calendar tin

i haven't posted any calendars for awhile but i found this one and think its design is really creative. i'm not that impressed with the fact that it carries office supplies but i like the organization of content and the fact that it's interactive.

recycled metal letters...b-y that is

they don't sell an a or z. seriously. oh well, these letters (made from recycled metal packaging) are unique enough to post even though they've discriminated against my initials ;)

mini digital rollei

how digitally retro of rollei...and a smart way to reinvent a classic as film becomes archaic. i want one! here's the product description from the rollei website:

Rolleiflex MiniDigi AF5.0 Proudly continues the Rollei Twin Lens Reflex Tradition.
If somewhere deep down you have always hankered after a Rollei, you are not alone. First developed in Germany in the 1920's, the Rollei 6x6cm Twin Lens Reflex Camera has always been a preferred tool for serious photography, especially portraits. There cannot be, for example, a single Hollywood celebrity who has not been photographed with a Rollei. Now, many of the outstanding convenience features and nostalgic design can be yours in a fashionable up-to-date digital with auto focus feature to shoot between 4 inches (10cm) to infinity on 5 mega pixel image. The Rolleiflex MiniDigi AF5.0, a world's first in its class.

frank chimero :: graphic designer and illustrator

the first one makes me chuckle. view more of frank chimero's work here.

1000 journals project

what happens when you send 1000 blank journals out into the world, ask people to contribute to them in any way and then pass them on? that's exactly what someguy, a san francisco graphic designer decided to do. this project began in 2000 and 999 of the journals are still circulating around the world. it's a fascinating experiment that provokes creativity and creates a common thread between everyone who contributes to or is exposed to the content of each journal. the 1000 journals documentary will be shown this friday at the roxie in sf and i just bought tickets. watch the trailer!

sweet websites

sorry ice cream, i'm dreaming of a different dessert...this is the first sentence in the pinkberry song on their website. it's a bit much but you can't blame them for thinking outside the cup. there's so much yogurt competition out there that they HAVE to differentiate themselves from competitors. pinkberry's website is elegant and clean with beautiful photography and these elements help them maintain a healthy image.

today i walked past cefiore, another southern california brand that's opening in sf on new montgomery...next door to my gym. great. i think their website is classy and although i like their logo, i don't think it has much appetite appeal. it would be more appropriate to use soft, organic shapes and colors that you associate with natural and sweet...because that's a more accurate representation of their product.

1 week to go...

hard at work...on a silly, tedious, everlasting poster project for my summer studio course. i'll post the finished piece next week.

gary hustwit's next project

objectified, is gary hustwit's new documentary feature about industrial design and creativity and will focus on the individuals involved in designing the mass produced objects surrounding us and how we're affected by these products. it will premiere in early 2009 and i can't wait! hustwit created the documentary, helvetica in 2007. check out the website that includes tons of production stills and information about the film. here are some of the individuals and companies that will be featured:

Featuring
Paola Antonelli (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
Chris Bangle (BMW Group, Munich)
Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec (Paris)
Andrew Blauvelt (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis)
Anthony Dunne (London)
Naoto Fukasawa (Tokyo)
IDEO (Palo Alto)
Jonathan Ive (Apple, California)
Hella Jongerius (Rotterdam)
Marc Newson (London/Paris)
Fiona Raby (London)
Dieter Rams (Kronberg, Germany)
Karim Rashid (New York)
Alice Rawsthorn (International Herald Tribune)
Rob Walker (New York Times Magazine)
and more participants TBA

a little monday detour

i arrived at school today and learned that our professor had an emergency and class was canceled. i decided to visit the sfmoma and spent most of my time familiarizing myself with the 246 and counting exhibit showcasing 246 objects acquired by SFMOMA's architecture and design department since 2006. the images above are all from my visit. the posters in the second and third image are by jason munn, a graphic designer. munn is from wisconsin and now lives in oakland, california. he earned quite a repuation for his beautiful poster designs for independent musicians. his portfolio has expanded and he now runs a full service design studio. here are three more posters from his website...

atelier works

atelier works (in london) was asked to design a label for the royal society of arts. it's simple and very clever.

