New Project: Portfolio Exhibition

Submit your portfolio

Hybrid:Works is a design studio located in Tokio. Designer Masaki Hoshino

Mar Okon mixed media designer.

Tom Muller graphic designer.

National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts

youngARTS opens Early Registration for 2008 Awards

MIAMI, FL (April 1, 2007) – youngARTSTM, the core program of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts (NFAA) that identifies and rewards exceptional student artists from across the U.S., has opened registration for its 2008 program. High school seniors in the 2007-2008 school year or graduates who will be 17 or 18 years old on December 1, 2007 are encouraged to apply for individual cash awards of up to $10,000 and the chance to be named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts, earning national recognition and opportunities for additional scholarships. The youngARTS 2008 early registration deadline is June 1, 2007 (30% fee discount on registrations received on or before June 1st). The final registration deadline is October 1, 2007 and all audition/portfolio materials must be received in the youngARTS offices by November 5, 2007.

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Carne Assada Improv

Taco Bell's Carne Asada Improv microsite features the comedic duo of lions from the new Steak Grilled Taquitos commercials and allows visitors to get on stage with them to do an improv act. The site features text-to-speech capabilities and hilarious outakes from the Serengeti.

Enter a new era with 3D

"Sophisticated technologies tend to be the preserve of experts. Today, Dassault Systèmes wants to break with this tradition and establish 3D technology as a new universal language with applications in every walk of life.

To express this groundbreaking vision – and the major advances we have driven in 3D technology in terms of capability, flexibility and ease of use – French advertising agency devarrieuxvillaret has created a new tagline for Dassault Systèmes:
See What You Mean. "

View TV commercial
3D Unveils the Mystery of the Great Pyramid

Collaborative Drawing

"Odopod is a design studio with a talent for using new technology in meaningful ways. We opened for business six years ago and currently reside in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. We're compact-we have one location with about twenty people. Our company was founded on the belief that a small group of talented people, when given the opportunity, can do amazing things.

About the work
The unexpected results of working in an inventive environment with talented people are something we enjoy. So it made sense to open that up to the extended Odopod family. We created this collaborative drawing tool and invited friends to make their own drawings and modify one another's."
Launch project: Adobe Design Center

Ford Ads by Director David Mamet

"Famed playwright and feature film director David Mamet makes his television commercial directing debut with two new Ford ads which feature two Ford Edge drivers discussing their vehicles while parked alongside one another on the road. “Quieter than a Lexus” highlights the fact that the Ford Edge beat the Lexus RX350 in a quietness test. “Quicker than a BMW” showcases Edge’s ability to outpace the BMW X5 in a 0-60 mph acceleration test. Both ads end with the line, “Spirit of a sports car … versatility of an SUV. The all-new Edge.”

Two-time Oscar nominee Mamet is best known for writing such hits as Glengarry Glen Ross, Spanish Prisoner, Heist, Wag the Dog, The Untouchables and Hoffa. The Ford ads feature his signature style of fast-paced dialogue and straightforward imagery.

The ads were created by JWT Team Detroit as part of the Ford ‘Bold Moves’ marketing platform." Read more...

J. Walter Thompson Company

Pop Culture + Abstract Art

Tonight, MoMA is playing host to “Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making,” an exhibition about the way pop culture has influenced abstract art.

"...Bridging the rift between abstraction and comics in ways that are at once critical and playful, this exhibition underscore the way popular imagery, which is so deeply imprinted on our collective consciousness, carries an extreme visual potency even when totally abstracted." Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography
Take a look...

New Project: Signage

Home Depot to Display an Environmental Label
By MICHAEL BARBARO

Published: April 17, 2007

The new environmental initiative would become the largest green labeling program in American retailing. Read more...
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Tool Depot at The Home Depot of Canada

ISP/VM+SD Design Competition Winner

(03-29-2007)

The Home Depot of Canada has undertaken a major push to remake its tool departments into the destination of choice for professional contractors and do-it-yourself consumers. Signage plays a central role in that upgrade, which won a special award for signage/graphics in the ISP/VM+SD International Store Design Competition. Graphics: Perennial Inc., Toronto

The Best New Typefaces for 2007 :: TDC2 2007 Results

"The Type Directors Club is an international organization founded in 1946 whose members include design professionals, typographic designers, and typophiles."

