Paid a visit to the Brooklyn Historical Society this weekend to see their show, "Counter/Culture: The Disappearing Face of the Brooklyn Storefront" it was interesting to see photos of the blocks I know in a constant state of flux. Also learned that the world's first teddy bear was created at a little mom and pop store in Williamsberg, the Ideal Novelty and Toy Co.
We've been working on a lot of identity projects lately. And the number one resource we always turn to when developing a logo is LogoLounge. It's easy to get a sense of the competitive visual landscape for a particular industry and identify trends that should be utilized or avoided. In particular, I highly recommend their annual curated books that are organized by subject matter (which we've been featured in).
I've just returned freshly inspired from a visit to New Orleans, where the city is beginning to buzz with preparations for the Prospect 1 Biennial opening in 1 month. I was down there working on the open air project, sponsered by the Arts Council of New Orleans and opening concurrently. A friend's gallery/experiment was just written up in the style section of the NY times. KK Projects has taken over a block of hurricane destroyed houses and given a new life and a little magic to the area.
Following up on my last post musing about when people can understand warning and bathroom signs, here's a light hearted site about them, should you need a warning sign of your own. Alert the world to Godzilla, gas masks, or what looks to me like a flashing fairy wand. Or check out Speak Up for more about pictograms.
Check out the video preview of Marion Bataille's book ABC3D a gorgeous alphabet pop-up book with a swing soundtrack.
As Pamela mentioned previously, we've been fascinated with music visualization lately. I came across this mesmerizing video of Bach. (Though I keep wanting a paddle and ball to appear.) Of course, the ultimate physical description of music was the grooves in LPs - I remember being fascinated by the guy that could identify records simply by looking at the vinyl grooves.
This site turns text you submit into "word clouds."
You can adjust fonts, color schemes, and a variety of other parameters. Perhaps a functional capability will come to me, but in the meantime it's a pretty good toy.
For Bruce Levingston's upcoming album design, Patrick and I were interested in exploring visual representations of musical form. In researching for it, I came across this project: The Shape of Song. They've built a program which diagrams out the connection of notes in arches of varying size - they also have an extensive library of songs... in glorious MIDI.
I'm working on a project for Scholastic Books and get to check out new picture books and illustrators. I want a picture of Jeremy Tankard's Grumpy Bird to show up automatically on my computer screen when I'm having a grumpy morning too.
As we pass the 1-year anniversary of the iPhone launch, the flood of so-called "wannabe" iPhones is coming in. And of course the press compares them all to Apple's device: mentioning how the new offering is feature-packed and great, but falls short. (Of note: In Mossberg's WSJ review of the Instinct, the iPhone is mentioned 29 times, the Instinct itself only 16.) Why? Across the board it is the design. It's the ease-of-use and polish of Apple's User Interface that still trumps even products with much better specs.
