Kruisherenhotel Maastricht

The Kruisherenhotel is a super modern hotel in the Netherlands built within a 15th century monastery and church. The contrast between the old architecture and the modern fixtures and furniture is quite interesting.

"The interior has been created by the internationally renowned interior designer Henk Vos. The beautiful pieces of light installation artwork is created by the German light installation artist Ingo Maurer. Throughout the complex, use has been made of the notable designs of masters such as Le Corbusier and Rietveld as well as modern designers like Marc Newson, Piet Heyn Eeck, Philippe Starck and Roderick Vos. These designs form exciting contrasts with the stained glass windows and the stunning, authentic wall and ceiling paintings."




Saul Bass Pitches the new Bell System Logo



If you're wondering how to deliver a killer presentation or just be a total BOSS when it comes to design, watch this.

"Bass' work in logo design and movie title credit sequences spanned the latter half of the 20th century, with prominent work in each field. He worked closely with AT&T, designing not only the 1970 "bell" logo that was ubiquitous for a decade, but also, upon the divestiture of AT&T, he designed the original "death star" logo, unveiled in 1984.

One reason for this bell logo's ubiquity? That redesign was the largest corporate re-identity program in the U.S., ever.

The redesign covered:
135,000 Bell system vehicles
22,000 buildings
1,250,000 phone booths
170,000,000 telephone directories

This film was made by his company as a presentation to AT&T executives. It would have extended to be shown to the public, but a number of his ideas in the film were not ultimately adopted, like his phone booth designs, and men's and women's uniforms. But a great many were—including, most memorably, the telephone vans and hardhat designs of the 1970s. He designed down to the details, showcasing in this film a myriad of ideas, right down to the yellow pages book designs, cufflinks for executives, and flags.

Bass' other very recognizable logo designs that persist today include those for Minolta, Girl Scouts of America, Avery International, Geffen Records, Warner Int'l, and many more. Bass' design for AT&T was the foundation for the logo that the company has today, redesigned in 2005 by Interbrand. Produced by Saul Bass Footage courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ"

From the AT&T Tech Channel.

Via TWBE

Decode your teen's TXT lingo!

Too funny. brb, pmc. lkab @ omgb.



via jc

Gotye - State Of The Art

This is a sweet song, but the main reason I'm posting it is because the video is awesome. It's animated in a mid-century cartoon/illustrative style. A stereotypical nuclear family is turned into robots and transported to another world by a magical electronic organ. The lyrics talk about an electronic organ and it's amazing capabilities (custom flute presets!). Check it.

Illustrator gives up.

Got this error at work. Sorry Illustrator, I didn't mean to make you do anything you're not comfortable with.

Painted games

I just came across this newer game called Bastion which has some pretty awesome painted graphics. It reminded me of some super old games from back in the day that featured hand painted environments. I guess any video game is "painted" or "sculpted", but these have a real organic look to them. I've never played any of these games, but the screenshots are nice to look at. I've also included a couple pics of the levels from the game Metal Slug, which are kind of more pixel-arty but awesome nonetheless.

In order of appearance, Bastion, Legend of Mana, SaGa Frontier, Metal Slug.














Austra - Beat And The Pulse

If you like dark synthy stuff this might be your jam.

Taking a photo everyday for a really long time.

Dan Hanna, a CG artist, took 2 photos of himself for 17(!!!) years. He starts off at 32 years old and it ends at 49 years. His head is also rotating as it's going on. A pretty cool example of some stop motion animation too.



And some babe takes a picture of herself for 4.5 years. The interesting part for me was how her haircuts changed her face. I was kind of digging the pixie cut thing. Either that or when her hurr was at its longest.

The History of the Universe According to the International Style.

There aren't any other significant events in the history of the universe, really, when you think about it.


Designed by wearebuild for the Helvetica movie, apparently.

Documentary - Big River Man

The true story of Martin Strel's swim down the entire 3300 mile length of the Amazon River.

"Martin Strel (born 1 October 1954) in Mokronog, SFR Yugoslavia, is a legendary Slovenian long-distance swimmer, best known for swimming the entire length of various rivers. Strel holds successive Guinness World Records for swimming the Danube river, the Mississippi River, the Yangtze River, and the Amazon River. During his swims, he sleeps for 5 hours each day. He prepares himself for a long-distance swim over a year and a half. It usually takes 6 to 7 months for Strel to recover physically. His motto is 'swimming for peace, friendship and clean waters.'" (Wikipedia)

Apathy-Smoke Weed Everyday

This is a bit out of character, but this song has been playing at work and it's stuck in my head for some reason. I think it's the bass. chea.

