Design Guru is a design & development agency based in Somerset West, Cape Town. It was founded by Creative Director/CEO Jorge Brunner in 2007, and has grown from a single employee to a fully functioning team of 12. This group of talented individuals consists of a creative team of designers, a development team as well as a managerial team. Each of their creative staff offer an array of dynamic solutions and are prepared to work side by side with their clients to ensure that their visions are met. The team creates digital designs that engage their client base and evolve their brand communication. Some clients that have been acquired thus far include; PlayboySA, Riaan Manser, Triggerfish, Andrew Neethling, Hidden Pixel and GraySwan just to name a few.

In order to carry out these tasks, Design Guru finds itself comfortably situated within the CBD of Somerset West. The agency located within the Fairview Centre, has an eclectic mix of industrial rawness and clean modern surfaces. The exposed industrial sections create linear perspectives that compliment the clean white and black walls with a quirky juxtaposition. Wall art pieces, hints of vibrant colour and a closed off brainstorming and relaxation area ensure that the  environment has an inspiring and creative feel.

The open-plan office consists of three main sections: the entrance to reception where clients are welcomed and introduced, the main meeting room that doubles as a photographic area, and the team’s designated work area complete with a recreational section with couches, a foosball table and design inspiration magazines and books. The work area ensures that the Design Guru  team has an efficient environment to tackle the selection of tasks delegated and also a comfortable space to unwind and recharge the creative mind.

BandwidthBlog loves the iconic Banksy image on the door and splashes of bright colour.

Thanks to Design Guru for providing the photographs.

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As the mayor of New York (Michael Bloomberg) vowed to start coding along with 352 000+ other people, there is another trend brewing.

That trend is the decline of the need for technical proficiency due to increasingly cheap and powerful infrastructure. I am not saying that you will still need computer scientists solving difficult algorithmic problems. Millions of records in a database and the difficulty of scaling is still an issue. Serving fast pages and responsive designs is a big part of a great user experience and you can’t do that without having a technical person on your team.

The thing is, at some point, serving a website with bad quadratic algorithms will be equally fast (or negligibly so). With the current cheap architecture available such as Amazon’s EC2, AWS and Heroku, a lot of developers in the past can now run services that would’ve taken considerable effort a few years ago. The point has been surpassed where a developer can make a livelihood for themselves without the need for incredible technical knowledge and this trend is going to continue.

You can do more with less. Just look at Instagram. They are close to about 11 people (about 4 were hired during the past month) and have 15 million users. This is impressive and they are mainly using Amazon’s architecture.

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Japanese automaker Nissan has announced that it will be introducing a new line of self-repairing  “Nissan Scratch Shield” iPhone cases.

The case utilises the company’s pioneering special paint technology that enables them to repair themselves quickly once damaged. The self-healing paint finish, developed in 2005, has already been put to use on a number of Nissan Infiniti models.

Created by Nissan in collaboration with the University of Tokyo and Advanced Softmaterials Inc., the case that appears gel-like is crafted from ABS plastic which allows it to be highly flexible and assists with providing a better grip.

Nissan launched the case at an automotive event in Dubai and distributed some of them to a number of journalists and customers for beta testing. Should the case get a positive review and demand proves to be strong they will look into general sales at the end of this year.

Nissan has explained that “The outer ‘paint’ is made from polyrotaxane, which means that when damage occurs to the coating in the form of a fine scratch, the chemical structure is able to react to change back to its original shape and fill the gap – ‘healing’ the blemish.”

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You might have noticed that YouTube has officially rolled out its brand new design to all users that they began testing out in mid November. The re-design comes as the next step in an entire aesthetic change for Google having first launched Google+ as a social network rival for Facebook, followed by a revamped Gmail, Google Analytics and most recently the Google bar.

The search giant’s streaming video arm launched a total site overhaul with the aim of reshaping the entire media landscape around the concept of ‘the channel’. Until now, Google concedes that YouTube viewers haven’t seen the site as a destination for channels filled with varying content, but rather a place to view different videos found on the web. With the re-design Google intends for the YouTube audience to become a destination site for media. Instead of presenting a grid with random one-off videos, the front page features a feed running down the center of the site, that displays the top channels in a user’s stream. Every feed will look different, with selected channels based on YouTube recommendations and sitewide viewing trends, what a user’s friends are sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, as well as those channels specifically chosen by the viewers themselves. The overall design is cleaner and more streamlined.

The redesign and new layout also serves to enhance the experience of users discovering new content that interests them who may have previously found it difficult to navigate the millions of videos uploaded on the site in search of what they liked.  A.J. Crane, YouTube product manager explains that “we are trying to make everyone an effective programmer on YouTube.”

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After recently rolling out the new redesign for Gmail and Google Analytics in November, Google has released a video of their new navigation bar on their official blog as part of the next stage of their redesign. The Google bar will enable users to easily and simply navigate between services as well as share content on Google+.

The black horizontal bar at the top of the screen will now be replaced with a new Google menu that will drop-down from the Google logo.

Watch the video below:

The next web has reported that YouTube has begun testing some interesting redesigns that in addition to the updated overall look of the video sharing site, will be highlighting Google+ content. Typical of Google, who tend to conduct testing with a very small sample, the new redesign hasn’t yet rolled out to all users. There will also be an emphasis on user subscriptions which will keep users returning to specific channels and keep users watching while retaining viewer loyalty.

The YouTube redesign highlights include:

• A slight colour scheme tweak with a new gray background.
• YouTube’s favicon will also be replaced with an updated version.
• All homepage content will be displayed in a single column allowing a focus on larger preview images for videos.
• Improved Google+ integration will show off YouTube content your Circles have shared to Google+, letting you surf user-recommended videos from people you have something in common with and know.
• New left-column dashboard sorts your Subscriptions and more into easily-clickable sections.

LinkedIn recently announced on its official blog that it has unveiled a new statistics dashboard for groups so admins can gain insight into the growth, activity and demographics of their groups. The dashboard is available to every group on the business social networking site with relevant information about the group being delivered in an info-graphic type display.

LinkedIn Data Visualization Designer Anita Lillie explaines that “We’ve designed each info-graphic view to highlight the most important signals you’ll need to help you understand your group better.”

While all the information is summarised on the Group Statistics dashboard, it can be further divided into the three different areas: growth, activity and demographics.

The activity panel focusses and comments and discussion as well as recent job and promotion counts for the group. In the growth area, users can see how the group has grown over time and how many members the group has gained. The demographics view shows exactly who is in the group including location, position, seniority level and industry type.

LinkedIn has been placing a greater emphasis on its Groups feature recently and last week, the company announced that its members created more than 1 million groups.

Total Access Communication PCL, under the dtac brand,  is one of Thailand’s leading telecommunications firms. The company’s headquarters in Bangkok is home to 3, 200 employees and the company has ensured that all of them are inspired and excited by their daily surroundings. The design is aimed at communicating the brand’s business approach of “play and learn” and enables staff to enhance communication, increase creativity and react quickly to changing conditions.

Australian-based designer Hassell (who also designed the ANZ Centre in Melbourne) created a space that is open and flexible with natural wood, natural light and purpose-built spaces. The office has an indoor Funfloor equipped with an indoor soccer pitch, table tennis, running track and concert area. There is also an exquisite amphitheatre-like library where staff can research and work on their laptops. The many other available chill-out areas are to encourage face-to-face communication among staff members and customers.

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