I'm Comic Sans.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/monologues/15comicsans.html

A little obscene, but absolutely hysterical imagined monologue.

Appeel

An interesting piece, Appeel is a virus spreading through interacting individuals, it demonstrates the basic principles of interactivity largely reliant on people’s behaviour. A surface is covered by a large number of coloured stickers, positioned in a grid. People can remove stickers, leaving white spots in the layout, as a result individually and collectively changing the walls appearance. These stickers then take on a life of their own, as they spread, extending beyond the installation itself, infiltrating private space and merging the boundaries of public and private space.

A Little Insight

Until now, the focus of this blog has been unusual, eccentric, or intriguing accomplishments by other designers/ artists. Today, I offer a small insight into what I have been up to these past few months.

St. George Illawarra is an Australian rugby team known as the Dragons. In early March I began a redesign process for them as a Senior Project. This was one of the most intensive and difficult projects I have worked on during my years at Pratt, and needless to say I am rather proud of the outcome. I set out to redefine what a sports logo can look like, to shake things up a bit and produce something unexpected for this team. I think I've accomplished that, but you be the judge...

BEFORE:


AFTER:

Weird Internet Find of the Day

Featured today on Weird Internet Find of the Day is artist Kate Macdowell. Kate presents dead and decaying animals with anthropomorphic features--blurring the difference between man and nature in a state of destruction. According to her,

"In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment. These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops. They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones. In some pieces aspects of the human figure stand-in for ourselves and act out sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous transformations which illustrate our current relationship with the natural world."

Personally, I think these are great. They're deeply creepy yet still beautiful, and they brilliantly illustrate a very controversial issue.

Hungry?

Brilliant. Part of me wishes I was badass enough to warrant such a cool business card.

Logo Process

Simply put, logos are the bane of my art school existence. I find them exceedingly frustrating and difficult to complete, and thoughts of the four I am currently struggling with keep me up at night. That being said, I really love looking at real designer's work with logos, and I find it especially helpful when they show their process and development of the logo along with the final product. Granted, this doesn't show the entire process, unless this person can make a banging logo in one go, but it's still rather neat.

Let the Sun Shine

After 31 days without it, Tropicana brings the sun to the arctic circle.

Weird Internet Find of the Day

There's really only one word to describe this typographic experiment. Yuck. I mean really. Yuck.

Activity

The only time I ever really think about how much time I spend on the computer is when my head starts to pound. This neat little application tracks your mouse movement over time, and then maps it all out in one frenzied little image.

Weird Internet Find of the Day

Featured today on Weird Internet Find of the Day is the photographic weirdness of Marc Da Cunha Lopes. As unnerved as I am by the peculiarity of these photographs, I can't help but notice that they really are quite beautiful. I love the color palatte he is working with here, and the light really adds to the macabre-ness of the photos.







Check out the rest of his work:
http://www.aisakie.com/
He does advertising and art direction as well. Most of it is equally strange.

Embrace Life

This is a truly beautiful ad, it captures the horror of auto accidents without descending to the level of shock campaigns.

Bernie Madoff Gets It

The sculpture “What You see Might Not Be Real,” by Chen Wenling, was displayed at a Beijing gallery Sunday. A bull, meant to represent Wall Street, is seen ramming the biggest con man of all time, Bernie Madoff, into a wall. Totally deserving, if you ask me.



The huge cloud coming out of the bull's rear not only refers to the end of a greedy era, but also symbolizes the danger of virtual bubbles in international financial markets. In a society based on desire and money, some people choose to create many false impressions, while others sadly fall for them.

Weird Internet Find of the Day

Today's Weird Internet theme: Photoshoped photographs that make me really, really uncomfortable. Through a combination of weird imagery and worrisome concept, these are straight up disturbing. Enjoy.

Her Morning Elegance

This is a simply beautiful stop motion piece. The simplicity and the emotion are wonderful. It's amazing what you can create with basic tools and a wild imagination!

Weird Internet Find of the Day

Ginou Choueiri - Potato Portraits

“I chose the potato to portray human faces because of the many striking parallels. Not only is their skin porous like ours, but their skin texture and color is very similar, and like us, they come in different sizes, shapes and forms. Potatoes grow, live, and then decay, mirroring the ephemeral existence and fragility of our own human nature.”

I don't know about you, but I'm creeped out by how realistic these are. I'd hate to see what they look like a couple weeks after completion. On the other hand though, it certainly does show a certain level of ingenuity and imagination on the part of Ginou Choueiri.

Random Installation

Royal Opera House: Audience. from rAndom International on Vimeo.

This piece, titled "AUDIENCE" was commissioned for the Royal Opera House in London. Each of the little mirrors follows the most active person in the room, which transforms the viewer into the central point of the piece. The fluid movement of the mirrors, and their behaviour as a group creates a very human feeling to the motion, and actively engages spectators. All in all, very cool.

Olympic Fever

I love the Olympics. It's one of the only times I ever feel even the slightest twinge of patriotism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xwe5x77m8U
I love this. I love the simplicity of it, but the imagination behind it is also incredible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bchzx9kCNk
This one is less cool, but has impressive animation.

Motion

I'm somewhat obsessed with motion graphics, so add that to my minor obsession with typography, and you get this.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/

Scroll down to the "A History of Scotland" part. Just click on any of the squares, then prepare to be amazed.
These are some screen grabs from the animation, but it is AWESOME. It's simply amazing.

The Master Speaks

Massimo Vignelli is more or less a demigod of graphic design. This is a really nice little book I found that he wrote for his students. It's about typography, but he also has some really good insight and comments on design in general. Definitely worth a read.



http://www.vignelli.com/canon.pdf

New York Type

These little delights were taken from the NYC edition of Show Us Your Type (http://www.showusyourtype.com) I'm a big fan of the first one. I love typography in general, and I have a mild fascination with the kind of illustrative type done by Si Scott Design and others. I mean...how cool is this?









I know they're mostly fluff. All beauty and little substance, but theres something to be said for the illustrative art of typography. Also, I'd kill to be that good at Illustrator.