Idiocracy and Design

So I netflixed (which is now a verb btw) this movie over the weekend and thought it was hilarious. It was "Dumb and Dumber" type of funny, so it almost turned me off, then as I watched more I thought wait a second, there is something really important here.

I will quickly sum it up as a Woody Allen "Sleeper" for the generation nexters. Luke Wilson's character who was an average slacker his whole life is put to sleep in a military experiment, but doesn't get woken up until 2530 or some ridiculous year.

He is in a dystopia with a society that is completely dumbed down. I don't want to spoil the humor so you have to watch it to see how Mike Judge portrays the dumbness of people in the future. TV, Brand names, and corporations have taken over, everybody speaks in slang and people have names like Frito and Mountain Dew.

So what does this all have to do with design? Well... there was this one scene when Luke Wilson is at a clinic and needs assistance. The nurse at the place looks and assists him by using a series of icons instead of reading instructions or speaking to him. So here is the question of the day and how this relates back to design:

IF DESIGN IS SUPPOSED TO MAKE THINGS EASIER AND MORE EFFICIENT, DOES IT ALSO MAKE US DUMBER?

We streamline messages, stories, interfaces, and spaces for ease of use, understanding, and efficiency right? But in this movie all these advances led to a homogenized dumb society. Personal example: I bought a course reader for a sociology class and it was mostly dumbed down cartoons of sociological theories described in single sentence bulleted content. This was a 400 level class...

Ok, so all you artsy/design intellectuals out there are thinking, WTF - its a Mike Judge movie, not a Julian Schnabel film, but its food for thought.... what do you think?

A few Ads...

To catch up on the blogging exercise I have several ads here for all of you to take a look at. Obviously selected because I thought they were effective:

POM Cheat Death.
This is a print version of a bus stop ad I keep passing by. Its clever and personifies the product as the "antioxident superhero". The bottle itself looks like a figure and the ad exaggerates this promise of health and preservation of life.
But wait there is more, upon further research, they have created a campaign from this... of course.
There are 18 total, I picked a few of my favorite ones.
Quick read, humorous, clean type, & great photoshop work.

MORE:










If you are curious and want to see all 18 of them follow the linky below:
http://www.pomwonderful.com/adgallery_juice.html

my second after effects movie

ok.
working with 3d movement + motion blurs.
still all vector.

I am going to now work on a type animation with the typeface I designed last quarter. maybe more raster images as well.

I think I know enough now to do that.

check back soon.

My First After Effects movie

As part of an independent study I have decided to finally address my desire to learn some time based design. I understand it, I view it, I love it, yet I don't know a single thing about it. Sure, it seems the hot design profession of the minute and perhaps will be oversaturated in a few years with a bunch of motion designers without motion jobs - remember web designers almost a decade ago, but it has become a necessity of a contemporary designer. I may not be a guru on it like some of the students I work with now... as you can see with the Ford Focus projects from a previous post, but if I understand it and the process of it, then I can art direct it. And hopefully that will be enough to get me by, for now...

And who knows, maybe I really fall in love with it. Plus it could help in my thesis exhibition, which for now is undecided, but some moving image is almost a guarantee as part of the execution.

So without further delay, here is 30 mins working with Prof. Magdy Rizk on a quick tutorial. I know what you are thinking, but this is only the beginning. I already have an idea for my first assignment - simple type in motion.

Ford Focus Challenge

Ford and Daily and Associates approached four schools to develop Ford Focus Commercials in a competition this past semester. If you all don't know, I am adjunct faculty at CSUN and one of the Directors of our student operated Viscom Center - a creative agency that CSUN Art and Design students work for as part class/part internship/part experimental projects outside of their regular work load.

I wanted to share with all of you a series of our final commercials that I helped "oversee". I use the term loosely because I was involved in the concept phase and after that we let the students take charge and go with it. I threw in a bit of creative direction when needed, but there was very little I had to do except say "yes" or "no". And even when I said "no" they sometimes didn't listen.

I am very proud to be involved in this project and am very happy of what we (they) did. And whether we win or lose, it doesn't really matter. I think our commercials are excellent.

So congrats to all who participated as the group of "kids" who worked on these were a pleasure to be around and I wish them the best of luck.

Here is a link to the Ford Focus YouTube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/FordFilmChallenge

Here are our submissions:

personal annual report

Here is a link to his 2006 report.

If you like information graphics, I thought I could share with you this site from a designer who creates his own personal annual report. Very interesting read as well as effective dynamic design. Informs and entertains.

Music Coaster

Someone pointed this one out to me. Thought is was great enough to share with all of you.

I love music and motion. And for those of you who read music, even more fun to look at.
Just like life, motion is about is all about timing.




It came from this site:
http://www.diretodoforno.com.br/zko-roller-coaster/

More interesting type

Personal Type Projects found in (as Jimmy would say) the "interwebs".
Found from this guys site:

http://www.robertsamuelhanson.com/pages/work.html

hello from Germany

TRAJAN IS EPIC

For the next time you scroll to Trajan on your font list...
From this guys website:
http://www.zefrank.com/zesblog/archives/2007/12/on_trajan.html#more

Initial thoughts on typeface design

So my initial ideas for this project deal with things I have been reading and researching about lately. I would like to correlate this with a concept for a typeface.

I was reading an old article in Wired magazine on human genome mapping and I loved some of the imagery used in the article. I have the magazine in print if you want to check it out, but here is the online link:
http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/15-12/ff_genomics

So my first thought was to design display type that looks like DNA, then i googled to see if this has already been done or somewhat conceptualized and found some of the images above and the following links:

http://www.fonts.com/FindFonts/detail.htm?pid=402094

love this one:
http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000212


Most of those are too stylized and decorative, I was thinking a little cleaner, less organic.

So that's idea one.

Idea 2:
Another random thought was some typeface inspired by the seasons. So I would need to develop a set of 4. For example putting shapes of leaves in the counters and creating really decorative sets. more sketches/research and ideas to come.

Check out this studio's work with illustrated type. Kind of takes the fuel away from my fire:
http://www.thequietrevolution.co.uk/typography.htm

testing new comments

this a test of a blogger