Do you often get the chance to work on some exciting briefs for charity campaigns and social impact brands? But at the ideas generation stage miss a vital link that could make the campaign go from good to great! To solve that problem  Thomas Kolster, author of Goodvertising  has come up with a great idea – a calendar that make it easy for creatives to plan campaigns for good.

The calendar highlights all of the existing days or events that are associated with a charities brand or mission to increase awareness around that cause. The Calender for Good helps you to plan your campaign to coincide with existing designated days, or claim one of the many days not yet designated and create your own!

Buy one for yourself, studio or agency here.

Designed by Shaun McCormack Concept by Goodvertising Poster A2 (594×420)

Via Good Design

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If your local school system offers computer science courses, chances are those courses are electives that won’t count toward core science or mathematics credit. The implicit message is that, while those skills may prove important for some students’ futures, they aren’t as transferable to a wide range of occupations as, say, Algebra 2 or Biology.

But students like Sam Blazes and Wilfried Hounyo, two winners in the 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge, say they see their passion for computer programming is potentially leading them into a wide range of future professions.

“There’s no specific place you can plan on going because there are so many different things you can do with programming,” Blazes told an audience during a panel discussion at The Atlanticmagazine’s Technologies in Education Forum earlier this month. “You can do pretty much anything with it that you can program.”

That’s because computer programming is a study of languages more than of technology or mechanics. And command of those languages allows programmers to control the functionality of anything that is driven by a computer.

For example, Blazes and Hounyo, both now high school students in the Washington, D.C. area, each won acclaim for helping to design educational video games. But they both said they initiallyembraced programming through school robotics clubs, where students not only build robots, but work to write code that can control robots’ movements and reactions. And as Blazes pointed out, the same skills could also be used for a wide range of career purposes, such as constructing meteorological simulations, making financial predictions, or creating personalized online learning curricula.

Yet in most secondary educational settings, programming is treated as a primarily technological pursuit with a far narrower potential application. One reason may be a simple lack of community exposure, said U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in a separate conversation at the May 15 event.

“It’s really easy in a town like Rochester, Minn., where you can see you can get a two-year degree (in computer science) and you can get a job at IBM or (the) Mayo” Clinic nearby,” said Klobuchar, referencing one industrial town in her state where there is widespread need for employees with programming ability. “They see a connection. That doesn’t happen all the time with inner city kids or kids in small towns.”

Blazes and Hounyo say they have experienced a range of academic and extra-curricular benefits as a result of their pursuit of programming:

1. SUBJECT MASTERY

A primary use of programming is to lead a user through the acquisition of knowledge, whether it’s through a traditional lesson or an educational game like those created by Blazes and Hounyo. To lead a user through a range of possible options requires a coder to understand all those options and their implications. Blazes, for example, had to master the basic principals of genetics before creating his game, while Hounyo’s team had to learn about the principals of electricity.

2. SYSTEMS THINKING

Whether writing code to lead a player through a game or a robot up a pyramid, the programming process requires an understanding of how possible inputs and outcomes effect one another. Further, as students move from their first programming language to others, they also learn what organizational elements are universal and what elements may be specific to a particular coding language.

“They’re all sort of the same grammatical structures, and there are sort of different dialects, key words, or quirks to them that you sort of have to learn,” Blazes said of the coding languages he’s learned.

3. COLLABORATION

Most programming projects are multiple-person efforts because the pursuit lends itself well to specialization. For example, if a group of students are creating an educational game, one may have a firmer grasp of the subject matter, while another may be the head coder, and the third may be the visual artist. Some students are actually drawn into programming because of collaborative environments.

“I joined my school robotics team, and we did an awesome first season, and I got hooked to robotics ever since,” Hounyo said. “There are students and mentors working together, and they program the robot to do different tasks, from basic to higher levels.”

4. PASSION

Both Blazes and Hounyo pursued programming out of their own interest, and suggested not all of their school classmates would be engaged by a formal computer programming education. But they also said the constructive nature of programming allows students who are passionate about it to harness that interest and take it as far as they might dare.

“Programming is fun to me,” Blazes said. “It’s something that I can sort of do and have fun and work on, and I can feel a sort of sense of accomplishment when I start working on stuff and even finish something.”

Via KQED

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Really lovely idea by American designers Bolt Group. Each tab on this credit card-sized pack can be torn off and used as a USB stick.

The GIGS.2.GO pack by Bolt Group is made of recycled paper pulp and contains four tear-off tabs with a USB flash drive in each.

The concept was inspired by Bolt Group designers frequently having problems sharing presentation and CAD files with clients.

“Burning CDs is slow and impractical, and nobody wants to leave behind their trusty—and expensive—32GB thumb drive. We saw a need for a smaller pack of drives that could be shared and even left behind with a client,” said designer Kurt Rampton.

Though the drives are designed to last for many uses, the paper and electronic components can eventually be separated and recycled.

