THE magical persistence of the pixel...

As our company name suggests, we draw core principles from the graceful implimentation of beautiful and useful product design.
Making the complex and difficult seem effortless is the ultimate in style.
FORM & FUNCTION marks it's second decade developing IT systems, commercial disc media, RIA, iTV delivery systems, on-screen civic services, and international user interface development.

In the end... Form-follows-Fun!

Grand Central Server

Corporate logo development + site design

When New York's longest running internet service provider, www.PANIX.com, decided to re-purpose a superior technical expertise from public access to corporate data services, GCS sought a look that bespoke their fine edge and rugged durability. Our job was to develop a branded logo and modified the standard IT symbol of stacked disks 'tin can' db icon into a server- bladed high-tech tool designed to dismiss imperfection.
Likewise, we made an extremely lean fluid site design that mimics traditional desktop applications versus typical long-page web page layouts - like this one.

the CryptoRights Foundation

BIG BROTHER really IS watching YOU

BUT does the DEPARTMENT have the BUDGET to snoop on everyone?

In an age where every cell-phone & webcam is a potential real-time spy-piece and certainly a digital spoor-spewer, our linked lives are subject to scrutiny & control by ever-more secretive executive groups + security tools jabbing & piercing the fragile tissues of the body politic. Issues of Privacy and Freedom cut quiet, but deep:
Witnesseses and investigators to crimes are in danger when strongmen e-copy notes at border checkpoints or confiscate documentation gear at a crime scene. When our security system isn't {hijacked by foriegn powers, graft, etc}, then whistle-blower protection is as vital as white-blood cells.
OK, so 'THEY' may not be watching ALL of us ALL the time, but are certainly RECORDING everything for later REVIEW...

C A V E A T
we're not real heroes, we just gave CRF nicer brochures & pleasant web site

ImMIX

'VideoCube' + 'VideoSphere'

NON-LINEAR Video Editor GUI

Professional digital video composer for turnkey digital broadcast production for newsroom, any commercial editing bay or internal corporate departments.

Gold Disk 'Video Director Jr'

Astound 'Studio M'

PLUG & PLAY video playlists GUI

Video Jr - Consumer oriented videotape sequencer for hobbyist and family media production. Colorfully illustrated tools log tapes & help assemble clip-lists. Pass around a small VHS or Hi8 tape of family & activities instead of a box of partial tapes.

Studio M - Presentation slide and multimedia animation tool. F+F was asked to dramatically simplify the feature-heavy interface of their popular Astound! product to make it appealing to OEM manufacturer and others expressing interest in bundling this applicaiton their products.

United Pan-Global Communications

'DaVinci iTV rollout'

AMSTERDAM interactive television

Reverse-engineered the MicrosoftTV Server + Client software under clean-room procedures, lead team developing commercial strategies for both profit services and government functions for broadband InteractiveTV roll-out. Headed international design team working on multilingual interfaces. Of the competing developer groups only this system was finished & ready for deployment... even met criteria.

Telestream

'ClipMail Pro' + 'ClipMail Express'

TOUCH SCREEN User Interface

Soft-wear for an electronic appliance product designed for easy office-to-office transfer of professional-grade video and/or conversion of broadcast quality material into global formats {HD, PAL, NTSC, etc} while transferring to destination.

Form and Function

Wraptures & Page Overtures

VIRTUAL WORLD TOOLKIT - impeccable seamless texture libraries

A product line of smart-pixel tesselated images, from clever tile-able photographic patterns to the extra-deep bits & pixel fidelity sought by professional graphic artists and high-end desktop publishers.

"TEXTURES are the FONTS of the NINETIES "

Interactive Media Technologies

'VideoValet' + errata

EXECUTIVE Video Information System

Massive parallel multimedia control through microcomputer control of video databases: this example is a custom front-end for advertising executives when a hidden bank of rack mounted video gear was essential for presentation - a prelude lesson in managing a wide assortment of image and data streams becoming common today.

AND Communications

'Guernica'

HOW children TODAY via YESTERDAY...

Seminal interactive exploration of Picasso's art + life using a unique language embodied in tools to 'build' quieries by clicking on topics within an image... depending which tool was used triggered a visual database retrieved digital videos from a matrix of relations. What you find in every internet connected classroom today, but groundbreaking in the late 1980's.

ADAPTEC

'Toast 4.0'

RE-SKINNING an old favorite

Contracted to give a multi-resolution graphical style update, al a Apple's Bondi iMac to Toast and a growing family of personal data-massaging tools like iViewMultimedia, Spin Doctor, and others that never saw the light of day.

InterVideo Corel

'WinDVD 4'

Re-Skinning popular DVD software

We were invited to "go wild" with the visual, functional, and abstract concept of where playback device design could go... naturally, we pulled out the X-acto knifes and scalpals.
With a nod to timecode olde we stylified a button-crazy interface...

MediaVision Publishing

'Hard Drive'

CROSS-PLATFORM game based on techno-thriller novel

Time-ticking game of accelerating technical failures under growing computer virus attacks that reveal hidden social and financial breakdowns following the death of the lead programmer at your brand spanking new employer
- in conjunction with & based on the novel by David Pogue

Apple Computer

'System 7 and beyond...'

CORE TECHNOLOGIES the Simulations

Visualizing core technologies through solution specific prototyping.A series of faux applications explore several case studies of proposed OS-wide capabilities. Form and Function began a multi-year task of animating various technologies with detailed MacroMedia Director animations.

