lana shahmoradian

ERWIN BLUMENFELD

2010-06-16T14:40:00.001-04:00

I know I already posted about Erwin Blumenfeld a few years ago, but it just seems strangely relevant. Is it just me or do these videos seem to emanate some kind of icy breeze? I get goosebumps everytime.

LITTLE DRUMMER BOY

2010-05-24T15:38:00.001-04:00

This is the aforementioned Shigeto whom I saw last summer at LPR. I was so impressed. You wouldn't think staring at a one man band playing the drums for an hour would be so breathtaking and crazy entertaining.

BIRDS OF FIRE

2010-05-24T15:09:00.007-04:00

I'm at LPR to see Shigeto and Tycho. Casino Versus Japan kicks things off with a guy sitting in the glow of his laptop on the stage. He holds a guitar which he idly strums. He's drunk. He's playing clumsy like an alien handling an earthly instrument, or me, or...this.
Little did I know, the "performance" I saw is indistinguishable from the sound of birds building a nest in a guitar.

CRUNKY PIXELS

2010-04-25T01:10:00.001-04:00

My friend Natalie sent me this today.

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. - Arts and animation videos.

NEW SITE

2010-04-21T13:00:00.001-04:00

Hello everyone,

I have been working on my new website. Please check it out.
Heavymetalunicorn.com

FUSE PROJECT

2010-04-13T17:39:00.002-04:00

BLARGH TOON OF THE DAY

2009-10-15T16:00:00.000-04:00

RETROFUTURISM

2009-09-28T03:02:00.000-04:00

The Sound of Arrows - Into the Clouds (Music video) from The Sound of Arrows on Vimeo.

RETRO REVIVAL

2009-09-18T22:35:00.001-04:00

LAPP

2009-09-03T10:57:00.003-04:00

TRACE OF TIME

2009-08-18T15:41:00.007-04:00

Cha Ilgu is an industrial designer who created this clock. As time goes by, the hand wipes away old reminders. Watch below:

JAN SVANKMAJER

2009-08-17T12:27:00.000-04:00

Food from tahen on Vimeo.

FURRY MAN

2009-08-16T22:20:00.001-04:00

FUTURE LOVE

2009-08-13T14:22:00.008-04:00

Today I went to a presentation about great interactive work. Artist Jonathan Harris (known for We Feel Fine) was mentioned more than once. He does alot of collective humanity projects. Here he weaves another "mosaic of humanity." It brings me to question the definition of an "artist". What are its confines? Projects such as these blur the lines between artist, humanitarian, therapist, etc. Shows art has no boundaries, it can do so many things. Enough rambling. The point is, this is cool, and I hope eHarmony is taking notes.

TO PUT YOUR EAR TO A TIME MACHINE

2009-08-13T10:47:00.004-04:00

GO, zip it back. Be somewhere else, come back.
Rewind, repeat, remind us of the past.
Slow it down! kick it up and lay it down on the track!

Eclectic Method aren't just video remixers, they are time travellers. Basically, they splice n dice sounds from linear time and flip flop them around to make a new, musical experience from that moment. It's like an alternate reality, a parallel universe. Trip on in a quacked-out time machine and boogie down to the sounds of Quentin Tarantino.

The Tarantino Mixtape from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.

THE HAPPIEST OF SONGS

2009-08-10T10:45:00.000-04:00

Blargh Song of the Day

2009-08-06T16:24:00.001-04:00

ANTHROPOMORPHOLOGIZE THIS

2009-07-31T10:57:00.004-04:00

anthropomorphism --
(n) the tendency to attribute human characteristics to animals or inanimate objects.

Take Disney, for instance. Or any cartoon for that matter. It's always bothered me a little when I see eyelashes on a squirrel to indicate that it is female, or a duck that gets abashed when his pants fall down. It's a little strange that we get some satisfaction out of making animals like ourselves. It doesn't end with animals. We even manage to anthorpomorphize a dishsponge!

Isn't if a little off-putting that we, the human race, feel like we need to humanize everything as if we own the world?

But what happens when ANIMALS choose to humanize themselves? Apologies for the blathering intro to the story of these 2 animals...

Casper, the commuting cat.

read article here

Lala, the backpack-clad, shopping penguin.

Maybe animals don't think anthropomorphology so bad afterall...

Tim + Typography

2009-07-07T16:09:00.001-04:00

Really?

