The Alii Lounge

I while back I started another blog. The Alii Lounge. It’s a tum­blr blog about all things Poly­ne­sian Pop, Ultra-lounge, mid-century mod­ern and tiki.  Alii is the Hawai­ian for roy­alty, and if you visit my site you’ll be treated like a king or queen for I only share only the finest Tiki links.

Visit The Alii Lounge

Digital Ephemera for Wednesday, October 26, 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…

Today’s Menu

• Art & Design
• Motion Graph­ics & Video
• Mar­ket­ing
• Social Media
• Some­thing Cool
• Some­thing Strange
• Some­thing Terrible
• Three Sites Worth Check­ing Out

Art & Design

Heather M. David’s Flickr Pho­to­stream.

If you are inter­ested in mid-century mod­ern design, Poly­ne­sian Pop or Goo­gie. Do your self a favor and check out Heather M. David’s flickr pho­to­stream. You will be treated to a cor­nu­copia of mid-century ephemera includ­ing match book cov­ers, gift wrap designs, signs and much more. It is really a treasure.

Nancy Duarte Interview

Check out this great inter­view with Pre­sen­ta­tion Designer extra­or­di­naire, Nancy Duarte. She has a lot of great insights about com­mu­ni­ca­tion, design and the pre­sen­ta­tion of infor­ma­tion. I first learned about Ms. Duarte from read­ing the clas­sic book Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen and blog by Garr Reny­olds. If you haven’t lis­tened to Duarte’s TED talk or read Garr’s book, you sim­ply must, right now, I’m seri­ous! My favorite line from the interview:

Most design­ers aren’t strong com­mu­ni­ca­tors. The invest­ment in com­mu­ni­ca­tions would help the entire design com­mu­nity. Many time the shy design­ers have the strongest con­cepts but don’t have the skills to explain their thought process.” — Nancy Duarte.

The per­fect word when you don’t know what else to say!
Best.Graffiti. Ever. via Jux­tapoz Mag­a­zine

Motion Graph­ics & Video

Retro School Videos
This is a really great site, it col­lects var­i­ous mid-century edu­ca­tional films for your view­ing plea­sure. As they pro­mote them­selves on their web­site, “A free and fun way to sup­port your class­room or home­school cur­ricu­lum using time-proven Edu­ca­tional Films, News­reels, TV Shows,  PSAs, and Movies from the past.”

The only bum­mer about the site is it doesn’t allow you to embed the videos from their site. But since the films are in the pub­lic domain, it is easy to track them down on YouTube or Archive.org. Like I did for the fol­low­ing hilar­i­ous film, Law and Social Con­trols: Morals, Laws and Con­for­mity in Par­ent­ing The­ory Video (1949)

Bob
This is a great ani­ma­tion, very funny and clever. Make sure you watch the cred­its!

BOB from Jacob Frey on Vimeo.

Mar­ket­ing

Guer­rilla Mar­ket­ing for the Dig­i­tal Age: I Want To Draw A Cat For You
I read this great arti­cle on about the site “I Want to Draw a Cat for You” and  am amazed. Basi­cally, for $9 Chicago-based come­dian Steve Gadlin will draw a stick fig­ure cat for you. Seri­ously, that’s it. Sur­pris­ingly it’s been fairly suc­cess­ful, recently Gadlin part­nered with Groupon and sold 1,000 draw­ings in a sin­gle day.

The marke­ing video is clever for sure but, more impor­tantly there is an inter­est­ing les­son to be learned in this case study. This exam­ple shows that non-traditional mar­ket­ing chan­nels can be used to launch a suc­cess­ful project, even if it is of dubi­ous artis­tic merit. If you have a pow­er­ful and clever video or web­site that peo­ple will share with their social media net­works and you can com­bine it with the ris­ing power of coupon sites like Groupon then you have a great low-cost strat­egy for success.

via freelanceswitch.com

Social Media

Vir­tual Vandalism!

A new app that allows you to take a pic­ture of a build­ing, vir­tu­ally van­dal­ize it then share it! Pretty clever and prop­erty own­ers every­where thank you!

Some­thing Cool

Behind the Scenes: The Life and Death of Stars with Sean Austin and Sandeep Parikh.
Pretty funny video from the Spitzer Sci­ence Tele­scope.

Some­thing Strange

Turkey Chases News Pro­ducer.
I am sure this has to have been fea­tured on some “fail” type of site at one point or another.

