Microsoft’s Office Labs team conceived this vision of the future – filled with smart objects and seamless UI’s that transfer across their surfaces creating an augmented reality of daily life.

The video for Microsoft was directed by Mason Nicoll (former creative director at Digital Kitchen and Prologue) and the animation and effects were completed by Seattle-based studio Oh, Hello. It was a truly collaborative production. The MS Office Labs team completed the UI designs in Illustrator and also provided sample comp animations in After Effects for Oh Hello. Nicoll directed the live action shoot and produced a final cut before OH did their work.

The outcome is incredibly convincing and slick. The sophisticated roto work coupled with lots of tracking and the ultra smooth animations fit seamlessly with the beautifully crafted (slightly sterile) live action to present a believable image of the future. This little film makes Minority Report’s UI look tame, and yet at the same time it follows the general futuristic picture that is emerging in different quarters. Remember Jeff Han’s talk at TED 2006 and look at recent interfaces like FluidTunes. Even the interactions with the Microsoft’s futuristic news paper mirror those of the iPhone.

It is interesting to imagine a future where touch based and gestural interfaces become commonplace. Imagine seeing your neighbour through the window waving their arms madly as they check what’s on tv or in their fridge or on their music player! From the perspective of screen-based design, UI design and typography – this video presents a glimpse of how the future will fuse motion and interactivity intelligently. If the iPhone is a current example of this trend, these objects will be desirable and irresistible. Its exciting and dreadful at the same time to think of gardening being mediated with a digital overlay.

I finally got an iPhone! It was worth waiting for, though there a few niggly UI things that I have to get used to. Its a must have from a UI design perspective. Creative Review has picked up some of the latest additions to the ever increasing list of new iPhone apps, and two happen to be type related.

Firstly, is the FontViewer by Thomas Podewils at osXwerk.de. It is a fairly basic reference tool for graphic designers: it lists the system fonts found on Apple computers and allows you to examine a type sampler for each font. You can view different sizes using the zoom slider. There’s great potential for this application if you consider it in the context of something like Typophile’s TypeID online resource/forum or Myfonts’ What the font. Imagine if users could upload an image (taken with the iPhone camera) of a font that would then be identified by the app.

On a totally different note is a second type related app by Andreas Muller called For All Seasons. This is a typo animation based loosely on the seasons. It won the Toyko TDC Grand Prix Award in 2005. Muller has now resurrected the work and ported it to the iPhone. Its a quirky piece but it shows off the beauty and surprise of dynamic letterforms when liberated from the traditional page. Its not so much useful as engaging to look at and interesting to muse over.

Everything You Thought We’d Forgotten by Jason E. Lewis collects together a series of text-based interactive works that explore the border lands between conflicting cultural identities, memory and history, and the visual and the textual. Common to all these works is a formal concern with how kinetics and interactivity can be used to expand how digital texts can be written, read and performed. This video of the exhibition with commentary by Lewis explains the work on show and the methods used.

Lewis is a poet, digital media artist and software designer. His practice revolves around experiments in visual language, text and typography, with a core interest in how the deep structure of digital media can be used to create innovative forms of expression. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University where he founded and directs Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media. A list of their projects can be found here.

Lewis’ background is not graphic design, but originally computer science and philosophy, later he went to the RCA. His work blends literary, design and programming skills.

The recent firerside chat at Signal v’s Noise with three of the most innovative artists/designers working in the area of information visualisation is an enlightening read. Each has their own particular perspective and approach to ‘infoviz’ as Wescamp puts it. Harris is interested in the ‘humanity of the web’ which might be excavated through the visualisation of hidden data. Koblin describes himself as an artist eventhough his background is in game design, and Wescamp admits to being an ‘interaction designer’ with a strong interest in information visualisation because it provides ‘a little bit of every world, art, visual problem solving and engineering’.

Their discussion the nature of their creative process is interesting, especially the role of experimentation and paper-based sketching in realising their ideas. While it is evident that typographic design is not a major focus for any of them, it forms an integral part of both Harris (Daylife, We Feel Fine) and Wescamp’s work. Harris and Koblin both note the impact that Wescamp’s Newsmap had from a design perspective.

“I think one thing that Newsmap demonstrates, which is important, is the fractal qualities of good design. For instance, you can glance at the grid and instantly see the largest stories overall, and the relative importance of sport vs. business, but then you can move closer and see the individual stories that compose the grid. Those orders of scale are important.” [Johnathan Harris, June 5, 2007]

In my view, whether consciously or unconsciously, Harris and Wescamp are breaking new ground in screen based typography and there are many inherent attributes within their work that signal innovative if complex future directions for the discipline.