Final forms for my logo type.

justcreativedesign.com/2008/05/13/how-to-design-a-movie-poster-with-an-example/

i just read this article on how this student went about making a movie poster. It is always fascinating to see how people go about design. Watching as each new version pushed the poster into a more polished product was a real treat. This inspires me to write on my own process of design creation. I think you can learn allot from understanding the simple choices that you would make through any creative solution. This article also show that even the "simple" looking posters had a ton of work done to them before they got to look like that.

Something we all should have

I saw this device on Core77 and thought about several things. This device can calculate how much power is flowing through it. The first thing I thought of was about the speaker we had that came and how he was talking about smart objects. This object, all though stupid by itself, could work with an array of other objects to help calculate where you are losing the most amount of energy. It also makes you think of "green" products. This device can help lower energy consumption but letting the user know how much money they are spending an hour. If some one knew that they where spend $30 an hour to keep that AC going I bet you they would reach for a fan instead. I think something like this should be built into all modern day things to let people understand how much power they are consuming at that one moment.

Design relief

prattgradstitutes.blogspot.com is a site that give relief to design students who are in a presentation booth. The ICFF design week is going on and many students who got a booth there cant get out. Whats cool here is that a group of people saw a need and took it. They supply these students with a service of presenting there work. The only thing they ask for is a chance to promote them selves at this convention. Its kind of cool, if you don't get your stuff in the fair you could always just present someone else and then promote your self. At the end of the day a client only needs your name and phone number.

washup

This thing is insane (as that it put together two things that no one would have ever thought of doing before). Some one thought that it was a good idea to put a washer machine and a toilet must have been on crack. But then again they do raise a good point here. A lot of water is used in both of the appliances and one of them doesn't matter what condition the water is in because its just flushed down the toilet anyway. So using the water from the washer machine to flush are waist down is condensing the amount of waist we produce, its so simple and effortless it makes you wonder why haven't we thought of this sooner? It also makes you think of what other products you could mesh together to increase efficacy and decrease waist, like what about a close dryer heat exhaust used to blow dry your hair?

Pingmag's UK vs. Japan desk-off

Messy desks have always been seen as some one who is very disorganized and is sloppy. I built my own desk to have as much open flat space as possible. My desk has some where around 15 square feet of space to it and i can only use 3 square feet of it. even now as i type here i have magazine, photos, toys, food and other junk just lying around. I always would think that my desk was sloppy but it wasn't, to me that is, it had its own order. I could find anything on my desk in a second, so even though my desk looks inefficient its not, its organized to my method of organization. They say that a cluttered desk is a cluttered mind but then what is an empty desk?

The lost art of model buidling

Its said to say that this art form is dying out. Model building was the best ways to see a mock up of a building or any 3D object. Now everything is done in the computer. I would think that the creator would lose touch with the object they are creating if they can not touch it. Working with are hands can give us the best feed back on what we are creating. These models are a masterful work of are and show true dedication to something that has long past its prime.

The five step brand lifecycle

On Seths Blog he brought up something that I hear all the time. The questions we hear from people who know nothing about design. I will use a musical field to further what he was saying in his blog. Most of the time when people are trying to produce something they want it to have a certain feel to it. If say they where making a movie and wanted to have a soundtrack to it would not be uncommon to hear "can we get it to sound more John Williams like". There is a sound that is distinctly John Williams ( composer who did Jaws, StarWars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, etc.) but that is not an adjective to describe something, its an association of a particular sound that composer has. What I am trying to get at, is that people who don't know what they want go for association with something that is popular instead of trying to find a more custom creation to there production.

How can we remake a bike rack?

Design can be used not only to reduce the risk of products being stolen, it can also be a way of encouraging more people to use a product if they think it is secure. This case study shows how the design process has made bike stands more secure because it involved watching how people used bike stands, how criminals abused bike stands and how secure locking practices could be made easier.

Sucking all the juice out

Seth wrote a blog about how his copyeditor made his work seem really boring. He also said that his work was made into a format that was factual correct and literally correct. He doesn't like the idea of making things fit, or staying on the "safe path". In my personal opinion I would agree but there is a problem, language is very hard to understand and when its pass around there is a chance that it could be misinterpret. If something is safe and boring the chance for it to be read wrong is much lower. There is a time and place to test these radical ideas but it must happen at a slow pace.

Its all About Sociology

Naussbaum makes the right point here when he says that Technology is no longer the primary platform for technology businesses to go off of but rather Sociology. He used Apple as an example. I would have to agree that a company that takes the idea of human interaction in its priorities over technology will have a greater success rate because we already have amazing technology but are unable to interact with it.

cool stuff

it’s always so fun to see what pratt students are up to and this year students seemed to really be focusing on re-using and re-purposing found or sustainable materials. i absolutely loved the cast porcelain lighting (above) by jennie maneri- it cast such a soft light.

There are many exciting modern art shows in New York, but this one takes the cake. A solo show by Cai Guo-Qiang. The art is huge and invites you to walk into and around it. The exhibition assaults the ears as well as the eyes. Apart from the giant installations there are video documentations of Cai's work with gunpowder: controlled explosions along the Great Wall of China, canon shooting out clouds of smut that resemble ethereal but deadly butterflies, over Valencia and Edinburgh Castle. I was trying to think on what "style" this would be placed under and I would guess porfoming art? what do you think?