here's a statement from the design firm:
for our label, we quickly rejected watercolours of vineyards or scraperboard drawings of grapes. what you want from a bottle of wine is a glass or several glasses. the wine, as it is poured out of the bottle, drops down through the cut out image of the glass. the real bottle AND the glass image AND the real glasses all get emptied.

graphic design in films

designers create the text and graphics for opening film sequences and credits. here's a creative example of graphic design used in stranger than fiction. if you haven't rented it, you're missing out. it's a great story with an unusual cast.

watch the opening sequence here. watch the film credits here. watch more examples here.

graphic design demystified :: part 2

how do graphic designers prepare to communicate a message? AIGA's answer...

Designers often combine images and typography to communicate a client’s message to an audience. They explore the creative possibilities presented by words (typography) and images (photography, illustration, and fine art). It is up to the designer not only to find or create appropriate letterforms and images but also to establish the best balance between them.

Designers are the link between the client and the audience. On the one hand, a client is often too close to the message to understand various ways in which it can be presented. The audience, on the other hand, is often too broad to have any direct impact on how a communication is presented. What’s more, it is usually difficult to make the audience a part of the creative process. Unlike client and audience, graphic designers learn how to construct a message and how to present it successfully. They work with the client to understand the content and the purpose of the message. They often collaborate with market researchers and other specialists to understand the nature of the audience. Once a design concept is chosen, the designers work with illustrators and photographers as well as with typesetters and printers or other production specialists to create the final design product.

1Litre

i found this 1Litre water bottle at target. it's hard to miss good packaging when you insist on browsing nearly every aisle. what?! its unique feature is the integrated nested cup. the idea behind this brand is that some people prefer to drink water out of a cup rather than directly from the bottle.

graphic design demystified :: part 1

so...uh...what do you do exactly? here's a consise answer from AIGA (american institute of graphic arts)...

Suppose you want to announce or sell something, amuse or persuade someone, explain a complicated system or demonstrate a process. In other words, you have a message you want to communicate. How do you “send” it? You could tell people one by one or broadcast by radio or loudspeaker. That’s verbal communication. But if you use any visual medium at all—if you make a poster; type a letter; create a business logo, a magazine ad, or an album cover; even make a computer printout—you are using a form of visual communication called graphic design.

Graphic designers work with drawn, painted, photographed, or computer-generated images (pictures), but they also design the letterforms that make up various typefaces found in movie credits and TV ads; in books, magazines, and menus; and even on computer screens. Designers create, choose, and organize these elements—typography, images, and the so-called “white space” around them—to communicate a message. Graphic design is a part of your daily life. From humble things like gum wrappers to huge things like billboards to the T-shirt you’re wearing, graphic design informs, persuades, organizes, stimulates, locates, identifies, attracts attention and provides pleasure.

short and sweet. more to come.

microsoft redesigns the ipod package

this video is pretty old but it always makes me chuckle. they use microsoft as an example but you could easily apply the client feedback and requests to many projects.

what did helvetica tell you today?

you've probably heard about the documentary film, helvetica, created to celebrate its 50th birthday. here's a trailer for the film. it shows you just a few ways that helvetica is with us wherever we go. just think, designers can recognize helvetica everywhere...and that's just one typeface...throw a few hundred in there (to be conservative) and add graphics and images to the mix. yeah, we're a little crazy. find out more about helvetica and gary hustwit (the film's director) here.

tuesday TED talk

paul bennett: design is in the details... an interesting talk about how simple acts and observations inspire significant design solutions.

designed by me :: experimental type

here are some of the experimental type layouts i created in my typography class (taught by jennifer sterling) last semester. our curriculum is so intense that you outgrow your work pretty rapidly...we had to turn in 60 layouts...every week. that being said, i'm proud of these pieces and more importantly, they're DONE.

designed by me :: harvest festival packaging

my professor asked each student to search for a hand drawn sign that we felt we could improve. i selected a sign on the window of the grove that advertised their apple cider. each student had to re-create (by hand) the sign using the exact same materials as the original. it was tough to put down the mouse and be restricted to markers. we weren't allowed to use rulers either so you can imagine how time consuming and funny the final signs were.