"Winning works will be exhibited in six traveling shows and published in Typography 28, the hardbound, all-color competition annual designed by Number Seventeen. The annual is published by CollinsDesign, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, and sold worldwide."

Text / Type Family

Corundum Text :: Joshua Darden
Greta Text :: Peter Bilak
Untitled :: Joshua Darden
EMT Lorena :: Eduardo Manso
Olga :: Christina Bee
Tisa :: Mitja Miklavčič

Type System / Superfamily

Arno Pro :: Robert Slimbach
Beorcana :: Carl Crossgrove
Fakir :: Underware
Nassim :: Titus Nemeth
Midan :: Kameel Hawa
Palatino Sans and Palatino Sans Informal :: Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashi
Quiosco:: Cyrus Highsmith
Xtra Sans :: Jarno Lukkarila

Display

Flexion :: John Langdon
Manicotti :: David Jonathan Ross
Peanut :: Michael Clark
Subtil :: Hanno Bennert and Alexander Gialouris

Pi & Ornament

Gregoria :: Elena Albertoni

Behind the scenes of South Park

Apple has this 2-page article about the technology behind South Park which includes some interesting things about the design of the show and how they've used technology to improve their production schedule.

Form and Function

“Form follows function—that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”
—Frank Lloyd Wright

"Natural Selections: Colors Found in Nature and Interface Design"
by Luke Wroblewski

"From complex web applications to informative “brochure-ware” sites, naturally occurring color combinations have the potential to distinguish (by helping create a more memorable website), guide (by allowing users to focus on interactions), engage (by making page layouts comfortable and more inviting), and inspire (by offering new ideas for color selection)."

Collaborative Work: Godunov project

A World Premiere Production by Princeton Students and Faculty of Alexander Pushkin's 1825 Play Featuring the Incidental Music of Sergei Prokofiev and Directorial Concepts of Vsevolod Meyerhold.

Performances will be held at the Berlind Theatre, Princeton University, on April 12, 2007 at 8pm, April 13 at 8pm, and April 14 at 2pm and 8pm

"Dozens of student actors, architects, musicians, and dancers have joined forces with faculty members to bring a Russian masterwork to the stage, 71 years after it was supposed to have premiered."
..."The production, presented in April at the Roger S. Berlind Theatre in the McCarter Theatre Center, is poet Alexander Pushkin’s Boris Godunov—based on plans created by theatrical innovator Vsevolod Meyerhold and composer Sergei Prokofiev in 1936.
..."This brings with it a commitment to art, support of innovation, and an emphasis on collaborative work that crosses disciplines—all the ingredients that the Godunuv project needed to succeed."

Portable Reader System

"It's a new and convenient digital reading experience. The Portable Reader boasts an amazing screen with technology that rivals text on paper. Search and browse thousands of electronic book titles from the CONNECT™ eBookstore, buy an eBook and then easily transfer from your PC to your Reader. So compact and convenient, you can take many of your favorite titles and documents with you."
Sony® Reader PRS-500

Homage to Sol LeWitt

“When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair.
The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.”

—Sol LeWitt
Guggenheim

Sol LeWitt, Master of Conceptualism, Dies at 78
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

Published: April 9, 2007

Sol LeWitt’s deceptively simple geometric sculptures and drawings and ecstatically colored and jazzy wall paintings established him as a lodestar of modern American art.

Call It What It Is

"...To understand the intrinsic differences between plagiarism (normally regarded as a bad thing) and preservation (normally regarded as a good thing), we should look at various means by which newer typefaces are derived from older ones. There are indeed many approaches. Outlining them can be helpful in considering the practices surrounding revivalism in general."

By John Downer - Read more

This text was first published in 2003 in the type specimen booklet for Tribute.

Emigre, also known as Emigre Graphics, is a type foundry in Berkeley, California, founded by Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko. It also published Emigre magazine between 1984 and 2005.

