Esquire's E-Ink Cover

I've never heard of E-ink before today, but I thought this was pretty impressive. I found out about this Esquire issue through Pop-Up Studio NYC. Here are some good photos also. I thought it was pretty sweet ... can't wait to see when Graphic Design gets to use more Animation/Motion Graphic techniques for print! :)

Jimiyo’s FREE Motorcity

YouWorkForThem has some great stock photos, vector images, fonts, brushes, etc. I happened to find this great freebie download of bird illustrations by Jimiyo. Beautiful birds!! Free to download. Thanks Jimiyo! :)

Font Conference ... If fonts were people

Here's a great video with design humor about typography. It made me laugh. :)

Steampunk Moves Between Two Worlds

I read this article - Steampunk Moves Between Two Worlds - today on the New York Times website about Steampunk & its subculture - wow! Amazing! ...

It's an aesthetic of the industrial age - brass, gears, burlap, time travel, adventure, creativity, etc. ... It reminds me of Waterworld, The City of Lost Children, Matrix, Around the World in 80 Days, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the video game Myst. ... I found Abney Park - a band that promotes themselves at "steampunk", Tom Sepe - who built a steampunk motorcycle(with lots of other cool inventions!), Gypsy Moon, a steampunk fashion site, and even SalonCon, a victorian/steampunk ball.

I really enjoyed looking through all of it ... I was even seeing the world through a sort of steampunk vision - pretty cool to think about! :)

The Reverse Graffiti Project

The Reverse Graffiti Project - a beautiful art project in San Francisco - a reverse graffiti mural of indigenous plants in an urban space.

The artist - Moose - has some other great design projects/creative ideas of communication in the city. Check 'em out! :)

My friend Matthieu Brajot also helped out on this cool project.

Paul Rand: form + content

"don't try to be original, just try to be good"

a great video designed by Imaginary Forces

Attitude + Power --> Performance

Attitude + Power --> Performance
Originally uploaded by Telstar Logistics

Wow! A beautiful article about the pioneer of the automotive design - Harley Earl.

I love how much information is packed into this beautiful illustration - it holds analogies for so many things. Make sure to check out the other illustrations and this article as well.

Fun with Camper

Fun with Camper
Originally uploaded by raondo

I was reading this nice article in Metropolis Magazine describing the Camper brand & design-thinking. It was cool to hear about they're trying to keep it a family business - even globally - and how they taylored the design of each store to reflect & enhance the area it's in (not some cookie-cutter franchise).

I was amazed when I saw the Camper website!! ... I was laughing & wanting to dance (as much as you can in an office chair). Their site has so much fun energy – a celebration of life & personality – playfulness with color & objects. I can really feel the Spanish culture influencing this design, which I love about it! Their animations are well done & playful/entertaining. It reflects their thinking that design can be fun & not-so-serious. The objects they chose to include are fun combinations and the animations with the shoes do a great job of reflecting each shoe's personalities.

I enjoyed looking at the different Camper store designs that are uniquely suited for the area it's in. I think that's an awesome idea, and they've done a great job at the environmental design of each store. I like their randomness too. I think it's cool how they taylored the London store to have random stories of Majorcan donkeys ... since the British seem to like to read a lot, why not give them something fun to read about? In Germany they encourage visitors to write on the wall, which I would think would be really fun. In Madrid they came up with this idea of a "info-shop" where the decoration would be random images & information - that would be a cool store to visit. Their Camper for Kids section is also a playful way to communicate why kids might like campers & all their different uses.

I really love this site. I'm amazed at how much joyful life it carries in the design, the art & the ideas. I think their could be some minor improvements, like the transitions between different sections. It did take me a little bit to discover the useful parts of some sections ... but I think it goes perfectly with the idea that everything doesn't have to have a point, a meaning ... sometimes we just need to take in life & enjoy the moment!

It also reminded me of the beautiful, joyful illustrations of Spanish artist Catalina Estrada, which I admire also.

