By Alice Vincent, Wired UK
One Smart ForTwo, two days, 150 tweets and several Sharpies combined in a collaborative view of the future and the inventions, improvements and bizarre events that come with it.
Smart asked the twittersphere to compress its visions of the future into 140 characters or less, then had illustrator Johanna Basford draw them on a shiny white Smart ForTwo.
[partner id="wireduk"]Suggestions appeared to mainly focus on beverages, from @beanie's "automatic gin and tonic maker that is ready and waiting when you get home" to the suggestion of "a walking teapot that follows you and gives you a drink" @mrdouglaswood would like to see. There were some transport-related suggestions, including commute-orientated rollercoasters and hover beds.
"It seems a lot of people were concerned with how we'd all get from A to B in future," Basford told us.
The compacted nature of Twitter and the miniature size of the ForTwo reflected itself in the attitude Basford had to adopt to draw the tweets.
"I had to try and imagine how [the inventions] might work, then really quickly sketch that out," she said. "There's not much time for procrastination. I like the challenge of thinking on the spot and coming up with a simple, yet clear way to draw things."
What does the future according to Twitter look like?
"A world that's pretty crazy, full of bizarre inventions and the odd dog-walking robot," she said.
According to the #smartpic tweets, the future involves humans living in space, a complete shift to renewable energy and Scotland winning the World Cup." Basford adds, "some things are easier to imagine than others!"
Being faced with having to draw these fantastic ideas, however, brought its own pressure: "the unicorn winning a marathon in under two hours proved particularly troublesome. I find horses hard to draw at the best of times, never mind when it's on the side of a car, with hundreds of people watching and with a pen you know you can't rub out."
Photo: Smart. Check out more closeups of the car over at Wired UK.
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