Some­thing Terrible

Splash Moun­tain Rap
In the late 80’s and early 90’s Rap Music hit the main­stream, so nat­u­rally mar­keters tried to cap­ture the lat­est youth craze to pro­mote their prod­ucts to the youth of Amer­ica. Just as nat­u­rally their ham-fisted approach cre­ated some­thing very, very bad. So in that vein, I present to you, the Splash Moun­tain Rap.

Three Sites Worth Check­ing Out

• Lynda.com The best inter­net based video train­ing site for learn­ing graphic design software.
• bufferapp.com A handy site that let’s you set up a sched­ule for send­ing out tweets.
• shorpy.com Cool his­tor­i­cal photo archive (though the actual images orig­i­nally came from the US National Archives)

Iced Moais!

Just a quick post today in honor of the last gasp of sum­mer in the North­ern Hemisphere.

I was fix­ing a glass of ice water today and I was prepar­ing it using my favorite ice cubes, or rather ice Moai’s. Moai’s, you know, the colos­sal and mys­te­ri­ous stat­ues that adorn the far away island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). By using these cool (ha!) trays I can cre­ate diminu­tive iced idols any time I need a cool refresh­ing idol­a­trous drink. When I pulled the iced idols of the deep freeze I knew I had to share their crys­talline beauty. So, I set up the Moais on my deck cre­at­ing my own per­sonal, if tem­po­rary, abu (altar or plat­form) and took a few pic­tures to share with my tiki lov­ing friends.

As I watched them melt, it seemed an appro­pri­ate send off to sum­mer. Because, I know that hav­ing an iced drink will soon be a thing of the past, as the leaves turn golden and Octo­ber rolls around. How­ever, for my lucky friends in the south­ern hemi­sphere, it’s time to dust off your favorite ice trays and get ready!

Digital Ephemera

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 beyond the dig­i­tal desert…

Art, Design and Retro Items of Note

New Shag Tiki Print
This new print from the great Josh Agle or  Shag, mythol­o­gizes the great long lost Poly­ne­sian Pop Palace, the Kahiki Sup­per Club.

Use­ful Illus­tra­tor Typog­ra­phy Tips from Smash­ing Mag­a­zine
File under: good to know. | Link

30+ Infor­ma­tive Typog­ra­phy Related Blogs
A nice round up of some good blogs that are just your type. HA! | Link

World’s fair of the 1930’s
A nice look back at some of the World’s Fairs in the 1930’s. Includes some of the lesser known fairs. | Link

Movie Posters Ani­mated into Neon Signs By Mr. Whaite
Now these are just cool! | Link

Great Design Free­bie
An Ele­gant Login Form for Pho­to­shop | Link

Star Wars Retold in Pic­tograms
The Force is strong with these min­i­mal­ist mas­ter­pieces from some­one who goes by the han­dle kisia. | Link

Film, Video and Motion Graphics

Star Wars Begins by Jamie Ben­ning
Con­tin­u­ing with the Star Wars theme, Film­maker Jamie Ben­ning has cre­ated an amaz­ing unof­fi­cial com­men­tary video with footage and  inter­views about the Star Wars films. Too bad the com­men­taries on the offi­cial discs weren’t one par­sec as good as these. For the true Star Wars fan! | Link

Man­hat­tan 4.33pm from Lizzie Oxby on Vimeo.

NY Pin­ball
A cool short film using New York City as a back drop for a huge pin­ball game. Now that’s a great use of after effects! | Link

Finally, Some­thing So Bad, It’s Good!

Mr T’s Be Somebody’s Be Some­body or Be Somebody’s Fool
A clas­sic self 80’s kids self help video from none other than the incom­pa­ra­ble Mr. T.  Link Please note that some of rap lyrics in the video are cred­ited to the Rhyme Syn­di­cate Boss, Ice-T. Also in an iconic twist you’ll get to see The New Edi­tion with Bobby Brown sing about the dan­gers of drugs and alco­hol. A must see for any pop-culturalist!

Josh Angle, the Hula Hula and the Disney Cruise Line

This Fri­day I sang Karoke at the greatly dec­o­rated, yet poorly exe­cuted tiki bar (way to much of a meat mar­ket for my tastes, the tiki vibe is totally lost in the testos­terone) the Hula Hula in Seat­tle. I saw an amaz­ing SHAG draw­ing on the wall and it made me want to find more SHAG inter­views on YouTube. This is a good one I found about the prints he did for the new Dis­ney Cruise Line. Enjoy!

