Video preview of the Fifth Wall app designed by Abbott Miller.
The pages of 2wice, the performing arts publication designed by Pentagram’s Abbott Miller, have always provided a unique and innovative venue for dance. Now Miller has designed “Fifth Wall,” an interactive app for 2wice that transforms the iPad tablet into a new kind of performance space. Created in collaboration with the choreographer Jonah Bokaer and 2wice publisher Patsy Tarr, the app takes advantage of the unique spatial and physical parameters of the iPad.
In the app, Bokaer engages with the edges of the iPad screen, and the viewer can interact with the performance by moving the tablet. To create the performance, Miller and his team built a box with the same proportions as the iPad. Bokaer was filmed performing within the box, engaging with the edges, jumping from the corners, and sliding down the sides. In the finished app, as users interact with the iPad, the performance responds to the movement of the user, flipping when the screen is turned, or changing when the surface is swiped. Technologically innovative, the app makes use of the accelerometer in the iPad, the device that rights the screen to the proper orientation of the viewer.
“Fifth Wall” is now available for download from iTunes. The app is featured in this Sunday’s edition of The New York Times.
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Quick Link: Abbott Miller’s Fifth Wall App for 2wice Featured in The New York Times
Science coverage in the media often seems threatening—dire warnings of global warming, potentially poisonous foods, and dangerous technology. But science doesn’t have to be scary. Science Friday, the weekly call-in talk show that is part of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” radio programming, is dedicated to presenting an accessible, exciting, positive view of science. Founded and hosted by the award-winning science journalist Ira Flatow, the show, known as SciFri for short, has as its motto “Making Science User Friendly.” Pentagram’s Emily Oberman has created a bold, fun identity and website for SciFri that helps promote a sense of wonder about science and all it can do.
The new SciFri identity creates an iconic brand that is playful but not childlike. Quirky, friendly and welcoming, the identity is built around the shape of the hexagon—the symbol used in scientific diagramming of chemical compounds. The identity is complemented by the redesigned SciFri website, a clean, simple gateway to a wide-ranging world of scientific information. SciFri is available as a podcast and is one of the most popular iTunes downloads, and the new site is designed to look at home on smartphones, tablets and mobile devices.
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Pentagram’s Eddie Opara has been named to Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business, an annual list that celebrates “business innovators who dare to think differently.” The list, published in the magazine’s June issue, out next week, recognizes a wide-ranging group of leaders from the fields of design, technology, advertising, business and entertainment, and Eddie is ranked alongside other innovators including Wes Anderson, Björk and CeeLo Green.
For the issue, Eddie was invited to create an infographic illustrating his process for creating an infographic. The image playfully shows how he turns data into art. “(The illustration) is a library of infographics,” he tells Fast Company. “Too often, people start with a pie or bar chart, but you have to understand the content and patterns in data before throwing images on paper.” Several members of the Pentagram team appear in the infographic, analyzing data and helping the process along. View details after the jump.
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Pentagram congratulates its client Punch Media on the recent launch of Punch!, the “first-ever satirical app” designed for the iPad. Pentagram’s Luke Hayman and his team collaborated on a prototype for the app, which encourages users to “play with pop culture” in witty interactive features that poke fun at current events in entertainment, politics and celebrity––both high and low. The app is available as a free download from the App Store.
Conceived for the iPad, Punch is innovative in the way it mixes the qualities of mobile games––sound, motion––with original editorial content. Unlike other magazine apps, the content does not start in the print environment, but is conceived for its native medium of the iPad. Punch! features incorporate web applications like YouTube and Google Maps, and encourages sharing via social media tools like Facebook and Twitter.
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Pentagram announces its newest partner, Natasha Jen.
Natasha was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and studied graphic design at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she received her BFA with Honors in 2002. She has worked at Base Design as a senior designer fashion and brand identity projects, at 2×4, Inc. as an art director leading large-scale branding, exhibition, environmental and editorial projects, and at Stone Yamashita Partners as creative director. In July 2010, she established her own studio, Njenworks. She joins our New York office in April 2012.
Natasha’s practice has been notable for crossing media genres, drawing on references from a diverse range of cultural, historical, aesthetic, and technological sources. Her work encompasses brand identities, environmental design, multi-scale exhibitions, signage systems, print, motion and interactive graphics, created in collaborations with universities and professional organizations, museums and galleries, and retailers and fashion companies.
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Video of our graphics, projections and interactive displays at the opening of IMPACT.
This season’s New York Fashion Week kicked off with the opening of IMPACT: 50 Years of the Council of Fashion Designers of America a commemorative exhibition at the Museum at FIT. Founded in 1962, the CFDA is the leading trade organization of the U.S. fashion industry and currently has a membership of over 400 of America’s foremost womenswear, menswear, jewelry and accessory designers. Conceived by CFDA President Diane von Furstenberg, IMPACT is the first museum exhibition to celebrate the organization and features over 100 garments and accessories designed by its members over the past five decades. The show remains on view at FIT through April 20.
Pentagram has a longstanding collaboration with the CFDA—Michael Bierut designed the organization’s identity in 1991—and was invited to create graphics and installations for the exhibition. Eddie Opara and his team have designed dynamic media that highlight the work of the nearly 600 designer-members who have graced the organization since its inception. Michael Bierut and Katie Barcelona contributed a fashionable identity and graphics for the exhibition.
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An interactive installation can draw a user into an immersive experience, illuminating an exhibition or object in depth or detail. It may also foster interaction between users, creating a collaborative atmosphere that sets a welcoming social tone for an institution. For an expansion of the SCAD Museum of Art, the contemporary art and design museum at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Pentagram’s Eddie Opara and team have created a unique interactive table that introduces the museum and its programs in a communal experience. Visitors gather around the table to view and exchange a series of “cards” that dynamically present information about the museum exhibitions, collections and programs.
Conceived by Opara and team, the communal table is an ideal form for the museum. SCAD supports a large community of students, artists, designers and educators in Savannah and beyond. The school is a pioneering institution with a campus of over 60 buildings spread throughout the city, many restored in the historic and Victorian districts. Designed by Savannah-based architects Sottile & Sottile, the new $26 million expansion adds 65,000 square feet to the existing 1856 Greek Revival building, originally the headquarters of the Central of Georgia Railway. The expansion creates additional galleries for the museum’s temporary exhibitions and permanent collection, new classrooms and performance spaces.
Video of the table in action, from development to installation.
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Quick Link: Eddie Opara to Speak at MoMA’s “Talk to Me” Symposium
Quick Link: Abbott Miller’s 2wice iPad App Featured in the Los Angeles Times
