Playing Cards

Go to this link over at COLOURlovers to view and learn more about the design and history of playing cards.

Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight - Show Time OCMA

The film, Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight, will be showing this Thursday evening, 8 pm at the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA). The show is part of the 2009 CINEMA ORANGE series.

August 27, 8 pm

Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight (2008, Documentary, USA, 73 min)

Director: Wendy Keys

Cast: Milton Glaser

For many, Milton Glaser is the personification of American graphic design. Best known for co-founding New York Magazine and the enduring ‘I ♥ NY’ campaign, the full breadth of Glaser’s remarkable artistic output is revealed in this documentary portrait. From newspapers and magazine designs, interior spaces, logos, and brand identities, to his celebrated prints, drawings, posters and paintings, the documentary offers audiences a much richer appreciation for one of the great modern renaissance men.

Hope to see you Thursday night.

London Bridge

Designers need to be attentive in our observations and documentations. This is such a project by Chris Boardman of London called London Bridge. Chris photographed his daily walk to work from October 2008 to March of 2009 across the London Bridge looking towards the Tower Bridge. The outcome of this daily observation and documentation is the London Bridge project.

This Just Scares Me

Many folks have a fear of the dentist and/or clowns. Put those together and you would end up with something like these images. I have a few fears over the years but these images from Germany are undeniably freaky and scary. See more of these freaky images at Toxel.com about this ad campaign for Colgate. If I see my dentist sporting this on my next visit, I am running far far away very fast.

Being Blind

As designers it is hard for us to imagine being blind. Today while searching around on the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Catalog, I stumbled on to this interesting image of blind children playing "hide and seek". I felt a bit uncomfortable thinking about the image coming from a world of the seeing. Two other images can be seen below that where also found at the LOC. The photographs are interesting examples of life is a world that is difficult for most of us to fully understand and relate to on a daily basis. I am happy to have good vision and am thankful daily that it allows me to do the job I do. Maybe we should all consider the worlds that others must face daily and allow those thoughts to have an influence upon us and our designs.

On a related link, Boing Boing has a cool historic news video of Helen Keller and her teach Anne Sullivan today at this link.

Lemonade

What do you do if you got pushed out the door during this recession? If life gives you lemons, make Lemonade.

More than 70,000 advertising professionals have lost their jobs in this “Great Recession.” Lemonade is about what happens when people who were once paid to be creative in advertising are forced to be creative with their own lives.

See the preview here of the film.

Chair Whore

You maybe one or desire to be one. A new site that has started up with visual reference for chairs and only chairs, Chair Whore. GO check it out, you chair pervert.

Mad Men Returns

Tomorrow night on AMC at 10 pm is the start of season 3 of Mad Men. Tune in or set your DVR - if the last two seasons are any indication, this season should be great. Get your Mad Men fix over at the AMC site.

World Cup Bid Logo - The Game Is In US

Pentagram has designed a logo for the US bid to host the FIFA World Cup games in 2018 and 2022. The design was worked on by Michael Gericke and Luke Hayman. The design is to help sell the USA and bring the World Cup to the states. The bids will be up against 11 other countries with the decision being made in December 2010. I think the color choices help to bring the fun of soccer out and the US / United States is vivid. Let's hope that with Pentagram's help the games come back to the US. It will be an exciting time.

Les Paul

Les Paul 1915-2009

Rock On - Posters from the 60's

With the talk of the 40th Anniversary of the Woodstock Festival this Saturday, I wanted to explore some 60's Rock Posters. A designer that has a huge collection of work from this period to current times is Bob Masse. Bob attended art school in Vancouver and began his long career doing posters for local musicians. He was a pioneer in the psychedelic art movement of the 1960's doing work for the Grateful Dead, The Doors, and Jefferson Airplane. His work is heavily influenced by the art nouveau movement and the work of Alphonse Mucha in particular and became synonyms for 60's Rock posters. Masse continued to design posters and in the 80's worked on many movie projects. You can view wonderful examples of Bob Masse's work at this link. Rock on and long live the music of the 60's.

Take Me To The River

Last weekend I had the opportunity to travel to the "river" to relax. For those not familiar with the "river", as people in LA say, its the Colorado River between California and Arizona. Having grown up on the east coast and having a river not more than a few miles away, I thought it strange to drive 3-4 hours to go to the river. I had resisted many invites from my firefighter friends but this time the stars lined up and we where off to the river, be it for only one night. The temperatures where hot but the desert is wonderful to see and experience. It is amazing to drive for such a long time and see nothing but desert, nothing. The experience was great and the friends where great. I had survived the "river". To extend our weekend, we stopped at a hotel in the Palms Spring area for a night. The weekend closed out but was great with good friends and time to relax and enjoy life.

Spell Check

Fellow designers, don't forget to spell check your work. To see what can go wrong, check out this collection of "Misspelled Signs". If you would like to claim any of these signs as your misspelling just let me know.

How Do You Spend Your Day?

The New York TImes has a great interactive informational graphic on how we spend our life. The American Time Use Survey asked thousands of American residents to recall every minute of a day. The interactive graphic shows how people over age 15 spent their time in 2008. You can narrow the graphic by several factors like men, women, education and age. To view the graphic go to this link at the New York Times.

It's a Camera, It's a Projector, It's Cool

Nikon has just released the world’s first camera with an ultra-small, built-in projector. The camera. the COOLPIX S1000pj, lists for $429.95, takes 12.1 Megapixel images and has a build-in projector of 10 lumens. I know that is not a huge brightness when it comes to projects but Nikon says it will project an image size of 5" to 40" with a throw distance of 10" to 6'-6" and last about an hour per battery charge. This will allow a new way for us all to see pictures or video. Most important is this is a start of things to come. Can you image this technology in a few years? We will all have our own personnel video projects and cameras. At this very reasonable price of $430, I say Nikon is on to something. I would love to play around with one and am looking forward to hearing more about this revolution in bring together a camera and projector. To view all the tech specs and information, go to this link at the Nikon site.

A Cluttered Desk Is A Creative Desk

A cluttered desk may be a sign of intelligence and being creative. At least I hope that is so. It has been observed that many creative individuals have desks that are in a state of clutter but that clutter is a way of organization, to a point. Ellen Lupton has written an article on desk clutter and filing for Fast Company based on the book Design Your Life she wrote with her sister Julia Lupton.

The Visual Dictionary

Looking to spell it out for a client or friend? You will have to check out The Visual Dictionary where contributors send along photos of words. Started my Matthew Knight, the sites goal is to collect as many photographs of words as possible. You can search by word or have fun with the random button to see what you get. The Visual Dictionary is a great little site to inspire and keep your passions flowing. Check out The Visual Dictionary and spell it out clearly next time.