The Vostok blog

Designer Michael Bierut says the best clients fall into two categories: the ones who trust you because they know they don’t know and the ones who trust you precisely because they do. To his notion we would add: the best clients are the ones who challenge you. Challenge you to challenge yourself.

We make a big effort in Vostok to choose our clients wisely and there’s a reason for it: when you work with people you admire you work better and quicker. Like a well-oiled machine. There are pros and cons, true, but they’re worth it. Basically because you have days like today.

Today Minube and Ducksboard are taking two important steps forward. For one, Ducksboard has launched. If you haven’t checked out the pretty awesome video yet, do. We made the video with the Riot Cinema team.

Next in line is Minube. After winning Apple’s Spain’s best app of the year award and the App Date [links in Spanish] award a few days ago, they’re organizing a pretty cool event today to celebrate the launch of their social traveler guides on iPad.

All in all, a pretty good way to begin closing 2011.

Jean Prouvé was once quoted saying: never design anything that cannot be made. Part designer, part architect he always conceived himself primarily as a craftsman, a builder. In Norman Foster‘s own words, in Prouvé’s work “technical imagination is placed at the service of function and economy”.

And that’s infinitely apparent when you understand the thought process behind his first attempts at prefabrication. How to produce furnishings and components that were simple to ship and easy to erect? How to create structures that were both solid and adaptable; temporary and long-lasting? Simple: modular design. His structures tended to be light, flexible, and even mobile, combining traditional building materials with aluminum and steel.

At the time, Mr. Prouvé was revolutionizing the concept of construction so he went back to the basics. He kew that if he was to create a new language, he first needed to devise an alphabet and that’s what he did, he created “L’alphabet des structures”. Because once you devise the basic elements of a system, it doesn’t matter what the future holds; you’ll know what to do, how to react.

Most of the problems we face as designers today aren’t new so it’s always refreshing and inspiring to see how others have tackled them before. And then it’s just a matter of learning, adapting and applying.

If you have a chance, Industrial Beauty (though I like the name in Spanish better, Belleza Fabricada), is an exhibition at Ivory Press Madrid of some of Prouvé’s most significant work, including drawings, sketches and furniture. It will be open until November 12th.

For an overview of some of his work, this Flickr compilation is a good start.

Eri and I headed to the Tokyo Good Design Expo last week. I heard that it’s supposed to be one of the most important Asian event on design, plus they host the Good Design Award, so we had to take a look. Here’s a super-quick review on what we saw.

The expo was huge. We were mostly for the interactive and mobile stuff although you could find many other design areas represented by all sorts of products: cars, domotics, furniture, pottery, home appliances…

After overlooking the whole expo we headed to the mobile design stands. I have to say most of what we saw was not surprising at all: tablets and phones whose only difference was exterior styling (shape and color) but were the same on the inside: android. Perhaps the most interesting was the IIDA infobar, designed by Naoto Fukasawa and Yugo Nakamura. The Infobar has a complete different approach both on UI and exterior design. Also, its marketing campaign is very intense, focusing on the personalization factor. Check the commercial:

I confess I was a bit deceived with the whole thing. Well, I’m an iPhone user, therefore I will judge anything up to those standards. But isn’t IIDA’s Infobar competing with the iPhone after all? There is one thing that really impressed me, though: it’s lightness. It looks heavier than it is. That is a good thing but the counterpart is that It’s not as solid as one might expect.

But the best piece of the whole expo, as seen with interaction design eyes -Eri and I agreed on this- were the vending machines, which happened to be working by the way. A big crisp, colorful touchscreen to chose your favorite beverage. Motion, layers, and directionality all very well applied. Check it by yourself on this video (sorry about the quality, I think I messed up with the frame ratio):

Overall it was a very interesting visit. We are looking forward to come back next year and perhaps display some of the products we’ve designed during this last year at Vostok Studio.

PS: check this post for more info on the Good Design Award and this other post for pics and more info on the expo (in Spanish)

Javier Cañada will be speaking at Ryokan Consulting’s VIP professional training in Elche about the value of investing in design. If you happen to be in town or haven’t been in Valencian territory for a while and crave a good plate of paella, don’t miss the workshops on online services and tools programmed for June and July.

You can book your seat here.

Last friday all the interaction design students and I attended the “Design, Greatest Hits” exhibit at the Círculo de Bellas Artes. I found the curation to be weak. It was a fun evening though.

Via oscar (an anonymous commentator in our blog) we find an incredible section in MONOmoda,that puts together a great list of design related films. All in all, a great research tool. Although we already knew most of the films’ highlighted (cause many of you directed us to them a few months ago), it’ll be a really helpful post to help us curate our own design cinemathéque. The best way to welcome 2011

Gabriela and I will be at Ficod this thursday, you may see us around checking on what’s going on in the Spanish digital content scene or partnering with our friends from Filmin who will host a talk on their product which has the best catalog of indie movies you can find available for Spain.

Are you attending it? Any very good recommendation on who to watch there?

In the end we came up with a pretty good compilation of design films. Thank you. We’ll make a selection and post the final movie list soon. Finally, I guess you’ll all agree with me that Mr. Guersenzvaig deserves that premium account. Congratulations to you, sir!

We hope you’ve all made good use of those Filmin codes and that you’ve liked the experience.

If you happen to be in Madrid on June 29th and 30th don’t miss this mini-music-festival to raise funds for thecosmonaut.org. Get your ticket and become a producer of the movie:

If you understand Spanish you’ll enjoy these promotional videos for the event. They are made by the guys at Riot Cinema. They rock too!

Spot 1

Spot 2

If you are in Madrid tomorrow you may want to attend the presentation of El Cosmonauta (The Cosmonaut – Kokmohabt) at Medialab Prado. Nicolás Alcalá and the guys from Riot Cinema will be explaining their project of filming an amazing science fiction movie applying the principles of Creative Commons and crowdfunding.

When: Thursday April 23th, 19:30h.
Where: Medialab-Prado. Plaza de las Letras, C/ Alameda, 15 · Madrid (map)

As you may know, Vostok is pretty involved in this initiative which we mentione a few posts earlier. We hope you find it as exciting as we do.