Choosing the right colors for a product is not an easy task, what usually happens is that a designer also doesn’t have enough time left to experiment with color because he spent it all on finding the perfect shape and solving out all technical requirements.

That’s were design combinatorics can come in. Dr woohoo, an artist based in the USA has post a video demonstrating a way of generating numerous color combinations from a given design concept. He is using the new capabilities of creating flash plugins to interact with applications like adobe illustrator CS4 through the use of ActionScript, a scripting language used primarily for the development dynamic websites on Flash.

Apparel Combinatorics from dr woohoo on Vimeo.

In this video, Dr. Woohoo demonstrates a little application that generates color and stroke variations on a vector rendering of an Adidas shoe. In the video, we can see that the application automatically exports jpeg files of an enormous amount of color variations of the design. How cool is that!? As you can see in the video, the amount of generated combinations is huge, so a new challenge arises, which is, having to sweep through the thousands of combinations to pick the ones you want. But anyway, having an app doing the color combinations and afterwards having you to pick the most interesting results can be a nice way to speed up the design process and to even surprise yourself.

I did a little research to find out how he made this little app, and by now I would guess that his combinatoric application was made possible through the new “PatchPanel technology” Adobe is releasing on their developer website:

“PatchPanel is a Flex library and set of services that make it possible for Shockwave® Flash® (SWF) files to work as Adobe Creative Suite CS3 and CS4 plug-ins. Flex developers can include this Flex library in their projects in order to create Flash plug-ins that access the ExtendScript Document Object Model (DOM) of Creative Suite applications through ActionScript objects.”

I was totally excited to see something I always wanted to have as a designer shine in front of my eyes. Let’s hope Dr. Woohoo brings more info on how to implement this.

And of course we totally dig the “evolutionary mindset” taking over the field of “design tools”. What about you? Do you have any wish for a “combinatoric” design application? What about automatically generating renderings out of CAD software like Maya or Cinema 4D? Those used on spending hours and hours tweaking light and material parameters for rendering 3D models in such programs know how nice it would be to have some “Charles Darwin twist to it”.

Render probes in Cinema 4D - Could finding the right light setting be easier?

For example, design combinatorics could have been of great use in the renderings of the folha seca skateboard. The image above shows a little overview on the rendering attempts in Cinema 4D before getting the right light and shadow results. It took me almost 3 hours..could it have been faster using design combinatorics to auto generate light, shadow, and material settings overnight and to have some options to choose from in the next morning? I wish..

With Adobe having bought Macromedia, we are seeing the merge of the capabilities of flash and its Creative Suite Softwares. As of in generative design, the combination of mathematical algorithms in the design process is opening up a whole new set of possibilities for designers and artists to express their creativity. Lets just hope that other design software companies will follow.

I am experimenting with the concept of Widgets which lets you take peaces of webcode from PLACE A and embed in PLACE B on the web. A common use of it: An embed youtube video on a Blog makes use of an Widget to do it.

My interest on widgets grew by believing that with the simplification of communication technologies on the web, users are actively reshaping media and forming opinion, more than ever before.

With the growing need of customizing the experience on the internet, a number of services emerged to make it possible for people to personalize their web experience. Netvibes and Igoogle are two examples. With them you can make a personalized Start Page with all the relevant information to you (weather, to do lists, Email Inbox, you name it…)

What is the relevance for open design and development?

In a real-time integrated design platform, widgets enable the flow of information without having to rely on centralized decisions. Widgets make it possible to quickly spread ideas and to communicate project updates through whatever platform or website one wants.

Imagine you have a small bike factory in your garage, and you are developing a new concept for a bike frame and you have chosen to “Open Design it”, like we are doing in the ecosk8 project, you are openly talking about our ideas before they become reality. You came up with new geometry concept that’s going to sweep 3 seconds out every rider’s downhill time a the local Downhill track, and for this frame geometry the special aluminum tubing that can handle the curving of this new geometryis just not available any where you look. A widget could be used, containing information like that, to spread the word for you on different suppliers websites.

Now imagine this same small bike factory and it’s team of 3 Amateur riders. Every one of them having a blog or myspace page where they publish their latest results, photos and tips. Doing the widget thing you could easily embed their blogs onto your factory website and vice-versa. Boom! evolution.

Think of this now:

Every time the rider puts up on his blog, a picture of him, on the podium, wearing your brand’s t-shirt, the picture shines on your website, and he gets a reward! Sponsoring on demand?

Brand, your next factory bike video needs a new sound track!? Boom! Click Click and the whole myspace community knows about it!

Of course Letsevo Lab couldn’t sleep a night to figure out how to have its own Blog widget. I’m no programmer (I wish I was) but looking around I found out that there are some platforms that enable we, the people, to easily create a widget for your Blog. Here are some of them: SpringWidgets, WidgetBox and Yourminis.

Using Widgetbox I made what can be proudly called the Beta Version of Letsevo’s “wherever you want it to be” widget.

Letsevo Widget on my Netvibes Page

Lets Evo Widget on my Igoogle Page

Those brave enough to give it a shot can do so by going to: http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/lets-evo-blog
and placing it where ever they want! Feedbacks are welcome!

Since last year, I have been researching about nastic movements in Plants and their ability to serve as models for products that will change form in order to adapt to different situations. Some of this studies I did were showed during lectures I did in Brazil last year.

While trying to find more about the functional anatomy of such plants, like the Mimosa for example, I logged on to what is claimed to be the largest collection on writings by and from Charles Darwin. I was wondering if he had, at that time, written about the Mimosa or other “nastic plants”.

Interestingly, Charles has written about the Mimosa in some of his diary entrances, written in Rio de Janeiro, on the Autum of 1832. It was nothing really technical or anything related to it’s functional morphology but I was left wondering…. If Charles Darwin had a Blog…who would he have linked in his Blogroll.

Jacksonpollock.org, a tribute to one of the great painters of the last century and a possible way of creating graphics on demand for your next piece of wear. This one was done by Vanessa and me. Could be the graphics for my next backpack….

Hope the textile industry follows…