This is absolutely everywhere on the internet right now because it is absolutely awesome. The Nike Music Shoe video features Tokyo DJ duo Hifana playing different Nike shoes via bends, bounces, and slams. Easily one of the most creative branding videos I’ve seen in a long while. The last time I got this excited over a soft sell video like this was probably Only the Brave. Talk about inspiring too. After watching Music Shoe I want to run, paint, jam, fly and do just about everything creative I can possibly do.
After watching the Winter Olympics I found this History of Ski Aerial Acrobatics pretty amusing. The whole thing is basically just a bloopers reel of guys eating it off of jumps. Towards the end they start nailing the landings though and the super-8 style film is pure vintage goodness. Check the awesome lens flare at 3:24.
Everything you see in these stills and videos by Alex Roman is 100% computer generated. This is certainly the best CGI I’ve ever seen; I would normally say “virtually” indistinguishable from reality, but in this case the “virtually” doesn’t belong. The videos were created using 3dsmax, Vray, After Effects, and Premier. But what amazes me here isn’t just the execution, Roman crafts truly beautiful images with impeccable taste, something often missing from highly technical productions such as this. The man perfectly rendered a Mies van Der Rohe and an Eames, give him a medal! Maybe I can get some VR googles and map his work to the interior of my house and pretend to live in some modernist paradise.
I thought I had a bad workload trying to finish this new album, I can’t even imagine the man hours that went into just one minute of these videos. More videos at Roman’s Vimeo page and lot’s of stills and info at his portfolio site.
This is an old video but it’s amazing and I had to post it. I was blasting around the web looking at various inforgraphics and I came upon the fantastic indexed again. The video above, Le Grand Content, was inspired by the site, and is a similarly excellent collection of random and insightful anecdotes (this time in motion) about nothing in particular. Any time you have a graph with time on one axis and “the adventures you’ve taken” on the other, I am going to be intrigued. The voice over by Andre Tschinder is my favorite part — the delivery is oddly perfect (…”but speaking of forever, it’s obvious that this takes some time”.)
Le Grand Content examines the omnipresent Powerpoint-culture in search for its philosophical potential. Intersections and diagrams are assembled to form a grand ‘association-chain-massacre’. which challenges itself to answer all questions of the universe and some more. Of course, it totally fails this assignment, but in its failure it still manages to produce some magical nuance and shades between the great topics death, cable tv, emotions and hamsters. by Clemens Kogler
Mid-Century Modernist posted a couple interviews with Dieter Rams. One is by Gestalten and the other by The Design Museum. It’s great to see this pioneer of product design is still getting the recognition he deserves.
By the way, can you believe this guy is still around? He’s the true definition of a living legend. That’s one of the coolest things about graphic design, our heroes don’t overdose on heroin at 27. They seem to live long, healthy lives, maintaining productivity well into later life. Must be all the sitting, or maybe all the designer reading glasses.
Grizzly Bear’s last album, Veckatimest, has been on constant rotation over here for a while now but I had somehow missed this Patrick Daughters directed video for “Two Weeks”. It’s been haunting me ever since, I can’t stop watching it. At first it’s seems a little strange, but it’s just so beautifully shot and somehow very fitting for the vibe of this song. I love effects like these (the big eyes, etc) where you can’t really tell what’s going on for a while, it’s so clean and subtle. Warp has a full HD version posted up on Youtube here that really highlights the attention to detail. I love seeing such simple compositions that are so moving. This is all essentially one shot and it’s got me glued to the screen. The rest of Daughters’ videography reads like a who’s who of indie music, with work for bands like The Shins, Feist, Snow Patrol, and Interpol among many others.
Easily the coolest advertisement for a fragrance I have ever seen. Tom and Tim Muller put this together as part of the campaign for Diesel’s new fragrance Only the Brave. There are many other videos up on the site — nothing comes close to this. (Though Si Scott’s could be cool in a few weeks.) This video, in addition to being flat out gorgeous, really captures the essence of the phrase only the brave. The Apollo 15 Mission connection is a perfect match:
As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown at Hadley, I sort of realize there is a fundamental truth to our nature. Man must explore.
UPDATE: Tom Muller has written a post detailing this project on his blog. Great to hear a bit more about this fascinating project.
As Scott mentioned, the ISO50 studio recently added the hulking Epson 9900 to its arsenal. We purchased the printer through Kirk Economos of Meridian Cyber Solutions, and he was on hand to help us set things up and make sure everything was working properly. I filmed the set up procedure and a trimmed down version is displayed above. Many thanks to Kirk for helping out! If you are in the market for a large format machine or other print supplies, we would highly recommend the guys over at Meridian.
In case it doesn’t come across on screen, this is one serious machine. I’m used to working with the much smaller R2400 and there is really no comparison. It’s been pretty exciting to have the ability to output such massive prints with the 9900. We had a few color profile and paper issues initially, but everything is working smoothly now. Look for a detailed post about color management and calibration next week.