2009-07-06T17:36:00.001-04:00

BLARGH DAILY PERSON OF THE DAY

2009-07-01T17:07:00.003-04:00

Mr. BigHead, motion graphics artist

http://www.mrbighead.net/

WEBSITE OF THE DAY

2009-06-23T13:49:00.005-04:00

it's not clear what this is about, but relax, i think that's the best part.

[click image to launch site]

tasting colors, hearing emotions, smelling visions

2009-06-22T10:36:00.009-04:00

Today's lesson is on
SYNESTHESIA:
a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.

What color do you see when you smell patchouli? drakkar noir? farts? What personality do you think of when you bite into a piece of crunchy toast? gummy bears?

When colors evoke an emotion, when days of the week evoke personalities, when types of food evoke certain songs. ex. Blue Monday

Understand? Maybe not?

Synesthesia from Terri Timely on Vimeo.

I wish every perplexing concept i had to learn in biology were defined by a video like this one. video dictionaries.

THE MILL

2009-06-17T14:54:00.005-04:00

the mill is responsible for the sweetness of this music video for a song i've been crushing on lately.
you can listen to it down below, so i will give you another gem:

dead_prez_grizzly_bear.mp3

SHOESDAY TUESDAY

2009-06-16T10:32:00.010-04:00

Tuesdays are for gazin' at your shoes.

Let me introduce you to someone you've already heard if you've watched Shunji Iwai's "All About Lily Chou Chou."

Japan's own Bjork, Salyu.

Salyu is the voice behind the movie's soundtrack. My favorite song, Arabesque, from the opening sequence:

Salyu-Arabesque.mp3

PAPERCRAFT

2009-06-16T10:25:00.004-04:00

brilliant video by johnny kelly

The Seed from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

Watch the making of:

Making of 'The Seed' from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

today, get out a pair of scissors and paper, and see what you can make!

IT'S FORMULAIC, BABY.

2009-06-11T10:47:00.008-04:00

I pulled this quote from an article in NYT's The Moment blog.
"By today’s standards, the cover of a fashion magazine is about as creative as baby formula." -Andy Port

It's so true. Let's get a popular female celebrity, get her in the latest fashions, have her expressing confident-but-not-too-brazen, smiling-strong-mature-healthy and put that in an neat, unoffensive, airbrushed package.
(P.S. Every time I wait at any checkout line, I want to punch every one of those cover girls squarely in the lips.)
GlamourElleCosmoMarieClaireinStyle. What is the difference? Need there be?
What happened to taking risks and being creative? I'll tell you why things get formulaic. It's because people are lazy. Taking a step back from the table to pause work and actually think about what you're working on takes effort. It's like being ankle-deep in honey. We get comfortable with the way things "SHOULD" work, and stop questioning that system.

Moral to the story?
QUESTION EVERYTHING.

FXXX SPECIAL FX!

2009-06-10T13:59:00.016-04:00

The London office of the agency I intern for, Wieden + Kennedy, just put out this stellar stop motion music video for We Have Band. It's interesting what you can do without special FX. Digital ages faster than Darmstadtium. Handmade is timeless and ages well, unlike perhaps Men in Black.

NOTTI, NOTTI HARRI

2009-05-30T12:07:00.011-04:00

Let me begin this post with some mood-setting music. We're going back to the 60s, sorta.

[Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Can't hear my eyes]

I was at the Strand in NYC yesterday, and I happened up on this book about Harri Peccinotti, 1960s fashion photographer and art director of British swinger style mag, Nova.

[H.P. Not Hewlett Packard, silly. ]

WHAT I WAS EXPECTING: borderline smutty, ripe candy hued fashion photography, 1960s sexual revolution style.
WHAT I GOT: that, and also this brilliantly delicious intro. i was pleasantly surprised to find such good writing in a photography book. i feverishly scribbled it down into my notebook before i finished reading it myself.

INTRO:

Looking at Harri Peccinotti's photographs is like peeling an orange. The first tear stirs a balm of bright citrus that takes over an entire room. Expectation draws as fingers launch into a tug of war between rippled skin and the pulp within.

Wrapped in vibrant color or nearly bare, Peccinotti's women refuse to age. Their luminous imperfections arouse first crushes, faded calendars and lost innocence. They continue to bruise with primal desires as they soak in the California sunshine, dance at the Classic Cat and stretch their bareness across distant continents.

Forty years have come and gone. The bath is drawn, smoke rings hover, and that unforgettable popsicle is wetter than water itself. Forty years later and the orange still makes your mouth water.

