David Attenborough’s Wonderful World

This is, well wonderful. Maybe a tad on the corny side, but the footage is beautiful.

Amazing Video: Snow Globe LA

Winter is hopefully gone, but here is a beautiful video to remind us of the Holiday Season. Take a look at Los Angeles as seen as a snow globe from the creative folks at All Cut Up Films. It’s pretty amazing, plus I love the tune “Samskeyti” by Sigur Ros.

“Snow Globe Los Angeles” was created using over 4000 still images shot on a custom built camera rig. The effect was achieved using a Canon 5D MII, a homemade tilt-shift style lens, a light bulb filled with water, and paper cut outs to create shaped bokeh.

Snow Globe Los Angeles from All Cut Up Films on Vimeo.

10 Best Video Series on the Internet for Self Education

The internet is an amazing resource for learning new things. If you want to put in the time, there are many great things you can learn. The following are ten great free video series that you should really check out.

These are sites and series that I regularly watch, so it is a personal list. Hence the rather random, nature of the subjects. I am very curious about pretty much everything from my profession of graphic design to science to pop culture to religion. You’ll have to forgive the rather scattered nature of the list, but I personally attest to the greatness of each of the listed shows.

TED: Technology, Education and Design
The greatest collection of experts waxing poetic on their fields. A must watch for anyone.

The Periodic Table of Videos
Video Journalist Brady Haran creates videos about chemistry.

Sixty Symbols
Video Journalist Brady Haran creates videos about physics.

Bibledex
Bibledex is a project by the University of Nottingham’s Department of Theology and Religious Studies in conjunction with video journalist Brady Haran. The videos are by no means comprehensive – rather they’re a curious assortment of academic insights into what is probably the most famous collection of books in history.

Backstage Science
Great videos about science by Brady Haran.

Deke’s Techniques
Deke McCellan is my PhotoShop hero. I find him the most entertaining and excellent teacher of digital communication tools ever. Here are different sites to check out this great series:
blog.lynda.com/tag/dekes-techniques/
deke.com/
youtube.com/user/lynda

InDesign Secrets Video Cast
Quick tips on secrets from the masters of InDesign. A must for anyone working in publications design.

Global Public Square with Fareed Zakaria
My favorite living intellectual and political thinker has an amazing show on CNN which is broadcast on the internet. His show is what news should be, a thoughtful examination of events and issues with the leaders and great thinkers.

Ontwink
A great resource for web designers and devlopers. It is a repository for talks on the technical side of design.

Watch Free Documentary
A collection of great non-fiction films. Though I would quibble the site about many of the pseudo-science and conspiratorial bent of many of the documentaries. So buyer beware on some of them.

Extra Series to check out!

After Hours on cracked.com
I had one extra one, it is more a humorous look at popular culture. I am not sure if it belongs with the other videos in this list, but I highly recommend it.

An Unfortunate Film By Kurtis Hough

Yikes! This is very a very sad yet funny (sort of) film by Kurtis Hough. “how to lose $2400 in 24 seconds” Sorry Kurtis!

regrettably filmed by Kurtis Hough

KH Studios, 2011

www.khstudios.com

Twitter: twitter.com/kurtishough

happy 40th anniversary Northwest Film Center

How They Did It – (The Daily Monster Edition)

This week’s install­ment of How They Did It will focus on the extremely talented artist Stefan G. Bucher. He is the artist who has created hundreds of monsters and released them on to an unsuspecting world. Don’t worry his monsters are created with ink and creativity, not weapons and discarded body parts. This modern day Dr. Frankenstein of art has created amazing work. Check it out, you’ll be glad you did!

A part of the great documentary about his work from Lynda.com

Some other resources about Stefan G. Bucher:

• Stephen Bucher’s YouTube Channel
• His Blog
• His Website

Digital Ephemera for Wednesday, October 5, 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 (Chess Edition)

Art & Design

The Evolution of Baseball card Design 1887-2011
This is a fun collection of Baseball Cards from designer Stacy David Wallingford. Just like the players, I’d have to say that even the graphics seem to have beefed up dramatically. I’m guessing they’d test positive for PhotoShop.

Case Study: The Revenger’s Tragedy Initial Design
Okay a bit of a shameless plug for my own article, but it’s a nice post that exposes my design philosophy and methodology. Take a look at how I came up with a design for GreenStage’s production of The Revenger’s Tragedy.

Motion Graphics & Video

Teal and Orange – Hollywood, Please Stop the Madness
A great rant on the overuse of color correction from filmmaker Todd Miro on the desaturation of the palette in Hollywood films of late. I don’t totally agree, but it’s a great rant nonetheless.

L.A. Timelapse
This is beautiful, and as John Nack says: “Colin Rich has done the nearly impossible: He’s made me find Los Angeles beautiful.”

