nevermind the bricolage

everything i ate

I finshed up my latest term at the art school last evening. It's been a good term, the students definitely rose to the occasion and did some really interesting work along the way. the classes I teach are in the school of advertsing, but, with the exception of one class on the history of advertising, they tend to be fairly esoteric and connected to advertising mainly by virtue of their focus on the explication, exploration and practice of creative conceptualizing. One of the major projects this term required the students to catalogue everything they ate and drank the entire term and present that information in interesting ways.

Part of the exercise was to think about ways in which needless information can become compelling by virtue of the creative manner of the presentation. I am quite a fan of Nick Felton, whose annual report, is always worth getting a hold of, and his work, plus a few other informational hubs were the root inspiration. Most of the presentations were good, really good actually, and I will try and feature some more later, but I thought this one was particualrly cool. The students made miniature models of everything she ate and drank and presented them categorized in a food tray---nothing too profound or innovative--just hard work, well-focused--the take-out bag actualy has grease stains on it, and slightly obsessive--something I always think leads to interesting stuff.

newsweek 1965

In advance of the long-awaited return of AMC'S MadMen, Newsweek has gone retro. Not only did they feature the cast on their cover, they decided to return to 1965, the year which will apparently feature in this new season of the show. They have brought back typeface from that period; utilized old ad images and language and done an all around great job of connecting the magazine to the show's sensibility. I sort of gave up reading Time and Newsweek on a regular basis a long time ago, but this one is worth the journey, just for the fascination aspect.

This book from Taschen is also worth a look it would seem.

water

 

This past Thursday was World Water Day and on Friday I participated in a conference at Woodbury University. The Drylands Conference was a one-day gathering to explore design, sustainability and general issues related to water in the Los Angeles area. It was fascinating, opening me up to ideas (and a literal and conceptual dictionary of words I have never heard before) about how to think about water in the 21st century. I was asked to speak on different aspects of water--to bring a wider focus to the conference--my topic was Water Utility: Mystic rivers, sacred springs and primordial oceans. I spoke about the uses of water in lfe and religion--the way water becomes a metaphor and a symbol of so many things in our various cultures. I opened with the above video--just for a laugh.

Mixel

Mixel is a free collage app from iTunes--check it out.

light!!!

Amazing. Found it here.

Luminarie De Cagna is an Italian family business founded in 1930. Back then on festive occasions the  company illuminated buildings and squares with oil and carbide lamps. This was quickly switched to electric lights, and since 2006 only LEDs are used for new projects. The lights are joined to make large curtains of light, which are placed onto buildings or spread out on other objects in the area. In this way, whole streets and even squares are full of light.

During  the 2012,Ghent Light Festival Ghent,  Belfortstraat (Belfort Street) will be the  domain of the Luminarie Cagna. A giant colonnade made of wood and hundreds of thousands of colored lights, with arches reminds one of Romanesque and Renaissance architecture. The entrance area is an imposing 28 meters high. The audience walks into a fairy tale gallery, surrounded by light and color.

Energy Wasted? On the contrary, this immense work of art with 55,000 LED lights consumes only 20Kwatt / h of electricity.

dead?

According to a piece by Cerentha Harris on the Herman Miller site, Fast Company's Kit Eaton, declares that within five years the laptop will be dead. God, rock, now laptops? We are quick to declare the death of things which we feel have been super-ceded or rendered obsolete by socio-cultural developments, but ...Things seldom die as quickly as we might hope they would. Now it could be argued that there is a good case for this particular prognosis. After all, it wasn't that long ago that we were all running home to our desktops, and who can forget the toilet-lid shaped Apple portable laptop that was cutting-edge cool not so long ago? Eaton's point is that we are coming to the natural end to the life of a particular form of technology.

Things in the digital world are changing rapidly and we seem to be moving towards the table era in many regards, but I wonder. The obstacle for me with complete dependence upon the iPad is the typing issue. I do quite a lot of written stuff still and while I do occasionally use an external keyboard, I find it quite hard to type on the iPad.

For a while it was the desktop/laptop permutation which shifted to the laptop/tablet form many now operate with. The desktop seems to have morphed into an interactive entertainment access point rather than being a static computer, so who knows where we go from here with regard to laptops. I can foresee their end, and if nothing else, the hand-writing seems to be on the wall, but as with most declarations of death--you need to ascertain that breathing has stopped first before it is called, and while it may be gasping, it seems their might be a little life left in it yet.

Paula Scher-The World

  

Graphic designer Paula Scher has created The World, an image reflecting information overload and, according to the information provided with the work, "presenting the world as made up of swirling information streams that are always changing, often inaccurate, while somewhat illuminating. It is expressionistic information." It reminds me a little of Stanley Donwoods work for Radiohead.

 

 

Hovey Design

The Hovey sisters' have a keen eye for design and their blogs are frequent visits for me. They've just launched a design company and I love the room pictured above, right up my alley, I am a big fan of that old colonial with a hint of new thrown in-look.

abundance????

 

 

Can marketing and advertising address philosophical issues? Well, Motorola is giving it a go with a series of ads asking people about abundance. Of course there are complexities and contradictions between the demands of the market, free-market capitalism and a host of other interrelated and complex elements that combine in the world of advertising--but who isn't complex and contradictory in life? And of course, I could go all biblical and remind us that even asses can speak for god, so perhaps ad-men can speak for philosophy. (this came via the very useful psfk site)

gurafiku

This and other quite beautiful works are catalogued on the gurafiku site--devoted to Japanese graphic design through the ages--well worth a lengthy amount of online exploration. This poster is for internal poison cleansing pills apparently--I could use some of those this morning.