the next step was to use our new sign as inspiration for an event. we would be creating a brand for that event which would allow us to practice extending a brand to multiple pieces while maintaining a consistent look and feel. the first shot shows the set, the second is an inside spread of the booklet, and the third is a close-up of the apple cider tea packages.

x-ray photography

nick veasey's work is beautiful and fascinating, revealing everything you miss below the surface. you may recognize his work from the adobe creative suite2 packaging.

time lapse design

this video shows a glimpse of the designer's decision-making process while creating a layout for the the royal academy magazine. i'm not sure what's going on with the music so you might want to turn that off ;)

mini luna bars

one size energy bar does not fit all...sometimes you just need a few bites during a run or workout and you're on your way. before this release, i could only find these little guys at running events so i resorted to stashing some in my pockets, waistband, socks...so sneaky.

improv everywhere makes me laugh

improv everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. created in august of 2001 by charlie todd , improv everywhere has executed over 70 missions involving thousands of undercover agents. i love this stuff and wish they would fly out to sf and pull a prank on one of our public spaces. read the project description below and then watch the video.

On a cold Saturday in New York City, the world’s largest train station came to a sudden halt. Over 200 Improv Everywhere Agents froze in place at the exact same second for five minutes in the Main Concourse of Grand Central Station. Over 500,000 people rush through Grand Central every day, but today, things slowed down just a bit as commuters and tourists alike stopped to notice what was happening around them. Enjoy the video first and then go behind the scenes with our mission report and photos.

chihuly

the chihuly exhibit is going on now through september 28 at the de young museum in san francisco. here are a few examples of his work. the second bowl reminds me of a school of fish!

is google making us stoopid?

i really enjoyed this atlantic article about the effect the internet has on the way we absorb information. ironically, it's a pretty long article.

the girl effect

this video is an excellent example of how designers used typography to illustrate the girl effect's message that you can change the world one girl at a time. watch it and make sure your sound is ON.

introducing archer!

meet archer, my new favorite typeface. we were introduced by a designer friend of mine (thanks LB) and now i'm tempted to use it on everything. archer is from the font house, hoefler & frere-jones, and they have an amazing selection of fonts. if you're the least bit curious, visit their site and try out the test drive feature... or not ;)

archer was designed for martha stewart so it needed to be elegant and lightweight but it's technically a slab serif typeface. slab serifs are typically characterized by heavy block-like characters with chunky feet like this example of superba.

virgin america

i was a passenger on virgin america last weekend and was thrilled that it met the high expectations i had set based on recommendations from friends. the flight got me thinking about user experience design.

if you're not familiar with that term, it's basically a design field that is directed at affecting all aspects of the user’s interaction with a product or company. this includes how it is perceived, learned, and used. in virgin america's case, the experience began with my first visit to their site and ended when i deboarded my return flight. every interaction between the company and the customer that occurred during that time was studied. in addition to offering a well designed and easy to navigate website, they sell low fares and provide a unique in-flight experience that encourages repeat business.

i'm sure you've heard of the leather seats, clean and sophisticated cabin, entertainment (including games and chatting with other passengers), and the option to buy food from your seat. i arrived at LAX wayyy to early as usual (just in case!) and was starving by the time i boarded. instead of being stuck with a soggy sandwich or the tiniest bag of pretzels i've ever seen, i browsed and purchased a healthy snack from my seat and it was delivered to me within minutes. the item i chose was $1. additionally, there was no annoying safety demonstration and every announcement was brief or witty...for example: for the .01% of you who have not operated a safety belt...i loved their sense of humor and the perks (like mood lighting) that are hard to find on affordable airlines these days. i know, i've gone on and on. what can i say? i notice these things ;)

tuesday TED talk

i hope you've heard of TED talks. if not, drop everything and visit the site. TED stands for technology, entertainment, design. Their annual conference brings together the world's most creative, innovative, and intelligent minds. each speaker gets in 18 minutes to inspire their audience. the talks are recorded and available to the public for free. for free! i will be including a TED talk every tuesday.

this weekend i found an insightful talk about creativity and education by sir ken robinson. watch it here: