Old AIM.
New AIM.
Good bye, little AIM guy. You served us well, in buddy icons throughout my school career.
I’m not sure how I feel about this one. I mean, It looks fine. And all the collateral surrounding it looks equally as good. But it feels a bit too Tumblr, Vimeo, Aviary-y. It seems to entrenched in trying to look like something and feels like a copy of a copy of a copy. Huh.
But what is good is a desperately needed change from the near 15 years of AOL stagnation.
“We prove our worth with our portfolios, not with a membership badge.”
There's a new show on Bravo, that home of "reality TV" which is more competition shows than it is "reality" (they're cheap, easy to produce, and honestly more entertaining than you'd think). But this new show is called "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist," and it is an abomination on TV.
It's just another competition show, but my main problem with it is that it is qualifying expressive art. From what I understand (I haven't seen more than one episode, because it frustrates me so much), contestants are given a theme or topic or objective with which to create a piece, with restrictions to add that special twist. But each piece is subjective, created by one artist, and viewed by one person. How can you say one piece is better than another and be objective about it?
But I'm concerned about what's happening over in the UK. It's almost a "Work of Art" kind of thing, but done in an actual profession, across the board. To make an exceptionally long story short: in February, the Chartered Society of Designers made an application to the government to award certification to designers. This application was just granted. Without getting too dramatic, the CSD will soon be allowed to dictate who is and who isn't a designer.
Architects, yes. Doctors, absolutely. These are the professions that warrant a certification. These are professions that require a board to make sure the people who build buildings and operate on humans do them correctly so that these buildings don't fall down and doctors don't open people up and say, "Huh, what's this do?"
But like art, design is inherently subjective. I'm not arguing that there are not standard and practices designers follow. And I'm not arguing that some things look better than others. My concern is how it could stifle creativity. A board is going to certify what it likes. And say a board doesn't like your work that is a bit out-of-the-box. So you don't get certified. Now it's harder to find work, because you or your studio isn't certified.
I may be getting melodramatic, but that's where it might lead with a certification. And maybe I don't know enough about the inner workings of the CSD or what it's process will be (and I hope I am woefully ignorant), but like I said, I'm going to keep an eye on it.
(That said, I would be pretty damn cool to have a professional suffix. "Why yes, madam, I am Sam Bolles, C.D.")
(via Creative Review)
"This installation by Erik Kessels is on show as part of an exhibition at Foam in Amsterdam that looks at the future of photography. It features print-outs of all the images uploaded to Flickr in a 24-hour period…" (via Creative Review)
Oh yeah! I forgot about the music video that I went crazy over a while back, and I was just reminded of it.
Machine Molle did this video for Justice’s “DVNO," off of their 2007 album † (which is where the rather conspicuous cross toward the end of the video comes from; it became somewhat of a de facto logo for the band, incidentally). Outside of being a really great song, the animation is well done and reminds me of old HBO tapes my aunt would placate me with as a child.
The famous Starbucks logo seems to just keep getting enhanced over time. Enhance… enhance… enhance…
More clever copy, this time from Zynga’s “Hanging with Friends" mobile game.
My childhood is a blur of wasted summer afternoons spent playing videogames in the basement. My mother says that we spent so much time down there that the smell would stick to us and permeate throughout the rest of the house. My friends were the same way; when I would go to their houses, it was nearly exactly the same routine. Videogames in the basement.
Suffice it to say, I have a lot of nostalgic attachment to videogames of the era. These games are often referred to by the processor each system had, 8- and 16-bit. Those jagged little edges of pixels, so large that if you wanted to waste the time you might be able to count each one on screen. I was always amazed at how real life things were represented with such technical limitations, especially in games based on movies or television shows.
Design inspired by videogames is hardly anything new, but I recently stumbled upon a blog that celebrated the parts of games that often had the highest graphical fidelity: the title screen.
Using these title screens as a graphical inspiration never occurred to me until I looked at Title Scream’s description. And then, well… I won’t be getting that last hour or so back.
(via Creative Review)
Heraldry has always fascinated me. Much in the same way I talked about sports team logos, the crest you carry should be proud and intensely personal. And like sports logos, it’s your heritage and your future.
British Airways recently radically revamped their coat of arms (hey, did you know British Airways had a coat of arms?) to stunning results. It’s quite gorgeous and reinvigorated the brand with a new tagline: “To fly. To serve." Screams “British," right?
(via Brand New)
dirtyspacenews: Rethinking receipts. (via Quipsologies)
The MIT Media Lab introduced a new logo – or I guess logos… logo system? – recently, that’s really crazy. I’ve seen logos that have permutations on a theme (Nickelodeon’s old identity springs to mind), but this one most assuredly takes the cake.
