Quotidian Miracles
Do you realise how many things in everyday life hang by a thread? I’ve been reading a lot of things scientific around our physical existence and a common element strikes me, the spiritual connotations of which get my mind racing around like a freight train running on nitrous oxide.
Here’s a few thoughts…
1) The Three phases of Water… do you have any idea what factors need to be in play for it to be possible just to have water in the form of solid, liquid and gas?… and it just happens to be fundamental to our existence.
2) Tectonic plates… Water in three phases is not all. The movement of our tectonic plates, and with it volcanoes, earthquakes, etc. are essential to managing the Earth’s temperature… without which, human life on the planet would not exist.
3) Day and Night… Apart from the fact that we just happen to be the perfect distance from the earth to sustain life on the planet with the Sun’s energy as well as contribute to the maintenance of the Earth’s temperature… the mere fact that the system revolves around us having a period of rest and work, Light and Darkness makes the Earth work and rest just as we do.
Right… now forget all the Scientific stuff… the temperature, the rest and work, the fact that we just happen to have all these things in a perfect balance and I haven’t even mentioned all of them. They also have an effect on our social atmosphere, health, behaviour. Again, all of which affect our ability to adequately LIVE on this planet.
It seems to me a bit convenient for all these critical elements which keep us alive to be a coincidence. At just how many ‘coincidences’ will we draw the line before we acknowledge the design?
Nike & RZA – Next Level Hip-Hop Advertising
I Love This. It’s a cool mix between hip-hop, basketball and the samurai/kung-fu/manga history which threads through the Wu-tang clan’s, and particularly RZA’s, career history. The music, the manga comic look and the story and tie in very well to the brands values. Mostly I like it because it all just works so well together.
Putting RZA into the mix definitely makes the entire messaging of the ad and the look and feel absolutely surreal but consistent and understandable given the target market which Nike wants to target. I wouldn’t say it was much of a risk, or at least Nike had mitigated the risk fairly well by tying in Basketball into the mix which makes perfect sense in the context it’s playing in the ad itself. basketball has always been involved with Hip-Hop, and this is just a very, very cool remix to drive home the point… along with some Confucian, self-exploratory, kung-fu philosophy thrown in for good measure.
Is Brad Pitt a fishfinger? – Brand Design Analysis on Inglourious Basterds
Best Agency Christmas Present I ever received… so far.
"So what the hell does that mean?" is probably going through your head. Well here’s the rub… the Poster design for Inglourious Basterds was akin to having a great shot of a fishfinger on a pack of… well.. fishfingers. No differentiation, nothing to build the brand. Bland. Blends into the background. Status quo. Following Market conventions… Don’t agree? Let me prove it.
Exhibit A: The Inglourious Basterds Poster (Mainstream)
Exhibit B: The Valkyrie Poster
Spot the difference. None… design-wise anyway. Now you can see Brad Pitt in typical fish-finger style… blending into the background of mediocre poster history. Why would Tarantino bow down to corporate pressure like this and risk his almost instantaneously recognised style and colouring for mass-produced crap like this?
To be fair… there were incredibly great-looking posters made alongside this one… the issue I have is that the mass-produced poster was the most ubiquitous. Which was a shit move, marketing-wise. I’d fire whoever approved it, and am highly disappointed with Tarantino for condoning it.
Anyway… here’s the great ones…
So there you have it. On the mass poster, Brad Pitt is a fish-finger. That poster should not have been made, let alone be put up as the main attraction. The movie was fucking awesome, regardless.
Google’s Nexus One vs. iPhone, Droid and Palm Pre
The below info is American-focused but you can get an idea of the benefits and pitfalls of each phone. Also, as I have always maintained, go for the phone which would suit your particular needs. Not everyone needs an iPhone despite it’s Cool status, which seems to be slowly dying out now. If you’re a business person, get a Blackberry. If you’re an all media, social, business, game and traveller junkie… stick with the iPhone… It’s all about utility, yo.
