Ten Images for Ithaca
This is cool! What a great example of using art for a civic cause! Every year, Ithaca, the island in Greece, hosts a global poster design competition called “Ten Images for Ithaca,” with a specific theme, as a way of emphasizing the island’s focus on culture and the arts and bringing creative people together on the island. This year’s theme was “labels.”
[Images for Ithaca site here, including past themes and images]
[Eye Mag blog]
Travel Guides for Design-Lovers and Connoisseurs of All Sorts
Now this is the kind of guide book that could really get you excited about a trip. Published by the Little Bookroom, these guidebooks have fun, specialized topics and hands-down the best covers of any guidebooks I’ve ever seen.
Maybe not practical to actually haul with you, since each city has multiple books dedicated to various topics, rather than comprehensive guides, but wouldn’t you love to leaf through these every night in bed leading up to a trip to pick all the places you wanted to go?
And then they’d forever remain on your coffee table or bookshelves, collectible reminders of your trips.
Listening To >> Florence and the Machine
A seriously bizarre but awesome video for a great song. Nominated for several VMAs, including Video of the Year, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, etc.
I nominate it for best use of sparkly gold mini-dress and matching heels with fringy ankle strap. I am obsessed with that outfit. #LustListed.
E. Tautz Branding
Moving Brands, a branding company based in London, was asked by E. Tautz, a luxury menswear brand, which started out as a military-outfitter, to create a brand identity for them.
Above is the logo they came up with, pairing the clean, modern Gill typeface with the traditional-looking fox and whip icon, all set on the broad field of utilitarian-feeling yellow. Don’t you think the yellow is a stroke of genius? The yellow is so unusual and distinctive and the size of the field compared to the actual logo makes a serious visual impact.
Below, their creative process and the resulting collateral.
August 6, 2010
Curated by:
Eliza Coleman
Section:
Graphic Fix
Labels:
branding, Graphic Design, typography
Curated by:
Eliza Coleman
Section:
Graphic Fix
Labels:
branding, Graphic Design, typography
True Statement >> Save Khaki
I can’t resist the awesome styling for the Save Khaki SS’10 lookbook by Unabashedly Prep. I hope the West Coast boys will catch on soon to the American trad-with-a-twist look being promoted by the likes of Save Khaki, Billy Reid, A Continuous Lean, Brooklyn Circus, The Sartorialist, Michael Bastian, Sid Mashburn, etc etc etc.
Please someone open a great men’s store in LA or SF and get this thing started… Sid, want to open a West Coast branch and literally “save khaki”? We need it! We’re drowning in a sea of graphic tees over here.
Click through for the rest of the looks…
Keeping Tabs >> Jason Hackenwerth
With his imaginative, large-scale, sea-creaturey balloon art, Jason Hackenwerth is one to keep tabs on.
Doesn’t this seem kind of like an ironic take on Jeff Koons, whose work was an ironic take on balloon art? Now Hackenwerth actually just makes huge balloon art? I’m lost in a maze of irony, but I think it’s like the same as √xˆ2=x.
I like how the context affects this one…
Listening To >> M. Ward
M. Ward “Chinese Translation” from DJBunnyEars on Vimeo.
I’d never seen any videos for M. Ward’s music until I came across this on Leo Basica’s blog, and I seriously love this little gem of a video. The song is wonderful, and the animation for the video is quite charming. You know how after watching some music videos, you know that the video will forever after play in your mind when you hear the song, because they just went together so well? This is one of them.
After watching it, you really can’t imagine the video for this song being any other way than exactly this– it’s pretty remarkable how well the tone of the song and the simple, folksy visuals go together. I’ve watched it about four times now, and I actually think the animation gets more charming every time.
[Leo's web design company's website here]
Kate Spade’s Vintage Book Clutches
Sometimes I come across things that just make my nerdy-designy heart race. Like these Kate Spade clutches, printed with their own re-imagined vintage book cover designs on silk twill. Would I actually carry one of these around? I’m not sure, it could be a little kitschy in real life. Do I love the concept? YES.
Love the back cover for Great Expectations…
Available here.
August 4, 2010
Curated by:
Eliza Coleman
Section:
Style Files
Labels:
book covers, fashion, Graphic Design, The Spades
Curated by:
Eliza Coleman
Section:
Style Files
Labels:
book covers, fashion, Graphic Design, The Spades
NetFlix This >> The Fall
Possibly my second favorite movie (after Amelie), this movie is so incredibly rich, both technically and emotionally. Roger Ebert called it “one of the most extraordinary films I’ve ever seen.”
Directed by Tarsem Singh and “presented by” Spike Jonze, the film was shot in 24 countries over 4 years. Tarsem, who has made his career as a sought-after commercial directer, used his own money to produce it. In addition, when was asked to shoot somewhere on-location for a commercial, he leveraged his desirability by asking that added to his contract would be an allowance of extra time on-site and all the resources of the commercial shoot to work on The Fall while there.
The result is a film filled with stunning visuals, due to both the mind-blowing locations (they are all real!!) and the art direction. But the cinematography is not all the movie has to offer; it is also an example of wonderful storytelling, of the sort where one character tells the story with another imagining it, a la The Princess Bride (remember the grandfather telling the grandson the story in bed at night?), and Tarsem perfectly evokes the feeling of what it was like as a child to drift into the vivid imaginary land of a story while being read to.
Also, the little girl who is hearing the story is downright adorable, which is not surprising considering Tarsem did a worldwide search to find the perfect girl to play her (they found her in Romania), and her relationship with Roy (Lee Pace), who is telling the story, is incredibly realistic and poignant.
(I have no idea where this incredible place is, but it’s real! And they shot there! See 1:48 in the trailer.)
Do yourself a favor and check out this movie — on as large a screen as you can find, for full appreciation of the visuals — and remember what it was like to get lost in an imaginary land.
