Pictures of Stats [Visualization]

"Artist Chris Jordan shows us an arresting view of what Western culture looks like. His supersized images picture some almost unimaginable statistics -- like the astonishing number of paper cups we use every single day."

In one of his pieces, he creates an fantastic image resembling pollution spewing out of a factor. When you get up close and personal, you realize that its actually made of lots of plastic cups. As a matter of fact, it includes 1 million cups, which is the number of plastic cups that are used on airline flights in the United States every six hours.

His work is a pretty cool intersection between art/design and infographics. You can check out his website here and his latest book here.

Convert Evolution [iPhone App Design]

Tap tap tap has a short video taking us through their design iteration process. It's amazing the number of little tweaks that result in a highly consumable product.  When thinking about your processes, how often do you tweak them? How often do you iterate?



Convert Design Evolution from tap tap tap on Vimeo.

More info about Convert is at taptaptap.com/convert

Online Marketplace for Directors [Online Film Festivals]

While living in DC, I was lucky to be part of a film festival. What continually amazes me is the depth and quality of amateur work out there. Given the high cost of making mass consumptive media (like movies and commercials), its no wonder that companies rarely bet on an unknown director.

Film festivals, especially the strappy small ones, seek to showcase emerging talent and their unique stories. For example, a Paris-based production company Mr. Hyde has launched The Hyde Tube, which provides an online venue for directors to have their work juried.

There are two things I like about the project:

• Creation of a Marketplace: Mr. Hyde, hopes that the Hyde Tube will becoming a marketplace where clients can find source new talent (and probably for a cheaper cost). In effect, Mr. Hyde is trying to remove the middlemen in the process--for a nice price"Clients will contact The Hyde Tube in order to pass on a project to a specific director, who is then free to decide whether or not to accept it. If accepted, the director will write a treatment or make an animated test within 3 to 5 days. For this work you will receive approximately 500€.

  If the client is happy with the treatment and decides that the director will make the film, The Hyde Tube will connect the director with the client, and Mr Hyde or one of its affiliate studios will oversee the production until the film delivery."

• Visualization of Content: With a reported 100 directors, I was deeply curious on how they were going to help clients scroll through all the content. The use of screenshots allow the clients to scan multiple aesthetics efficiently.
  

Little Red Riding Hood [Animated Fables]

In the age of information, people expect to be able to take a deep dive at any point in time. I can't tell you how many times bets are settled by accessing wikipedia via my mobile phone.

Tomas Nilsson created a 3 minute reinterpretation of Little Red Riding Hood for a (Swedish) university class project.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did:



HT: Thingamababy

Evolution of Logos

Best Ad has a post showing the evolution of a couple corporate logos. I found it interesting how much or little companies have evolved their logos over time.

For example, after a significant change between 1955 and 1957, the logo design has continually been tweaked.


Bryant, thanks for sharing!

Let's get Photo Synth-ical, Synth-ical

Since Blaise Aguera y Arcas first presented a demo of Photosynth at a TED conference back in 2007, I've been salivating at the opportunity to play with the technology.

Not too long ago, Microsoft made it available for the general public. Unfortunately, I've been completed swamped--the number of posts I make correlate directly with how much free time I have. (Yes, February in Chicago is freezing cold, there is not much else to do but blog!). I've been trying to find the right opportunity to test it out. I didn't want to create a photosynth of my apartment--too messy, or of a cup--too boring.

A couple weeks ago, when Tommy and Ashley came out from NY, I took the opportunity to grab my camera and get a couple shots in.

Tommy and Ashley walk behind the Lyric Opera

I took them on a 4 hour walk around Chicago. Starting from the intersection of Michigan Ave and Wacker, we followed the river until we ended up in Gallery 400, in Greek Town, where K was working. The exhibit, "Chances are, the comets in our future" was about to end. To immortalize it, I put together my first photosynth. Check it out:

Bonus: Try to find the first image in this blog post in the photosynth walkthrough.

Visualizing Music Mash-ups

I've always been a big fan of mash-ups. Ever since hearing DJ Z-trip's Uneasy Listening, and hearing Enferno while I lived in DC, there is something intriguing about taking the familiar and giving it new perspective. Girl Talk has taken it to another level. In Girl Talk's latest album, 300 audio snippets appear in the 50 minutes of CD play. Wired.com has a pretty cool way of visualizing the first 4 minutes and 15 seconds.

Source: Cool Infographics

Radiohead's Laser Light Show Video

Whoah...Radiohead's latest music video, House of Cards, uses 64 lasers instead of a camera.



Read Creativity's has a Q&A with director James Frost.

The Art of Cleaning

Speaking of corporations and their PR marketing campaigns. Green Works, a Clorox Company and maker of "natural cleaners," worked with Paul "Moose" Curtis on a graffiti art project.

Using Green Works products, created "reverse graffiti" by cleaning dirt off walls.



Like my last post, I'm on the fence. Conceptually, I like what the idea of "reverse graffiti," and its ephemeral qualities, and I'm a big fan of the director, Doug Pray (Scratch, and Infamy).

It's just...

I'm just not sure how to feel when street art goes corporate.

Source: Blogthousand!

Breathing life into Che

How che appears from simple text...