[For those people in Austin, I have seen Camper shoes & that same fun/playful design-sense at Creatures Boutique on South Congress.]

beautiful font freebie - faceplate

Font Shop is offering a pretty cool font for free (with registration), designed by PSY/OPS Type Foundry. I think it's a beautiful font - clean, industrial, tall, legible, solid but unique with a few personal features, not too loud, but noticeably solid in a thin/open way ... I like the baseline curve on the Z, the 2, the G & g, the J, and the a. It reminds me somewhat of technology-driven, clean European style mixed with a forward-thinking, confident creative strength - sort of like a high-tech guy from London who travels to New York frequently on creative projects. Beautiful font ... and it's free. :)
Nice work PSY/OPS.

kuler - beautiful color themes

Adobe just launched their new CS3 suite yesterday. ... lots of improvements. They bought Macromedia awhile ago with ownerships over Flash, Dreamweaver, etc. Now Photoshop & Illustrator will be able to communicate with Dreamweaver & Flash more seamlessly ... which means more great designs on the web & seamless flow between print, web & video. I'm pretty excited about the new changes. ... To watch their webcast of yesterday's launch, go here.

One really cool thing I found during the launch was Kuler - technology for picking color themes & palette. (Try creating a color scheme.) You can save color schemes, share them with friends, have their RGB, CMYK & Hex/Web codes ... really cool. They have a mac widget that you can download too. I like the RSS feeds for the most popular & highest rated color schemes.

They also annouced a spry widget to easily put ajax/javascript tools into a website.

Here's an article on what "Web2.0" is about ... a term I was introduced to when I went to SXSW ... interesting article.

a site for caffé medici

I finished a website for Caffé Medici, the Espresso & Coffee House of my friends Michael & Alison. I'm happy with it, and I think it serves their needs well. (They have some really good cappuccinos & lattes too!) The trickiest part was learning how to integrate a blogger engine into my CSS design ... but it was amazingly easy (the dynamic parts worked automatically on my server; I just had to tweak my design a little bit; it even helped me make some of the typographic decisions for the rest of the site). It took a little push to finish it, but I beat their baby out (who's due date is today). :) Enjoy. (I also designed their beautiful logo.)

sxsw07 interactive notes

I finally compiled my list of notes from the South by Southwest 2007 Interactive conference. There were so many great ideas, people & inspiration that it would've taken too long to type out all my ideas/processing. I ended up scanning my notes and just putting in hyperlinks to the various websites & articles. (I hope you can see the green underlines. If not just try clicking on something you find of interest ... The titles are all linked to the SXSW panel pages, for example, among the 346 links within it.)

Hopefully this PDF can serve as a useful reference for the various topics in design, typography, web development, business and the next generation. (I plan on using it that way.) :)

Creative Summit & BBQ

Next weekend (March 30/31) is the 22nd annual Creative Summit in San Marcos, Texas. It's a great conference and student show about graphic design, illustration, photography and creative professionals. I'd like to make the whole show, but I might make only make it for a little bit (silent auction, design show) ... and I plan on making the alumni BBQ shin-dig down in Riley, TX. It should be a good time. Hopefully I can catch up with some alumni design friends and maybe play some horseshoes.

sxsw brain-spinning

I'm back from SXSW ... wow! what an experience - great people, ideas, discussions, etc. It was over-whelming at times - too much information & people, but really good. I got to see a few friends/alumni who had moved away, hang out with my co-workers and listen to some of the most forward-thinking people in creative technology. I took notes on the panels & will try to share them soon ... there was lots of information. I'm trying to bring as much inspiration & ideas back into my workplace, and hopefully make things even more productive & enjoyable. My brain is kinda fried right now. I'll come back later with more. (I think I have enough ideas to keep me busy for the next year at least.)

One thing, yesterday I saw the world premiere of the movie Helvetica ... which was a great documentary film about how helvetica came to be out of the swiss design school and how it has (positively & negatively) shaped our society from different people's perspectives. There was a Q&A at the end with the director Gary Hustwit & designer David Carson. Whether or not you're a designer, I think you'll like it a lot.

german type foundry

I ran across this cool type foundry based in Essen, Germany today - Cape Arcona Type Foundry. I like their work - folky, funky, foreign, some industrial & experimental. (For experimental/degraded fonts, I also like Misprinted Type.) ... a few good free fonts to download too. :)

architect website + sxsw

I finally finished a website for Michael Hsu Design Office. I designed the logo and website interface, shot some photography for the front page, and developed the whole site in CSS & HTML. I really like the way it came out. It was wonderful working with Michael since he already has such great design aesthetics. Check his environmental design/architecture work out. It's really good and all over Austin.
...
getting stirred on ideas for some more blogging ... I'm also going to SXSW Interactive for work next week ... so I'm getting excited about technology again (had a break for a few years) ... so I look forward to doing new things with my blog soon - new design, new stuff ... thanks for checking back

Caffe Medici logo

a freelance project for my friends Michael & Alison.
stay tuned for more ...