“It’s not important to develop your own style but your own *approach*!” – Massimo Vignelli
(From tonight’s fantastic TDC Night of the Italians)
Massimo Vignelli on Style
A Day at the Office
(Burks sent this video to our entire studio, saying, we’ll all do this tomorrow, when swiss tv will be filming. Oh, and they said they’ll be wearing sweat pants! Ha! How much do I love my studio mates?!)
Shopping Losts
Simon Attwater turns lost shopping lists into typographical treats. Lovely idea.
Cardboard Twin Lens Reflex Camera Time Lapse
Time Lapse Video of Kiel Johnson’s Cardboard Sculpture of a Twin Lens Reflex Camera made strictly from cardboard, hot glue, and tape. Later they made the sculpture into a pinhole camera and actually took photos with it.
Pigs might fly
Pigs might fly/quand les poules auront des dents (when chicken got teeth). The idea associates the two idioms, in french and english, which mean the same thing: ‘it will never happen’. A personal project by Claire Fauché for Eurostar.
Domsai Terrarium
Meet the Domsai! Matteo Cibic—a multi-threat creative director for architecture, design and ad brands—describes his little guys as a kind of tamagotchi for our desk or side table. Unlike those pedestrian technical toys that require “feeding,” the Domsai is high design and beautiful and actually requires a bit of water and sunlight. User interaction is a hallmark of Matteo’s work. Produced in the tiny Northern Italian commune of Nove, a hot bed of ceramics, these anthropomorphic planters are all one of a kind because no two are exactly the same: They are hand cast and mouth blown…so forms vary slightly with each Domsai.
Invisible Dogs | Improv Everywhere
For their latest Improv Everywhere Mission, over 2,000 people walked “invisible dogs” down the streets of Brooklyn on a Sunday afternoon. The leashes were on loan from the current owner of 51 Bergen Street, the factory space where the invisible dog toy was invented in the 1970s. Participants of all ages spread out from Red Hook to Brooklyn Heights, very seriously walking their very silly dogs.
In had the pleasure to meet with Lucien Zayan and get a personal tour of the Invisible Dog Art Space on Bergen street. It’s impressive what he is turning this big beautiful building into. His enthusiasm and vision are contagious. And I am happy to announce that Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere will be our CreativeMornings speaker in December. Yay!
pS: Our studio is now a proud owner of an invisible dog. I take him out for walks over lunch. If you’re in DUMBO and see me walk my little four legged pal, don’t hesitate to come up and say hi.
The Working Proof
Anna Corpron and Sean Auyeung of Sub-Studio launched a new site this morning called the Working Proof. It is an online print gallery and shop with the mission of promoting both art and social responsibility through a series of limited-edition prints.
Prints are affordable (always under $100), and each print is paired by the artist with a charity to which they will donate 15% of each sale – creating what they believe to be a product with not just aesthetic, but social value. Their charities support a wide range of causes including humanitarian outreach, animal rights, environment, and research.
Their first print, Burden by Samantha Hahn, is simply lovely.
Consistent PNG quality across browsers
Here’s a helpful tip I got from my friend Olivier on how to save out your png’s to guarantee a consistent color/saturation quality across all browsers:
– in Photoshop, turn on proof colors (view -> proof colors)
– make sure your proof setup is set to “monitor rgb” (view -> proof setup -> monitor rgb)
– when you save for web, make sure you do 24 bit png, interlacing OFF, and uncheck convert to srgb
Voila.
Hillman Curtis DVD Collection
Hillman Curtis just launched his store site where one of the items he is selling is a DVD Collection beautifully packaged in a design by James Victore. It consists of Hillman’s 10 Artist Series Films and 9 Short Films. What a great gift!
iRetroPhone
The iRetroPhone iPhone App made me smile.
Isamu Noguchi’s Playscapes
My friend Jen had the opportunity to discover and play on the grounds of Isamu Noguchi’s Playscapes over the weekend. Here are some pictures she took. Beautiful, no?