The Anatomy of a Nap

Everybody has a routine that they follow when they get home. Mr. Rogers would change his shoes and put on a nice sweater and then proceed to talk to a trolley. More often than not, I'll get a glass of water and head to the couch, flip on MSNBC and fall into a quick 20 minute nap. Every once in a while, I wake up two- to three- hours later. I kinda look like this:
In "How to Nap," the Boston Globe tells us everything we've always wanted to know about napping. It notes that midday napping can boost alertness, creativity, and mood. In fact, a British study found that knowing a nap is coming was enough to lower blood pressure.

The graphic helps us define the optimal time to have a siesta (around 3 for me), how long your siesta should be, and what you need to do to prepare.

The only fact I don't completely buy is the ability for a nap to improve my mood. I am the grumpiest person alive when someone wakes me up mid-nap.

I was part of a cause...

Alright everybody, together now, "Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start." I grew up with a Famicom (the original version of the NES) and will forever have that code burned into my memory.

I shudder to think of how many hours I spent hunting ducks, eating mushrooms to grow, or protecting some eagle symbol with my tank.

However, to help me cope, I think about how gaming technologies are going to revolutionize the world. Turns out Hospitals are looking to the gaming industry to increase the precision of surgeries.

Cardiac surgeons have borrowed a 3-D stereoscopic imaging technology from the video-game industry to help them guide their tools during intricate beating-heart surgeries. In tests of the new imaging device, a surgeon was able to more accurately navigate into pigs' hearts and then to more quickly repair the hearts' torn walls....

Recent advances in image-processing technology have allowed game designers to simulate 3-D environments--complete with depth perception--using stereoscopic vision displays. "To address structural heart disease, you need a three-dimensional map with depth perception," says Marc Gillinov, chief experience officer at Cleveland Clinic's Heart and Vascular Institute. "And that's what the stereoscopic glasses give you."

You can read the entire article here.

Street Art Globalization

The Tate Modern in London recently launched a street art exhibition including artists from all over the world. Creativity Online interviews Will Gompertz, director of Tate Media, about the exhibit.

Read it here.

sighting

Dob seen in brooklyn

(Taken by my HTC Touch)

Emerging Artists showcased in Chicago

I went back to Atropolis yesterday to get another high-impact dosage of art. Yesterday, I spent most of my time checking out NEXT, the emerging artist show.

One of the must-see's at the NEXT show is Jonathan Schipper's installation "The Slow Inevitable Death of American Muscle." Over the course of four days, two American muscle cars slowly collide into each other. K remarked that halfway through the day, there was a thunderous explosion as the glass from the cars shattered under the stress. It definitely drew in a ton of people. I love the use of red, white, and blue colors.

Rory Donaldson's Sqelemental also made a lasting impression. From afar, the piece a mod-like quality.

But I realized as I zoomed into the center of the picture, what it represented. Rory's piece seemed took a casual scene put through a space and time warp. Here's the closeup:

You've still got 2 hours left before it closes down for the year!

Early video games are retro cool

I know I just posted earlier today about the Atari print ads, but I've just come across Pontiac's twist on an old NES videogame. In "Spy Hunter," a G8 GT replaces the original car. As the video deftly shows the cars performance in dodging oil spills and spiked-assassin cars, a wave of nostalgia overcame me.

And no doubt, anybody within my age group will remember the add. A perfect ad that pre-selects its audience.

Take a trip down memory lane:

So retro, it's cool (atari print ads)

Atari has a series of print ads that pays homage to its 8-bit style. They have one for tennis and golf. Check out full prints on advertolog.

Behind the big door lies a big monster

K and I were walking home last week when we came happened to come across a mysterious cartoonish door. Actually, the door was so big it was hard to miss. I rubbed my eyes once or twice (I had just come from a "summer" party and had my fill of hotdogs and jello shots) just to make sure I saw what I saw.

Looming behind the door was a monster not much different from Sully from Monsters Inc. Turns out, its the front door to Big Monster Toys, LLC. The workshop creates, engineers and develops the products from inception to finished working prototypes. You can read about more about them in a wikipedia entry here.

You gotta give 'em props for their creativity.


Big Monster Toys
21 S Racine Ave
Chicago, IL 60607

Black and Gold Falls Flat

Sam Sparro's black and gold was one of my favorite songs in December of last year. And it looks like he's created a video to go with the music. While the song is still one of my faves, the music video is.. well... underwhelming.

It's stuck between a cliché and a disappointment. With a song this good, the video tarnishes the song black and blue.

What rgb is your shoe?

This is an old but great campaign. The original concept, launched in 1983, were white sneakers sold with tools for individuals to customize it as they saw fit.

Fast forward about 20 years. To relaunch and promote adicolor, adidas commissioned a series of directors to create specific shorts. There are seven shorts from a slew of directors--Roman Coppola & Andy Bruntel, Neill Blomkamp, PSYOP, TRONIC, Saiman Chow, Charlie White, and HAPPY.

A nice touch small touch is how they reserved URLS based on the colors RGB code:

• White: www.r255g255b255.net
• Yellow: www.r254g245b006.net
  
• Green: www.r006g146b071.net
• Pink: www.r243g197b208.net
• Blue: www.r023g075b158.net
• Red: www.r213g037b053.net
• Black: www.r000g000b000.net