Apple

For all us crazy mac fanatics....take a look at apple through the years:
30 years of apple in 3 minutes

You can do that with photography???

We just had a presentation by photographer (etc/etc/etc) Lyle Owerko. Although it seems like he's done a lot of other interesting things, like the commercial spots, but mostly I was impressed by what he did with photography. I guess I had always looked at a photographs and not really thought how those pictures were procured. It was interesting to here how he set up his studio and formed relationships with his "subjects." It was also interesting to here why he was doing it. A lot of photography books will offer the author's explanation, but it always sounds a little too rehearsed...a little too pretencious. Lyle seemed very down to earth and had a very relaxed and relatable way of describing things that definitely brought more of my interest to his work. Here are some of my favorites he what he showed us:

Sleepovers done better

Thanksgiving break is almost here, so what does that mean?? Overnight guest, thats what. Designasyl has come up with an all new project called Stay At My Home. for thos of use who can't afford guest houses this furniture is made so that you can host anyone in any size space comfortaby. The guests will feel right at home and you wont even have to sacrifice any of your home space for storage. Thank Luzia Kalin and Nicole Lehner for this win-win situation.

Yay YouTube!

So my complex video finally posted too!!! Yay I'm on youtube!!
Heres the link to my Complex Animation
and here's the video:

Yay YouTube!

So my video finally posted!!! Yay I'm on youtube!!
Heres the link to my Simple Animation
and here's the video:

Push it

So would we call this people powered electricity?? Like wind power, now we have push power, with the installment of a revolving door that generates energy in the Netherlands at Natuurcafe La Port. Built by Boon Edam, and designed by architects at RAU, it can generate roughly 4600 kwh of energy per year. So it may not be the biggest impact right now, but think if every revolving door in New York City had one of these....they could at least power a Jamba Juice or something.

YouTubin'

So since it is taking FOREVER for my YouTube video to upload and I'm not sure they'll be ready to post on the blog, here is the link to my youtube profile so that once they do upload, you can see them there.

Movies

Yay i finished my moviess!!!! Soon I will be a youtuber too....

Look Again

So when i first breezed past this post on core77, I did a double take on the picture I saw. I thought these fireplaces looked, well, really cool. Of course, then when I read further, I felt like an idiot. So this post was not about how interesting or how innovative these new wall mounted fireplaces, but about how impractical they are:
Post author hipstomp encourages readers to think longevity...logically will a wall mounted fire place last that long functionally, and think 1970's decore.....with this even remotely look okay in 10years??
Shows that there's ALOT more to think about than "that just looks cool"

Country Logo Powerpoint presentation

Country Logo

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Something I learned from a blogger

I suppose since reading all of these design blogs for over a year know, I have become somewhat a critic of blogs as well. I also recall back on article by Seth Godin in which he discusses how to be a good blogger. So while I was reading core77's post "Living With:" Product Review I got to the end and found myself being more critical than interested. One of Seth's key point was to put links on everything, because an interested blogger with always follow and return; however, "hipstomp," the poster of this post only gives an introduction to the review itself and it wasn't interesting enough for me to click the link. So needless to say, I don't even know how good that chair might be....

Tis the Season

So core77 has come out with their ultimate gift list: "Top 77 for under $77." Check it out for those on your list, you're guaranteed to avoid the regular repeat gift, like this fresh take on the regular old wallet.

Some more robots....because they're so cute!

So Cute

I love the recycled objects, so here are robots designed by Rusti D that are made from "re-animated" pieces. See if you can pick out some every day household items...

2 sides of the design spectrum

As I was going through some photos of the 2008 Design open I came across two wildly different takes on design. Here is one practical application of handbags:

And here is another completely artistic experiment of porcelain on balloons:

Its just interesting to see such different things at the same exhibit; i suppose thats why they call it the Design OPEN.

