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Posts Tagged ‘design’

Andy Warhol paints Debbie Harry on an Amiga

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

What more can you say?

Tags: Amiga, Andy Warhol, art, design, Digital Art
Posted in art, culture | No Comments »

BDD Büro Destruct Designer

Monday, March 1st, 2010

BDD Büro Destruct Designer an application for Adobe Air (Windows, Mac, Linux) or iPhone/iPod Touch creates abstract grid based designs inspired by modern Swiss design of the 1960’s. In just a few clicks create pleasing color combination, grid layout, and shapes. Great inspiration for poster, logo, and illustrative design. The desktop version is free and the iPod version is available for the introductory price of $0.99 USD.

Tags: Air, application, design, grid system, iPhone, modernism, swiss design
Posted in Applications, design | No Comments »

Mark Coleran: Fantasy and Real UI Designer

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Mark Coleran has designed many of the user interfaces seen in films, from Blade II to Children of Men. His delicate balance between futuristic fantasy and present familiarity is astounding.

It’s easy to do overdramatic access denied screens, but Coleran’s work is eye catching, understandable and even clever. In an unused interface for Children of Men, a “coverflow” view like iTunes is shown. Before iTunes even introduced coverflow.

You should really see some of his work.

He’s also a designer for real life UI. Gridiron Flow looks like the one thing that would make any Creative Director, Designer, or Art Director’s life easier. In a simple overview you see all files related to a project and how they relate to each other.

Tags: access denied, computers, design, Movies, ui
Posted in Asides | No Comments »

Raw Materials: HYPE framework for Flash

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

I have been shying away from Flash lately as its not supported by many mobile devices and comparable open technologies like jQuery, Raphaël, and Canvas get better each day. And I don’t know Actionscript 3.0.

HYPE might make me dust off my copy of Flash. In a style similar to Processing, HYPE does the heavy lifting for Flash coding. Making this fun again. From HYPE’s site:

HYPE is a creative coding framework built on top of ActionScript 3. A major goal of HYPE is to allow newcomers to Flash and ActionScript to creatively play and express themselves while they are learning how to program.

To get started, the user needs only the most basic knowledge of programming – variables, conditionals, loops, and functions, for example.

As the user learns more about programming they can extend HYPE and thus grow their skills, while at the same time inspiring the next generation.

Now, that’s not to say HYPE is just for people who are new to programming. Instead, HYPE is for anyone, regardless of skill, who wants to play with code. Fundamentally, the point of HYPE is to make Flash fun again. We made HYPE to help bring back the playfulness that once defined our community.

HYPE – come out and play!

Tags: design, Flash, Process, processing, Web Design
Posted in Raw Materials | No Comments »

Beautiful Infographics from a 1939 design handbook

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

These beautiful infographic images are scanned from the 1939 book Graphic Presentation by Willard Cope Brinton. Visit Professor Michael Stoll’s Flickr stream to view more pages at high resolution.

Tags: data, design, Graphic Design, infographics, visualizing
Posted in Neat, Raw Materials | No Comments »

Dollar Store Design

Monday, October 19th, 2009

No, this site hasn’t morphed into an Engrish rip-off.  I’ve just been spending a lot of time in dollar stores lately.

Haunting the aisles of the cheap and easily broken, one begins to pick up on certain design tropes prevalent in goods sold at or near the amount of a dollar.  With the caveat that I am still a young grasshopper when it comes to big-city bargain hunting in the modern five and dime, I will attempt to sketch out some observations on national trends in decoration for products cheaply manufactured.

Now nothing says cheap like retro styling. In the above label for a ‘Movable Stick’, note the overall 70s vibe.  Warm colors.  Soft focus clip art.  Wavy rainbow lines.  And dig the simplistic logo for Min Long Craft that nearly screams “Owner/Operator/Creative Director”

I find the sum effect pretty reassuring of a half-assed product at a price low enough that I won’t think twice about splurging on a rolling pin when I don’t even have curtains on my windows yet.  (Dear neighbors: The human body is a beautiful, natural thing.  Especially mine.)

Even better:

The subtle clash of elements here is fantastic.  An American flag design with a discreet but readable ‘MADE IN CHINA” and the bold fiery letters of XIAN JIAN on the blue starry field delivers a one-two punch of easy irony.  Drop-shadows, serifs and a lovely gradient matte behind the cryptic product title let you know that when this designer works a pirated copy of Illustrator 4.0, its hard to see the mouse from all the steam coming off the man’s hands.

A nice tight row of bolts keep things nearly topical (this label comes from a variety pack of nails) and finishing it off with the polite and reassuring ESL slogan gives the whole proceedings that Asian flavor that keeps one coming back to the dollar store.

A subject for further study is whether there is a national style to cheap product package design.  I’d venture yes, having fed on bottom of the barrel Israeli sesame cookies, cheap Turkish milk crackers and allegedly Durian flavored sandwich cookies from Thailand through various jobs situated next to 99 cent, dollar and 100 yen stores.  More musings on this subject to come.

Tags: analysis, cheap, chinese design, design, dollar store, Graphic Design, humor, movable stick, product design
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Rise Above: Commuting by Airship

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

While I don’t bitch much about the lack of flying cars–c’mon, driving’s dangerous enough in two dimensions–the near complete disappearance of the dirigible as a transportation option strikes me as a missed opportunity.  Geez, you have one massive fireball over New Jersey and everybody freaks out…

Alexandros Tsolakis and Irene Shamma are keeping the faith, though.  Their entry for the Reburbia design competition envisions a network of commuter airships making sense of suburban sprawl in a sustainable and beautifully futuristic manner. Their proposed airships can haul 400 people at 150 km/h with their stations stops built up, not out or under, so as to ease the complications that mass transit infrastructure usually brings.

While I’ve got my doubts that a network of these skywhales is the answer to greening the suburbs (slow speeds, helium shortages, expense, wind) I think these designs at least are pushing the idea of modernized lighter than air travel as a serious option.  And any time I get to link to the Island of Future Airships, I’m happy.

found this via grinding.be, which I’d recommend browsing around for a few hours anyway

Tags: airship, commute, competition, design, Hindenburg, reburbia, suburbia, zeppelin
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Raw Materials: Venetian Renaissance Scans

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Click here for a gallery of ancient hand-cut fonts, illustrations and borders, all free and clear to alter and reuse.

I found this book for a dollar at a garage sale and it looked too good to keep to myself.  Great for design projects that require a medieval touch.  Ten scans up currently, more on the way.  Angels, saints, branches, lions and giant fancy letters.

Link to any projects you use these on in the comments.  Someone want to whip up a font?

Tags: book, design, medieval, print, public domain, Raw Materials, renaissance, scans
Posted in Featured, Raw Materials | 1 Comment »