Twilight of the Idols

Design Some­thing Every Day 30/365

Very sad news. The cus­to­dian at my work was dust­ing and “acci­den­tally” knocked over on of my many Tikis. Trau­matic to say the least. Hope he doesn’t plan any surf­ing any time soon or he’ll find out, just like Greg Brady (see Sea­son 4 Episode 1), what hap­pens when you mess with might Ku. Or watch below:

Digital Ephemera

A few inter­est­ing bits of dig­i­tal ephemera I’ve found on the infor­ma­tion super high­way in the last week.

Mid-century Mod­ern & Tiki

• Paul Malon’s Flickr Stream, an amaz­ing col­lec­tion of mid-century ephemera, you sim­ply MUST check this flickr pho­to­stream if you have any inter­est in the 1950’s.
• Summer’s offi­cially over, how­ever this is good advice on Tiki Torch Safety.
• Great posters from the 1950’s. Good inspi­ra­tion for design­ers or fans of the 1950’s from the great design inspi­ra­tion site Daily Inspi­ra­tion. Posters: Part 1 Posters: Part 2

Good Design resources, tips and tricks

• Lift­ing a logo from a PDF via David Airey’s other great blog Logo Design Love.
• HTML 5: What Design­ers need to know
• An impor­tant read, Typog­ra­phy Field Guide. Also from logo mak­ing mas­ter David Airey.

Design con­tests

• Pan­tone and Behance have a com­pe­ti­tion find­ing the best use of color in a design project.
• 125 video short­list announced today for YouTube Play

Info­graph­ics

• A cool poster: Grand Tax­on­omy of Rap Names

Free­bies

• Some great retro-inspired labels from Designer Cathe Holden’s great blog Just Some­thing I Made.
• Cool 70’s inspired vec­tor graphic from Allonzo Inc.
• Just in time for Hal­loween, a great col­lec­tion of blood splat­ter brushes for Photoshop

Illus­tra­tion

• One of my favorite illus­tra­tion blogs Urban Sketch­ers. Loads of inspi­ra­tions and great sketches from artists around the world.
• Ire­land based artist and designer Jen­nifer Farley’s illus­tra­tions are sim­ply amaz­ing. I can’t wait to read her (hope­fully) forth­com­ing children’s  book. Some pub­lisher needs to jump on her book.

If you have any cool design, art, tiki or mid-century links or thoughts let me know. Leave a com­ment or shoot me an email.

Design Something Everyday: Day 5: Bali Hai

I’ve been work­ing on stuff every­day, but I haven’t been post­ing daily, so I’ve got a bunch of stuff to put up.

The first of these is a dig­i­tal doo­dle of a song from the won­der­ful 1949 Rogers and Ham­mer­stein play South Pacific, Bali Hai. I was inspired by the pro­duc­tion I saw last week­end at Seattle’s Fifth Avenue The­atre. Of course, I was famil­iar with the song and the play mostly through the 1958 film ver­sion, but see­ing it live was a thrill. Bali Hai is a myth­i­cal and mys­ti­cal island that rep­re­sents an unat­tain­able par­adise. That image of a hazy dou­ble vol­cano island has formed a core of the Tiki and Poly­ne­sian Pop mythos.

The song is a clas­sic in Amer­i­can Musi­cal the­ater, and for me the best part is very influ­en­tial in the world of Tiki and P0lynesian Pop Cul­ture. Below you can see the won­der­ful scene and lis­ten to the song Bali Hai from the 1958 film, do you hear it? It calls to you..

Tools: Adobe Illustrator

Links:

• Bali Hai: Myth­i­cal and mys­ti­cal island, if you lis­ten it will call to you…
• 5th Avenue Theatre
• Rogers & Hammerstein
• South Pacific (1958 film)
• Tales of the South Pacific, the 1946 Pulitzer Prize win­ning  book by James Mich­ener, source for the film and musi­cal productions.