Go Tree Shopping

Literally you can take a shopping cart home with a tree in it now. Dutch architects NL created a forest of 100 trees planted in shopping trolleys at the Urban Play event in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Take a look at the moving forest:

Fireplaces

I posted in my other blog about interesting new fireplaces so this article from core77 immediately caught my eye. Core77 discusses how they're not sure this exactly goes along with the "fireplaces bring warmth into a space" thing, and I'll have to say it definitely makes it look different. I'm not sure I completely agree that all fireplaces remind us of warmth alone, but this one definitely makes me think of danger and not warmth....although the look pretty cool too.

One of my favorites....

With the Holiday season just about upon us we're bound to see some very interesting new ideas in the gift department. But giftcards?? I mean granted they're the fall back for any gift giver, but leave it up to Target to be innovative in the gift card area. As core77 reports, Target has now made a gift card digital camera. Starting at $50, you can accompany your money with 50mb worth of creative pictures. At 1.2mp you're not going to get a ton of quality, but it makes a gift card a whole lot more personal. Or maybe you're sill going for the orginal impersonal message of a gift card and you can just opt out of the camera card all together.

Ooo la la

Welcome to the Tender Tub....the most wonderful looking tub I have ever seen. I'm not sure if ergonomic is the right word, but this looks like it is perfectly made to be the most comfortable thing for the human body. This bring relaxing a hot bath to whole new level.

YO

So here American designer Victor Vetterlein has designed Yo, an MP3 player dock with removable stereo speakers. Now i like the concept, but I've seen similar speaker in urban outfitter too :)

The Winner

Looking back on some of my old posts I was reminded of the CityRacks Design Competition to redesign a bike rack to be installed on NYC streets. Since we live so close NYC and this is something I could directly see, I decided to follow up. So the winner was in fact not the one featured in core77 by Andrew Lang and Harry Dobbs, but another (pictured below) by Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve. Although I had a personal attachment to the the other one, this one is pretty okay too and I will def keep my eye out for it in the city. For the full article see here.

Will this work?

This sort of reminds me of the airplane trick you use to get children to eat their vegetables.....
London is trying to get their inhabitants to drink more tap water, so they decided to have the Thames Design Competition to see who could design the most appealing cups and bottles from which to serve it from. Somehow I don't think people will be necessarily be fooled by this "crafty" trick, but hey why not?

Just Sketch

This week on core77, one of the most popular articles was We (heart) "I (heart) Sketch." This article is about a completely new way to, well, sketch. I (heart) Sketch is a new device from Seok-Hyung Bae that allow the user to draw right on the screen. It runs along the same lines as a tablet laptop, but one look at the video and you can already recognize some amazing difference. We've crossed the line from turning handwriting into text, and mouse-drawn lines into curves, and now we can do with any line we make. No longer is there sketching things out, scanning/transporting them in, I (heart) sketch transforms your lines right then and there. But thats not even the best part of it, check out the video for more:

Better Better Better

New Bike racks?? Didn't really know they needed improving, but since seeing these redesigned racks from Andrew Lang and Harry Dobbs, I can definitely see the change. Aesthetics is a huge amount of city streets and neighborhood, think realty curb appeal, and how much better would it be to see one of these fancy bike racks opposed to the crummy metal racks we mostly have now. Even Jones Beach, had attempted to make their bike racks better, but wire seahorses can only go so far. Hopefully one of, if not Andrew and Harry's, designs will pass the test on the streets of NYC for the CityRacks Competition and better bike racks everywhere.

Lets Grow a Chair Today

So I've seen cardboard chairs, can chairs, trash chairs, all different kinds of chairs, but this has to top all the rest. Today on core77 there is an article about growing chairs. Yes, thats right, growing, like a plant, like a child, like a cat, but chairs. Ok so even though it sounds weird, not that bad. The Venus Chair by Tokujin Toshioka is made by growing crystals into a chair shape, see below.

