The four-day week gets some press
Michael was recently asked to contribute to the discussion at The Punch about the merits of the four-long-day workweek. Read the article here.
Project: Touch-screens and listening stations
Recently the Icelab crew washed down cucumber sandwiches with Pimms and lemonade at the opening of the Stanley Melbourne Bruce exhibition at the National Archives of Australia. We were invited after having the pleasure of developing and installing four touchscreen interactives and three listening stations.
Project: Published Authors
Looking for a healthy, community-focused way to raise money for a good cause? Published Authors asked us to build them a website that allows users to submit recipes to their own community cookbooks.
The website’s administrative backend is central to Published Authors’ workflow. Cookbooks are exported as XML and used to populate and structure entire cookbooks in our specially constructed InDesign templates. The templates typeset every page, automatically placing title pages and building table of contents and index pages.
Beautifully printed cookbooks are then sold back to the community and Published Authors breathe a sigh of relief knowing that they didn’t have to copy-paste another entire cookbook.
Project: Audio on Demand
The National Museum of Australia asked us to help them re-build their Audio on Demand website, an evolving collection of lectures, forums and symposiums held at the NMA. A custom built back-end has dramatically improved the client’s workflow by organising their RSS and podcasting needs, their MP3 content (including ID3 data) and text transcripts. The new front-end experience includes a inline mp3 player, and much improved navigation and exploratory paths.
There are already over 100 programs and 3 gigabytes available for download or live listening. Go and listen to audio from scholars, story-tellers and curators on almost any subject; archaeology, architecture, history, evolution, exploration, migration, politics, war, sport and more.
Project: Crafting a design
Migratory Practices is the first issue of Craft Australia’s new journal Craft and Design Enquiry. We developed a logo and other printed promotional materials for the journal’s launch. The identity references range of media and processes that Craft Australia and CDE covers: the handmade, physical materials, as well as more formal design processes.
Project: Making a complaint in style
We’ve made making a complaint even easier with a new design and super-clean HTML/CSS templates for the Commonwealth Ombudsman and Postal Industry Ombudsman websites.
New site for Indigenous Community Volunteers
We’ve been working for a while with ICV, and it was great to be able to provide them with a new website. Clean design and sharp Symphony code from Nathan McGinness.
They’re good people, and there are lots of interesting volunteer projects available: have a look and see if anything catches your eye.
HOWZAT! Cricket interactive hits the net
Not content with having a Cricket touchscreen in the Australian Journeys gallery at the National Museum of Australia, we’ve downsampled, re-encoded and repurposed it for in those of you who prefer the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Clear your cache, install Flash and get into it.
Icelab feels the love at MAPDA Awards
The 2009 MAPDA Awards were good to Icelab this year, with two of our recent projects—Billy Hughes at War for Old Parliament House and the Crimson Thread of Kinship for the National Museum picking up Highly Commended in their respective categories. Yay!
Project: Eco Logical Australia
Eco Logical Australia, an Australia-wide environmental consultancy, asked us to redevelop their website in late 2008. With only a month to complete the project we put together a design that is clean and friendly; simple without succumbing to commonplace corporate styles. A tailored installation of the Symphony content management system allows their staff to manage all aspects of the site.
Notable features include: adaptive templates that transform the layout structure as the content grows and changes; and customised print layouts for all sections of the site.
We have signage
We moved into our new offices around 6 months ago, but until recently, like a exclusive club, there was no sign on the door: you needed to know the cool people to get in. Well, we’ve become more accessible, but the fact that it took three of us to put up a small vinyl sign indicates that while we’re pros at some things, at others, we are rank amateurs.
Project: What's on Your Mind?
Old Parliament House opens its doors as the Museum of Australian Democracy in May 2009. As part of the opening celebrations, they’re holding a debate on a topic to be chosen by the people. The site is bright (why choose one colour when you can have them all?), there are some nice JavaScript interface touches to the voting experience, and a Symphony backend for easy maintenance.
Project: Old Parliament House redevelopment
After almost a year in the pipeline we put the finishing touches on the new Old Parliament House site last week. The comprehensive redesign and development includes a highly customised content management system that allows OPH staff to administer all aspects of the site, including an events calendar, online exhibition content (both new and old), news and education programs.
Max’s design pays respect to the building’s rich heritage and gives the institution the flexibility to adapt into its upcoming new role, in which multimedia and technology will play a crucial part. The build utilises super clean and accessible xHTML/CSS, some subtle JavaScript and integrates with Old Parliament House’s expanding presence on Flickr.