Sony Soundville Campaign
New Sony Soundville campaign by “Cadbury Gorilla” creator Juan Cabral. In March 2009 a small town in Iceland was filled with speakers and music from the likes of Death In Vegas, Bob Dylan and the Guillemots. The Seydisfjordur village was turned into an extraordinary sound-system for a week. The objective of the brand is inviting people to believe in experience superior sound and promote the latest audio technologies from Sony, offering an experience never before experienced.
(via bblinks)
Eric Sanderson pictures New York — before the City
400 years after Hudson found New York harbor, Eric Sanderson shares how he made a 3D map of Mannahatta’s fascinating pre-city ecology of hills, rivers, wildlife — accurate down to the block — when Times Square was a wetland and you couldn’t get delivery.
Poem Cup
Working around the clock, cell phones in the middle of the night, googling this and that. How do we reconcile our physical needs with our virtual bodies? Katarina Häll’s graduation project is a comment on a world spinning faster and faster. The Poem cup offers a moment of reflection, a meditative break in the rush of everyday life.
Lunch Skins
While visiting Portland OR my friend Jen took me to the lovely Grasshopper Store on Alberta Street where I discovered these amazing Lunch Skins.
Lunch Skins are reusable, colorful cloth pouches are made from a high quality, moisture-proof German fabric used worldwide in the food industry. They are food safe, extremely durable, grease-proof and can even be thrown in the dishwasher. And most of all they are incredibly stylish! I am thrilled to be packing Ella’s on-the-go snacks in these stylish pouches from now. Good bye to ZipLock Bags.
I’ll take that to go
A clever, and less-spillage-inclined solution to the stressful task of carrying out multiple cups of coffee. (As a bonus, it also offers acres of branding space.)
Blind Text Generator
I don’t like to present design mockups with Lorem Ipsum copy, so this Blind Text Generator comes in handy! I love the Kafka option!
(thank you chesley)
Networked Design Talks: Mushon Zer-Aviv
My friend and teaching colleague Mushon Zer-Aviv is kicking off a promising new speakers series at Parsons, The New School this coming wednesday:
“Design by committee,” “too many cooks in the kitchen,” and other epithets have been used to imply that the creative process breaks down when it involves too many people. At the same time, the software world has been completely revolutionized by open source, networked collaborative processes. It is only in graphic and interaction designs—two fields critical to software development—that the open source process has yet to overtake more conventional design methods. How does networked collaboration present challenges in the creative process? How can they be solved? Can they be solved at all? Or do designers just not work well together? Mushon will address these questions in light of his own creative work as well as research done in the Open Source Design class he teaches in Parsons’ AAS Program in Graphic Design.
Networked Design Talks: Mushon Zer-Aviv | October 14, 2009 6:30 p.m.
Can Design By Committee Work? The Case for Open Source Design
If you are not able to join us in person, please log on to: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/parsons-the-new-school-for-design for a live stream.
Learn more about the AAS Program at Parsons, The New School.
Fail Harder
While visiting W+K Portland yesterday, I noticed this magnificent Fail Harder Mural, done by Wieden + Kennedy 12.
Over 100,000 thumbtacks were used over 351 hours to create this typographic mural that spells out Fail Harder, a message that underlines the importance of failure during the creative process. Absolutely fantastic. I would love to do something similar in my studio! Hat tip! (Make sure to watch the video below!)
W+K Talk, Portland
I have been enjoying beautiful Portland OR weather since my arrival on the west coast thursday. My Brooklyn transplant friends Jen and Michael Cogliantry have been wonderful hosts, showing me around Portland, trying hard to convince me to switch coasts as well!
Highlight of my trip was yesterday’s presentation at prestigious Wieden+Kennedy. A big thank you to the W+K Studio for having me and to everyone that came out. Here are pictures of the talk and some shots I was able to take in W+K’s amazing space. I especially enjoyed hugging the W+K Beaver goodbye.
Did you attend my talk? Do you have any feedback? Anything you wished I’d talk about? Let me know! Always love to improve my presentations!
Thank you Portland, you’ve been very good to me!
Piano Stairs
(via ignant)
Lego TV Remote
Craighton Berman’s mockup of a Lego TV Remote. Made me smile.