As the designbus camps out at the beaches of san francisco, I had tons of phone calls to make and a lot of cyber huts to download from. My first contact was Cameron Cambell from Movedesign. Quickly learning the san fran public transportation system, I was on two buses taking me into the mission district. After getting off at the wrong stop, I walked about 15 blocks to a funky brown outboard motor repair shop where movedesign resides.

Cameron is the marketing / buisness development / " ultimate bullshitter" / art historian expert for movedesign. Movedesign is a playful design co. that specializes in web / graphics / interface and motion design, working on projects such as the interactive display for the Nike Triex 15 watch to the 2000 Interactive Design Review for ID. Their two
story studio consisted of; a number of pc/mac highpowered cpu's / accompanied by a few laptops / flat screen monitors on some desktops / t.v. monitors / a sony playstation 1 and 2 (with a variety of games) / video equipment / printers scattered throughout the space / library of magazines / streams of wires flowing to the next computer and still
there was a lot of space. As a few designers worked, chatted, and laughed freely...one was locked on his monitor; hooked in with headphones and video equipment. They showed me around the studio and booted up some of their work. Soon enough, I was blown away by some incredible digital motion graphics. Crazy, fresh, sharp, and technical motion graphics. Their work is really tight and fun, and display mad skills! I can see why they work with a lot of industrial design firms collaborating on web / graphics / interface. One of the issues cameron brought up, when dealing with companies who are looking for designs, is: ignoring quality for cheapness. And with the web and technological boom (where everyone and their mother is capable of creating some sort of website), its become more competitive.

Something that totally kicks ass (by movedesign):
www.theremediproject.com/projects/issue10/movengen/index.html
The n_Gen® Design Machine is a rapid prototyping graphic design engine that
automatically generates savable graphic files from a combination of a) the user's own text content and b) Design Modules - External ‘style files’ that supply the Recipes (design algorithms, formulas, rule sets) and Ingredients (layouts, imagery, type, color palettes, etc.) that define a particular style.

After being amazed by the work of Movedesign, cameron took me to a coffee shop and we began to chat. From the minute we sat down, the names and companies she was downloading to me didnt stop! She knew everybody in the san fran area, from web, graphics, to product.

I left Movedesign with a printout of contacts in the san fran area ranging from IDEO, designRAW, newdealdesign, fuseproject, lunar, philips, and many more! As I left Movedesign, I wondered how am I going to get to all of these people? Its getting HUGE! Now, who do I call first? ....and what bus did i take to get here?
posted by james farran on 1:10 PM