The King Liar has held on to his title - have you told any tall tales lately?
Check out Amit Pitaru’s sound experiments including his sonic wire sculpture below;
http://pitaru.com/
LIFE photo archive hosted by Google does exactly what it says on the tin.
We’re changing the domain of the Vis Com blog and in the process looking at how the site is used. If you’d like to get involved, come along to an informal chat on the 3rd/4th yr graphics couches, 12.45pm, Tues 25th Nov. If you can’t make it, but are interested, email n.mcguire
This in itself will be an interesting experiment to see how many people currently look at this blog. Anyway, in the meantime you could look at carpe noctem
Interesting article on Design Observer about relational design, charting major design movements of recent decades. Haven’t read it in full yet but, unusually for a blog post, the comments are quite thoughtful.
If you’ve been wondering about the provenance of that 1982 Talking Heads Album or such, the Album Covers Map may be able to help.
If you’re in london anytime soon, the Cold War Modern Exhibition at the V&A looks worth a look. The graphics and exhibition design by Bibliotheque are very nice and very Bibliotheque-y.
Is a good question, asked by Selina Swayne
Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain are a pair of young Brazilian artists, working in their home country and in France. Some of their work explores fonts and maps. Typography meets cartography in this little work, entitled ‘The World, Justified’.
… a Q&A with Sara De Bondt (‘I don’t believe in the myth of design geniuses, working on their own’) on the Eye magazine Blog.
The Big Picture at Boston.com picks up where the Guardian’s big centre spread pictures left off. There are tons of other interesting ways in which people have visualised the news on the interweb. Just can’t remember them right now, apart from 10×10. Which brings me to my next topic - when is someone going to invent an interface for me to plug my brain into my laptop, download my memories and the computer will automatically tag, theme, organise and store them for me?
Interesting looking interview by Steve Heller on the AIGA site, about analyzing terror through imagery.
Beautiful, perfect, supreme chunk of paper says Stephen Bayley.
We Think, I Think looks at collaboration and what this means for the role of the ‘creative’, via Charles Leadbeater.
Recent article in The New York Times featuring new Bike Racks designed by David Byrne of (Talking Heads) who is Scottish born. You can read the full article here.
Some of the racks work better than others but nice to see design providing a solution to promote cycling as a means of commuting. Feature was spotted on Howies site.
Hot new trend info here.
Hillman Curtis short film on artist Lawrence Weiner
Newzald: From Moleskine to Market charts the process of designing a typeface from sketch to online sales, in an accessible and well-written article.
As if you needed it but here is another good reason to buy the iPhone 2 when it is launched on July 11th. MooCow Music Band.
Falmouth and Brighton are probably* fighting it out as we speak, as to who is geographically (or mentally?) the furthest from Glasgow, but in the meantime you can have a look at some of their graduating student’s work here (Falmouth) and here (Brighton)
*possibly not.
Looking forward to seeing the degree show catalogue, but is this the most lavish print spec ever?
If you’re stressing out about your degree show and having trouble getting to sleep, you could try reading up about Adobe Flex, and downloading some of the tools which are free to tutors and students. Flex is a tool for developing RIA’s (that’s rich internet applications), though you should be warned that some people view it as “proprietary, monopolistic, non-standard, anti-competitive, non-portable… sexy and pragmatic.”
FontStruct is an online type design tool for creating type from simple geometric shapes. Set up by the FontShop type retailer, (founded by erik speikermann), this looks like one of the most accessible web apps/type tools of recent times, and an interesting starting place for some open source typography. But be careful, as Spiekermann himself states; “Fontsruct shows you how easy it is to play around with type, but how difficult it is to make real type…”
Howies will be running their ‘DO’ lecture series in September again. They invite attendees to apply for a place to hear presentations by leading designers and press / publicity folks on how to get your idea, issue or concern in the national press. You need to specify why you want to attend and what your issue/concern is. Basically how you want to change the world for the better.
You can add to the site that accompanies the book here.
You can have your say on what shape the designers of 2015 will look like on this forum hosted by AIGA and Adobe here
Flash on the Beach Conference will run again this year in Brighton on September 28th -1st October. If you buy the super early bird tickets now you get the tickets half price. You can check out the speakers list here.
Fed up of disfunctional studios? Why not try the Invisible University?
Following on from our 2nd year location type project, comes 100 Daze: Runnin’ with the Devil
Been looking for a messenger bag for carting folio books around. Came across these guys in San Francisco called Chrome. Planning on having a look at them when I in SF later this month. Will let you know how I get on and if it does the job. Reviews say they are pretty robust and completely water tight. If you are planning on cycling in to the studio with a laptop they also do a laptop case that fits inside. They also have a shiny seat belt style buckle to release the bag. Apparently it is a bit of bag-ejector seat button at parties that people feel compelled to push.
Follow this link if you’d like to register for a free screening of Helvetica at the GFT on the 11th March, along with a panel discussion including the outspoken (and often entertaining) Bruno Maag of Dalton Maag.
