My gamer generation, now in its early 30s, kicked things off with the Atari 2600. I still remember my stepdad coming home with the dusty, industrial grade plastic console at the bottom of a cardboard...
July, 9 2010 • 2 Comments • 0 Faves
It took some nuanced digging during downtime to get here, but lately the idea of cloud-based media has been nagging at an old metaphor for me — Plato's theory of forms. And there's some Naoto Fukasawa...
June, 17 2010 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
We all remember the talking billboards from Minority Reprt that recognized Tom Cruise as he walked by, looked as his pants and tried to sell him some more. Sure. Well, let's get the internet right first...
June, 14 2010 • 1 Comment • 0 Faves
I recently took a trip to Best Buy to get my hands on a variety of remote control devices, everything from antiquated universals, to the $400+ touchscreen remotes cropping up at the edges of the technophile...
June, 8 2010 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
The US government has recently ramped up a plan to unite innumerable databases across the globe, enabling researchers to seek insight from in-depth information sitting idle and siloed without some intelligence...
May, 5 2010 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
I've been working on a UI-centric, integrated product experience for almost 6 months now, and many times we ran into design challenges that couldn't be solved with features, information architecture...
April, 11 2010 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
At the Milwaukee Art Museum for the second time in the last few years, I once again sought out the German artists on the main floor. Richter, Kiefer, Polke and Beuys are well represented in museums...
March, 7 2010 • 1 Comment • 0 Faves
Found a real gem this week at the Evanston bookshop — Bookman's Alley — called Daniel Boone: Wilderness Scout. Written by Stewart Edward White, illustrated by Henry C. Pitz, and published by the Boy...
March, 1 2010 • 1 Comment • 0 Faves
— Jo Jackson, from the documentary Beautiful Losers, 2008
February, 23 2010 • 2 Comments • 0 Faves
Thought I'd share an old design concept that (maybe) never made it out to the world. This was for a Chicago play that interpreted the Dostoevsky text: Demons, aka The Possessed, a novel about political murder...
February, 23 2010 • 2 Comments • 0 Faves
While working on an opportunity space project awhile back, I was challenged with understanding what women want out of life. Seriously. My team analyzed hours upon hours of observation video, conducted...
February, 14 2010 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
Watching an old western this weekend, I was struck by the relationship between the Indian tribes and a Texas Ranger played by my great-great uncle Tom Mix in his last film, The Miracle Rider series...
February, 1 2010 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
I used to be one of those people that took pride in designing and employing personal systems to deal with email, magazine subscriptions, paying bills, my Netflix queue, etc. I still do. But now I have a second sort of personal satisfaction for some of these obligations: fuck off. That might seem harsh, but really, we take this position way more than we might realize. Get a phone call from an "unknown" number? Oversized coupon from Bed, Bath and Beyond in the mail? How about those people...
January, 19 2010 • 2 Comments • 0 Faves
The awkward relationship between old and new first hit me while watching the film, Children of Men. Like many sci-fi flicks, we're given a glimpse of the near future, an advanced society with new computing...
August, 16 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
In the past few years, I've worked on innumerable Web projects that involved social media tools aimed at connecting with a brand's audiences in a more meaningful way. I've found that the best examples are often small businesses that realize the power of a good story and have the guts to try something new on the Web. While many of these businesses may have felt like they had nothing to loose by trying, many of them have realized they had everything to gain — they've enjoyed the satisfaction that comes with being true...
July, 12 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
I'm often entertained/moved/frightened by the way humanity seems to tell the same stories over and over again using whatever technology is available to us at the time. While the changes in technology...
April, 15 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
A former undergraduate classmate of mine, Aaron Held, recently completed his Masters at Southern Illinois at Edwardsville. His work always struck a chord with me with it's primitive, insect-like structure...
March, 26 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
The Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah is one of judgment and punishment for the sinful ways of the city's population. One of the gravest sins, according to most interpretations, is one of homosexuality...
March, 22 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
Every once in awhile I experience an uncanny coincidence in seemingly disparate content that combines to open me up to a new understanding of how the world works. This week I had one of those experiences. It started with an article in the latest Seed magazine. One of my most meaningful reads every month is the Seed cover story - this month's being "The Hive Mind" by Benjamin Phelan, which synthesizes the most recent history in the development of the theories of superorganisms (ants, termites, etc), specifically around...
March, 18 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
Gordon Muehle's Polaroid arrangments, opening at Schneider Gallery in Chicago tonight, remind me of another event this week: the discovery of Atlantis in the mapping of the oceans in Google Earth. Of...
March, 6 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
This is straight out of Usenet-style culture and it's brilliant. People have such an overwhelming need to sort through the billions of Tweets online, that Twitter users have begun sacrificing part of...
March, 6 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
Dev Patnaik, author of "Wired to Care" and leader of Jump Associates, will be speaking at his Chicago book launch next week. His approach to business growth, like many leading innovation firms, mine included, is centered on users and their needs. The fundamental principle that businesses today can no longer grow through a traditional model of create and sell is an idea that's starting to gain high-level proponents in some of the world's largest companies. Alternatively, companies...
March, 5 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
A graphic design trend I've been seeing develop for awhile seems to have its roots in the Web. For years, the lack of type formatting on the Web drove traditional print designers mad. HTML forced you to just drop in copy, design be damned. A widow is a widow, move on with your life. But this style, or lack thereof, is showing up in print, on everything from ads to packaging. I'm curious as to how conscious the style is, as most young designers today probably grew up reading on the...
March, 1 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
One of the most iconic branding systems ever created, Otl Aichers' 1972 Munich Olympics remains timeless in its approach to systemic design. You had me at your analog clock graphics, Mr Aichers. ...
February, 20 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
Barry Schwartz, author of the acclaimed Paradox of Choice, speaks about the damaging relationship between rules, incentives and critical choices we make as moral individuals. If rules and incentives could be designed to inspire critical thinking, instead of displace it for the sake of predictable, transactional decision making, we might find ourselves living in a much more creative, selfless culture. You might ask: how do you convince a business that guaranteeing a certain outcome in employees' behaviors through...
February, 16 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
A great show in Pilsen last night. 200 Lincolns was an open to call to artists and non-artists alike, seeking portraits of the President for a birthday show. No shortage of Obamic symbolism, the...
February, 14 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
Data visualization is at a fever pitch, covering everything from contextual election results to the frequency of the word Springsteen during the Super Bowl. What might...
February, 11 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
I'm an Interaction Design Lead at a renowned innovation firm in Chicago. I've worked as a writer, strategist and general disseminator of anticipatory design science for a wide variety of industries and clients.
On www.altgestalt.com I write about design thinking and associative cultural phenomena.
On www.goodbeerhunting.com I explore unique breweries and seek out my next favorite beer.
you can say hi this way: mkiser.ia@gmail.com or explore your other options on www.michaelkiser.com
Kyle Fletcher often designs my headers. He's a clever guy. www.kylefletcher.com
Theme created for Posterous by Obox