I'm not sure what left more of an aftertaste, the photography or the introduction, but at any rate, it's the blargh daily book of the day.

daily blargh toon of the day

2009-05-18T02:22:00.005-04:00

1956 propaganda film, destination 'earth' (really just another name for the grand USA)

TRY THIS

2009-05-09T16:52:00.004-04:00

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/

PORTALS TO YOUR SECRET DIMENSION

2009-05-04T19:23:00.006-04:00

A video my partner and I made for Bose.

VIRTUALEBRITIES

2009-05-02T14:07:00.008-04:00

With the boom of user generated everything, there has been a rise of "virtual celebrities." Users/Social Networkers that use media like blogger/flickr/youtube in such a way that makes them stand out from the pack and garner a troupe of followers.

Today's such example is one of my acquaintances from college.
Doug Appling, AKA Emancipator, mashed up mobb deep and sigur ros more than 2 years ago, and he posted his track on hypemachine.com

Then, 2.5 years later, which was last week, his song skyrocketed to the #1 most popular song on hypemachine.

I heard my roommate, who's from San Fran, playing his song on her computer. She's going to go back to Cali someday and then maybe tell someone out there about him, and his music will spread. But that's not even necessary, because on Hypemachine or on the net in general, geography is nothing.

Sadly, I went to search for his song today on hypem, and it is nowhere to be seen. Swallowed back up into the woodwork, vanished, not anywhere in the top 60.

From number 1 to nothing in 1 week.

The thing about these virtual celebrities is that they are lone wolves. They don't have "people" to promote them, keep twisting them in ways to keep them "fresh" and "culturally relevant." People have their dose of them, and then simply move on.

Nonetheless, I've had this song in my itunes library for the past 2 years, and it never seems to get old. Check it.
Emancipator - Shook (Sigur Ros vs. Mobb Deep)

I THOUGHT...I WAS THE ONLY ONE

2009-04-27T23:54:00.006-04:00

http://fuckyeahcilantro.tumblr.com/
the captions, the captions.

A PROBLEM UNSOLVED AND FORGOTTEN IS WORSE THAN THE ORIGINAL PROBLEM TO BEGIN WITH, BECAUSE NOW ITS A PROBLEM THAT THE PROBLEM WAS LEFT UNSOLVED.

2009-04-24T00:42:00.005-04:00

are you bored? do you need a job? here is something you can do.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/world/europe/10romania.html

This article is 2 years old. That is a problem. Because this is still a problem. It's still happening and alot of people don't know about it, have forgotten about it, or think it's been solved.

things you can do:
1. go to romania and teach people about birth control methods
2. donate birth control
3. go volunteer at these orphanages
4. help build a better orphanage and give money to it to make it wonderful
5. if you are a photographer, go document this and show it to the world
6. if you are a journalist, go document this and show it to the world
7. if you are a doctor/pre-med student/med student, go out there and help these kids
8. if you are looking to adopt and you are incredibly patient and nurturing, adopt.
9. write a bajillion letters to the romanian government.

Government of Romania
1 Victoriei Plazza, District 1 , Bucharest
Phone: +40-21-314 34 00, 319 15 64

IF YOU'RE A STARVING ARTIST....

2009-04-24T00:35:00.006-04:00

Photographs by James Nachtwey.

ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE UNIQUE!

2009-04-24T00:00:00.010-04:00

...just like everybody else.

whether you're emo... :'(

or rasta...mon

or garish hoodie wearin'...

or hip hop luvin, 80s throwback fresh prince lookin'...

or XTREME...

or a small asian boy, spectacular sweater sportin'...

if you are brave enough to find your personal clones, click here. But be warned. You might get the urge to completely toss out your wardrobe and start afresh.

I'm in print!

2009-04-19T19:10:00.003-04:00

I'm in this issue of Print Mag!

HM.

2009-04-14T22:47:00.005-04:00

This is the dome ring by Kenneth Jay Lane. You can buy it for $175.oo from polyvore. It's been recently likened on Highsnobette to wearing "spring on your finger."

Old cheese. Diorette collection by Victoire de Castellane. Ring a bell?

UNREAL

2009-04-03T21:32:00.006-04:00

as unreal as little dragons, but as real as it gets. yukimi nagano lackadaisically murmurs sad benevolence into your ear. there's something familiar in her voice. after just one listen, you already feel like she's your best friend.

little dragon -- fortune

Fortune - Little Dragon

little dragon--infinite love

Infinite Love - Little Dragon

PSYCHEDELICIOUS

2009-04-03T20:57:00.008-04:00

[click on the image.]
[click on the image above to view a short film.]
[the short film will appear near the bottom of that page, so you'll need to scroll down.]

sort of reminds me of the video for alan braxe + fred falke's "palladium":

for more of this eye candy, check out another erwin blumenfeld experimental fashion film:

Fresh Like Blue

2009-04-03T20:22:00.005-04:00

these are some bleutiful blargh things of the day.

