Museum Reset.

A monthly newsletter with fresh discoveries at the intersection
of technology, design and museums.

Artwork image of filming taking place inside a history museum.

Editor's Letter

Hello!

I hope you are all keeping well, with the current news cycle I’ll keep it short today. If you are looking to learn more about the current situation in Afghanistan I’d recommend this Guardian Today in Focus podcast episode and for the impact on artists, this open letter by director Sahraa Karimi is essential reading. If you are looking to make a donation we’ve supported Women for Afghan Women here and ActionAid’s Haiti emergency appeal here.

If you’re interested in thinking about how your museum or gallery could work with refugees and migrants I’d also recommend this piece from Museum Next.

Now onto our August roundup of tools, sites and think pieces the Smartify team have enjoyed. Recommendations this month from our very own Head of Design, Helen Arvanitopoulos.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Anna Lowe
Smartify CoFounder

Apps, tools and sites

Human Hotel - Instead of choosing your holiday accommodation purely based on place, Human Hotel invites you to stay with individuals. Why not stay with an artist, a journalist or a scientist? They even have a dedicated section for the upcoming COP26 in Glasgow, encouraging people to ‘host a climate justice guest’.

Travel Remotely - Desperate to get away? This delightful project lets you pick a city, a method of transport (walk, car, train), a time of the day and a radio station, and then virtually invites you to explore that place. Internet at its best.

Font Share - Free quality fonts. A catalogue with currently 52 beautiful “professional-grade fonts that are 100% free for personal and commercial use”, created by Indian Type Foundry.

Hello, Goodbye - Great name for a pop-up blocker. Once installed, ‘Hello, Goodbye’ blocks annoying chat windows such as the ones from Intercom, Zendesk, Help Scout, and many others.

Black Highlighter (iOS) - A tool to hide text in screenshots or images you’re going to share on social. Hide people’s names, e-mail addresses, and more with just the swipe of a finger.

Five recommendations
from Helen Arvanitopoulos, Head of Design at Smartify

An Instagram account worth following..............................

yatzer - I've loved this site since it began many years ago. Amazing inspiration featuring design, architecture and great artists/artwork you may not come across and the imagery is just fantastic.

A newsletter worth subscribing to .........................................

I love Mr. Porter which is a men's fashion brand. Their newsletter delivers information outside of men's fashion - carefully curated content about travel, tech, food and of course fashion that anyone can immerse themselves in with beautiful writing.

A book worth reading.................................

Glennon Doyle - Untamed - a book any woman can relate to. About beginning to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, honour ourselves and unleash our truest and wildest instincts in becoming the women we are.

A podcast worth listening to .........................................

Armchair Expert with Dax Shephard ... I just love his raw honesty when talking about the messiness of being a human with weekly celebrities who really get vulnerable and share their stories.

A phrase worth knowing ...............................

"Courage is knowing what not to fear" - Plato

Helen Arvanitopoulos is Head of Design at Smartify. Inspired by humans, data and digital, Helen loves creating experiences that are a valuable addition to people’s lives.

Tweet of the month

"One of the best pieces of advice was from my Year Two teacher, on how to draw a bicycle: "Spend twice as much time _looking_ at it than drawing it".

I apply that to so many areas. More time listening than talking. More observing than doing. The outcome will always be better."

Anna Debenham @anna_debenham Jul 02, 2019

Food for thought

Future Art Ecosystems from The Serpentine

The second annual strategic report from the R&D team at The Serpentine contains lots of interesting concepts like the ‘UX of art’ and reiterates the need for pan-institutional collaboration.

Augmented Reality Is Coming for Your Ears, Too

I enjoy articles about the future of immersive audio for Augmented Reality. If we are really serious about delivering the best possible on-site visitor experiences, audio will always be equally important (if not more important!) than video and visual AR.

Creating A Space Game

A Jaw-dropping demonstration of an artificial intelligence application for turning plain-English instructions into animations and video games. Silent video, with captions.

How can we help you?

Smartify is the world’s most used museum app (and web app!). We'd love to help you deliver and monetise tours, classes and OnDemand video across multiple channels.

Here's 3 reasons to get in touch:

1. You want to offer a mobile guide via the Smartify platform.
2. You want to talk to us about content production: video, audio, animations, online courses, AR, games.
3. You want to talk to us about content strategy or format development for on-site and online experiences.

We do other things too. To learn more and get in touch, visit https://about.smartify.org.

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