Browsing articles from "March, 2010"

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-28

Mar 28, 2010   //   by Devlin   //   Blog, Uncategorized  //  No Comments
  • More design decon­struc­tion from the New York Times! Poster Art for Revival of ‘La Cage Aux Folles’ — NYTimes.com http://goo.gl/IDfX #
  • An amaz­ing photo of long lost Dream­land park on Coney Island… Dream­land Twi­light: 1905 | Shorpy His­toric Photo Archive http://goo.gl/qgJs #
  • Hilar­i­ous audio take on web design & usabil­ity from QN Pod­cast | A con­ver­sa­tion I have every month or so. http://goo.gl/PBqX #
  • More nuggets of Ana­lytic wis­dom! Google Ana­lyt­ics Blog: Web Ana­lyt­ics TV #7 with Avinash and Nick http://goo.gl/emSj #
  • Get your Ter­mi­na­tor on! Melt­ing Girl in Pho­to­shop | Abduzeedo | Graphic Design Inspi­ra­tion and Pho­to­shop Tuto­ri­als http://goo.gl/u3Xg #
  • Pretty good, watch it all the way through. Good Is Dead. It’s true. Fall, 2010. http://goo.gl/bDah #
  • Read more »

The Seven Deadly Sins… now with Stormtroopers!

Mar 23, 2010   //   by Devlin   //   Blog, Uncategorized  //  1 Comment

The Seven Deadly Sins. The Car­di­nal Vices.

Just list­ing them is very evoca­tive, they drip with poetry and dread and have since they were slowly cod­i­fied dur­ing the early his­tory of the Catholic Church:

  • pride
  • avarice
  • envy
  • wrath
  • lust
  • glut­tony
  • sloth

The nature of these sins are both replant and attrac­tive. This dual­ity inher­ent in the human psy­che has inspired artists for cen­turies. We’ve seen the seven deadly sins depicted in many dif­fer­ent ways; from the bizarre and fan­tas­tic can­vases of Hierony­mus Bosch to the cel­lu­loid ter­rors of David Fincher. Now we have a new re-imagining of the sins that lead to hell fire made with toy Stormtroop­ers from Star Wars. And it’s brilliant.

The project is a mini-series by a pho­tog­ra­pher who goes by the han­dle Sté­fan, who has been, well let him explain it:

Stormtroop­ers 365 is a photo project star­ring TK455 and TK479, Stormtroop­ers in the Galac­tic Empire Army.

The project began on April 3rd 2009 and should end on April 2nd 2010. Each day dur­ing this year, a new pic­ture is added to the series.

The pic­tures are posted to Flickr.

Here’s a slide show of the 7 Deadly Sins, see if you can guess which sin is pic­tured. Dont’ for­get to check your answers. Also check out the rest his work. It is really funny, ironic and best of all exe­cuted with great skill.

7 Deadly Links:

Survivors get ready to RUMBLE!

Mar 23, 2010   //   by Devlin   //   Blog, Uncategorized  //  1 Comment

Design Some­thing Every­day 16/365

After read­ing the amaz­ing tuto­r­ial “How to Creat a Retro Box­ing Poster in Pho­to­shop” from James Davies I was inspired to give it a whirl. I didn’t get quite as faux-vintage as James did, but went in my own direc­tion. Turn­ing it into a pre­view of some upcom­ing clashes in Sur­vivor. If you’re a fan of the show you’ll get the gags.

Survivor Faux Vintage Boxing Poster

Seperated at Birth?

Mar 23, 2010   //   by Devlin   //   Blog, Uncategorized  //  No Comments

While pur­su­ing the world’s num­ber #1 pack­age design web­site™, the Dieline, I was impressed by the new design and prod­uct photo shoot for The Impos­si­ble Project; a new film for Polaroid instant cam­eras. I enjoyed the designs star­tling white palette, rigid geom­e­try  and aus­tere typog­ra­phy. How­ever, the more I stud­ied it I kept get­ting the weird sen­sa­tion that I’d seen it some­where before. Then it hit me… I had, sort of. I real­ized that George Lucas’ dystopian clas­sic THX 1138 & the Polaroid cam­paign must have been sep­a­rated at birth, long lost twins, or per­haps, sim­i­larly mass pro­duced android sol­diers. You decide:


Seperated at birth or rather creation?

THX 1138 the dystopian cult mas­ter work:

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-21

Mar 21, 2010   //   by Devlin   //   Blog, Uncategorized  //  No Comments

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Design Something Everyday 15/365

Mar 15, 2010   //   by Devlin   //   Blog, Uncategorized  //  No Comments

I found a great arti­cle in Esquire wherein book jacket designer extra­or­di­naire Chip Kidd dis­cusses the think­ing and meth­ods that under­lie some of his recent work. One typog­ra­phy trick  that is par­tic­u­larly use­ful is how he cre­ated the dis­tressed text for his cover of Cor­mack McCarthy’s The Road:

The font is one of the old­est tricks in the book. You type­set text in a reg­u­lar font, I think this was Rotis, and then you blow it up really big on a Xerox machine and then you shrink it down really small. The trick is to see just how much you can dis­tress it and keep it read­able. It’s got­ten harder to do because Xerox machines are so much bet­ter, but if you’ve got a won­der­fully shitty machine it will look all cor­roded and gummy and yucky. It takes a bit of play­ing around, but it’s really not that hard.

