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.

Trollbäck & Company have been creating the opening titles for TED for the last few years and they never disappoint. The 2009 TED sequence combines appropriate editorial sentiment and ambitious choreography that echoes the blue sky innovation presented at TED. Its also worth noting that even while enjoying the spectacle of typographic acrobatics, you can still read the text. The motion design reflects the meaning of the words and isn’t just a bunch of technological stunts.

Also by Trollbäck & Company is another typographic motion sequence for the PopTech conference. This time, letterforms are mixed with live action type footage and special fx for more organic and transformations.

Pop!Tech 2008 from Sacred Noise on Vimeo.

This opening title below by Thornberg & Forester is for the AICP 2008 awards show at the Museum of Modern Art. TH’s description of the piece states, ‘The innovative 3D type-based title sequence captures the aura of the world’s most famous modern museum through a mesmerizing and gracefully choreographed 3D symphony of letters’.

AICP 2008 Open from Sacred Noise on Vimeo.

It demonstrates an interesting combination of real world and synthetic 3D which is a theme that I find intriguing. There are many different examples that touch on this concept such as the title sequence for Stranger than Fiction by MK12. Here the typography is presented as annotated overlays on the world inhabited by the film’s main character.

There is something kind of strange about viewing pixels from the future. Pixels are crude, and although screens are becoming sharper with higher resolutions, rendering type with them is difficult.

Hoefler and Frere Jones have this interesting picture on their blog, its an example of type in a Renaissance ‘lace book’ from La Vera Perfettione del Disegno di varie sorte di ricami, an embroidery guide by Giovanni Ostaus published in 1567. It looks just like a low-res bitmap.

Jonathan Hoefler has this to say: It’s likely that the pixel’s final and most enduring role will be a shabby one, serving as an out-of-touch visual cliché to connote “the digital age.”

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.