Hugh Ferriss

I have a feeling I might have posted his work before but I can't find anything in a search of the site... so here it is.

"Hugh Ferriss (1889 – 1962) was an American delineator (one who creates perspective drawings of buildings) and architect. According to Daniel Okrent, Ferriss never designed a single noteworthy building, but after his death a colleague said he 'influenced my generation of architects' more than any other man. Ferriss also influenced popular culture, for example Gotham City (the setting for Batman) and Kerry Conran's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow."

"By 1920, Ferriss had begun to develop his own style, frequently presenting the building at night, lit up by spotlights, or in a fog, as if photographed with a soft focus. The shadows cast by and on the building became almost as important as the revealed surfaces. He had somehow managed to develop a style that would elicit emotional responses from the viewer. His drawings were being regularly featured by such diverse publications as Century, the Christian Science Monitor, Harper's Magazine and Vanity Fair. His writings began to also appear in various publications."(Wikipedia)





Opeth-The Devil's Orchard

The new video from the new record Heritage. The music is prog-rocky and the video is 70's horror-James-Bondy. If you're interested in animation and "rich media", check it out. Directed, shot, animated and edited by Phil Mucci.

Opeth - "The Devil's Orchard" HD from Phil Mucci on Vimeo.

Australian mugshots 1910-1930

These pictures are amazing. They're mugshots of Australian criminals, taken just after they had been arrested. It looks like there must have been some sort of practical reason for composing the photos this way, I have no idea, but the compositions and the candid feel of the pictures create some very compelling images.

The description below is from this article, which gives more details on the photographs.

"The Sydney Justice and Police Museum holds a collection of about 2500 “special photographs” that were taken by the New South Wales Police Department between the years of 1910 and 1930.

The forensic crime negatives were rescued from a flooded warehouse in the 1980s by the Historic Houses Trust, and later relocated to the Sydney Justice and Police Museum.

Author Peter Doyle took the collection in his hands and spent three years researching the undocumented files trying to uncover the grim and chaotic storyline of the folks in the photographs."

Originally saw this on the fox is black and had to repost it here. Apparently the creative directors at Ralph Lauren's RRL brand saw the pictures too and have been using the same sort of imagery to promote the vintage-y brand.





Josh Kirby

Back in the day I used to read Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of fantasy novels. They are totally awesome, but what first drew me in as a kid were the mind-blowing covers Josh Kirby created for the books. Check out his website here

"Ronald William "Josh" Kirby (27 November 1928 – 23 October 2001) was an English commercial artist born in Waterloo, on the outskirts of Liverpool, Merseyside.

Kirby painted film-posters, magazine and book covers. Creating a total of over 400 cover paintings, his personal preference was for science fiction jackets and his work on the covers of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of novels is well known. He also created the poster art for Monty Python's Life of Brian and Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. He worked almost exclusively in oils. Charles de Lint said Kirby stood apart from most genre commercial artists for 'his own flair and unique vision'" (Wikipedia article)




Plague of Passwords

I liked this little rant on passwords that I read in the paper today. Click to read the whole thing.

"Type your password incorrectly three times and you'll get your account suspended and have to talk to password control. They'll ask you security questions about your first pet, your second husband and your last mistress."

"One hoop we must jump through is deciphering weird distorted words on screen that we must retype correctly.

For instance, if you want to e-mail someone a curry recipe from gourmetrecipes.com, you may first have to identify blurry letters that seem to spell "ypoletka brezhnev."

It's a bit like an eye doctor chart, but harder to read, so I usually fail and must try another set that looks like "grfzuhs cereal" - and I fail again and decide I don't want to e-mail that recipe anyway.

I'm told these eye exams are to prove we are humans, not computers that are programmed to constantly scan the net trying to steal everyone's identity. Apparently machines can't read these distorted letters, so by deciphering them, we prove we are people. So why do I feel like I've turned into a machine instead?"

St. Vincent-Cruel

The first video from the new St. Vincent record, which just came out today. Annie gets kidnapped and forced to be a mom. Check it.

yowayowa camera woman

This has probably been all over the internet already, but I just found out about her yesterday. Basically, she takes self portraits of herself jumping. Pretty self-explanatory but the results are awesome.

"Lives in Tokyo with two cats. Photographs mainly levitating self-portraits (and cats not levitating). yowayowa is a Japanese term meaning "weak" or "feeble." Since I'm yowayowa, it's really heavy to carry SLR cameras around."

Her about page has more info on her process.