Rollins shoes by Clae

Newton watch by Nixon.

Uh-Huh.

Looking forward to...

2009-03-30T02:56:00.004-04:00

Where The Wild Things Are from Darian on Vimeo.

This girl is amazing!!

2009-03-28T00:30:00.006-04:00

jane aldridge. she's 5 years younger than me but light years cooler.

[click on ze pic to see why.]

my freshly squeezed internship book

2009-03-26T00:28:00.003-04:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More advertising

No CG. This was on the news.

2009-03-21T13:39:00.004-04:00

anger + chains = art?

2009-03-18T22:05:00.004-04:00

jeremias got arrested for being drunk. someone filmed that. then someone made music from the footage.

i am proud to be japanese.

2009-03-18T19:02:00.004-04:00

gareth kay from modernista! sent us this.

[click image to view the video.]

a friend sent me this today.

2009-03-18T18:05:00.002-04:00

sick.

he got that savoir faire

2009-03-07T14:39:00.004-05:00

if you've got a left speaker and a right speaker, prepare for something kinda wonderful.

http://rappmusic.ytmnd.com/

Blargh Daily Quote of the Day

2009-02-06T15:10:00.002-05:00

“My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I’m happy. I can’t figure it out. What am I doing right?”
-Charles M. Schulz

Coraline Dunks!!

2009-01-24T01:34:00.015-05:00

I just got a package in the mail today. It was a pair of Nike dunks made for the movie Coraline, designed by Gian Galang and Rob Heppler from WK12. I got the circus edition box that has a cat and mouse lace lock. And the spiffy tails(!!!) The cotton candy was fake. Believe me, I got caught up in the splendor and magic of it all and tried to eat it. I hear the props were actually handmade by the Laika puppet masters. Each cat face is slightly different. They were only sent out to a small handful of people...I feel pretty special. THANK YOU NIKE AND CORALINE! These babies are bangin. I shall be sporting these around town.
(PS...word on the street is to hang tight after the credits roll...you'll see why.)

[mysterious box arrived at my door]

[package designed by gian]

[front of post card]

[the little cat and mouse accessories are authentic from the movie and are detachable]

[beat out Kanye for the first glow in the dark dunk sole]

Watch the trailer:

blargh daily song of the day

2009-01-17T13:06:00.002-05:00

directed by one of my favorite directors, Mike Mills, and featuring another stellar director, Miranda July.

Blonde Redhead - Top Rankings

blargh daily video of the day

2009-01-12T14:56:00.001-05:00

Audio "unboxed" spot by BBH London & NYC

thoughts #2: while trapped in traffic with a shopping-fried head

2009-01-11T14:22:00.008-05:00

To say advertising exists only to sell is like saying life exists only to mate.

thoughts #1

2009-01-11T14:14:00.003-05:00

[ galatea of the spheres by salvador dali ]

When you're a creative in the ad industry, you're not just a creative in the ad industry. You're something else, a would-be something else. I'm a doctor/engineer. Alex Bogusky is a frustrated industrial designer. Think of it as your moon sign. It's crucial to assert (or if you haven't already, cultivate!) yourself as something else or else you're just an empty shell with nothing to bring to the table.

goosebumps and giggles

2009-01-11T13:13:00.005-05:00

I'm gonna hit you with 2 ads today by my favorite shops, cp+b and w+k.

nike "for warriors" by w+k directed by one of my favorite directors, tarsem singh, who also directed The Cell and The Fall.

bk "whopper freakout--ghetto version" [this is a parody of cp+b's campaign]

cheers.

A Hint of Handmade.

2009-01-06T13:09:00.017-05:00

First off, the Blargh Daily Ad of the Day:
An ad for VW by boutique ad agency, Escape Pod.

Escape Pod is also responsible for the new OfficeMax "work can be beautiful" campaign. The motion graphics used here seem to have become popular in the past year. The Saturn Rethink spots by Deutsch/LA. The Happy Jetting spots for JetBlue (directed by Johan Renck).

There is something real about these graphics, how they unfold, bloom, and tremble like living origami.

The CGI almost seems organic. It has a certain je ne sais quoi that I have been trying to articulate. Then one day as I was reading Fingerprint, a book about incorporating handmade elements into graphic design, I happened upon a possible explanation for the magic behind these campaigns.

