Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-07-31

• Read Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Graph­ics Daily ? today’s top sto­ries via @freelance_com ? http://t.co/mrqPCG3 #
• Usabil­ity ver­sus Dyslexia | | dis­tilled http://t.co/Fm5ubSb #design #
• 50 Let­ter­press busi­ness card design for inspi­ra­tion | New Design Blog http://t.co/MUzGEiJ via @newde­sign­blog # Read more »

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-07-24

• How to Add Google Ana­lyt­ics Social Track­ing to Your Web­site http://t.co/1JosYXe via @wpblog­gers #ana­lyt­ics #
• Cool photo! Walt Dis­ney and the #Tiki Room http://t.co/oQ5UemV #
• Dis­ney­land Kinetic type RT @thedis­ney­blog: Happy Birth­day Dis­ney­land http://t.co/Alyvn19 #dis­ney­land #design #
• Email Mar­ket­ing: Cam­paign Analy­sis, Met­rics, Best Prac­tices http://t.co/KIHZs8k via @kaushik #mar­ket­ing #ana­lyt­ics # Read more »

Digital Ephemera for July 20, 2011

Another Wednes­day has rolled around, so here’s my weekly col­lec­tion of inter­est­ing dig­i­tal ephemera I’ve found pok­ing around the vast Inter­net waste­land. Think of me as your guide through the eclec­tic dig­i­tal desert…

Art and Design

A swing­ing inter­view with the great artist, SHAG!

A very inter­est­ing lec­ture from Robert Williams, founder of the impor­tant Low-Brow Art mag­a­zine Jux­tapoz.

The mas­ter of all things dig­i­tal media, Deke McClel­land presents another one of his amaz­ing Deke’s Tech­niques. This time, learn how to use blend­ing and opac­ity to cre­ate shoot­ing stars in Adobe Illustrator!

Film, Video and Motion Graphics

In dif­fi­cult moments in life it is impor­tant to remem­ber many, many have come before us and have turned their set backs into success.

This is a beau­ti­ful short film, Split Screen via Church Media Design:

Splitscreen: A Love Story from JW Grif­fiths on Vimeo.

This lit­tle pro­mo­tion from video effects soft­ware cre­ator Red Giant is hilar­i­ous! Plot Device…

Plot Device from Red Giant on Vimeo.

Mar­ket­ing and Social Media

Inter­ested in Google Ana­lyt­ics? Don’t know where to start? Check out this quick primer from Google.

Some­thing Cool

I am a big fan of Dante, and I find this is pretty funny: A quick ani­ma­tion  of Dante’s Inferno done in MS Paint, yes you read that right. via poetryfoundation.org

Some­thing Weird

Now this is eerie. A dial up modem slowed down 700 times. It’s pretty freaky, but in a good way.

Three Cool Sites Worth Check­ing Out

• You like Info­graphcs? Check out visual.ly, it’s amazing!
• You like Sci­ence Fic­tion, Hor­ror or Fan­tasy? Check out the lat­est releases at podi­o­racket.
• You like cool music? Check out the great Kurt Lorenz!

Great Read: Exit To Tomorrow, World’s Fair Architecture 1933–2005

Here is another great book for the design book­shelf: Exit to Tomor­row, World’s Fair Archi­tec­ture, Design, Fash­ion 1933–2005 by Andrew Garn, Paola Antonelli, Udo Kul­ter­mann and Steven Van Dyk. This fab­u­lous and copi­ously illus­trated book cat­a­logs the major World’s Fairs through­out the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury; and details their impact on design, tech­nol­ogy and architecture.

Exit to Tomor­row also fea­tures many great essays about the rise of World’s Fairs as pop­u­lar spec­ta­cles through their hey­day and finally chron­i­cling their even­tual demise due to eco­nomic and tech­no­log­i­cal obsta­cles. Each essay gives great insight into these once pop­u­lar events, one that I par­tic­u­larly liked was “Of Imag­i­nary and Con­crete Fan­tasies” by Paola Antonelli, wherein she gives great per­spec­tive, includ­ing this lit­tle nugget describ­ing the under­ly­ing phi­los­o­phy of a World’s Fair:

A great World’s fair, just like a good sci-fi movie, is a plau­si­ble fan­tasy based on the impact of sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy on soci­ety. But while the world por­trayed by the movies can be on the verge of a dark cat­a­stro­phe — or just emerg­ing from it —  the dream invoked by a world’s fair nearly always a gleam­ing utopia within arm’s reach.”
— Paola Antoneilli from the essay “Of Imag­i­nary and Con­crete Fantasies”

It’s a great book, espe­cially for any­one inter­ested in the inter­sec­tion of cul­ture, archi­tec­ture, sci­ence and visions of the future. Read­ing the almost naive opti­mism of these World’s Fairs is quite infec­tious, in fact I’ve put on my rose tinted space aged glasses and I see it’s a great big beau­ti­ful tomorrow!

