Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
BBC - The Perfect Suit
I bought my first suit the other day. All of a sudden I'm looking at the GQ website to see if I bought the right fit and all that nonsense. Here's a BBC documentary on suits that delves into the history of the suit and how it forms the male identity. And stuff.
The Art of the GIF
A cool little video from PBS's Off Book about the history of GIFs, how they were used in the past and how they are being used now by artists. via TWBE
And some GIFs I've run into for your viewing pleasure:
^By Reed + Rader
^ "cinemagprah" by Jamie Beck & Kevin Burg.
^ some hospital probably.
And some GIFs I've run into for your viewing pleasure:
^By Reed + Rader
^ "cinemagprah" by Jamie Beck & Kevin Burg.
^ some hospital probably.
The new Windows 8 logo
Designed by Pentagram, the preeminent design studio. Surprised I didn't find out about this earlier. My take is... it's boring, but really what alternative is there?
The window points away from the wordmark instead of towards it, which is distracting for me. Actually I'm indifferent about the design, it's the self-fellating design talk that gets me. "The team designed the system to fit into lines of perspective." – Four squares is a "system"? "The clean lines, flat shape and bold color of the logo reflect the design principles of Microsoft’s Metro design language." Clean lines, flat shape and bold color, therefore it's awesome! Haven't heard that one before. If only they used Gotham, it would have been a winner for sure.
From the windows team blog: "Our final goal was for the new logo to be humble, yet confident. Welcoming you in with a slight tilt in perspective and when you change your color, the logo changes to reflect you. It is a “Personal” Computer after all." I don't think the logo is very humble or confident. It's more precocious and stoic, a distant but intimate embrace of hue and shape, altering its nature to mirror the viewer's physical spirit.
Seriously though, the logo is pretty interesting because I get the feeling of a big shift at Microsoft. Whether or not this is reality is something else, but looking at the Metro "design language", it seems that Microsoft is actually trying something different with the aim of improving their product.
Pentagram's Windows 8 page
Windows Team blog
The window points away from the wordmark instead of towards it, which is distracting for me. Actually I'm indifferent about the design, it's the self-fellating design talk that gets me. "The team designed the system to fit into lines of perspective." – Four squares is a "system"? "The clean lines, flat shape and bold color of the logo reflect the design principles of Microsoft’s Metro design language." Clean lines, flat shape and bold color, therefore it's awesome! Haven't heard that one before. If only they used Gotham, it would have been a winner for sure.
From the windows team blog: "Our final goal was for the new logo to be humble, yet confident. Welcoming you in with a slight tilt in perspective and when you change your color, the logo changes to reflect you. It is a “Personal” Computer after all." I don't think the logo is very humble or confident. It's more precocious and stoic, a distant but intimate embrace of hue and shape, altering its nature to mirror the viewer's physical spirit.
Seriously though, the logo is pretty interesting because I get the feeling of a big shift at Microsoft. Whether or not this is reality is something else, but looking at the Metro "design language", it seems that Microsoft is actually trying something different with the aim of improving their product.
Pentagram's Windows 8 page
Windows Team blog
Film the police.
Obviously there are good cops and there are bad cops. If you see a cop doing good, you should probably thank them. If you see a cop doing bad, don't let them get away with it:
The Rise of the New Groupthink
An opinion piece for the New York Times by Susan Cain, talking about how research is suggesting the current trend of open-plan workspaces and constant group collaboration is inefficient and stifles creativity. Endless meetings and sub-par ideas pushed by extroverted individuals leads to poor company performance and poor employee quality of life. She also writes that the majority of true creative thinkers are introverts.
As always, I think there is a balance. Having an extra brain around is very helpful in a lot of situations, but after a certain point things become a competition of who can talk the loudest. In my experience any group larger than 3 will generally have someone excluded from the majority of the conversation.
In general I think working alone is better for fleshing out the main foundation of an idea, and group discussion is good when you want a sort of rapid-fire way of generating variations on the main idea.
Also, read the comments. A lot of people from the "creative industry" have submitted their thoughts. Some pretty insightful comments... most of them agreeing with the article.
This piece also featured some QUAL(ity) illustrations by Andy Rementer.
As always, I think there is a balance. Having an extra brain around is very helpful in a lot of situations, but after a certain point things become a competition of who can talk the loudest. In my experience any group larger than 3 will generally have someone excluded from the majority of the conversation.
In general I think working alone is better for fleshing out the main foundation of an idea, and group discussion is good when you want a sort of rapid-fire way of generating variations on the main idea.
Also, read the comments. A lot of people from the "creative industry" have submitted their thoughts. Some pretty insightful comments... most of them agreeing with the article.
