My latest side project for Graphic Designers and creatives is called Buamai. The project is only few months old but we already have 3000 images blogged. As of today, we now gave a great new iPhone application to bring this content to you while you are mobile. The application was created to grab random images from our server to cure your boredom as well as inspire. Images found on our site are mainly of Graphic Design, Art and Architecture interest but with some random, strange images thrown in for variety. Use our website to cure boredom, find talented artists or for gathering inspiration.

Available on iTunes | Application Website

I love posting this application, just after my Google cannot design rant. It makes me love, really love when designers ‘design’ applications, and not engineers and programmers. In this case it was created and designed by mega agency Fallon.

This little beauty called Skimmer is an application to help you manage all your time wasting community sites that you love to post on. It runs on Adobe Air, which I haven’t got too much into, but this app has struck a new interest in it. I have to say, this application is very nice and is very well designed. The code gets a little flaky for me sometimes with a black overlay screen hanging on me sometimes, but a quit restart solves that. I assume in due time it will be even smoother, but for a free app this is the hotness!

In a previous publication you stated: “Amidst the attention given to the sciences as how they can lead to the cure of all diseases and daily problems of mankind, I believe that the biggest breakthrough will be the realization that the arts, which are conventionally considered ‘useless,’ will be recognized as the whole reason why we ever try to live longer or live more prosperously. The arts are the science of enjoying life.”

How specifically do you think art can be presented to the common person as a part of their life rather than merely a part of museums? Can you give any examples in the visual arts that help illustrate this statement? This is an area that my new group the Physical Language Workshop is currently working on. Our hypothesis is that by re-architecting some common web technologies, we can provide a new kind of distributed creative supply/demand that has not yet existed. Different levels of artistic expression will have varying levels of associated value. Average art can have an average value, and can be a new kind of creative currency.

Today most people see art as a way to visually express ideas and feelings. Are you implying that art can be functionally useful to the general public? Do you think one day society will accept art as a science because technology has become a new form of art? I think creativity is an important untapped resource in our society. Currently, only the “most creative” get to be creative. I think that it is a shame. The general public needs a means of exercising their creativity in order to discover some kind of tangible benefit from it (beyond the mere joy of exercising the freedom to be creative).

Technology hasn’t given birth to a new form of art; people using technology have given birth to a form of art that is perhaps new. The biggest question is no longer, “Is it new?” The biggest question now is, “Is it any good?”

What is the benefit of teaching creativity and art? In every in-flight magazine there is a piece of wisdom. Today I flew to NY and there was an article in the in-flight magazine on proverbs. It said there is a Japanese proverb, “To teach is to learn.” Is there no greater benefit in life (besides family) than learning? I am currently enrolled in an MBA course, which has very low creativity, but I am learning new things everyday. So it isn’t just about creativity and art. It is the experience of enrichment through learning as learning, or learning through teaching. To work the “exploration muscle” in your brain is a worthy way of life.

As a teacher, how do you judge “good technology” when there seem to be so many aspects to consider? What aspects or traits of technology do you consider to have value? Good technology is always best when it is not the major issue of discussing a technology-based experience. When it is invisible, and simply the source of the magic of it all, it is best. I have heard this said similarly many times before by many people, but I feel that it is usually said from the perspective of someone who knows very little about the technology under discussion. It is convenient to discuss the technology as “getting in the way.” In the way of what? Oftentimes it stands in the way of a thin idea. Why is the idea thin? Because technology demands you to treasure it — to do what you can because something new is possible. Technology craves attention, and we feed its insecurities. In the process of serving technology, we often forget why we were doing something in the first place. Such a process inevitably gets you in trouble because the all-consuming attention given to the technology leads you to an arrival point with very little conceptual strength. One must always seek balance by acknowledging the infinite hunger of new technologies (for more technology).

What links are there between design and technology? Design can aid technology, but many producers of technology don’t seem to value design. Why have you chosen to unite the two? I chose to unite design and technology because it was relevant for me to do so at the time. But I do not think it necessary for anyone else starting out. Everyone is different and valuable. My value came from the mix of those two things.

You talk a lot about Paul Rand. What is it about his design work or his approach to design that fascinate you? What objective or insight did he give you “to aspire forever?” The humility and the confidence in Paul Rand, the person I met, continue to inspire me. He had a wonderful balance of strength and weaknesses that was very human, but also superhuman. At 82, maybe that is a natural state of being.

Is your work more a process of discovery or the application of a consistent methodology? Do you work for personal satisfaction or for solving larger problems? I find my work to be a constant process of discovery and failure. In only the rarest of moments do I see any success. And I know from experience that success can be fleeting, so I do try to find pride in my many failures whenever possible.

What do you consider a failure? A failure, technically speaking, is something that turns out in a way you didn’t expect or hope. A real failure is when you don’t have enough talent to take that unexpected twist and ride it into something better than when you first started.