Dorkbot exhibition, featuring Nathan and Michael doing stuff with Processing
Nathan and Michael both have works in the Dorkbot exhibition at Canberra Contemporary Art Space in Manuka this November. We’ll rustle up some images once they finish the artworks…
Icelab Highly Commended at McFarlane Prize
Great news: our recent project Billy Hughes at War won Highly Commended for the McFarlane Prize for excellence in Australian Web Design. Yay!
More Plasmas than You Can Shake a Stick At
Eight(!) plasmas, four laptops, 400 square metres of stage and a whole lotta Keynote: IDLS 2008 at Darling Harbour.
On location with the PM
Occasional Icelab collaborator Les Herstik shooting the powers that be for an upcoming video project.
Project: Adhami Pender Architecture
A long time in gestation, the new website for Adhami Pender Architecture features a custom CMS built in Symphony for site text and portfolio items. For users of advanced browsers, there’s some pretty tasty live-rendered background Flash animation. Nice buildings too: they’re lovely people who do good work.
Great new location, same old people
Come visit us at our new office at 3/1 Gordon St, Canberra City. We’re enjoying the natural sunlight and access to public transport, bicycle goodness and cafés. Oh, and the 25m lap pool, gym and sauna. And working extra-hard to pay the increased rent.
Icelab wins at PAGE awards
Our recent interactive for the National Museum of Australia, The Crimson Thread of Kinship just won the 2007 PAGE Award for Best Multimedia Production Over $5000.
As ever, when a job goes well it’s a combination of hard work, inspiration and a good client relationship. Go team!
AGDA Awards Get Photographic Love from Max
Max worked his booty off* last year with design goddess Jacinda Jackson on the Australian Graphic Designers Association awards audiovisuals (Michael came in at the last minute and helped out a bit to ensure he got an invite). Now the hard work’s paid off with some nice spreads in the Awards book. Check it.
*It’s just starting to grow back now. At last.
Design for thinking
People hire designers for different reasons. Design for selling a product. Design for selling the designer. Design for its own sake. We like doing design for thinking. We like finding graceful, intelligent and sometimes beautiful ways to present information and tell a story.
It’s about telling the truth, not trying to hide it behind a glossy facade. It’s about making complex ideas understandable without dumbing them down. That’s why we like working with people who put considerable effort into what’s being said—not just how to say it.
We’re media-agnostic: rather than come to a problem with a solution in mind, we work with you to find the right way to tell your story. It could be a website, a poster, or a video. Maybe a touchscreen interactive or a multimedia projection. You need it? We’ll build it.
Sounds like what you’re after? Email us, tweet us @icelab or call +61 2 6162 0241.
Designed by humans
Michael Honey
Max Wheeler
Karmin Cooper 
Tim Riley On our bookshelf
The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture
Great coffee-table book. I mean, it's the size of a coffee table. Are they trying to present the buildings as close to life-size as possible?
Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design
Michael Bierut writes, we read.
XS Green: Big Ideas, Small Buildings
Tiny buildings that make us happy. And the world too.
Design Like You Give a Damn
Low-cost projects from around the world providing shelter, health care, education, and access to clean water, energy, and sanitation. Do more with less.
Phaidon Design Classics
Essential 3-volume compendium of 999 industrially designed objects, in chronological order. Arrived in a box the size of a microwave.
Interesting
The right amount of complexity
"The problem is that while successful complex systems evolve from simple systems that work, not every simple system that works can support additional complexity. It’s not enough just to start simple, you have to start simple with a framework designed for future evolution and growth."
Ten Design Commandments
Dieter Rams, industrial designer for Vitsœ and Braun, lays down the laws.
Max Kerning
"When I look around, I see disorder in the world—needless chaos and messes. I sense panic and stress. In fact, I feel it myself. It rattles my soul and gives me a headache and a sourness of the stomach. This is because everywhere I am assaulted by sloppy text that is displeasing to the eye."
Small team, smart people
"I’ve seen it both ways. Working in a teams where the vast majority of the staff were multi-disciplined, and in teams where each section was clearly its own echo chamber to the point where it felt like the considerations of one team would always be ignored by the other. I can tell you that the former was not only infinitely more productive, but that the results were exponentially better."
Inventive Labs
Virginia came to visit recently. Props from one lab to another.
Unit 3/1, The Metropolitan,
1 Gordon St,
Canberra City ACT 2601 Australia
Telephone +61 2 6162 0241
Facsimile +61 2 6162 0242