Creative Review: The Making of The Rakes’ “Klang”

Ratings

2 of 5 stars
What’s this?
Work Associates created these beautiful covers for recent releases from British pop band “The Rakes.”

Covers for “1989” and “Reason” from The Rakes

The studio “based their imagery partly on Bauhaus principles and on colour theorist Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack’s 1920s experiments with various apparatus that could generate moving projections of coloured light. His processes were later explained in his booklet, Farben Licht-Spiele.”

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Mike Davidson: Examining Typekit

Ratings

3 of 5 stars
What’s this?

A typically thoughtful look at the promise in Jeff Veen’s forthcoming font-embedding technology which will allow Web publishers to license and embed typefaces on HTML pages. Davidson, a co-creator of the type replacement method sIFR, says, “It’s important to examine the following characteristics, in order of importance: compatibility, functionality, legality, ease of use, and hackiness,” and he proceeds to do just that, very effectively. The comments on this post are interesting too and worth a read (at least the first dozen or so were).

While we’re idly speculating in advance of having actual hands on experience with Typekit, I may as well weigh in with some speculation of my own: if in fact the Typekit business model allows relatively cheap licensing costs, that is of course ideal for everyone — independent Web designers would have access to a fully rich array of typographic options, and type foundries would both stave off illegal uses and open up new markets for their products. Unfortunately the type business has never really been a consumer business, and it’s quite possible that licensing won’t be particularly affordable for individuals — and yet Typekit could still succeed. There are enough big companies willing to pay a few hundred or a even a few thousand dollars to render their messages in their own typographic voice to make this work. However, fingers crossed that everyone involved sees the upside in affordability.

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Microsoft Silverlight vs Google Wave: Why Karma Matters

Ratings

2 of 5 stars
What’s this?

A developer at Zoho ponders why Microsoft’s products are so poorly received, while even Google’s concepts and pre-announcements are so enthusiastically received. “Microsoft just has so much bad karma in this industry that I cannot imagine a company like us trusting them on much of anything. Take Silverlight: Microsoft pledged that they will always support Silverlight on Mac and Linux, and on browsers other than IE. Do you really, really believe their promise?”

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“Up” Is Really Down a Little

UpI saw Disney Pixar’s “Up” last night at New York’s famously outsized Ziegfeld Theater, where the audience was shockingly sparse. Only half of the seats in the house were filled, if that, which I found to be amazing and, for a Saturday evening show at one of the city’s premier cinema houses, somewhat appalling too. To be sure, Pixar films do well, and “Up” is well on its way to a healthy profit. But adjusted for ticket price inflation, the movie’s opening weekend gross makes it only the fifth-best performing of all of Pixar’s theatrical releases.

Continue Reading

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BLDGBLOG: Interview with Jim Rossignol

Ratings

5 of 5 stars
What’s this?

In this lengthy and somewhat incredible conversation, Geoff Manaugh talks with gaming critic and author of the personal narrative and philosophical reflection “This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities” about points of commonality and departure between architecture and video games. Along the way, they explore fascinating territory, including ideas about how creativity in both fields — and by extension, design in general — is influenced by competition or the lack thereof, and the disconnect between the buildings architects design and the architectural environments the same architects might enjoy in video game worlds. Actually, there is so much good stuff in this interview that it would take me all day to excerpt and comment on everything I found enlightening or revealing. Highly recommended, and worth reading through to the end.

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Dollar ReDe$ign Project

Ratings

2 of 5 stars
What’s this?

A blog from creative strategy consultant Richard Smith focusing on ideas for redesigning U.S. currency, with an open policy for accepting idea submissions. The proposed designs from Michael Tyznik and Michelle Haft are quite pretty. However, it seems as if most submitting designers are neglecting the very real usability problem of the lack of size distinction among the various denominations — a one-dollar bill is the same size as a one-hundred dollar bill, which means they’re practically indistinguishable from one another to many visually impaired people.

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