Josh Chen of Chen Design Associates and contributor to the book wrote,
"even a hint of hand-created element can activate a surface, instill passion and energy into a medium, and reassure the recipient that human understanding and insight are the foundations for the message"

True.

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon and the Return of Cinema

2009-01-04T23:49:00.008-05:00

I finally saw Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), the memoir of the late French Elle editor, Jean Dominique Bauby, and his experience with locked-in syndrome. He wakes up in the hospital to find that he is completely paralyzed with the exception of his eyelids. His mind is still perfectly functioning but he is unable to communicate, trapped within a useless shell of a body. The cinematography is inventive, organic, and ethereal. If you're in the mood to see something beautiful or if you're in the mood to let a movie make you a little sad, I recommend it. But I must say, Julian Schnabel does an excellent job of taking a really depressing story and artfully crafting it into something very enjoyable and almost delicious to watch.

Trailer

DIY!
The director, Julian Schnabel uses 2 camera techniques which I find interesting: swing-and-tilt lens and a hand-crank camera.
You can learn how to make your own tilt lens here.

"Brief" by Marco Aslan. The theme song is from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It's nice to watch.

Use of tilt lens in this video by Redrock Tests.

Asics

2008-12-25T02:22:00.001-05:00

Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.

Love and Violence.

2008-11-21T22:34:00.009-05:00

The Daily Blargh Song of the Day goes to...

[Sebastien Tellier - L'amour et la violence (Boys Noize Remix)]

And I know this is untimely, but I just learned the full title of Fiona Apple's CD and it makes hunks 'o' sense to me right now. I might go so far as to say it is a truth in advertising.

"When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You'll Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You Know That You're Right."

sell your dog

2008-11-17T22:35:00.009-05:00

i'm going to start posting my assignments.

this week in fenske: "sell your dog. bring in a piece that sells your dog."

i was going to do a piece on my great bloodhound bubba who sniffed his way to Jimmy Hoffa, Shangri-La, El Dorado, The Fountain of Youth, etc. however, after going through craigslist and reading not only the ads people put up to sell their dogs("MY DOG NEEDS A GOOD HOME I CAN'T TAKE CARE OF IT BC OF [insert lame excuse]") but also some other stories ("YOU'RE NOT LOOKING FOR THEM, BUT I FOUND YOUR 2 DOGS.") about people who rescued dogs from shelters/by the side of the street and the stories by animal shelter workers who beg people not to leave their dogs there, i began to question whether i wanted to go about this assignment as i had planned. so here is my piece...

time, time, disappear, come again some other year!

2008-11-08T17:57:00.007-05:00

Can't wait until xmas? the summer? spring break?
Forget count-down widgets.
The best way to pass the time is to go to the public library and check out bestsellers on a 2 week loan. The weeks will whiz by as you scramble to make time to read the book before its due. Repeat a few times until your much awaited date. The time will simply fly.

sugarcube clock screensaver:

For Mac OS X
For Windows
For Mac OS 9

3 Bestseller books which have made 6 weeks seem like 6 days:
Downtown Owl, by Chuck Klosterman
The Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt

in need of a sunny day

2008-11-01T02:06:00.002-04:00

perpetual sunshine from videos11 on Vimeo.

some very un-blarghly things + the blargh song of the day

2008-10-07T22:16:00.006-04:00

Today I shall blargh modestly. I'm making it up to you all with an excellent gem in the blargh music department. So please enjoy.

[dutch designer marcel wanders: ]

[a very cool turntable by NAD:]

[cut copy - far away:]

some interesting things

2008-10-07T22:09:00.003-04:00

[dutch designer marcel wanders: named fastcompany's 2008 Master of Design]

[a very cool turntable by NAD]

[cut copy - far away]

FLUID, DYNAMIC.

2008-09-19T16:20:00.006-04:00

Now for a science lesson.

Protrude, Flow is a project by Sachiko Kodama and Minako Takeno first released in 2001. It involves manipulating a real, tangible liquid via a computer. (!!)
They describe their project as an

"interactive installation which expresses the dynamics of fluid motion of physical material, the dynamics of organic, wild shapes and movements of liquid by means of digital computer control."

The result is titillating.
See for yourself.

How do they do it? The patterns you see in the video are controlled more by the laws of physics than by the whims of the artists at hand. The phenomenon is called "ferro-fluid" which is a liquid of suspended magnetic particles coated in surfactant. They're used in your computer's hard disk!
Ferro-fluid can be purchased so you can DIY.