Finally, I thought I’d end with a few clips from YouTube with footage from one of my favorite World’s Fair’s… The Cen­tury 21 Expo­si­tion or The 1962 Seat­tle World’s Fair. A World’s Fair that pro­moted space travel and man’s future explo­ration of space. I am par­tial to this World’s Fair for three impor­tant reasons:

1. It was the set­ting for a delight­fully tacky Elvis movie.
2. The Space Nee­dle is awe­some… mid-century archi­tec­ture at it’s finest!
3. I live in Seattle!

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-07-17

• Read Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Graph­ics Daily ? today’s top sto­ries via @veroo­jeda @designactive @idgde­sign ? http://t.co/F7Ji0rh #
• Enjoy Dante’s Inferno ani­mated in MS Paint! via The Poetry Foun­da­tion http://t.co/TgJeGw6 #inferno #lit­er­a­ture #dante #
• “It’s art if can’t be explained. It’s fash­ion if no one asks for an expla­na­tion. It’s design if it doesn’t need expla­na­tion” Wouter Stokkel #
• 55+ Ques­tions to ask when design­ing a logo | Graphic Design Blender http://t.co/Fp9iSU9 # Read more »

Communications and Graphics Daily… My New Daily Newspaper!

I recently cre­ated a Paper.li daily paper. It’s pretty cool, you can check out my paper.… Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Design Daily. I won­der if this is the future of pub­lish­ing and of news in gen­eral? All you have to do is fill out 5 twit­ter cat­e­gories and ta da! You have your own per­son­al­ized paper! Thant is pretty cool! I’ll keep it up for a while and see how it goes. Let me know if you use paper.li or what you think about it.

Digital Ephemera for July 13, 2011

Another Wednes­day has rolled around, so here’s my weekly col­lec­tion of inter­est­ing dig­i­tal ephemera I’ve found pok­ing around the vast Inter­net waste­land. Think of me as your guide through the eclec­tic dig­i­tal desert…

Art and Design

Entire Text of Nov­els Used in Out­door Poster Campaign

This is very clever! The entire text of the novel A Clock­work Orange printed on a poster as a part of an adver­tis­ing cam­paign for New Zealand online book­seller Whit­coulls. As a big fan of  Burgess’ dysu­topian clas­sic I am par­tic­u­larly drawn to the poster. The New Zeland based ad agency Draft­FCB came up with the out­door poster cam­paign, “Read More Books.” The cam­paign that reminds us that some of the most pop­u­lar movies began as books. Other posters in the cam­paign include  Char­lie and Choco­late Fac­tory and The Girl with the Dragon Tat­too.

I love how the art work is cre­ated using only color and the text of the books and recre­ates iconic images of the film or the book cover. To quote the great philoso­pher Darth Vader, “Impres­sive, most impres­sive. via DangerousMinds.net

The Ani­mated GIF is Dead. Long Live the Ani­mated GIF!
I say “G-iff” you say “J-iff” but we can all agree the arti­cle “Ani­mated GIFs Tri­umphant” by Anil Dash is pretty cool; as is this great col­lec­tion of ani­mated GIF’s on Tum­blr.

Amaz­ing Harry Pot­ter Paper Cut Designs
See­ing these gor­geous paper cut out mas­ter pieces from the insanely tal­ented Brit­tney Lee is, well, magical!

Mar­ket­ing & Social Media

This is a great lit­tle talk from Gary Vayn­er­chuk:  Thank You Econ­omy – SXSW 2011 Inter­ac­tive. He brings up dif­fer­ent points about the human­iza­tion of busi­ness, dis­cussed at length in his book The Thank You Economy

Film,Video and Motion Graphics

Hitch from Pas­cal Monaco on Vimeo.

‘Hitch’ — An Alfred Hitch­cock Cook­book
What’s the per­fect recipe for sus­pense? Alfred Hitch­cock knows how to dish it and his recipe is explained in this great grad­u­a­tion project from the highly tal­ented Felix Meyer, Pas­cal Monaco, Torsten Strer, at the Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sci­ences and Arts in Hannover.