This piece also featured some QUAL(ity) illustrations by Andy Rementer.
China-Portrait of a Country by 88 Chinese Photographers
So I'm going to try starting this new thing where I post an art/coffee table book from my humble collection. Maybe a novel or something might find its way in there from time to time.
I picked up this book today at Chapters for $10.50(!!!!) It was on sale down from $65. Crowfoot Chapters. Cop it while you can, cats. 2 Left. I as blown away that they still have copies left, as I've seen it sitting on the shelves for months. This thing is pretty big, a good 13.5" tall and 10" wide. 425 pages.
The photographs start at around 1949 and progress to the modern day. They are shot in a social documentary style, illustrating the life of ordinary Chinese. Apparently these types of photos were tough to find, because of a preference for landscape and portrait photography in Chinese culture and censorship by the government. Some photographers were fearful of releasing their photographs and the editor of the book had to meet them in their homes to reassure them.
Check out this title on Taschen's web site.
I picked up this book today at Chapters for $10.50(!!!!) It was on sale down from $65. Crowfoot Chapters. Cop it while you can, cats. 2 Left. I as blown away that they still have copies left, as I've seen it sitting on the shelves for months. This thing is pretty big, a good 13.5" tall and 10" wide. 425 pages.
The photographs start at around 1949 and progress to the modern day. They are shot in a social documentary style, illustrating the life of ordinary Chinese. Apparently these types of photos were tough to find, because of a preference for landscape and portrait photography in Chinese culture and censorship by the government. Some photographers were fearful of releasing their photographs and the editor of the book had to meet them in their homes to reassure them.
Check out this title on Taschen's web site.
Documentary-CYBERPUNK (1990)
A pretty RAD documentary featuring sick GRAPHIXX from 1990. It deals with the emergence of the internet and hacker/computer culture and makes some predictions about what the future holds. Now I guess "held" would be a better word.
What Tim Leary said about democracy and people controlling the press and being able to "zap our messages around" was a pretty good prediction. Case in point being the use of social media in the Arab Spring.
Some other stuff like "data suits" never really took off. We can get by fine with screens and buttons for now.
"A must-see. Marianne Trench's campy, kinetic documentary about the cyberpunk phenomenon blends practical technological and medical hacks with philosophical forward-thinking about the often-cybernetically expanded boundaries of our humanness.
Learned commentary by luminaries like William Gibson and Timothy Leary is augmented by interviews with actual hackers and anonymous computer criminals, creating a composite essay about our increasingly internet-dependent experience that is as important today as it was in 1990 when the film was created.
The film examines actual drug-like technology designed to make the user "permanently smarter"; xeroxed zines and high tech fashion; cyberpunk music like Front 242, Manufacture, Severed Heads, and includes a discussion with Michael Balch of Frontline Assembly. Hilariously dated digital graphics meet still-relevant realizations about how we define our human experience as our abilities are continuously extended by technology."
via RW
What Tim Leary said about democracy and people controlling the press and being able to "zap our messages around" was a pretty good prediction. Case in point being the use of social media in the Arab Spring.
Some other stuff like "data suits" never really took off. We can get by fine with screens and buttons for now.
"A must-see. Marianne Trench's campy, kinetic documentary about the cyberpunk phenomenon blends practical technological and medical hacks with philosophical forward-thinking about the often-cybernetically expanded boundaries of our humanness.
Learned commentary by luminaries like William Gibson and Timothy Leary is augmented by interviews with actual hackers and anonymous computer criminals, creating a composite essay about our increasingly internet-dependent experience that is as important today as it was in 1990 when the film was created.
The film examines actual drug-like technology designed to make the user "permanently smarter"; xeroxed zines and high tech fashion; cyberpunk music like Front 242, Manufacture, Severed Heads, and includes a discussion with Michael Balch of Frontline Assembly. Hilariously dated digital graphics meet still-relevant realizations about how we define our human experience as our abilities are continuously extended by technology."
via RW
Art and Copy
I watched this documentary the other day. All the kids in advertising class have probably seen it, but it's basically a bunch of interviews with famous ad people talking about their careers. My favorite part was about Nike's "Just Do It" campaign. Apparently the inspiration for it came from an article about a death row prisoner who said to the firing squad "lets do it!". They were talking about the response to the campaign, and how they were getting letters from all these people about how they decided to get divorces after seeing "Just Do It". I found it funny that people needed a Nike ad to realize their marriages were bad. Thanks Nike! The extremely cheesy ads for Ronald Reagan's election campaign were pretty funny too. An interesting watch.
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