Sony

'Sony Buys Columbia'

Interactive Communications

Interactive press release effective and concise corporate communications by flooding the press with reams of quotes, libraries of data sheets and books worth of product beauty-shots. When an editor needs to fill a media void this provides rich content at the ready.

Infoscape

"Fresco"

IT User Interface Modeller

A Java-based intranet toolkit for enterprise development needed a rich set of visual language to connote the nuances of this field. The company did not survive the millennia-ending financial bust known as the Tech Bubble: further documentation on this minor project awaits unpacking.

MacroMind / MacroMedia / Adobe

'Media Content + example files'

Original Content + OEM Bundles = Publishing

Our close association with MacroMind, Paracomp, absorbing Authorware, unto MacroMedia beget Adobe... gave us a hand in the creation and improvement of many, many, products.

ColorDesk

'Copy'

Office Suite of Productivity mini-Programs

One design module from an office utility suite tying otherwise seperate office equipment, fax, printer, scanner, modem, into a unified small publishing operation and/or document processing system. This was a PC-only product with the associated color-range and other technical limitations of 1990's era.

RadiusTV

'a room w/many views'

Poor-Man's Virtual Reality

Roll-out presentation for RaduisTV television capture device featuring multiple advanced video and data capture inputs for video compression, control and display. Lingo scripts choreographed analog video through a Director movie simulating a 3D fly-through by flowing frame-by-frame animation output to laserdisc as source material. The demonstration focused on symbols, like a Desktop Toaster appliance, for addressing business & educational solutions.

Timogen

'Studio'

Enterprise intranet IT construction set

Interface additions for java-based website construction toolkit for corporate intranet and e-commerce systems during the dot-com peak.

Rose 'Mural' and other Trompe l'oeil

{work in progress}

Personal art projects ... 'gratis publis'

Before an entrepreneurial software career there was this wall, and I had all these paints. And then there were these flying dreams. Visions where I'm zooming through a cityscape like fish in an aquarium as I daub great curving arcs of paint across a city wired up for sound and crowds cheered me on....
Well, when one day {maybe it was a lucid dream} this one building looked awfully nifty, and I got to thinking...

And then...

DESIGNING with logic and intuition

Would we use elevators if manufacturers required us to punch a calculator to figure the number of stairsteps we travel vertically?
Imagine hanging industrial air conditioners off the Taj Mahal and you see where function-heavy thinking leads... to tears every time.

A memorable experience and targeted solution-centric design should be the goal of user interfaces that go almost unnoticed by the public. Our international crew of talented screen and communication designers address everything from Internet 2.0 RIA web sites, to wearable technology, to interactive television. The earlier any user experience designer can be inserted into your development process the better the outcome.

We create new ways to work and play.

INTERACTIVE
user interface design
multilingual interfaces
interactive content for broadband
iTV prototype development
handheld interfaces
information design
software work-flow evaluation
user experience feedback
UI mockups
application architecture design

LOGIC & CODE SKILLS
HTML/CSS/JavaScript
Flash & Flex2 ... and recently Apollo AIR
ActionScript & Lingo {even HyperTalk}
UserLand Frontier
Ruby on Rails {this very site}
Kaleida {Yes, we believed... and bought $1K tee-shirts}

COMMUNICATION
naming of things
corporate identity
brand identity
marketing campaigns
packaging design
collateral production
retail design
kiosk design
exhibit design

PRODUCT
fashion/culture
industrial design
human factors
functional/visual prototyping

additional timeline and skill details via History...

For Your Consideration...
Of the following themes... do any describe your project?

Marketing has a budget to immediately dress up the latest spawn to crawl out of engineering before collateral & manuals are committed to paper.

A stomach twisting deadline looms omminously close and you just lost graphic help... you think F+F's stuff looks great, but what about working all-hours for a few weeks?

We are about halfway through development and noticed a few logical cul-de-sacs and metaphor contradictions. We've been thinking about some user testing and a whole range of issues opened up..

We've decided on a strategic plan and the development team seeks outside expertise to generate interface designs and provide user experience feedback.

As you can imagine, putting the above in reverse-order has the most professional appeal and, frankly, likelihood of overall success. We believe in the "work smarter, not harder," approach to our tasks and declare greater client satisfaction when Form and Function is called earlier into their process than later.
Good design amortizes itself through avoided customer support calls, greater user satisfaction, the exhortations of free media by reviewers, and word of mouth recommendations by excited users. But this up-front problem-avoidance function requires a commitment of resources from within your company that may appear frivolous - at first.

Add up the number of topics in your project along with a laundry-list of features and you've got a rough sum of what a key part of your production budget will be. Years of client design reviews has taught us this and other useful tips to guide your project to completion.
We typically do man-hour bids rated according to the task outlined: call for an estimate. We will do fixed-bid arrangements, but based on a firm understanding of the scope of the job and provisions for compensation if review cycles draw out.

ADDENDUM: Youth and Vigor -vs- Experience and Guile
When using students for quality work calculate 6x-10x time above. Seriously.
For fresh graphic design graduates expect 3x-5x above budget.
This is the high cost of low wages and lack of experience: do you want to solve your problem with the incredibly long-lived pay-offs our designs have proven, or can you afford to not even ask what Form and Function asks for this service?

"a problem well stated is a problem half solved", - Charles Kettering