Fred­die Wong!
If you haven’t checked out any of the great stuff from Fred­die Wong, stop what you are doing and do so, you will be well rewarded; you’ll laugh and be amazed. Check out his stuff: Fred­diew YouTube Channel | Freddiew2 YouTube Chan­nel | His Blog

3 Cool Sites Worth Check­ing Out

modelcoasters.com
Just as it says, like peo­ple who build model trains, but these make the minia­ture peo­ple hurl their plas­tic lunches. You’ll see some great crafts­man­ship on dis­play on this site!

Chi­nese Pro­pa­ganda Posters
For­eign Pol­icy Mag­a­zine has a great run­down of Sino-propaganda. Make Sure you get to #5 the note about mis­trans­la­tion, it is pretty funny.

The Cen­ter for Car­toon Stud­ies
A nifty place to get all ani­mated and that.

Drop a line in the com­ments and let me know if I missed some­thing cool.

This Book Is Just My Type: An A-Z of Type Designers by Neil Macmillan

I found this great book, An A-Z of Type Design­ers by Neil Macmil­lan the other day at a local used book­store and I can’t say enough about how cool it is! It is a great addi­tion to the library of any typophile or graphic designer.

At it’s heart it is an ency­clo­pe­dia of some of the most influ­en­tial type design­ers from Guten­berg the cur­rent crop of dig­i­tal design­ers. It is well laid out, thor­ough and, as you’d expect, has excel­lent typog­ra­phy. The entries on the var­i­ous design­ers have nice infor­ma­tive brief biogra­phies, lists of type­faces and lots of images of the design­ers fonts being used in books and other ephemera. It’s a per­fect way to get face to face with those behind the typeface.

The end of the book has a nice sec­tion for fur­ther reading. Perusing the list I was very happy to find that I already had sev­eral of the rec­om­mended books. Now those books get to share space with this great new edi­tion to my typog­ra­phy and design library.

Included are sev­eral short essays on dif­fer­ent aspects of typog­ra­phy, they almost alone make the book worth it.

• Jonathan Barn­brook writes on the way dig­i­tal tools have upset the old order of typog­ra­phy for good and ill and have made typog­ra­phy and type design a real­is­tic vehi­cle for artis­tic and self expression.
• Erik van Blok­land writes about the change in type foundries from tra­di­tional foundries to dig­i­tal foundries.
• Clive Bur­ton writes about the need for font licens­ing and the respect for the field of type design.
• John Downer has a great essay about cre­at­ing new type­faces based on older ver­sions and how that with the lack of his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge of type design has led many design­ers to use revival fonts and cre­ate designs that are wildly anachronistic.
• John Hud­son writes and essay on the tech­nol­ogy, par­tic­u­larly Open Type tech­nol­ogy, behind dig­i­tal typog­ra­phy and how it is being used to cre­ate non roman based alpha­bets. Esp­cieally script based lan­guages like Ara­bic, Thai and so on.
• Jean François Porchez writes on the extent at which type reflects and influ­cences per­cep­tions of nationality.
• Erik Spiek­er­mann has an essay on cor­po­rate typog­ra­phy where he makes the case for buis­nesses hav­ing unique typog­ra­phy cre­ated for their brand.
• Jeremy Tankard has an essay about how to actu­ally draw let­ters and the ini­tial steps in design­ing type.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-07-10

• Happy Inde­pen­dence Day! — Read­ing of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence http://t.co/83R60uh via @youtube #4thofjuly #Inde­pen­dence­Day #
• An explo­sive idea! — Wide Angle Cam­era Mounted on Fire­work POV http://t.co/70gyV2A via @youtube #
• How to scale a non­profit orga­ni­za­tion so it is opti­mized for impact.: Change Observer: Design Observer: http://t.co/i2Z74KU via @AddThis #
• Check this video out — Ultra Cul­ture — Shag Seg­ment http://t.co/vEiYTsQ via @youtube art #tiki # Read more »

Friday Freebie: Vintage Hawaiian Map Wallpaper

Feel­ing the Aloha Spirit today, so I thought I’d pass along a lit­tle desk­top wall­pa­per I cre­ated. I made it by mash­ing up a cou­ple of images from a 1950’s United Air­lines pro­mo­tional brochure of Hawaii. Very mid-century mod­ern. Mahalo!

• Large Wall­pa­per »
• Small Wall­pa­per »

Speak­ing of the Islands, I saw this again today, the late great Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo’ole  per­form­ing “Some­where Over the Rain­bow.” Chokes me up every time. Rest in Peace IZ.