WIND...

2008-09-19T15:44:00.016-04:00

BLARGH DAILY PERSON OF THE DAY...

is Dutch engineer, Theo Jansen. He makes "kinetic sculptures" that use a simple mechanical force powered by the wind, sun, etc. to power a variety of complex movements. "I wanted to sculpt the air around us, and give it shape"

Check out this BMW spot that features his very own living creation, "animaris percipiere":

Also, in East Lancashire, England, Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu of Tonkin-Liu built a sculpture that captures wind in another interesting way. "Singing Ringing Tree" was built in 2006.

Last but not least, here is a spot done by The Vikings (Joakim Reveman and Bjoern Ruehmann) for Epuron.

Creating a new way to use something, I think that's innovation.

The Power of Visual Effects

2008-08-01T00:30:00.005-04:00

Visit the Clusta site. Clusta is a motion graphics studio. Check out the work they did for Publicis and Hal Riney. [click on the picture above to see the site]

You use your webcam to navigate through the site, using your hands to point to where you want to go. Total thinking-outside-of-the-box. Make sure you have a webcam, and that it's turned on.

And here are 2 music videos clusta did, the first, an entrancing video for Boards of Canada complete with pulsating diatoms and scintillating fireflies that suit this lullaby. All you need is quaaludes and you're bound to experience something life-changing.

Also, take a look at Amoeba Proteus studio's reel. They did some of the visuals effects for The Fountain, one of my favorite surrealist movies. But these visuals were strictly non-CG. They employed some of the microphotography we see in the clusta videos (the ink in the water) in the form of tiny chemical reactions -- to produce the look of the galaxy.

Innovation<--->Imitation

2008-07-31T13:07:00.015-04:00

What is Innovation?

THE INNOVATORS
+ Com-pa-ny, helsinki
[heartbreakingly-simple-yet-too-goofy-to-actually-use-problemsolving]

It's a beard wig.
There needs to be more of these made. I know a handful of asian guys who have divulged to me their woes of not being able to grow a proper beard. How are they supposed to stay warm in the winter? Company, a helsinki-based wacky apparel company run by designers Aamu Song and Johan Olin, steps up. Other Company innovations include the following:
"Tailor" which is an appendage you wear on your ass that functions as a stool or a leaning post. Chairless? No problem!
and "Homssu" which is something you can buy to quiet anyone you know who always complains of being cold. I guess it could also double as a halloween costume...anyway, as nerdy as they seem, these designers are problemsolvers, and that makes them worthy today.

+Fred, US
Fred has been extremely ubiquitous this past year, appearing in almost every design magazine I pick up. Here you can browse their catalog, so you can understand just why. But I've picked out my favorite of their creations.

[Pick Your Nose cups]

[Snap-A-Party do-it-yourself place setting]

THE IMITATORS:
Ok, so it's quite obvious that fashion/style/design repeats itself. Joseph Laver, fashion historian, came up with a timeline that delineates how a certain style will be regarded as time goes by:

Laver's Law
Indecent	10 years before its time
Shameless	5 years before its time
Daring	1 year before its time
Smart	present
Dowdy	1 year after its time
Hideous	10 years after its time
Ridiculous	20 years after its time
Amusing	30 years after its time
Quaint	50 years after its time
Charming	70 years after its time
Romantic	100 years after its time
Beautiful	150 years after its time

I think this could apply to all types of design, not limited to fashion. Typography too, even.

As I was browsing the book 1000 lights, which shows the evolution of lighting design from 1878 to the present, I was surprised to see designs we now consider to be innovative and very 21st century that are actually mimics of those made 50 years ago!

+The Origami Plastic Lantern:
Take a look at this lamp. I've seen this lamp EVERYWHERE these days, gracing juice bars, coffeehouses, forever21's, etc.Of course there are a whole slew of IKEA variations we're all familiar with:
Lanterns made of interwoven pailletes of polyurethane. Nothing new here. Each of these are exact replicas of lanterns designed in the 1950s and 60s. When I say exact, I mean NOTHING about them has changed. Let's take a look at the evolution of plastic origami-like lanterns, shall we?

1957: The PH Snowball or the PH Artichoke by Poul Henningsen.
1958: The Lantern Series by George Nelson, a collection of plastic interlocking origami-like lighting.
1967: Models No. 167 and 169 by Poul Christiansen
1972: IQ Hanging Light and Model No.172 Giant Sinus by Poul Christiansen, the most similar to what we see in every Urban Outfitters and Ikea today.

