On my search for good news today I found a piece of source code to help me get a better read on the emotional state of the world. The people at Flaptor created a tool to reveal trends on the Twitter platform. Lots of fun to use and it updates automatically so you can check back here for your daily report.

When Voorsanger Architects approached us to redesign their website we were immediately intrigued by two things:

First of all, their unique architectural language is applied to a great variety of projects with an amazing consistency of style and a subtle instinct for the ‘genius loci’.

Secondly, Voorsanger Architects understand the importance of good photography as a main ingredient to communicate and market their work in the best way possible.

It was clear that the new web site’s most important characteristic would have to be to play up this equation. A full screen image is the base layer for each screen and navigational elements, and text content are added on top of it in semitransparent layers. The main navigation appears and disappears intuitively as the user’s focus shifts between browsing the main menu and exploring the content of a section or project. Each element only comes into play when it is necessary for the immediate logic of a user interaction.

Our friends at Valiant asked us to get involved in an international competition to design a logo and a collection bin for e-waste recycling. We designed the basic branding of Design The 4th Bin together with Mina Hatano and developed the website based on Wordpress.

Because we didn’t really want to create too much of a blog look and feel, we chose a Wordpress template that allowed for many static elements and tweaked it quite a bit. I wrote my first little Wordpress plug-in (customization of admin panel/ dashboard), we integrated PayPal payment for the sign-up fee and added some fields to the Wordpress user database which we use to manage contributers.

We hope we we’ll be able to contribute our share in addressing this huge ecological disaster which so far has not received the attention it deserves.

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UPDATE: Registration Deadline for the competition is June 19, 2009. For the project Valiant also teamed up with Per Scholas, The Architect’s Newspaper, Metropolis Magazine, Soho Reprographics, and Core 77, the New York City Department of Design and Construction, Studio Scott Henderson + MINT, and Ishida Crandall.