Overall its an interesting concept, but I wonder how long it will last/hold. I mean I used to grow crystals in a jar as a kid, but they used to break in a week too. The chair will be heading the Second Nature Exhibition in Tokyo on 10/17. Here are some links to some other interesting chairs built off of nature inspired materials and designs too: Honey-Pop(2001), Pane chair(2006).

Step 1 Complete!

So after a long search of words and experiments I cam up with my word for my three countries combine into one. Here are the words from each country I choose to use:

from Denmark: REJSE = journey

from Turkey: SU = water

from Thailand: JAI = mind

I liked all these words and their meanings also played into my logo and general focus for the combine, so I set about making various combinations of the word. I ended up liking RESUJAI best, so I cut of the "I" picked a font and viola:

(The font is Amerika San from dafont.com)

Put it with my logo design and here's my final word composition:

Debate '08

For this post I reviewed Seth Godin's post about debates. Seeing that the final debate will be coming to Hofstra very soon this article interested me. It has nothing to do really with graphic design, but more so on the whole issue of informing people. Seth premise for this post was that he believes there should be many more debates, and not just from presidential candidates but for candidates for other major positions. I agree with Seth in that debates are a great way to compare the ideas and policies of two, or more, people. As well as too see how they interact and can speak in a, moderately, improvisational setting. It gives people a better view of the candidates personalities and how they appear side by side. However, I have to disagree with Seth proposal on how the debates should be run. He says that there should be no moderator and that they should be just allowed to each speak for 15minutes and then ask each other questions. I think those rules take away from the actual purpose of a debate. Without organization you're not going to be able to keep anyone on track, have any of the real issues address, or get an equal exchange. I think it would be good to go more towards less preparation and structure but not that far.

Final Logo

So I can't lie, I totally came up with this as a fluke, and sort of hate that I came up with it that way, but whatever I like it now anyway:

Overall I do feel like it conveys the water, reflection, soothing aspects I had been trying to create from the beginning, so alls well that ends well I guess.

Logo Beginnings

This is my first logo design to incorporate my countries' flags:

This is my second,  simplified take:

What to say?

For this review I read Seth Godin's post about what you're trying to say with your product. In his post, But You're Not Saying Anything, he gives the example of the logos of some top companies. Pictured at your left are examples of how six, rather large companies have very similar, basic logo designs. By having more typical logo designs these companies are not focusing on their logo; they don't want to be know for their picture, but rather something else. Another example he gives are products that are priced at normal, competitive rate so that it doesn't put undo emphasis on the price.

I though this post was able to provide a lot of insight into how you have to think about any product you put out. Although you may want all of everything to be amazing, you have to analyze what you want to convey and emphasize. A step in the right direction might be to devise a list before you start a project of what is most important and what is least important. Then construct your project around that list, putting more work into the important things and intentionally leave others more common.

Indian Market at Santa Fe

Cultures in Photos

So I'm finally remembering to post all the pictures I've been looking at for my logo.

Here are some pictures from my countries that really caught my attention:

Recycling Cycle

Since we're taking components from other cultures and combining, and essentially reusing, them to make something new, I thought William Bostwick's article, [Re]make it New, was somewhat relevant. Bostwick discusses how designers have always recycled ideas, cultures, styles, eras to make them fresh for a new time; and especially with today's motto of "going green," recycling everything has become more appealing and more profitable for all involved.

Limited Olympics

So for my first blog review I decided to read up on Nussbaum's most recent post on the Olympics. In his post, China's Innovation Moment -- And NBC Blocks Us From Watching It Live, Nussbaum discusses how China has enabled the Olympics to be web-cast live; however, since NBC wants everyone to watch it at night on TV, they block access to the service. Although, is it really doing that much damage, because with such a technologically savvy population, people have been hacking Chinese, and every other country's, broadcasts of everything from soccer to cooking.

Three Countries to Combine

Three countries I chose to combine into my one united logo are:

Denmark

Thailand

Turkey