SONY - Play-Doh AD
by Bun Lee
Check
All Stop Motion! Used 2.5 tonnes of modeling material.
Also this interesting links:
Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies
Future Lions
by Stefan Belavy
hey DD
AKQA is hosting an event at Cannes…it’s a great way to get noticed in the Advertising/Interactive community. Big prizes,
big recognition. And, it’s free. A great way to network and jumpstart your career.
cheers
Stefan
dd06
“Am I Hot or Not” for designers and some other stuff.
by Jamie Peterson
Hello and Happy Easter Monday. I have been sitting on a couple interesting websites for a while and finally decided to share them.
“CommandShift3 is like Hot or Not. Except, instead of clicking on hot babes, you click on hot websites.” That pretty much sums it up. If you are not familiar with Hot or Not it was a site that let you play this beautiful game where you were presented with a random picture that someone uploaded of themselves and then like a Roman emperor you could give the thumbs up or thumbs down. Which would either crush their self esteem by lowering their “Hot Rating” or raise it up and boost their low self image temporarily. If I remember correctly the kind people over at FOX also created a short lived reality show based on the concept. But anyways if you are thinking of going into interactive/web development, CommandShift3 is a good diversion if you have time for it.
RedesignMe! is a good site to visit if you want a little inspiration on how everyday things can be improved. The idea behind this site is that people will post items that they believe need to be redesigned and improved and then the community will post suggestions. It really is interesting to see the wide range of ideas that people come up with and a lot of times the most simple ideas are the most effective solutions.
Kuler (pronounced “kuhl-er“, not cooler) and COLOURlovers are my favorite and most useful color resources on the web. Both are basically the same idea of premade swatch libraries with ridiculous names. I always get a laugh out of some the names that I come across. For example I just went to both of the sites and these are real names of sets: “walnut stain”, “Turn up the AC”, “Country Giblets” and “Team Zissou”. Also I highly recommend getting out the color wheel and whenever you find yourself at a hardware store to just grab a bunch of those paint sample chips they give for free.
ər
And finally a funny one. Design Police offers a number of print offs to “bring bad design to justice!” I hope that I won’t have to post any of these on any of your work.
Thats it. If you guys like these I could add some more to this post later. Thanks for your time.
-Jamie P.
CanUX looks at me and the Organic Web
by Tyler Egeto
CanUX (a Microsoft Developer Network blog) is a blog that focuses on the user experience community in Canada. Recently they took a look at me and some of my work, specifically my final project, the Organic Web.
The article can be found here. In the article I talk briefly about my passions as a designer and where I am headed in the future. Also in the article is a video that demonstrates some of the core concepts behind the Organic Information Visualization System I developed, (the system that the Organic Web demo application is built on).
A special thanks to CanUX for giving me the opportunity to share my work!
-Tyler Egeto
Wim Crouwel’s “New Alphabet”
by Vinson Van Haaff
When a young Wim Crouwel went to a German type setting expo in 1965, he saw one of the first digital typesetters. He saw Garamond 6pt and noticed that as you scaled the letters, lets say by two times, there would be twice as many pixels available to generate the curves, thereby changing the font as you scaled it. This spawned an idea in him that would eventually lead to this grid-based type concept that would be later used in rock album covers and pop art magazines. His ideas were later published in the “New Alphabet” (1967), a book showcasing his approach to print and type design, and the whole book consisted of not one curve or non-45 degree diagonal! Crouwel’s idea was clarity in the digital age, to create a defined typesetting that would not change when scaled, because of its strictly 45 or 90 degree angles, and because if its inherent grid-based structure. The type was to be very square, so that if text lined up on top of each other, the letters would be lined up as well. What started out as an experiment for Crouwel became a sleeper success. Peter Saville, a designer that was contracted to design Joy Division’s Substance album redesigned Crouwel’s “New Alphabet” to be more legible, and then released it as “atmosphere ’88”. For years to come, the new wave of digital type must nod their hats to Wim Crouwel’s foundation laid by “New Alphabet”. It presented a clean, rational scope in which to view type design with this new digital medium. With the new wave of pixel fonts (type designed with screen usage in mind, making efficient use of blank spaces to create readable text even at small sizes) emerging, echos of Wim Crouwel’s methodologies still ring strong today. His foresight in the future of type design can be seen with hundreds of different modern fonts out there, and their functional ideals can all be linked back to Wim Crouwel’s “New Alphabet”. I created a type specimen showcasing Wim Crouwel’s “New Alphabet”. For the piece, I brought in another functional digital type “OCR Std”, to contrast “New Alphabet”, and to also highlight the similarities between the two eras of functional digital type. I then created a site map of The Foundry’s website and all of its internal file assets within that domain using Processing. The Foundry is the only foundry I have found that digitized Wim Crouwel’s type. All of the files on this site are linked to each other ultimately by the single root node, “/”. I am trying to communicate the parallel with Wim Crouwel and this root node. Virtually all of digital type that followed are connected to “New Alphabet” by some avenue or other. Just like the root directory, Wim Crouwel is the node that links all other functional digital type to each other, and all of them share the same concepts and approach in their design and function. I used Processing to extrapolate the filenames and linkage properties to map out the connection between all of the files, I had to play with the layout a bit, but it was mostly done in Processing and Illustrator. Let me know what you think! 
Thank you THANK YOU
by Danny Chan
It’s always great to see work from former faculty members and alumni. Check out the work from Todd Smith, and DD07 alumni Boca and Ryan Uhrich at Thank You.
Also, you should check out the Mar/Apr 2008 issue of Applied Arts. Jeff Greenberg from DD06, branding instructor Eric Karjaluoto, and Final Project advisors Cosmo Campbell, Alex Beim, Sergio Toporek, Wil Arndt have all been honoured for their various interactive design projects.
Typographics nominated for 2008 Yahoo! Video Awards
by Danny Chan
Let’s show our support for Ryan and Boca from DD07. Their term 4 piece is a nominee in the category of Best Animated Video for the Yahoo! Video Awards. We have until Friday, March 21 to vote.
And don’t forget about Simon’s piece for the “See What’s Possible” challenge.
Pablo’s Garden
by Pablo Kraus
Here it is. the much anticipated final Project. After 4 months of hard work you can finally check it out here at pablosgarden.com.
Pablo’s garden is a website where users can log in and express themselves as an artist, designer or however they feel. Users can interact and draw into the garden as well as have the power to vote on drawings.
The garden gives the opportunity for users to collaborate and draw pieces influenced by each-other. They can build on each others work and create combined works of art.
If you want to know more about my project you can download my case study here.
Wanna win $10,000 for designing a logo?
by Tom Fedechko
British Columbia design students are being invited to compete to create a new logo for the government’s LiveSmart BC climate action programs… Click here
