March 12th, 2010
Until now I had never heard of Wilt Chamberlain the NBA basketball player or this enormous house. After reading a few articles about the house, the most interesting thing aside from the architecture and interior was that it has a groovy feel to it.
“Built in 1971, the five-bedroom, 7,158-square-foot contemporary-style house at 15216 Antelo Place in Bel-Air was built by Chamberlain, who lived there until his death in 1999. TV writers George Meyer and Maria Semple purchased the house from Chamberlain’s estate in 2002 for nearly $3 million, and have owned it ever since. The house has attracted much attention over the years–both with this listing and in 2000-2002, when Chamberlain’s estate was trying to unload it, first for $7.45 million and later reducing its asking price to $4.38 million. The house’s unconventional features include a gold-lined hot tub, a retractable mirrored ceiling above the master bed, a swimming pool that flows into the living room, walls of glass, 40-foot ceilings, a wrap-around pool, and a balcony suspended over the living room. Other features include five and a half baths and teak finishes.
The house sits on a 2.58-acre parcel that has ocean and city views.”
Source Mid Century Architecture
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March 8th, 2010
Sometimes I find it increasingly difficult to get away from working on stuff and take a break. This past weekend I managed to get away and go north from Seattle, out onto the Olympic Peninsula–all around fun trip. Excited to get out and start shooting more photos.
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March 2nd, 2010
The 1967 world fair in Montreal, Canada was held together by one unifying object–the Expo 67 logo. Quite possibly it is one of the most cleanly executed and memorable World Fair logo’s to date. The combination of the timeless icon combined with beautifully kerned type (set in the Optima Roman typeface), really unified the core ideas behind Expo 67.
The theme of this World Fair was ‘Man and his World’. Every pavilion in one way or another, represents this theme of man to the world around him. The designer responsible for this logo was Julien Hébert, a Canadian industrial designer. At the soul of this logo is Hébert’s conceptual use of an ancient sign representing man–vertical line with arms outstretched to either side–close in proximity to represent friendship. The symbol representing man is repeated in a circle, extending the conceptual representation of unity of mankind around the world.
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February 23rd, 2010
It’s a wonderful feeling to look back at older art & design. This particular group of images, taken from a pool on Flickr called Mid-Century Modern Art & Design, are just a few of many that I really enjoyed.
Don’t let the great image of the Sands Motel fool you. Maybe at one point in its life it was an oasis but now, its far from it. I included this image because of my personal recollection of the motel and also because I wasn’t aware that the Sands Motels existed anywhere but in downtown Boise, Idaho. In the image above it looks gorgeous and like it was the hot spot. That certainly wasn’t the case in Boise back in 2002.
The Sands Motel as I know it, was a trashy, run-down motel where drug deals and prostitutes went down. The sheets of the beds had burn holes, the knob of the sink came off to the touch and fell down the sink (whoops), and lastly the TV. My brother and I were little and of course wanted to watch some TV (more than likely to get our minds off the fact that this motel was sketchy) so our dad hardwired the TV back into working order because someone had cut the wires off the back of it for some unknown reason. On top of that I believe that when our dad went into the lobby to get a room, the guy was sleeping in his chair with his arms falling back to each side and his head tilted over the back of the chair, looking like he was dead. If this wasn’t an indication that we shouldn’t stay here, then I don’t know what was.
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February 21st, 2010
Alex Varanese is a stunning graphic designer based out of San Francisco. His work has a very unique and retro feel to it, using experimental type to really make each piece sing. Initially the detail is what I was drawn to, but after reading about Alex on various sites, I realized that the majority of his work is true 3D Illustrations. It’s extremely hard to tell because each piece has been completed so extensively. I could only imagine that each one of these pieces was substantially time consuming.
I would love to take the time to learn how to work with a real 3D program such as Maya or 3ds Max. It seems like there is so much that could be done design-wise. If you have any other great 3d design links, feel free to share them.
Hit the jump to see larger images.
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February 19th, 2010
These images are of a 1960’s magazine called Venture. It’s a shame there really isn’t that much information about the magazine.
Via the Retro America Flickr pool
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February 16th, 2010
This project, brand and identity development, was for long time friend and photographer Ian Matteson. Ian is an action and commercial based photographer out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Along with Ian’s action and commercial work, he shoots a lot of film/fine art photographs. As the project progressed, I realized just how great it would be to incorporate these other areas into core components of his brand. We both have put in endless hours working on this project and really are excited to have this portion of it completed.
Objectives & Goals
Our first main objective was to develop an identity for Ian that really complimented his style of photography also keeping his long and short-term goals in mind, while at the same time, enabling him to stand out among others in the photography industry. After talking about these goals we came to recognize that simplicity was key in this case. We needed people to remember his name through his work and needed to be unique in the way that we were doing it. A brand that was cohesive would in itself set Ian apart from his competition.
Logo Development
Before diving into headfirst into the design, Ian and I sat down (mostly via iChat) and researched current and past photographer logo trends. Based upon our research, we saw a pattern. It showed that generally the more successful photographers opt to utilize their name as their logo. In some cases, Ian’s competition also did this, but completely lacked the visual stability throughout their brand and the uniqueness of the logotype.
The few sketches above show alleys that were explored. Although my initial icon sketches didn’t make the cut, they still provided a point in which I could look at how an icon could assist or take away from the main logo. This was the point where we really questioned tradition and steered away from using an icon. There would be no case where Ian would need to use one and going back to our original goal: We want people to remember his name–not an icon.
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February 11th, 2010
When large typography and monochrome color combine, I fall in love. This is without a doubt, one of my favorite package designs this year. The product, Ms men by Mesoesthetic, was designed by Espluga + Associados a Barcelona based design group. If anyone from Mesoesthetic just happens to be tuning in I would love to get my hands on some of this product.
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February 10th, 2010
If you need on the fly icons to serve in your wire-frames or maybe even icons for your design then Helveticons are your savior. These are are beautifully designed icons based on the Helvetica Bold typeface. This set includes 245 icons in a slew of different formats to suit your need. I’d definitely recommend using the preview icons on the website as inspiration to create your own or purchasing if you can stomach the $279 price tag.
As a side note I just have to say that the Helveticon’s website is nicely laid out. The typography and ‘Preview’ section is what pulls me in. As you click to preview the icons, the page slides up as a reveal for more content. The motion is very pleasant and leaves your mouse with an ‘x’ to click, close and show the main page. I haven’t seen a site done this well in a longtime. Not to mention one with such a beautiful grid.
Read Kyle Meyer’s thoughts on the website’s design.
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February 9th, 2010
Nearly every week for the last year and a half I’ve been viewing websites on The FWA for inspiration and then saving to my bookmarks. In these screen shots I’m loving the navigation systems combined with fullscreen imagery or video. In one of my current projects (to be launched very soon), I’m working with navigational elements in a similar way to make the most sense of the interaction.
You can check out the sites below–all are beautifully designed sites in flash:
• http://www.resn.co.nz/
• http://www.fl-2.com/
• http://www.themetaproject.com/
• http://www.martinanderle.de/
• http://www.sorenrose.com/ Note: Not awarded an FWA, but shown for relevance
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