All info was thanks to Billshrink
Design Remix: London Underground
A brief has been put out to redesign the London Underground, specifically the fabric on the seats. Compared to it’s counterpart in New York, the London Underground has generally always tilted a little bit more toward providing some sort of palatable colour and design to enhance the experience of the 3.5 million commuters.
The Underground’s Design history includes Edward Johnston’s sans serif font, Harry Beck’s map and Paul Nash’s fabric.
Wallpaper explains the brief…
The colours should respond well to natural and artificial light (there’s even a pantone reference wheel allocating percentage allowances), the pattern must wear and tear well and the fabric must be comfortable and durable. This might sound fairly restrictive but entrants are also encouraged to challenge convention where possible, being mindful not to create a repeat pattern that’s too small to ‘dazzle’ the 3.5 million commuters who will see it each day.
The competition ends on September 14th. More details may be found here.
Designers Get on it! w00t! :)))
(via PSFK)
Technorati Tags: London, Underground, Design, Competition, Remix
Modern Urban Street Art
It seems one of the things I haven’t kept my eyes on lately has been that of Art of any form (although I did attend the National Art Gallery which was interesting in its own way but I find some the art REALLY BORING.) So here’s some examples of modern urban street art.
This is by Aakash Nihalani and if you look at the NYPD cop car in the background, you can see that he hails from New York! Simple and Brilliant.
via LikeCool
And… more technologically advanced and making gangs look all the more cooler –> LED Spray Paint!
While there are more than a few exceptions to the rule, most graffiti is nothing more but lame, self-serving tagging. But combine simple signatures with LEDs and slow shutter photography, and the genre is born anew:
Halo is a concept by French designer Aissa Logerot. Shaped like a bottle of spray paint, the LED light can change colors on the fly and while it’s powered by an internal battery (that recharges with a simple shake of the can—a cutesy but awesome idea).
Combine this LED light with slow-shutter photography and you can freeze light graffiti in thin air without ruining a facade in the process. Of course, that non-destructive practicality probably eliminates any incentive for about 99.9% of graffiti enthusiasts.
– Gizmodo
By far one of the coolest mash-ups of Culture, Technology and Design I’ve stumbled across on the net. Love it.
Technorati Tags: Cool, Urban, Street, Art, LED, Gangs
The Tale of How…
Here’s an awesome short Film done by a group of very creative South African’s calling themselves the Blackheart Gang. It’s a very cool story about an island of Kiwi’s who keep getting eaten by a huge octopus that doesn’t allow them to live in peace or leave the island until one of them gets an idea to put messages in a bottle and throw them into the ocean…
The Tale of How from Shy the Sun on Vimeo.
Technorati Tags: Cool, South African, The Tale of How, Creative, Kiwis, Octopus
Awesome: Deconstructing the Al-Jazeera Logo
A close friend of mine, Mohammed Nanabhay, posted this awesome animation showing the deconstruction of the Al-Jazeera logo.
The Al Jazeera logo is a calligraphic rendering of the arabic word Al Jazeerea (which means the “The Peninsula”).
The animation was posted on Wikipedia.
Technorati Tags: aljazeera, al-jazeera, design, logo, deconstruction
Cool Little Robot Toilet Paper Holder
How cool is this!
Cool Geek Gift: PhotoSafe II
This is really cool (someone buy it for me!). I’ve had this happen a couple of times, where you’re busy snapping away with your camera and suddenly you realise… no space.
The Photo Safe II is essentially a storage backup, about the size of an MP3 player, that dumps photos from your camera’s memory card into its hard drive. All you do is remove your memory card from your camera, insert it into the Photo Safe II, press the one-touch Auto Copy button, and bingo, you now have a backup of your photos and free space on your memory card. Now go back out there and snap away!
Link
I don’t celebrate Christmas but I do Accept Gifts :)