Go ahead, google away. You'll see that these lamps have very little to do with innovation and a whole lot to do with their 1950s counterparts.

+The Garland Light
These laser cut metal garland lamps have been all over the place, and not only at the MoMA. I've spotted these recreated by some rogue lighting designers playing pioneer in small towns like Richmond, VA. Lavishing in all the ooh's and ahh's at their creations while deep inside they know they are dirty dirty copy-cats.

[ here in richmond's quirk gallery, i captured some copycat lamps ]

The original was created by Tord Boontje in 2002.

+Capiz shell lamps
The originator? Not Ikea. Verner Panton. Here's the original:

What I'm trying to say is that I'm wondering what 'innovative' really means. What makes someone innovative? Is it the boldness to bring back something from the past? Is it the creation of something so different from anything created before? How different does it need to be? If innovative means new, does innovative mean good? Is it good to doggedly find a new solution to a new problem, just for the habit of seeking to be innovative? Or is this making things more difficult for us? Is the winner the person who recreates an old solution, modifying it a little (or not at all) to make it appeal to the times, the situation, the problem at hand...or is it the person that comes up with the most frighteningly novel invention that most people are afraid to employ? I don't know, but all I do know is that I'm getting a Homssu.

song of the day

2008-07-19T16:51:00.007-04:00

[ SymbolOne - Love Juice (Danger TV Remix) ]

Dioramas: The title sequences of Studio Deubal, Paris

2008-07-18T20:22:00.016-04:00

Movie title sequences are like dioramas (shoebox landscapes that children make in elementary school) that present the overall summary of a story in a little pretty window. I never remember them...well, unless they are particularly interesting, funny, or visually stunning. The title sequence of the movie Catch me if you can comes to mind, directed by K+D.

That brings me to Olivier Marquezy. He and Stephanie Lelong run creative motion graphics studio, Deubal, located in Paris.

The Submarine Channel has a great series called Pretty Cool People Interviews, featuring a variety of people on artistic missions of all kinds. Here they present us with Olivier Marquezy.
Enjoy.

[a diorama. this one by illustrator, Heiko Windisch.]

Art Director + The Super Creative Client, aka

2008-07-15T13:24:00.013-04:00

Alison Goldfrapp. Because she is just as much in control of her sound as she is her aesthetic. I think it's pretty cool when a client knows themselves well enough to be able to describe to the art director how they want to be projected. It makes it easier/harder for the art director. Easier, because it makes the parameters clear, but harder because it might be limiting...But Big Active does it just fine.

Big Active is a sort of a branding/design collective, and they art directed some stuff for Goldfrapp's most recent album, Seventh Tree.

This is what they said about her from this interview with Computer Arts magazine.

"Why is Big Active so music-oriented?
Mostly because we’re all interested in music. I certainly wouldn’t necessarily advise anyone to choose that route nowadays. We just happen to be known for it.

How do you work with an artist like Alison Goldfrapp, who has such a strong visual sense herself?
She always comes to a project with a very clear understanding of where she wants a project to get to, but not necessarily a clear idea of how she’s going to get there.

How well-formed are her ideas?
She’ll always be cutting things out from magazines: imagery she likes, moods she likes. A lot of it in her case is down to how she’s styled as well. The team’s wider than just us. We also work with her stylist Cathy Edwards – she’s fashion director on Dazed & Confused – to pull together the look, not only the way Alison’s styled but also the mood of the photography."

Music + Graphic Design are so intertwined, I think. It's kind of like copywriting + art direction, except the content that needs illustrating is stuff you listen to rather than words. And to know where you want to go with both is kind of like being a creative director. So Alison Goldfrapp = her own creative director. Go Alison.

my first animation

2008-07-15T01:47:00.009-04:00

just had to post this out of excitement.
it's a great song! AND...

[ ratatat - falcon jab ]

it's my first animated gif! more to come...

i like the packaging for some reason. it's like a mini calendar.

A bed of inspiration and a smack in the face.

2008-07-10T12:19:00.016-04:00

Daily Blargh song of the Day:

[ chromeo - needy girl ]

I was reading an article in Fast Company yesterday. I've just discovered this mag. It's like a pop cultural/political/environmental/interesting news/art magazine disguised as mag for business savvy types. Notice I said interesting news. That was intentional. There are some really great stories in there, all very inspirational. So go out and read it if you know what's good for you! And no more tramping around in my front lawn, you darn kids!