The overarching idea of the logo is the three variously colored spotlights mixing and coming together, each maintaining it’s own identity, something that speaks to the lab’s tradition of “cross-pollination" as Suzanne Lebarre calles it at Design Co. “The Media Lab has outgrown this notion of traditional media, with researchers working in areas ranging from human computer interaction to neurobiology or nanotechnology,” Richard The, a designer of the logo system, noted. “Whatever ‘media’ means, it has been and will be defined at this place, in the next 5, 10, 20 years. The algorithmic logo is an effort to capture this dynamism.”
The craziest part (and this is what prompted me to tell you guys about it) is that it’s based on an algorithm that can create up to 40,000 unique position/color combinations. That’s enough to give every staff member their own logo. For the next 25 years. They’ve even gone as far as to set up a website where folks can choose their own logo. Once a design has been chosen, no one else can use it. On all of your business cards, tote bags, etc., it’s your personal logo. It’s a wonderful idea, that results in such a bizzarre and beautiful logo.
(via Surfstation)
Yikes. This one has been making the rounds as of late, and I couldn’t help but echo everyone’s thoughts here. Here we have a logo, fine as you would hope any logo could be. It’s for a new blog run by the Smithsonian about “people and ideas that likely will shape the way we will live one day."
Look closely at the logo. Three gears. It evokes industry, mechanics, engineering – smart people doing smart things. Or so you’d hope. If you’re perceptive, you’ll see that all three gears interlock in such a manner as to prevent them from actually moving. Locked in place. The irony is not lost on me. The point being, as Christian Palino puts it at the Brand New blog, it’s a “great reminder that creating good logos begins with understanding your subject matter and ends with great craftsmanship — neither of which were present here."
The logo has since been updated.
“What is art? And does being art automatically justify something? Does art have its own conscience? Or is it amoral? Can there be art that is so bad that it is no longer art? And could art be great art but cause great harm? Can art “cause” anything?”
Hehe. The copy writing team at Moe’s is pretty clever. (This may or may not be influenced by the burrito that currently occupies my stomach.)
I’ve always enjoyed and placed a lot of emphasis on sports team logos. They seem akin to a coat of arms or a medieval banner. They become more than just an image in the center of the field; they become a rally, a source of pride and strength. So, with people as passionate as they are about their team, it’s important to get it right (looking at you, Buffalo Sabres… Hey, where’re you goin’ Tampa Bay Rays?)
Even as a kid, I got excited as teams would change hands or expansion teams were added to leagues. Not because of the effects it would have on the rest of the teams of the how the new teams roster would fill out or anything like that (I’ve never been one to follow sports that closely), it was because a new logo and brand would come to life.
The Jets name has been around for some time, in various forms. The Winnipeg Jets were first founded in the World Hockey Association, one of the few strong competitors to the NHL, in 1972. When the WHA inevitably folded, the Jets were still remarkably strong. The NHL absorbed the Jets in 1979 where the team enjoyed as well a run as could be expected. In 1996, with money being the deciding factor, the team had to move out of Winnipeg and became the Phoenix Coyotes, who still operate today. In 2009, True North Media optioned to purchase the flailing Atlanta Thrashers with intent to move the team to Winnipeg. With Winnipeg’s rich Canadian Air Force history, the Jets name seemed the only choice.
The design mainly plays off of the Canadian Air Force’s rondelle medallion that is featured prominently on all official aircraft. It also evokes a compass pointing north, a nod to Canada’s proud affiliation with the direction. The collateral designs and word mark play less with the aviation theme and stick with the maple leaf.
It’s a great mark, honestly, as good a mark as you can hope. It’s clean, strong, playful, active, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword. The “Jets" type is the weakest aspect of the brand, it’s a bit too angular and pointy. It says to me that they were going with more of that aviation theme with a script, old-school style, but in modernizing it, maybe they went too far? But it’s not terribly distracting and I don’t think it will be featured on the jersey.
My worry is that if they put the rondelle full on the chest of the jersey, their away games may end up looking like a team of Captain Americas, which would be counter intuitive, but I digress.
Fantastic work by Patrick Sullivan, who made them for his senior portfolio class at Cooper Union. I may not be the world’s biggest Harry Potter fan, but this set just might make me one. (via io9)
But enough about you, internet. What about me?
I was contacted to redesign the Lake George-Lake Champlain Regional Planning Board website. I was pretty happy with the results, and so were they!
Beautiful beautiful artwork from Gregory Euclide, most notably for his cover for Bon Iver’s new album. Surreal and tense, yet at the same time calming and beautiful.
breakfastsafari: Time to start campaigning for Alec Baldwin for mayor of NYC. I figured what better place to start than Tumblr.
timothypmurphy: Obama finds Jesus in Rio. This photo is fantastic.
Wowzers. Probably the most impressive photo I’ve seen in some time.