well placed many of the 45 AF points are laid out within the viewfinder.

How I learnt to focus on all my previous cameras is to find an element in the image that I want to focus on, then start the ‘Focus Lock and Recompose’ sequence. The focused element then doesn’t always fall in the dead centre of the image. I started using this process years ago and it’s totally instinctive now. But this technique just becomes a pain when you’re trying to compose a portrait where the subject isn’t used to holding still with a toothy grin on their face. I don’t want to be constantly, ‘Focus Lock and Recomposing’ on them either, as in that split second when I’m reorientating the camera, they might move their head and body and the shot will be thrown off. I just want there to be an AF point directly on the person’s eyes for a portrait and it want it to be placed so things look right proportionally when the camera is set into a vertical orientation. I guess that I could revert to manual focus to really make sure the AF doesn’t move around, but I don’t think that I could trust that I could react to a person’s movement quickly enough to guarantee that I got that tiny, subtle change in expression or glance of the eyes. The whole time I was shooting close ups of the artists at Pitchfork, I would change to the vertical grip, hit the ‘select AF point’ under my thumb then roll my index finger two clicks until it hits the upper most AF marker. Done. Shoot. Next shot.

One additional thing I noticed while using the Mk III was that I retrained my eyes to use a technique that I’d forgotten about since my first film camera, the Canon A1. Since there’s so much fast movement on stage at any one time it’s important to not be too blinkered looking through your viewfinder and miss something happening just out of the frame. My old film camera had a really expressive, bright viewfinder which I missed dearly when I moved to my Nikon D70. But since moving to the Mk III, I found that while I have this new viewfinder up against my right eye, I can once again open my left eye and let my mind blend the images together. This way I can ‘see’ through the lens while keeping a check on whatever else is happening on the stage with both eyes open quite naturally.

All in all, I’m very happy with the new body and when matched with some decent glass, it’s a formidable package.

Epson RD-1-0836

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

A sad farewell this week. I finally said goodbye to my dear, dear camera which I only knew for six months.

Rangefinder cameras had a recent renaissance when the buzz around this camera broke out a few years ago, but it really got turned up to a white hot buzz when the Leica M8 was announced. The Epson was also limited to a production run of only 10,000 units.

Rangefinders and rangefinder photography is hard wired into photographic history and there’s no one that contributed more to this than a gentleman called Henri Cartier-Bresson. From the early part of the last century until his death in 2004, he was synonymous with three things: an enormous body of legendary work, being known for the phrase, ‘the decisive moment’, and for using Leica rangefinders.

No one I can think of is as tied to a brand as strongly as HCB and Leica. And so, in 2006 (when I started to think about the Epson RD-1) one can’t help but be wrapped up in all the romance and mystique of what these cameras offer.

A unique shooting style (manual pre-focussing) and a unique way of visualizing (through a separate viewfinder that shops crops marks of the field of view) all make up an experience that is difficult to describe without having one in your hands for a while. And truly when I bought this camera, I really wanted to give this style of photography an honest, through work out.

But sadly for me, I can say that this style just didn’t work for me. And how much of it was to do with this camera is sort of a moot point, as there is only one other digital rangefinder alternative available, the Lecia M8, which at $5000 for the body was way too expensive to ‘try out’. And after owning my first camera (a Canon A1) I’m not going to go back to shooting with film again to fully experience rangefinders.

Despite the awkwardness of my experiences with the camera, I found it to be one of the most exquisitely designed objects I’ve had in my hands. It was a great design exercise in melding analog, manual controls into a digital camera body. The Epson designers even integrated fully working, chronograph style dials to display the available space on the memory card, the white balance and the image resolution.

Ironically, the final nail in the coffin was my last assignment for some intense photography. The chance to photograph all over two cities was challenging enough, but when faced with this pressured assignment, I chose my trusty Nikon d70 instead. I just cannot afford to have a camera without auto focus anymore.

My Epson is now in the hands of a new owner and I’m sure that he’ll cherish it ten times more than I ever could.

In memory of this beautiful, romantic camera, here are some of my favourite photos taken with the Epson RD-1.