LA Light from Colin Rich on Vimeo.

Table 7
A very cute, clever and well executed short film. -via Neatorama

John Dies at the End
Okay, I don’t know what this is about even after reading this article. But I sure want to see it!

Marketing

Seth Godin’s Blog

Many people have heard of Seth Godin, if you haven’t you should! His daily missives on marketing, communications and humanity are not to me missed. A truly invaluable inspiration for those navigating the murky waters of modern marketing.

Social Media

What Was There?

This site is an experiment in collective history. Using google maps and user submitted photographs they aim to create build a visual history of the world. A worthy goal!

Something Cool

Digital Dead Sea Scrolls

After over 24 centuries, the work of archaeologists, scholars and historians the Dead Sea Scrolls will be accessible to everyone thanks to Google’s technology. Google and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem have teamed up and are celebrating the launch of the Dead Sea Scrolls online. As reported on Google’s Blog:

Now, anyone around the world can view, read and interact with five digitized Dead Sea Scrolls. The high resolution photographs, taken by Ardon Bar-Hama, are up to 1,200 megapixels, almost 200 times more than the average consumer camera, so viewers can see even the most minute details in the parchment. For example, zoom in on the Temple Scroll to get a feel for the animal skin it’s written on—only one-tenth of a millimeter thick.”

Something Strange

Cthulhu vs. the Sith (or the Carrot Monster Revenge)
A cute, if strange stop motion animation involving vegetables, legos and the unmentionable horror from beyond the stars.

Something Terrible

Worst Band Ever Butchers Pink Floyd
So bad, it’s almost good… almost!

Three Sites Worth Checking Out (Chess Edition)

• It’s Your Turn. My favorite online chess (and other board game) site. If you want to challenge me at chess challenge Ulysses 2004.
• The Chess Website YouTube Channel. Great video chess lessons and lectures.
• US Chess. The US Chess Federation official site.

Funny Graphic Design Videos

Sometimes it seems that graphic designers are a serious lot. After all, it is not the normal person who becomes enraged at the use of papyrus as the subtitle font in Avatar. But to prove that designers and design can be funny I present these following clips dealing with design, adverting and worst of all Comic Sans.

101 Photoshop Tips in 5 minutes by Deke McClelland. Funny, yet helpful.

You Suck at Photoshop: Very crass, but very, very funny! You must watch both seasons of it, well worth it. As a bonus it has some decent tips for Photoshop. Linked below is the first episode, and for poor Danny Boyle, it all goes down hill from here.

John Stossel from 20/20 discussing graphic design, his advice on one particular typeface is illuminating:

Movie Poster Designer: As some one who worked with film posters for several years, this isn’t that far off the mark. From the humor site, Funny or Die.

Font Conference: A classic from the humor site College Humor.

Font Fight: A sequel of sorts of Font Conference. I love it when Helvetica goes after it’s rip off, Arial:

Life of a graphic designer, everything’s better with a little cute kid. From Canadian Designer “yoshbox” of Q Graphique.

Designing the Stop Sign by Committee. I think every designer’s felt this way at one time or another.

How NOT to use PowerPoint. A hilarious, and true video on poor slide preparation. Life After Death PowerPoint from EMT Media on Vimeo.

Life After Death PowerPoint from EMT Media on Vimeo.

OGD: Original Design Gangsta

Focus Testing the Apple “Big Brother Ad” Opening video to the Hatch Award 2007 (an ad agency award), This is an actual focus group testing of the 1984 ad. This is the lowest common denominator ladies & gentlemen.

A Few Good Creative Men: A design related mash up of the classic courtroom scene from A Few Good Men.

Only the Best Ideas Win What happens to all those ideas after the are born… literally born in this case.

Vendor Client Relationships in the Real World Pretty funny take on this sensitive topic.

Last, but not least… What Happens When your Father is a Graphic Designer A classic old video, though why Comic Sans at the beginning? A bit suspect for the premise I’d say.

Interesting timelapse video of choosing a typeface

I saw this interesting timelapse video of the very talented Designer Brian Hoff as he works up different looks for a logo he is working on.  Anyone who has ever done this can relate to this fun and frustrating (at times) chore of picking just the right typeface.

Often times  I have the perfect typeface in mind or at the very least a general style based on appropriateness, historical convention and client requirements. However sometimes the joy is just scrolling through and finding a happy accident of a typeface that looks good when you least expect it. One of the little joys I get in the wild world of Graphic Design.

Related Links:

• Brian Hoff’s Website
• Brian’s post about creating the video
• Brian’s portfolio
• The official site of Suitcasefusion 2 by Extensis. One of these days I keep to pick up a copy.