I was reading an article in the National Post the other day regarding the TypeCon 2008 Conference. To parapharse, the author discussed among designers: "If you were stuck on a desert island and only had 10 fonts..."
This was there list:
• Janson
• Gill Sans
• Didot/Bodoni
• Joanna
• Myriad
• Helvetica Neue Light
• Walker
• Century Schoolbook Condensed Light
• Trebuchet
• Meta
Good typography is important to any medium as it is to use images and shiny objects. The fact that you may skim articles and headlines, it should still be pleasing to look at and easy to read.
In every situation where type is used - in television, signage, packaging - the designer has to adapt his techniques to suit the medium.
So I figured i would just google things on typography and wouldn't you know I came a cross this website, NYCtype by designer Jason Powers.
Jason goes around New York City photographing street typography.
I was intrigued by it because I always wanted to go around the Gem City and just photograph signs and different types. Here, Jason takes that idea and uploads to his blog.
Although he doesn't critique the styles of typography, any graphic designer who is looking for a new style to try, this gives you the visual record in the public terrain. Check out NYCtype to find a font that might be suitable for your next medium.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Get Drunk Inside the Trunk
Ah, my man Pearly over at Fancies and Delights hooked me up with this hot link. A Bar inside a tree that draws crowds of people every year to South Africa.
The bar is located in a rural area of Sunland Farms...inside a tree! A Baobab tree for that matter. The bar is hollowed into the 155ft wide trunk. Carbon-dating has shown the anicent tree is about 6,000 years old. It can comfortably seats up to 15 people and has four meter high ceilings.
Read more and see more photos over at the Daily Mail.
Safety Boy out.
The bar is located in a rural area of Sunland Farms...inside a tree! A Baobab tree for that matter. The bar is hollowed into the 155ft wide trunk. Carbon-dating has shown the anicent tree is about 6,000 years old. It can comfortably seats up to 15 people and has four meter high ceilings.
Read more and see more photos over at the Daily Mail.
Safety Boy out.
The Environmental Shoe
Adidas going green? Not quite...A recent ad campaign billboard in London, Adidas appears to be reaching out to the environmentally conscious type. The ad features an Adidas running shoe without typography or a logo on a billboard composed of vines, plants and foliage. The brand is well known for it's three stripe etching on the shoe that it's pretty easy to associate which brand it is. The message they are going for is clear, but only points in the right direction and is far from sincere.
Reports have come back that the vines are made of plastic. I got to say I was a little let down once I heard that...to find out that a beautiful ad that represents such a positive message is constructed of plastic that so happens to be polluting the world. Shame to hear that loss. Innovative idea nonetheless.
Source: Injoy Design
Reports have come back that the vines are made of plastic. I got to say I was a little let down once I heard that...to find out that a beautiful ad that represents such a positive message is constructed of plastic that so happens to be polluting the world. Shame to hear that loss. Innovative idea nonetheless.
Source: Injoy Design
A Pennies Usefulness
Billboards today!
Most people won’t make the effort to bend over and pickup a penny from the street. Chevrolet tested this idea by creatively placing a 20 foot billboard in London and covering it with over 20,000 pennies.
The pennies were all plucked from the billboard in less than 30 minutes.
Chevrolet’s Les Turton said:
“There have been some great car adverts before, but none that has stopped traffic and actually put money back into the motorist’s pocket so this is certainly a first. We’re glad we’ve topped up lots of people’s wallets, purses and, in some cases, rucksacks, but it would have been nice for the billboard to last a little longer than 30 minutes.”
While the ad may have only been truly effective for 30 minutes, it will continue to catch eyes all over the internet for the next week or so. Don't you just love viral marketing!
Most people won’t make the effort to bend over and pickup a penny from the street. Chevrolet tested this idea by creatively placing a 20 foot billboard in London and covering it with over 20,000 pennies.
The pennies were all plucked from the billboard in less than 30 minutes.
Chevrolet’s Les Turton said:
“There have been some great car adverts before, but none that has stopped traffic and actually put money back into the motorist’s pocket so this is certainly a first. We’re glad we’ve topped up lots of people’s wallets, purses and, in some cases, rucksacks, but it would have been nice for the billboard to last a little longer than 30 minutes.”
While the ad may have only been truly effective for 30 minutes, it will continue to catch eyes all over the internet for the next week or so. Don't you just love viral marketing!
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Rabbit in Your Headlight
Another music video post. This video was released in 1998 by Unkle with Thom Yorke doing vocals. Director Jonathan Glazer – critically acclaimed for his films, commercials, and music videos – shot the video in real-time and allowing the diegetic sounds produced by objects and characters to be audible above the music. It differs from that video in that the music itself is non-diegetic. Rabbit in Your Headlights is such a great music video – won MVPA Best International Video of the Year Award in 1999 – it actually has it owns Wikipedia page. The money shot comes around the 4:22 mark.
It is wildly theorized that:
"The nonsensical ramblings show a man in transition, confusion, a state of delirium - a man undergoing enlightenment. Audible surroundings underline the abuse he is receiving, the inescapable aggression and oppression of life. His resolve demonstrates a bravery; he stands up to the hierarchical shit of the world, and realises that we, as living creatures, are stronger than the machines we create - we can reach a sublime state, a nirvana - and thus, in Jesus-like pose, he becomes all powerful. And while his final pose has a religious element to it, it is more to do with spiritual realisation in the non-religious sense - a much more personal response to the world. His arms are lower than a crucifix pose, below his waist - demonstrating more power. His clenched fists and closed eyes also show ultimate power in the mind and body. The loss of his hooded jacket again shows a discarding of human influence and of the need to hide from the elements - he is free, omniscient, omnipotent, alive."
