Brendan Dawes
The Art of Form and Code

That Was The Week That Was — 7th April 2019

Whilst waiting in a car park I was checking Instagram when I saw that little red dot appear in the top right corner — the one that says you have a direct message. On opening it up I read it was from someone I met a few years ago at an interaction design conference in New York where I was giving one of the keynotes. They were asking if I was interested in talking about a new work prospect and after a call the next day it turns out I happen to be in the city in the states where their office is in a couple of weeks. Funny how the Universe can transpire to make these things happen.

Talking of social media, I tweeted about the typeface used on the poster that comes with Notes to Myself, using the hashtag #fontsunday, something which the Design Museum account originally started I believe. They then retweeted it to their 4.3 million followers. Now not for the first time I find myself being tweeted by an account with millions of followers only for it to have no impact whatsoever. It really makes me think that the majority of these followers are even dormant accounts or bots. I've had much better engagement from accounts with much less but the quality is much better.

I'm a big advocate for putting ideas and things into the world as you just never know where it will take you. One such thing I made years ago is The Happiness Machine, which since its first appearance has gone on to be featured in various art exhibitions as well as garnering two client pieces of work. More recently I've been asked to quote for a custom build for a project in Dubai. This time however I'm looking to make this version use cellular data rather than wifi as there would be need to enter wifi passwords and the like — it will just connect to the nearest 3G network. I'm also having to think about the backend system as well as building in redundancy — what if the network goes down and is now longer available — what messages does the machine serve?