Bruce Mau: Institute without Boundaries

The Institute without Boundaries will carry out an interdisciplinary project that involves students, teachers, and industry and community experts. The ambition of the project is to generate a housing system that achieves a balance between extremes of urban sprawl and urban slums and enables people to build sustaining, universal, and healthy human dwellings and communities. We will start locally and seek collaboration with other schools and institutions around the world to work on this challenge.
Next program begins in September 2007.
Early deadline is April 10, 2007 and all applications must be received by May 31, 2007.

Bruce Mau is a Canadian designer. Mau is the creative director of Bruce Mau Design, and the founder of the Institute without Boundaries. To know more about Bruce Mau click here.

Bruce Mau: An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

New Project: Looking for ideas 3

"Mindball® is a two persons game controlled by the players brain waves. The player being most relaxed wins the game.
Mindball is based on a concept (Brainball) invented by The Interactive Institute www.tii.se which is a cross scientific research institute, working within the areas of IT, art and digital media."

"Brainball is a game that goes against the conventional competitive concept, and also reinvents the relationship between man and machine. Instead of activity and adrenalin, it is passivity and calmness that mark the truly successful Brainball player. Brainball is unique amongst machines since it is not controlled by the player's rational and strategic thoughts and decisions. On the contrary, the participants are dependent on the body's own intuitive reactions to the game machine." Smart Studios Projects

"Brainbar is a mechanical bar that mixes drinks adapted to the visitor's brainwaves. The bar reads the brain frequencies that represent levels of stress and calm. Depending on how the bar is tuned it will then mix a drink to enhance or suppress the guest's feelings."

Graphic Designer or Visual Communication Designer

"The longer I stay in this industry, the more I realize the difference between producing graphically appealing (pretty) solutions and creating strategic communication designs that produce results." Posted by Mark Busse on Saturday, March 10th, 2007
Read more...

"The pencil crayons and the felt pens may be outdated as tools, but I would like to think that they are still relevant as metaphors. And I wish that designers would take back the power of the words “graphic” and “arts”, because as career definitions continue to blur, they might find it’s the most valuable asset they have." By marian bantjes on Mar.27.2007
Read more...

Using Eyeliner together with Isadora software

"Eyeliner is a new projection technique that enables projection of 3D phantom images to blend with the physical space in a very convincing way. The technique consists of High Definition projections that are projected onto an invisible foil material set up in a special angle. Using the Eyeliner it is possible to build virtual set designs and let animated or filmed objects and characters blend in with real people and spaces. The Eyeliner is thus capable of creating a new and different narrative space on stage. A narrative space which makes use of special effects otherwise only known from movies and computer games.

The Eyeliner is partly developed by the Danish company Vision4 which also holds the Danish rights and know-how to use this new technique.

For a filmed example of the use of the Eyeliner in the staging of H.C. Anderson’s The Steadfast Tin Soldier click here."

Example from the 3D performance True Love Is Yet To Come at Donna Karan’s Studio in New York City. The perfomance marked the opening of last year’s Performance Biennale Performa05 in NYC. [blogged by Lene Mailund on Digital Experience]

Eyeliner 3D: Gorillaz & Madonna Grammy Awards

Theater

Illusory Characters With Startling Stage Presence

By STEVEN McELROY

Published: April 2, 2007

With new software that controls digital video, the creative team at 3LD (or 3-Legged Dog) are hoping to produce some dazzling, perhaps even shocking, effects on stage.

3 LD Art and Technology Center

What is Yupo?

"YUPO is a state-of-the-art synthetic material offering all the attributes of the highest quality papers with the added benefits of extraordinary durability.

Yupo Corporation in America is the largest manufacturer of synthetic paper in the Western hemisphere. Its parent company in Japan has been the industry leader in reserching and developing the highest quality synthetic papers for more than three decades.

Yupo paper offers a unique experience. Multi-layered and composed primarily of polyolefin resin, Yupo paper is 100% tree-free, 100% water resistant, and Uv stable."

Case studies