To put this in context, thought i’d also link to this thought for the day from Michael Johnson which compares the google hits for “sustainable graphic design” compared to “helvetica movie” - as he neatly puts it:
…tap “sustainable graphic design” into Google and you get a thousand suggested links. But tap “Helvetica Movie” in, and guess what, you get fifteen thousand. So in cyberspace at least, that makes people 15 times as interested in a movie about a typeface than how to design responsibly. Great.
The article provides some interesting reading, and this Johnson Banks blog can be thoroughly recommended as a source of some great design commentary.
Classic Russian animated short film from 1975. Based on a story by Sergei Kozlov, directed by Yuri Norstein. In 2003 “Hedgehog in the Fog” won the “#1 Animated film of all the time” at “All time animation best 150 in Japan and Worldwide” contest in Tokyo, Japan.
Enjoy!
This is a company which has been inspiring for a while so I thought I post it here. 1st-ave-machine´s amazing animation is a prime example of excellent execution and strong ideas were the is music is well incorporated in the projects. They have also been featured in several magazines, one of them, Specialten (issue 19) were I first saw them. http://www.specialten.com/issues/19
Here is their website. http://www.1st-ave-machine.com/
I would personally recommend these..Enjoy
Ivor Williams (Graphics graduate 2007) now working with Jonathan Ellery at Browns has posted a mini-site as an investigative and reflective space split between image, text and audio on visual stimuli and conceptual thoughts. Called Doubting Thomas and can be seen here. Ivor invites you to stop by and say hello, maybe have a cup of tea even.
Want to search the web but worried about your carbon footprint? Blackle - Energy Saving Search uses google’s search engine but a predominantly black (rather than white) screen hence saving a shit load of energy. Read the ‘about’ page to find out more.
Just to draw your attention to a new gallery Recoat (near Kelvinbridge on North Woodside Road, right next door to the Woodside Social) if you haven’t come across them yet. Ran by two design graduates (illustration and graphics respectively) who are exhibiting graphic art, illustration, photography, graffiti and street art and also have some interesting workshops coming up to do with graffiti and murials. They’re hoping to create a relationship with students in Vis Comm so if you’re interested have a wander to the gallery and have a chat with them, sign up to the mailing list. http://www.recoatdesign.com/
Apple expo is in San Francsico next Tuesday 15th January. This is Apples venue for announcing the major plans for the next year. Don’t buy any kit till after Tuesday. Sure as fate they will announce some new mac, laptop or iPod that makes the one you bought last week defunct. The top rumours are for new sub-laptops with flash memory drives so they last longer on battery and boot immediately. A new variation on the iMac that acts as a dock for a laptop that slide in the side when home and is a laptop on the go (2 in 1 deal). Apple have played with this before and never quite pulled it of so maybe this time. Last is new higher spec iPhone. Steve Jobs presentation is usually available as a podcast and is worth watching just to watch his style of presentation.
POST_SCRIPT
You can watch the podcast of Steve Jobs presentation here. It is also a podcast from iTunes ( but is 1.2 GB download ). If you have an iPhone or iPod touch you can download new updates that add mail to the touch. Previously Apple had hobbled the touch, so good to see them remove the restrictions. Main highlight is the new MacBook Air weighing in at only 3 pounds in weight. A new super thin lightweight laptop but you have to buy an external superdrive since it does not have one. Also Apple want to be the new LOVE-FILM and get your dvd rentals as well by adding videos to iTunes.
Core77 Broadcasts: Offsite Event Videos of Ze Frank, Paul Budnitz, Steven Heller, Kelly Dobson, and Tobias Wong features vodcasts of some prominent designers and commentators discussing design, wit and the creative act.
Sweetskinz produce brightly coloured tyres by day which are flourescent at night. What a great and simple design solution for cyclists. Click the site link above to find out more.
Calaniscast interview with Jeff Dachis (founder of Razorfish) provides interesting retrospective insights into the evolution of internet design leading up to the dotcom boom of the 90’s and the current scene. Jeff Dachis now runs Bond. Ignore first 5 minutes of chat to get to the interview.
The Whale Hunt / A storytelling experiment / by Jonathan Harris is exactly that. An interesting experiment to deal with narrative, visuals and customisation with really interesting subject matter.Also working in interaction/narrative in an online environment is Donna Leishman, a former tutor at GSA and now head of illustration at Duncan of Jordanston in Dundee.
A new book has been published by MIT Press specifically looking at introducing non-programming designers to Processing. It is by Casey Reas and Ben Fry with a forward by John Maeda. You can read more about it here
Just sharing a great MAC utility for anyone who has to deliver artwork by FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to clients who are remote. Yellow Mugs Filechute does it simply, it even tidies up after itself, (you can set a time for garbage collection for it to automatically remove files form the server after posting them). Best of all it only costs £10. You can check it out here
Double Bill of talks with Paul Ryding and Gordon Carmichael, taking place in second year vis com studio, all welcome. 3:30 prompt start.
