Google Archives | Moss and Fog

3D

Google’s Project Starline Creates Stunning, Next Level Video Conferencing

January 24, 2022 3D

For those of you that spend a lot of your days on Zoom calls, you can attest to the fact that they don’t look or feel especially realistic. Indeed, the low-res camera on your laptop and bad lighting that often accompanies home offices make for very bad video calls.

Google wants to change that, and they have a very impressive prototype to demonstrate it. Known as Project Starline, the technology uses 3D imaging, a super hi-res 8K screen, four GPUs, four microphones, and a whole lot of cameras.

All of that technology comes together to create an experience that makes a user seem like they’re talking to someone through a pane of crystal clear glass. The video below gives users a sample of the experience, and it really does look impressive. The level of detail and presence is leaps and bounds better than today’s video conferencing.

This is still a prototype, and who knows how scaleable this technology might be. But it’s a fascinating look into the near future of teleconferencing, and the ways we may be connecting in a few years. Via The Verge:

Animals

Social Decay by Andrei Lacatusu

January 4, 2018 Animals

Social Decay Moss and Fog — A great play on words, this series shows social network company logos in aged detail.

With young companies like Google, Facebook and Pinterest, it’s easy to always picture them in clean, glossy, fresh context. That’s why we’re intrigued by Andrei Lacatusu‘s “Social Decay”, which showcases these famous logos digitally rendered to look old, rotten, and decayed. His level of detail and artistry is really impressive, showcasing rusty, broken down signage, missing letters, and weather-worn marquees.

Something fascinating happens when a bright and shiny logo is seen out of context, and more in the light of an old, Route 66-like marquee. It begins to have more of a story, more of a lived-in feel. While this might just be an exercise in beautiful digital rendering, we think Lacatusu’s work is poignant, timely, and thought-provoking. Via Behance:

Art

Flying Cars of Yesteryear

December 26, 2017 Art

What if? What if we had been driving flying cars all along? Renaud Marion has a series of images that show vintage cars in ‘float mode’, parked casually on the streets. His series shows a classic collection of cars, all lovingly photoshopped to remove the wheels. A floating future would be sexy, indeed.

“Our dreams of today are the reality of tomorrow,” says Marion.

Via Wired:

Animated GIF

Micaël Reynaud’s GIF’t

June 19, 2014 Animated GIF

Considered one of the masters of Animated GIFs, Micaël Reynaud is able to take small moments and make them huge. Here are just a couple. Check out his Google + page to see all of his amazing GIFs.
Award Winning GIFs by Micaël Reynaud Warp Space and Time gifs animation

Award Winning GIFs by Micaël Reynaud Warp Space and Time gifs animation

Branding/Identity

The Moto 360 Gets the Smartwatch Form Factor Right

March 18, 2014 Branding/Identity

The first shot fired in the smart watch war was either the Pebble or the pseudo-smart iPod Nano in a watch band. Since then, a number of companies have attempted some very interesting and lame entrants, few of which have caught on with any kind of vigor. Lately though, as rumors of a fully-fledged Apple iWatch heat up, the biggies of the tech world are starting to invest in their own ‘watches of the future.’ The latest, announced this week, is the Moto 360, utilizing the just-released Google Wear software. Unlike nearly all of the competition, the Moto 360 is elegant, thoughtful, and actually looks like a watch you want to strap on.

As a designer, I immediately gravitate toward the Moto 360’s form factor, which has been around for centuries, and looks classic on the wrist. Indeed, I imagine there are some designers at Apple this week that are pretty pissed that Motorola got here first. Understated, versus the chunky, often ghastly industrial design of those other smart watches, the Moto 360 eschews things like cameras and visible sensors, which in 2014, takes some real restraint.

The watch is too new to be reviewed, but it relies heavily on Google Now, which is entirely voice-driven, similar to Siri. Part of me hates the idea of always barking commands at my wrist, but we’ll see how the watch operates, and how intuitive the software really is. I’m also very curious to know how a circular LCD is created. Nice work, Motorola. You deserve a slap on the wrist…

Art

Google Glass Goes Vogue

August 26, 2013 Art

Most of us aren’t of the means to buy boutique, $3200 sweaters and jackets. But it’s fun to see high fashion in artsy, glossy spreads like Vogue. This month, they did a big fashion spread featuring strange retro-futuristic models on a Mars-like landscape wearing Google Glass. It’s both a bit tongue-in-cheek and forward-looking. Via FastCo Design:

Architecture

Red Ball

July 19, 2012 Architecture

Via Colossal:

This summer, New York artist Kurt Perschke brought his famous RedBall project to the UK for the first time, installing his massive inflatable red ball in a total of 20 sites around the country. Photos of the public installations flooded the news and photo sharing sites like Flickr and Instagram, and I tried to live vicariously through them and imagine what it might be like to stand in the completely transformed spaces inhabited by this giant red sphere. Lucky for us filmmaker Danny Cooke was on hand during the entire RedBall UK trip and edited together this fantastic timelapse of the installation as it moved from location to location around the country. I recommend sitting back and watching it much larger for the full effect.

Kurt Perschke’s RedBall UK from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.

Design

Google’s Project Glass

April 5, 2012 Design

Google seems to be bringing us one step closer to that Cyborg future…

We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t.

A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.

Please follow along as we share some of our ideas and stories. We’d love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?

Nature

Beautiful Storm Photography by Mitch Dobrowner

December 9, 2011 Nature

Storms. Giant thunderclouds, ominous skies and that spooky, electrically-charged air before all hell breaks loose. That’s the kind of scene that photographer Mitch Dobrowner can capture in an elegance we’ve never seen before. His compositions are gorgeously calming , despite their kinetic foretelling.

Dobrowner’s portfolio is packed, and each and every one is a stunner. We would love to see his work printed wall-size. And beyond just capturing storms, he has an amazing ability to photograph craggly landscapes and barren nature in an almost dreamlike way. The blacks and whites ooze off the screen.