With that tip as inspi­ra­tion I used the same tech­nique to make these lit­tle design posters. The type­face is Rock­well Bold and each let­ter was blown up 1600% on a Toshiba pho­to­copier, before being dig­i­tally reduced. The Toshiba was too new to give the type a truly won­der­fully gummy yucky look, but it was a good exer­cise. Even with all of our dig­i­tal tricks, it is pretty fun to get in there with some old school techniques.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-14

Mar 14, 2010   //   by Devlin   //   Blog, Uncategorized  //  No Comments

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To seek, to find, to design and not to yield.

Mar 9, 2010   //   by Devlin   //   Blog, Uncategorized  //  2 Comments

Design Some­thing Every­day 14/365

To strive, to seek, to find & not to yield.

This was a design based on one of my favorite poems, Ulysses, by Alfred Lord Ten­nyson. The poem is very mov­ing, and has the great hero Ulysses (Odysseus in Greek) at the end of his life feel­ing the urge to strive, explore and set sail once again. That is an urge we have and should cher­ish, that lit­tle voice that tells us there is still much more to see and do. It is a human qual­ity that we need to heed, espe­cially when our boat has waited to0 long in the har­bor. Here’s the com­plete poem (don’t worry it’s in the pub­lic domain):

Ulysses
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

It lit­tle prof­its that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these bar­ren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a sav­age race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I can­not rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suf­fered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scud­ding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roam­ing with a hun­gry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And man­ners, cli­mates, coun­cils, gov­ern­ments,
Myself not least, but hon­oured of them all;
And drunk delight of bat­tle with my peers;
Far on the ring­ing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all expe­ri­ence is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untrav­elled world, whose mar­gin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unbur­nished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too lit­tle, and of one to me
Lit­tle remains: but every hour is saved
From that eter­nal silence, some­thing more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearn­ing in desire
To fol­low knowl­edge like a sink­ing star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scep­tre and the isle —
Well-loved of me, dis­cern­ing to ful­fil
This labour, by slow pru­dence to make mild
A rugged peo­ple, and through soft degrees
Sub­due them to the use­ful and the good.
Most blame­less is he, cen­tred in the sphere
Of com­mon duties, decent not to fail
In offices of ten­der­ness, and pay
Meet ado­ra­tion to my house­hold gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the ves­sel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me —
That ever with a frolic wel­come took
The thun­der and the sun­shine, and opposed
Free hearts, free fore­heads — you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his hon­our and his toil;
Death closes all: but some­thing ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbe­com­ing men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twin­kle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sit­ting well in order smite
The sound­ing fur­rows; for my pur­pose holds
To sail beyond the sun­set, and the baths
Of all the west­ern stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal tem­per of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Poem Source

Just for fun here’s a YouTube video of a per­for­mance of the poem:

Design Something Everyday 13/365

Mar 7, 2010   //   by Devlin   //   Blog, Uncategorized  //  No Comments

I was at the park with my kids play­ing in the sand box and I recalled this quote from Chip Kidd’s won­der­ful novel The Cheese Mon­keys: A Novel in Two Semes­ters: “Design is pur­pose­ful plan­ning… Graphic design is the form those plans will take.” Between the juice boxes and push­ing kids on the swing I tried to rep­re­sent that with sand, sticks and pebbles.

Any­one who is inter­ested in lit­er­a­ture or good sto­ry­telling would like The Cheese Monkey’s, but for design­ers, I highly rec­om­mend Kidd’s book for many rea­sons, first it is a grip­ping tale of Happy (the pro­tag­o­nist) dis­cov­er­ing him­self and the world he inhab­its. Sec­ond, the host of char­ac­ters that Kidd cre­ates are unfor­get­table, espe­cially Himillsy Dodd and Win­ter Sor­beck. Finally, the book is full of great nuggets about graphic design. That last point is some­thing design­ers should enjoy, or at least pro­voke some food for thought. It isn’t often that graphic design gets so elo­quently dis­cussed, defended and crit­i­cized in any form, let alone a novel. Hav­ing the his­tory, pur­pose and prac­tice of graphic design exam­ined in fic­tion is refreshing.

Links:

Here are some great interviews/talks by and with Chip Kidd:

Twitter Updates for 2010-03-06

Mar 6, 2010   //   by Devlin   //   Blog, Uncategorized  //  No Comments
  • As I rush to fin­ish a ton of projects I real­ize that the great philoso­phers INXS had it right when they said “Not enough time.” #
  • A good intro­duc­tion to Albin’s Coun­tergam­bit http://goo.gl/zRmZ #
  • If you love mod­els, as I do you’ll love these Itty Bitty Cities: Mod­els That Minia­tur­ize the World | Design + Ideas on WU http://goo.gl/EEHn #
  • great arti­cle Archer open­ing title sequence | The Art of the Title Sequence http://goo.gl/DgBG #

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