This is the second year we have visited the exhibition and thought we would share some of our favorite pieces from this years show.

Green Protest Suit, UK

“Mullins has created the Protest Suit, whereby applying HollyWood Green Screen to the felt suit implies that it can display political messages when filmed. Therefore, by wearing the suit within the borders of what would normally be regarded as cut-off limits for displaying political messages, this suit can convey any form of communication when filmed”.

Jar Tops, Holland

“These are a simple but ingenious way of transforming ordinary empty jars into functional products. There are five variations allowing the creation of a milk jog, sauce jug, sugar shaker, oil/vinegar pourer or chocolate/herb shaker. The tops are made to fit jars designed using the ‘Twist Off’ standard, and international standard that is used for food jars with metal or plastic screw caps and can be recognised by two or more screw thread ridges on the neck of the jar”.

Workit Office System, Switzerland

“Individual work stations can be expanded as desired and flexibly combined with one another, where the accessible price range of the system is in part also the result of the design concept and product philosophy”.

Aesop Retail Stores and Branding, Australia

“The retail display units at the store on Flinders Lane, Melbourne were entirely constructued from the cardboard packaging, 3000 cardboard boxes in total, used to distribute and ship the Aesop products”.

Appeel, Germany

Described as,

“A virus spreaing through interacting individuals”, Appeel demonstrates the basic principles of interactivity largely reliant on the behaviour of the user. A surface is covered by a large number of coloured stickers, positioned in a grid. People are invited to remove the stickers, leaving white dots in the layout, as a result individually and collectively changing the walls appearance”.

Music video for Radiohead House of Cards, UK

“A ground breaking technique is employed in which no cameras or lights are used. Instead the three dimensional images are captured using scanners which use two types of technology. The first being Geometric Informatics, where scanning thechniques produce structured light to capture three dimensional images at close proximity…the second technology is Velodyne LIDAR, a system that uses multiple lasers to capture larger environments”.

So if you haven’t been aleady, pop along! The exhibition runs until 14th June 09.

Agenda:

• Does Education for Industry start early enough?
• Are Industry focused portfolios boring portfolios?
• Is there value in work placements?
• Are technical skills valued over creative thinking?
• What are the roles & responsibilities of employers in Education?

Attendees:

Universities, third year students, graduates, recruitment agencies, journalists such as Design Week and an industry panel including Bulletproof Design, Waitrose, Futurebrand and of course toggle!

The event takes place at the New Designers Exhibition on the 10th July 2008. The New Designers is a (free entry) showcase of this years graduate talent.

Come and join the debate!

All we knew was that this was a chance to see some innovative ideas and hear talks from the likes of Bob Geldof, Tim Berners-Lee and the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. (Other great reasons to visit included free food and a great chance to meet new people…)

We can now safely say (with the help of the Nesta website) that…”Nesta is the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts – a unique and independent body with a mission to make the UK more innovative. They offer investment in early-stage companies, inform and shape policy, and deliver practical programmes that inspire others to solve the big challenges of the future.”

The two underlying themes we took away from the event were:

1. We need to innovate in a way that is positive to the global community, solving issues such as climate change, poverty, health and debt. To do this we must work collaboratively across the globe.

2. We need to make money to strengthen our local economies and place the UK at the forefront of innovation.

The real shame is that this seemed to be presented as two conflicting goals… Is it not possible to innovate, solve global issues and at the same time make some money?

Here at toggle we might be a long way from solving any major global issues, but we’re doing what we can. We’re promoting open source development and helping people get online through Pixie. This is a free project that we have spent a great deal of time developing. While it won’t solve world poverty any time soon, it will enable people to promote positive causes through the web for free.

Parallel to this we are experimenting with different business models alongside running what I would call a “normal” creative services company: client -> project -> fixed cost -> deadline -> complete.

Mix all these things together and I think we are stepping towards the right way to run a modern business. We still have long way to go, and a great deal to learn. Finding the balance between free, value and the necessity to make money is extremely difficult.

Looking back on the day I think we felt the morning talks from Bob Geldof and Tim Berners-Lee were the highlights of the day. Bob in particular was very inspiring. In the afternoon we headed into separate “expert seminars” which I felt were lacking in content and a little out of date. On the whole though a very interesting day and well worth the visit.

To promote Pixie, we decided to create a limited number of pre-realease Pixie cd’s (400) to give out at Internet World starting on 29th April. For those not familiar: Internet World is a free digital business trade show held annually at Earls Court. If you are heading to Internet World, look out for us and you can grab a copy of Pixie early!

The cds are all homemade in the toggle office and were put together over 3 days. We decided to keep the cd’s very simple and used ejector cases with rectangular labels for the packaging. Here are some photos from the production line…

You can find more photos on Flickr.