What is your interest in typography? I have no real interest in typography today. I used to be part of the cigarette-smoking, chummy Swiss cult in Tokyo but I broke free.

How are typography and technology currently connected? The connection between typography and technology is the same connection that everything has to technology today. Everything is (unfortunately) connected to technology today.

Do you think this new generation of technology will lead to some groundbreaking shifts in the way we communicate? No.

How do you describe your profession to people? I call myself a person that aspires to think creatively. I’ve managed to turn that into a profession as a professional professor. I lucked out.

What other professions would you like to practice? Currently I’m getting an MBA. After that I plan go to cooking school. So maybe I want to be a chef in the future.

About John Maeda

John Maeda is a world-renowned graphic designer, visual artist, and computer scientist at the MIT Media Lab, and is a founding voice for “simplicity” in the digital age.

What are you working on? I was away for three months in New Zealand on an extended surfing – drawing trip and filled a couple of sketchbooks. I have been back for a couple of weeks so far and am just sifting through all of the new material and making stuff out of it.

I am trying to approach my process differently. My usual approach is to think of a project that will take months or years to complete and then wade through a never-ending marshland of monotony and boredom. You know the saying 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration? The outcome is usually exciting and positive for me, but the process drives me mad, and bored.

Instead of doing what I’ve always done, I have been trying a lot of mini-projects that can each be completed in about a day. I wake up in the morning and spend about an hour thinking about the mission of the day. Then I just get down to making it happen and try as hard as I can to finish it in one go. If I don’t finish it then I just store it away as a ‘nearly complete’ work and move on to another one the next day.

A lot of these ‘day projects’ have been animation, and some have been technology sketches. I really like what has been coming out so far.

Do you have any set goals for this work or are you just interested in the creative process? What has been the result? My goal is to not allow myself to get into routine based work. I have a habit of creating formulas in my process and getting locked into them for long periods. The work reflects this and has a stiffness and stagnancy that I am getting picky about. Instead, I am trying to just let my drawings lead me wherever they want to go, whether or not that direction fits into some comfort zone in my process. It is a bit scary because every morning when I sit down to a project I am not sure whether I am going to be able to pull it off because it may be all new to me. I have yet to have one flop though! It just takes more active focus and less monotonous grind.

I also have a bit of an umbrella goal to use this new work as material for some sort of song based animation(s). Not sure what or how yet, but it will probably end up going there. The stuff that has been coming out of it so far has been really light, positive, and quirky. A lot of it has been inspired by the incredible environments of New Zealand and the experiences I had while I was there.

Are you taking a break from client driven work then? How do you think your experimentation crosses over into client generated work? Yes, I am taking a break from client-driven work for now. I had more than I was comfortable with last year and am trying to give myself a chance to make stuff that I really care about now. I make projects for myself and release them on Presstube, and then that personal work acts like a net to snare the interest of potential clients; then I get job offers. That seems to be the cycle. The best thing to do if I have no money is to make as much stuff for myself as I can and just forget about trying to directly get clients. It works much better to set bait with personal work and just let them come to me. That way the client projects I end up doing are based on personal work that I am really excited about instead of some diluted commercial Frankenstein that I made for someone else. That is why I post no commercial work on PT. Generally the only place to see a Presstube made TV spot is on TV and I kind of like it that way.

Your work has been showing up often in the art world this past year. What do you think or hope this next year (2007) will bring you? I would like to say goodbye once and for all to commercial work and just focus on self-initiated projects from now on. I hope this is the year I will be able do it, but who knows.

What is your greatest dream? That is a difficult question to answer; I adore my job and lifestyle and could hardly ask for more. Having a mini-ramp in my studio would be pretty good. Being as good a parent as my parents would also be high on the list.

Have you ever shopped for reptiles? Do you think that if you listen to heavy metal that your chance would be higher to own a reptile? I have never shopped for reptiles, but I used to frequent a reptile shop in an old neighborhood I lived in. They had a really good selection of strange creatures. It smelled really bad and I would try not to breath through my nose. One day it burnt down with all the animals in it though, which I thought was sad. Crispy! I do listen to heavy metal and I still haven’t bought a reptile, so my answer to that second question is no.

About James Paterson

James Paterson is a visual artist who also works as an illustrator, broadcast & web designer. Paterson’s unique synthesis of drawing, animation and programming have attracted the attention of a variety of galleries and clients worldwide. His personal and collaborative works have been shown at the London Design Museum, The London Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Pompidou Center in Paris, The Museum of Contemporary Arts in Taipei, The Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art, biforms in NYC, The Sundance Film festival, and The Israeli Art Museum. He has also done commercial work for clients such as Nike, Burton, Bjork, VH1, Deisel, HP, Apple, Sony & Target. Paterson’s work exist online at two primary sites: Presstube.com (his personal space), and Insertsilence.com (the space dedicated to his collaborative work with Amit Pitaru of Pitaru.com). James was born in England, but has been in Canada since 1988. He currently lives and works in Montreal.