Thanks for stopping by.
It is wildly theorized that:
"The nonsensical ramblings show a man in transition, confusion, a state of delirium - a man undergoing enlightenment. Audible surroundings underline the abuse he is receiving, the inescapable aggression and oppression of life. His resolve demonstrates a bravery; he stands up to the hierarchical shit of the world, and realises that we, as living creatures, are stronger than the machines we create - we can reach a sublime state, a nirvana - and thus, in Jesus-like pose, he becomes all powerful. And while his final pose has a religious element to it, it is more to do with spiritual realisation in the non-religious sense - a much more personal response to the world. His arms are lower than a crucifix pose, below his waist - demonstrating more power. His clenched fists and closed eyes also show ultimate power in the mind and body. The loss of his hooded jacket again shows a discarding of human influence and of the need to hide from the elements - he is free, omniscient, omnipotent, alive."
Thanks for stopping by.
Some Gifts Come with Baggage
Since I'm on the music video theme for the day. New video just dropped as Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse again offer up an interesting and quirky visual treat. The duo directed the video in collaboration with Chris Milk. Little gory, but watch as a man has his heart ripped right out. But it is all Gnarls geniality - it's slightly weird, yet totally brilliant at the same time. On top of all that, Cee-lo finds an interesting new use for a piece of broccoli. The dialogue makes this video.
Just utterly impressed with this video by the duo Gnarls Barkley. The song plays as background noise in a diner, but it's the dialogue between the two diners that is deeply enriched with emotion. Everyone can relate too that one who got away and the comparing of exs to new people you meet, but damn isn't this what being broken hearted looks and feels like!?!
Just utterly impressed with this video by the duo Gnarls Barkley. The song plays as background noise in a diner, but it's the dialogue between the two diners that is deeply enriched with emotion. Everyone can relate too that one who got away and the comparing of exs to new people you meet, but damn isn't this what being broken hearted looks and feels like!?!
Music Video without the Video?
Take that, conventional music video-making wisdom! Radiohead known for there unique sound and revolutionizing the production of music and unconventional ways of releasing it, Have taken it another step. Creating a video without the use of a camera.
In Radiohead's new video for "House of Cards", directed by James Frost of Zoo Films, no cameras or lights were used. Instead, 3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects. The video was created entirely with visualizations of that data.
Two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.
Thom Yorke in the press release: "I always like the idea of using technology in a way that it wasn't meant to be used, the struggle to get your head round what you can do with it. I liked the idea of making a video of human beings and real life and time without using any cameras, just lasers, so there are just mathematical points-- and how strangely emotional it ended up being."
Go here to check out the making of the video and how you can create your own visualizations and then upload it to Radiohead!
In Radiohead's new video for "House of Cards", directed by James Frost of Zoo Films, no cameras or lights were used. Instead, 3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects. The video was created entirely with visualizations of that data.
Two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.
Thom Yorke in the press release: "I always like the idea of using technology in a way that it wasn't meant to be used, the struggle to get your head round what you can do with it. I liked the idea of making a video of human beings and real life and time without using any cameras, just lasers, so there are just mathematical points-- and how strangely emotional it ended up being."
Go here to check out the making of the video and how you can create your own visualizations and then upload it to Radiohead!
Guinness Light Show
Today's featured content is from an Irish advertising agency IIBBDO with creative direction from Mal Stevenson.
Now doesn't that make you want a tall glass of Guinness. Oh goodness. It was hard to catch on what was going on in the video, but I think they could have captured this from the panoramic view that they used at the end of the video more vividly.
Now doesn't that make you want a tall glass of Guinness. Oh goodness. It was hard to catch on what was going on in the video, but I think they could have captured this from the panoramic view that they used at the end of the video more vividly.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Sidewalk Astronomer
I happen to like to blog about things I have seen. Typically if it isn't a night out drinking, it's something on PBS that is intriguing me. Like for instance the Sidewalk Astronomer...John Dobson.
The Sidewalk Astronomers are a group of amateur astronomers who build telescopes and take them to public places beckoning passersby to come have a look at the heavens. They do this with no profit motive in mind; it is purely for the satisfaction of sharing the wonders of the heavens with others.
They stop people on sidewalks and let them see the craters of the Moon, the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, or the spots on the Sun. For just a moment, they have a personal connection with the universe around them, and sometimes life seems a little better after that.
It's a 1 hour profile of John Dobson, creator of the Dobsonian mount – a device that revolutionized the telescope, making large-diameter telescopes that once necessitated costly setups available to anyone with a few bucks and the will to gaze into deep space.
It was fascinating, and very inspirational.
He doesn't believe in the Big Bang which will inspire some fun conversations here.
Here is an exercept of Dobson sharing his belief. The full documenatary is enlightening.
The Sidewalk Astronomers are a group of amateur astronomers who build telescopes and take them to public places beckoning passersby to come have a look at the heavens. They do this with no profit motive in mind; it is purely for the satisfaction of sharing the wonders of the heavens with others.
They stop people on sidewalks and let them see the craters of the Moon, the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, or the spots on the Sun. For just a moment, they have a personal connection with the universe around them, and sometimes life seems a little better after that.
It's a 1 hour profile of John Dobson, creator of the Dobsonian mount – a device that revolutionized the telescope, making large-diameter telescopes that once necessitated costly setups available to anyone with a few bucks and the will to gaze into deep space.
It was fascinating, and very inspirational.
He doesn't believe in the Big Bang which will inspire some fun conversations here.
Here is an exercept of Dobson sharing his belief. The full documenatary is enlightening.
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