The issue was kind of old, from waaay back in october of 07. The article, Masters of Design, featuring Yves Behar, of Fuseproject. He's an designer with strong standpoints and cool viewpoints.
He spoke about how he made a presentation for Coca-Cola because he aimed to change things. The execs were wary at first, but after he asked them if they'd allow themselves today to let somebody have such a wide-ranging impact on their brand as Raymond Loewy (the father of industrial design responsible for the coke bottle's shape) did, they hired him. "There's pain in transformation, pain when you have to do things differently." But he's making himself the mechanism for transformation, and the results have been quite beautiful.

Another quote got me thinking about idea-driven campaigns. Sometimes I'll see an ad that has a brilliant idea going on, but the art direction is lagging behind, all sweaty and worn out, and it's honestly making that idea look terrible! You know how in middle school, you were kind of judged by who you hung out with, and it didn't matter if you hated computer games, if you hung out with the nerdy kids, you were regarded just the same? It's kind of like that. If there's a great idea there but you see it all intermingled with some sad art direction, the page is turning.

"Most execs hope skillful marketing will make up for design shortfalls...Marketing people are incented to come up with great ideas, engineers are incented to drive out costs. To resolve those conflicts, somebody at the top has to make the Solomonic calls. If you want to be design-driven, Who's driving?"

He then went on to talk about how we're hampering innovation by hampering independence.
"What I learned is that design in the Valley is consensus-driven and that isn't the best way for strong ideas to come out."

So if you really want to be an effective creator, you have to do 2 things:
1. make them want change
2. don't compromise your vision to make others happy

Have a good one.

The Computer is Fucking Brilliant Again.

2008-07-08T19:28:00.007-04:00

An ad by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners San Fransisco for the new HP Touch Smart PC.
HP's campaign is constantly knocking my socks off.

I remember seeing an ad for a mattress company that prided themselves on being #2. I was totally baffled at first, wondering why they didn't choose to simply say "we're the best," but then they went on to explain that being the #2 brand means that they have to work harder.

I think GSP is doing a great job differentiating HP from Apple. Their ads are evocative, passionate, and DARK--everything that the White, Shadowless World of Apple is not. What a nice vacation from seeing slews of Apple copycatters hoping to score by slapping an "i" in front of a product name, making it white, and calling it a day.

It takes alot of work, you can really see 'em trying in all their super elaborate ads. They ain't no Apple, but their underdoggedness is what's winning me over.

Take all in the influences in

2008-07-02T23:51:00.004-04:00

and make things.

That's what Andy Mueller says in this mini-documentary series called Western State provided by Coudal Partners:

[click on the logo. you already knew that]

[that's jeff in front of his work, Align]

Coudal Partners also has a video of Geoff McFetridge up on that page. Geoff is a graphic designer that makes really simplistic yet powerful pictograms.

Give them a watch.

'nuff said. Over and out!

Daily Person of the Day: Garth Davis

2008-06-30T00:25:00.005-04:00

The Daily Blargh person of the day is Garth Davis.

Garth is a film director who works at Exit films. You might remember the cops n robber's xbox 360 commercial from a few years ago. What I'm trying to say is that he directed that. It was awesome. Garth is good at making some ridiculously emotive tv spots. He seems to have a knack for making brands sparkle.

.

This Cadbury Schweppes tv spot he did under George Patterson Y&R illustrates my point. The song in the ad is by Cinematic Orchestra.

Here is an ad he directed for Herringbone. Here's what he has to say about it:
"With Herringbone, some people might've read the script and thought, "Oh, it's comedy." But for me, it's not. The fact that Henri has small hands is always going to be funny. So, there's no reason to play that up in any way, shape or form. I thought that the best way for the humor to come through is to not ignore it but to concentrate on the real story - his journey. If I could make someone feel something for him then you get a much richer experience watching it. I really think of the audience and I want them to go on a journey when they watch something. Emotion is so lacking in commercials, and it's what I strive for."

And that's why he's today's Blargh Daily Person of the Day.

What is The Daily Blargh?

2008-06-30T00:13:00.000-04:00

The Daily Blargh is not a daily blog.

The Daily Blargh publishes new entries whenever it wants.

There is no blogging going on here. It's information found that relates to the topic of this blargh that is pieced together and rehashed, with some opinions, but mainly facts, videos, and data.

The topic of the blargh is everything in the creative industries. I hate the word industry. <--That was an example of opinions that may pop up in the blargh. There will be postings about interesting people and things in the fields of design, film, music, culture, and creative advertising.

The Daily Blargh is also known as Lana Shahmoradian. That's how you found this blargh. You had to correctly spell "Shahmoradian." Good Jarb.