DARRYLFELDMAN.COM

I have been designing and developing user interfaces over a period of 20 years, from black and white HyperCard stacks through to mobile web frameworks. I am currently working for Nokia in Berlin in the Location and Commerce unit. I am fascinated by design and how best to create products and services that people love to use.

Good fun was had last week meeting (and drinking copious beers) with all the nice people at the MobX conference in Berlin. I enjoyed speaking about Microexperiences and running a workshop, even though we had a fire alarm halfway through. You can download the presentation (.pdf) here.

I was at Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin on Tuesday night, giving a talk and meeting students. It always amazes me the questions and insights that come up and very refreshing to hear the students perspective on what normally are corporate issues. Looking forward to more collaboration with Carola Zwick and team. You can download the presentation (.pdf) here.

Had a wonderful time last night speaking at TEDxKreuzberg, the other speakers were very thought provoking and the audience responsive. A big thanks to Peter Bihr and team for organising that and the Betahaus for providing the facilities. For those wanting my slides – here they are, enjoy.

The date: 1992 – I am a struggling graphic designer getting to grips with early multimedia software. Macs are becoming the defacto design environment and I was a proud owner of a Quadra 700 which was my prized possession and cost me a lot of saved money to buy. The soundtrack to all this creative activity was Caberet Voltaire, New Order and pretty much anything on the Factory label. I got my hands on the Octavo CD-ROM (as a giveaway inside Emigre magazine perhaps?) and was deeply inspired by the interactive format, message and typographic design. Octavo was normally a print journal on typography and this was the first CD-ROM edition. This was a strong minimalist reaction to the overly stylised and popular work of Neville Brody, Peter Saville and co. The big thing for me was the fact that it was heralding a new way of thinking and the death of print – of course now we know that didn’t happen. 8vo are an important piece of British design history,  founded in 1984 by Mark Holt, Simon Johnston and Hamish Muir. Their output was diverse – from posters, brochures, typefaces, CD-ROM’s but all with a very distinctive look – layered grids, informal structures, dysfunctional looking type. They did a lot of work for Factory records over the years including promo material for the Durutti Column. The Octavo CD-ROM used punctuation as a navigation tool which I thought was pretty interesting with a lot of voiceovers communicating a post-modern design manifesto. I also liked the fact they were kind of faceless but purposeful and not promoting themselves as design celebrities which was kind of in keeping with the times. It is refreshing to look back on this period of digital design, I find a lot of the work inspiring and in many ways even though the tools were cruder and technology immature the output was substantial and profound. In a time of digital mediocrity this is food for thought.

Another great example of new product design that reflects a simple, human aesthetic. The Blackbird Fly is a Twin-Reflex 35mm camera made of plastic and available in bright colours…yes it uses film and the images have a very distinct retro feel. The Blackbird is the antithesis of all the high tech compacts proliferating the market with higher and higher pixel count and crammed full of features. Again this is another Lo-Fi product that seems to have appealed to the romantic consumer desire for a time long gone, when no 2 photos looked the same due to unpredictable results and light leakage.

Imperfection is OK