Design Something Every Day: Day 4: Russell: Finder of Lost Idols

Day 4 brings me back to one of my favorite muses, Sur­vivor of course. Here’s a lit­tle sort of vin­tage styled poster high­light­ing the arch vil­lain from the TV fran­chise, Rus­sell Hantz, bet­ter known to fans as Evil Rus­sell. In the show he had a knack for find­ing idols, which would keep him from being kicked out of the game. That explains the tiki idol in the poster. Since he was con­sid­ered evil, the styl­ized flames seem appropriate.

Evil Rus­sell

Tools: Adobe Illus­tra­tor
Links: Rus­sell Got Screwed, a site defend­ing the honor of this often maligned cast away.

Updated Free Survivor Tribal Color Swatches for Illustrator and Photoshop

Another sea­son of Sur­vivor, my favorite tele­vi­sion show, has run its course. In a sur­prise to me and most of the fans of the show, the con­niv­ing and bril­liant tac­ti­cian Rus­sell Hantz won every­thing but the game, being defeated in a lop­sided vote to Natalie White (link). I guess that Sur­vivor can be like chess, in that you can be a bril­liant tac­ti­cian, but if your strat­egy is flawed then even being up in mate­r­ial and posi­tion, you can still be mated.  For more about my strange obses­sion with this show, I refer you to my last post with the topic here.

In honor of another great sea­son I thought I’d update my Sur­vivor tribal color swatches for the Adobe Cre­ative Suite, they are in the Adobe Swatch Exchange for­mat (.ase). They are now updated and include the tribal col­ors for the pre­vi­ous two sea­sons of Sur­vivor, Tocan­tins & Samoa .

Click here to down­load the free color swatches.

Also, today is the win­ter sol­stice and is offi­cially the first day of win­ter here in the North­ern Hemi­sphere. In Seat­tle the rain has been pour­ing for weeks if not months already. How­ever, thanks to Sur­vivor and Her­man Melville I have been trans­ported to the lush and mys­te­ri­ous islands of the South Pacific.  I have begun read­ing a clas­sic in the field of pop­u­lar­iz­ing and mythol­o­giz­ing (for good and ill) the world  of Poly­ne­sia, Typee: A Romance of the South Seas by Her­man Melville (for some rea­son I’ve also seen it sub­ti­tled in some edi­tions as A Peep at Poly­ne­sian Life).

Long before Melville had his read­ers chase a great white whale, he marooned them on more tem­per­ate shores. This book is a highly fic­tion­al­ized account of some of the true adven­tures Melville had as a young sailor when he jumped ship and lived with the natives of Mar­que­sas Islands for three weeks in 1842. Coin­ci­den­tally , the Mar­que­sas played host to a sea­son of Sur­vivor (Sea­son 4).

Schol­ar­ship is divided on the mer­its of Typee as a work of lit­er­a­ture and espe­cially his por­trayal of the native islanders. I find it inter­est­ing that even though Melville is now known pri­mar­ily for Moby Dick, this was by far his most suc­cess­ful work dur­ing his life time.  I think that is because this book is at its heart an adven­ture story of escape in a lush and mys­te­ri­ous land. Which is the under­ly­ing mythol­ogy of the west­ern view of the South Seas, some­thing that Sur­vivor and Poly­ne­sian Pop has cours­ing through their blood­stream. To end here is a quote from Typee that sums this mythol­ogy perfectly:

‘Hurra, my lads! It’s a set­tled thing; next week we shape our course to the Mar­que­sas!’ The Mar­que­sas! What strange visions of out­landish things does the very name spirit up! Naked houris—cannibal banquets—groves of cocoanut—coral reefs—tattooed chiefs—and bam­boo tem­ples; sunny val­leys planted with bread-fruit-trees—carved canoes danc­ing on the flash­ing blue waters—savage wood­lands guarded by hor­ri­ble idols—HEATHENISH RITES AND HUMAN SACRIFICES.

For more information

Online Ver­sions of Typee:

• Project Guten­berg: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1900
• Libravox.org audio book: http://librivox.org/typee-by-herman-melville/

More about Typee:

• Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typee
• Sparks Notes (no cheat­ing, just ref­er­ence… read the book!) http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/typee/

More about Her­man Melville & some of his other works:

• Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Melville
• http://www.melville.org/
• http://www.mobydick.org/

Sur­vivor:

• http://www.cbs.com/primetime/survivor

More about Adobe .ase format:

• http://blog.gilbertconsulting.com/2007/04/adobe-swatch-exchange-ase-files.html
• http://kuler.adobe.com/links/kuler_help.html