Via Dezeen

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In a collaborative research effort between petr novikov, saša jokić from the institute for advanced architecture of catalonia and joris laarman studio,
‘mataerial’, an anti-gravity additive manufacturing process is conceived. the printer allows for creating 3D objects on any given working surface
independently of its inclination and smoothness, and without a need of additional support structures. similar to the doodle pen featured earlier on 
designboom, the robotic device utilizes innovative extrusion technologies that neutralize the effect of gravity during the course of the printing process.
the approach provides flexibility in creating natural objects by producing three-dimensional curves instead of two-dimensional folds. unlike 2D layers
that are ignorant to the structure of the object, the 3D trajectory can follow exact stress lines of a custom shape.

mataerial anti-gravity 3D printer
video courtesy mataerial

the printer allows for creating 3D objects on any given working surface independently of its inclination and smoothness

the robotic device utilizes innovative extrusion technologies that neutralize the effect of gravity

the approach provides flexibility in creating natural objects by producing three-dimensional curves instead of two-dimensional folds

a 3D trajectory can follow exact stress lines of a custom shape

horizontal 3D printing in real time

anti-gravity in effect

material detail process

Via http://www.designboom.com/

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We have been wanting to play around more with Bare paint for a while and when we met the good folks at Studio Luma last month at one of our Rough Trade workshops it seemed like the perfect opportunity to start a nice potential collaboration.

Yesterday morning Andrew and I went over to their Studio to do the first round of initial tests and see how the paint printed and worked with different materials.  We tested 4 circuits in the end, a couple of variable resistors to hook up with our DIY Synth and a couple of simple circuits on around 9 different materials including Glass, paper, Card, wood, material, tissue to name a few. As well as  trying different line thickness within the circuits to see how this effected the flow of electricity, and we also varied the application of paint or ‘floods’ as its known in the printing business to again see how this effected the circuit.

The tests have been drying overnight and today we will head back to see how successful or not they are. But we tried a few things today and most seemed to be working well.

It was a great morning and a nice change from the normal day of working with print again after so long. Lots of ideas started to flow of potential possibilities and as the tests continue we will post on our progress and hopefully have something workshop-able in a few months. Here are some pics of the morning and what we got up too.

Big thanks to the guys at Luma for the awesome printing skills and to our good friends at Bare Conductive for the paint.

To see the rest of the photos check out our flickr set here.

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Great new project by Dominic Wilcox  titled Sound Bulbs that combine a light bulb connector with music players so that it’s possible to screw in your music player into any light bulb socket. The idea came form an invitation to take part in an exhibition during Clerkenwell Design Week called Design Exquis. The idea of the exhibition was a little like the game of Chinese whispers in that a first designer/artist was given an object (a stethoscope), they then had to find inspiration from that to create a new object of their own. The object Dominic was given was a ceiling lamp by ‘Plant and Moss’. This led him to think  about ceiling lights and the question of ‘why do we only plug light bulbs into lamp sockets?’ and the project was born.

Check out his blog post here on the project and where you can catch him and it during Design Week.

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A BRITISH NONPROFIT AND SEVERAL BUSINESSES ARE USING 3-D PRINTERS TO CREATE QUALITY PRODUCTS THAT HELP PEOPLE LIVE MORE INDEPENDENTLY

The post The Next Frontier For 3-D Printing: Helping The Disabled appeared first on Technology Will Save Us.

“The idea is a simple one,” says Do Lectures founder David Hieatt, “people who do things can inspire the rest of us to go and do things too.” This is the premise of the small yet mighty Ideas Conference, held annually on eco-tour-worthy farms in West Wales and California. Now it is also the mantra for a new arm of the Do brand, the Do Book Company, which follows the addition of the Do Workshops last year. At the helm is London-based editor Miranda West, who previously worked at Random House. West is running this new independent publishing business from East London’s Shoreditch neighborhood with welcome support from The Chicken Shed—aka Do HQ—in Cardigan, Wales.

The Do Book Company launches with five titles. “Do Disrupt – Change The Status Quo Or Become It”, written by innovation and environmental design consultant Mark Shayler; “Do Improvise – Less Push, More Pause”, a new approach to work (and life), by improv expert Rob Poynton; “Do Grow – Start With 10 Simple Vegetables” by gardener Alice Holden; “Do Birth – A Gentle Guide To Labor And Childbirth” by celebrated midwife Caroline Flint and “Do Story – How To Tell Your Story So The World Listens” by screenwriter Bobette Buster.

Each book delves into the expertise of a previous Do speaker—with the lecture series only scratching the surface of their knowledge. The Do Lectures, now in its sixth year, has a veritable treasure trove of inspirational talks from the world’s best Do-ers, so there’s no shortage of content for editor West to draw on for book titles. The company holds the promise of developing a rich and diverse collection of motivating reads. Plus, new titles are already in the works for 2014.

There are other motivation-meets-how-to publishing houses and workshop series around the world, yet the Do Lectures really uphold the adage: “It’s not what you do, it’s the way you do it.” From keeping it small and intimate, to inviting attendees and speakers to camp together, to the homemade food and freshly baked bread, to the rustic outdoor setup, the Do Lectures cultivated a unique way of opening people’s minds and consequently changing their lives.

With the launch of the Do Book Company, the rest of the world can access this fantastic knowledge-sharing platform through short reads, in addition to streaming the lecture series online. The spirit and flair of the Do Lectures are embodied in the simple design of the books, which feature lively illustrations throughout the pages. The covers are a series of eye-catching designs by Brooklyn-based designer James Victore—a Do lecturer himself.

Do Books are reassuringly compact and at about 100 pages long, “they hold just enough advice to help you learn a new skill,’‘ says West, ‘’and give you a shot of inspiration to get you started.” Do Book Company’s titles are available from 16 May, check their website for more information.

Images courtesy of Do Book Company

Via Cool Hunting

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