This is one of those things where I am in awe of the technical achievement but the whole idea behind it makes me want to drive off a cliff in a ’78 Blazer playing Sgt. Pepper’s on 8-track. It’s easy to say John Lennon would be rolling over in his grave if he saw this, but then again time does funny things to people. At any rate, The Beatles have always been idols of mine so this is still a treat, even if it is some cynical alternate reality where they’ve all been recast (two posthumously at that) in their prime as hucksters for some half-assed video game cavorting around with Hollywood-extra hipster stereotypes and generally making my whole childhood feel nauseous.
Anyways, it’s worth a watch as long as you hit stop right around the 22 second mark at which point is devolves into the zombie-mation 3D stylings that are the reason Rock Band makes me cringe. Although it could be worse, far worse.
I can’t say I’m in love with Swisscom’s new logo by itself, but I will say that the overall rebrand feels right as a whole. The type treatment is solid and the logo — although downright ugly standing still — lends itself well to motion and reinterpretation on packaging. The rebrand was headed up by Moving Brands (apparently with help from Dalton Maag).
I’m not trying to diminish what Moving Brands has done — they know way more than I’ll ever know about brands and how people perceive them, and hell, for all I know this is the best logo ever made and it’s singlehandedly going to increase Swisscom’s annual revenue by 1600% — but seeing a room full of designers standing around an idea board like that and thinking about the hours and weeks and months and millions of dollars that go into a project like this… Well, I sometimes wonder why these big corporations don’t just surf Behance for like and hour or something, find the kid with the best logos, throw him like $50K (which will completely blow his mind and make him your slave basically) and give him like 6 months. I bet he comes up with something just about as good and you saved like $20 million or whatever the hell they pay huge agencies these days. Ok, that’s probably all a bit of a stretch, but it does cross my mind, and if I become CEO of a european telecom giant you better believe I’m at least going to look into the idea. Actually, Moving Brands should have just done the same thing and pocketed the difference, all those guys would be doing burnouts in Ferraris wearing whale skin jackets now instead of standing around a chalkboard.
All that aside, what’s amazing to me is that these companies had the presence of mind and resources to film the process. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for the poor designers over at Moving Brands having some guy with a camera always looking over their shoulder, sounds like a nightmare to me. Of course, a lot of this could have been compiled after the fact, but it’s still an interesting look inside the process of high level design shops. I’ve always wanted to do something similar for one of my posters — capture it from start to finish — but I’m convinced that the second I started the camera I would make the worst thing ever and as hard I tried I would never actually catch anything good happening. Maybe that would be more fun, the time-lapse frustrated designer movie. Video Link
A little peek inside the wonderful world of Randolph Chabot, aka Deastro by James P. Morse. I had the chance to play with Deastro in Detroit and they really put on an incredible show, catch them if you have the chance.
I just got home from Portland after playing the Emrg-n-See festival on Sunday night. Thanks to everyone who made it out, I had a great time playing and the energy was amazing. I had the honor of sharing the stage with two artists I have a lot of respect for: Flying Lotus and Daedelus. Luckily I brought my little Canon SD780 Elf and in between setting up my gear backstage, I was able to catch a little bit of Daedelus’ set on video (Sorry they’re so short, time was really tight).
The SD780 really is amazing for it’s size; it cranks out HD and takes some great still shots too. If course, it’s not the greatest in low light situations so take the above examples with a grain of salt. I will post some daylight stuff this week that show it’s real capabilities.
Canon 5D MKII capturing the NYC 4th show by Mike Kobal (24-70mm at 2.8 at ISO 2000). Once again, the MKII delivers amazing video quality. Still waiting for Nikon’s answer before I take the plunge though. There are some more 5D MKII video examples over at Kobal’s Blog.
By the way, did anybody else happen to catch the San Francisco fireworks “show”? This puts it to shame and then some. I’ve seen better displays at Dolores Park (before they started parking that mobile command station RV out there and ruining it for everyone).
If you live in NYC and walk with your eyes open, you’ve seen Katsu’s skull grinning at you- from fire escapes, bus stops, urinals and now rooftops. In this chunnel exclusive, Red Bucket Filmmakers Nick Poe and Alex Kalman team up with the elusive Katsu to take Charles and Ray Eames’ 1977 classic “Powers of 10” from outer space to the street.
Now Katsu, we can’t tell you much about, you know how it is. Red Bucket, we can say, have been featured in the NYTimes Magazine looking fly in vests and bathing suits and have been to the Cannes Film Festival twice with feature films. Working out of a downtown sweatshop, the crew turns it out, always fresh, never fancy, always burning the midnight oil.
– Chunnal TV
