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Journal. An evolving snapshot of the ideas taking shape within BB, spanning multiple industries, disciplines and work practices. Large part behind the scenes and work in progress.

What Are We Reading at BB?

Good design relies on a variety of well-sourced inspiration, and we like to keep a steady supply on hand. Specifically, we have a roster of publications to which we turn over and over again. As a fun exercise using Figma and Framer, our product designer put together a minisite with some of our studio's favourite titles.
  • Nathalie de Vallière
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Lovers Magazine: Ianthe Bato

Our Head of Product Design answers questions of daily routine and inspiration, touching on social housing design in Amsterdam, a personal website that records passages from her favourite books, and of course some notable projects from BB. Click through to read the interview in Lovers Magazine.
  • Ianthe Bato
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    Mouvo Conference

    Join us on Friday, March 1 at Prague's annual digital art conference, where graphic design, film, animation, and technology intersect. We’ll be talking about the role of metaphor, narrative and visual language in the field of AI.
    • Iris Cuppen
    • Amelie Dinh
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    Plant-Forward Foods in the Oslo Office

    What are we cooking at the BB Oslo office? In today’s environment, shaped by climate change, health epidemics and threats to biodiversity, we’re mindful of the meals we prepare every day for lunch. Here, our resident chef and office coordinator, Marianna, outlines her thoughts on a sustainable, plant-forward diet.
    • Marianna de Almeida Debelian
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    Sustainable Impact Estimation: A Journey from Custom Models to LLMs

    Our head of data science explores how NLP and advanced LLMs, like GPT-4, can extract insights from start-ups’ website data. By categorising company activities, aligning them with Sustainable Development Goals, and using a Theory of Change analysis, the software maps out a start-up’s impact.
    • Philipp Gross
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      Putting the Tech in Teaching

      How we used natural language processing to make Skrible, a tool that accurately detects and suggests improvements for a written text. Skrible easily connects teachers and students, providing an accessible and understandable framework for teachers to customise their teaching.
      • Bakken & Baeck
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        MLOps, DevOps, AIOps?

        What is MLOps and how does it tie into a machine learning development cycle? Here we take a look at a fast-growing field targeted at engineers and developers trying to operationalise all facets of machine learning development, the different tools available, and how we’ve deployed them in a recent project, AI Start.
        • Nico Lutz
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        Seminar: Tailor-Made AI Assistants

        Join our CTO, Gunnar Grimnes, for a seminar in Oslo on the applications and business value of tailor-made AI assistants, hosted by our partners at Frend on January 23. All are welcome but places are limited, and the seminar will be held in Norwegian. Click to register!
        • Gunnar Grimnes
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          AI Start: Building a Search Function

          AI Start is a joint initiative that includes Katapult, Seedstars, and Bakken & Bæck, with the goal of exploring the potential of AI in providing detailed analysis of early-stage start-up investments. The project seeks to encourage a more comprehensive outlook by considering a range of factors that impact the success of start-ups.
          • Nico Lutz
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          The Brand Identity

          Read the feature on our recent brand work for Helsinki-based climate tech company Carbo Culture. BB’s creative copywriter Callum Copley walks TBI through some of the key decisions in our design process.
          • Callum Copley
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            Sustainable Innovation: Towards a Circular Economy

            As a tech-driven design studio, we’ve heard the term “innovation” paired up with “sustainability” across many conversations and in various constellations. While the buzz around these words might overshadow their true purpose, we believe their combined meaning is, and should remain, relatively straightforward.
            • Callum Copley
            • Iris Cuppen
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            Visuelt

            Double gains at the 2023 Visuelt awards, with two projects winning gold: Seen, a collection of chats exploring the interplay between race, ethnicity and careers in the design industry, and Trall, a digital singing experience for children that preserves the country’s musical heritage.
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            Communicating Climate Tech

            Working with Carbo Culture on their brand identity and website, we were also thinking through the challenges of communicating climate tech more generally. How does it differ from communication in the broader tech and innovation fields? And how does the temporality and complexity of the climate crisis impact the narratives used?
            • Hanna Ojanen
            • Iris Cuppen
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            On Hype: A Reading List

            In preparation for G.O.A.T. — Talks on Hype, we closely observed the real-time hypes unfolding around us, while also diving into the wider discourse on hype as a political, social and economic force. From practical guides to comparative analyses, from economic perspectives to historical takes: here are some of the books and articles that shaped our thinking along the way.
            • Iris Cuppen
            • Amelie Dinh
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              A Look through the Window

              When we published our first research project, Machine Windows: Views from the Latent Space, we asked the question: how can we see more, not less, of the visual material that neural networks generate? How can we build a window onto the machine’s inner logic?
              • Mar Ginot Blanco
              • Philipp Gross
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              European Design Awards

              We’ve brought home gold from this year’s EDA! The website we designed for Pio earned its place in the promotional site category for its ‘elegant and intuitive user experience’. Features like the interactive Pio builder and savings calculator were the cherry on top.
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                Tailored Learning with Skrible

                We combined AI and pedagogy to create a groundbreaking writing tool for use in Norwegian schools. With the help of machine learning, Skrible continuously evaluates a student’s grammar and syntax, providing immediate feedback, while it also helps teachers to create assignments and personalise evaluation criteria.
                • Bakken & Bæck
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                Creative Review

                For their Future Issue, Creative Review asked our CDO, Daniël van der Winden, to weigh in on how design and future technologies can (hopefully) help us create a better, calmer relationship with our devices and their notifications.
                • Daniël van der Winden
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                  On Spatial Computing: Towards a New User Interface

                  With the advent of spatial computing, interfaces are rapidly changing from two-dimensional screens to virtual environments that address all our senses; beyond our eyes, ears, voice and fingertips. It’s time to embrace the physical space as a computational medium.
                  • Iris Cuppen
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                  Y+L Projects

                  Our head of research and strategy, Iris Cuppen, and head of contextual research, Amelie Dinh, share some insights into the role that explorative, self-initiated projects play in the long-term vision of BB, letting us dig into the bigger questions around emerging tech.
                  • Amelie Dinh
                  • Iris Cuppen
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                  UX: Designing with Words

                  You know the words you see on websites, apps and digital products? All the buttons, labels and affirmations? These seemingly tiny words are a crucial part of helping users effortlessly navigate digital services. It’s called UX writing, and is considered a fairly new discipline.
                  • Josefine Valle
                  • Lennard Kok
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