COOL! My Instagram Snowflakes on CNET/Crave...

Big fat snowflakes in the city today!, originally uploaded by Adrian J.K. Shum, CGD.

On 8 December 2011, Apple released their App Store Rewind 2011 and declared Instagram as the iPhone app of the year. Following that, the Crave blog on CNET put out a call to all Instagram users to submit their favourite Instagram pictures, with the editors top picks to be published to an online gallery.

Well, I'm very pleased to say that my Instagram photo of snowflakes from 4 December 2011 was selected! Check it out amongst the other selected submissions on CNET/Crave blog.

Cheers!

COOL! MOSSTIKA Urban Greenery...

A very cool 'living portrait' hanging on a green space wall in Brooklyn, NY. Created by Edina Tokodi and József Vályi-Tóth.


Check the details on their website - http://www.mosstika.com/ - enjoy! Via Robert L. Peters' News+ (via Visual Culture) - cheers!

COOL! Rorschach Inkblots...

A recent article over on the Globe and Mail, brought to my attention the existence of Rorschach's original inkblot images on Wikipedia. These inkblots of the Rorschach test were printed in Rorschach's Rorschach Test - Psychodiagnostic Plates (Hogrefe, 1927, ISBN: 3-456-82605-2). They've been in the public domain in Hermann Rorschach's native Switzerland, since at least 1992 (70 years after his death), according to Swiss copyright law. They're also in the public domain under United States copyright law (based on when they were first created and published - before 1923).


The images were scanned and posted to Wikipedia along with the most frequent responses for either the whole image or the most prominent detail (according to Samuel Beck). This, as the article in the Globe and Mail details, has prompted some interesting response (like numerous websites/blogs now hosting the images + common responses) and protest... read the article over at the Globe and Mail - here.


What do you think? Was the poster of the images 'in the wrong' or should the protesters just deal with it? ;)

In any case, I think the inkblots are cool, and recommend that you check them out if you've never seen them before, visit the posting on Wikipedia, or check them out on my Flickr (Rorschach Inkblots set) - enjoy!

WICKED! Post-It-Note Animation...

You have to see this crazy animation to believe it... do you think they really stuck all those 'sticky-notes' up by hand or is this fancy CGI? Any thoughts? Watch the embedded video above or via Today's Big Thing - enjoy!

Happy 25th Birthday Tetris!

This Saturday, Tetris the world famous falling brick/puzzle game turns 25! Excerpt from CNET news:

...created by Russian programmer Alexey Pajitnov in June 1984, Alexy had an immense love for puzzles, and felt compelled to create a game that allowed players to arrange distinctive puzzle pieces along the bottom of a field or "matrix." Pajitnov chose the name Tetris by combining the words "tetromino" and "tennis." The game was first made available on the IBM computer.

It quickly enjoyed popularity and was ported to a variety of other platforms. In 1987, it became a major hit in the United States. But it wasn't until Nintendo released its version of Tetris for the Game Boy in 1989 that Tetris reached critical mass. According to The Tetris Co., the Game Boy version of Tetris sold more than 35 million copies.

I have fond memories of playing Tetris on my original Game Boy (back in the day)... video games and technology has come a long way in 25 years. In celebration of this historic occasion, I offer you Human Tetris, watch the video embedded above or on YouTube, here - enjoy!

COOL! Compfight...

Compfight is a really neat, Flickr image search tool. Intended for finding images on Flickr for comps, inspiration or research, Compfight is not affiliated with Flickr but makes good use of the Flickr API.

There are a number of different settings you can use to filter your search results, try Compfight out for yourself and see what you think, check it out at www.compfight.com - always double check the image license before use (CC or otherwise) and respect the rights of the content creators... enjoy!

Top Ten Type Crimes...

Ilene Strizver, founder of The Type Studio, is a typographic consultant, designer and writer specializing in all aspects of typographic communication has written an in-depth article for Monotype Imaging in regard to the Top 10 Type Crimes, excerpt from the article:

Are you a type criminal? Don’t be afraid to confess; the type police won’t come knocking at your door in the middle of the night. Even the most seasoned designers can commit an occasional type crime, by accident or inattention. If good typography is important to you, knowing and recognizing the “ten most wanted” type crimes will help make your projects stay on the right side of the law...

I highly recommend you read the in-depth article for yourself, here - perhaps you've been committing type crime(s) without evening knowing it! ;)

Cheers!

Happy Birthday Mr. Peters!

Happy 55th Birthday Rob! Wishing you all the best, on this day and the rest! May all your birthday wishes come true! Peace, love, and happiness always... cheers!

Image: ASCII portrait of Rob prepared as part of my e-card birthday greetings.

COOL! Font Game...

A little over a year ago I blogged about The Rather Difficult Font Game... well since then, the game has been updated with some additional fonts for you to challenge, as well its now being hosted on I Love Typography. Give the game a try for yourself and see how well you do, here - I still can't seem to manage to get them all, my best is still 33/34. Perhaps, I'll give it another shot later. ;)

Thanks for the link Beth!

Antique Road Trip...

This past Saturday, I attempted to go see the Marilyn Monroe: Life as a Legend exhibition at the WAG with good friends, James, Doug and Raelene. Unfortunately for us, we were a bit late in arriving, and opted to visit the Forks Market instead.

For those of you who are familiar with Winnipeg and the Forks, you can see in the picture above, the river walk is completely invisible, covered by a thick (and rising) layer of ice. Flood worries are definitely running high as the ice 'jams and dams.'


We ended up exploring the Antique Mall located on the lower level of the Johnston Terminal. It's quite an interesting place to say the least...


I've always enjoyed classic pop bottles... for nostalgic reasons perhaps? I wonder what Snow White pop actually was? I'm guessing cream soda? I wonder if it was actually white like Calpis or Calpico (a Japanese beverage).


James offered $10 to anyone who would drink this (after signing a waiver of liability that is)... ;)


Doug aka The Orange Kid, posing with his Elvis shades amongst the Elvis antiques(?)...


One of the more interesting finds was this creepy, Colonel Sanders statue/bank (enhanced creepiness via Photoshop). It was immediately dubbed the 'Why so serious?' Colonel (ala Dark Knight - Joker).

View the rest of the pics from my antique road trip on my Flickr, here - enjoy! Cheers!

Recommended Viewing | The American Package Museum...

If you're a fan of nostalgia or packaging, I highly recommend that you take the time to visit The American Package Museum... where curator, Ian House has taken his personal collection of early 20th century packages and created an online gallery/archive to share with everyone.


There are some really neat old packages in this gallery, it's interesting to recognize some familiar brands and see how they've evolved... check it out at http://www.packagemuseum.com/ - cheers!

R.I.P. Shigeo Fukuda | 1923-2009

It's with great sadness that I learned today through Rob that Shigeo Fukuda (an internationally recognized Graphic Designer, Design Sensei, artist, sculptor, and master illusionist) has passed on. Long have I been an admirer of Fukuda-san's work, I love his poster work.



The international design community mourns, as one of its brightest stars (or a comet if you prefer) has fallen. There's an article in the Icograda eNews regarding his passing, here. You can view some examples from his prolific body of work, here and here - enjoy.

Rest in peace Fukuda-san. You will be missed.

Recommended Viewing | The Grid System...

I highly recommend you check out The Grid System, the ultimate online resource for grid systems. Excerpt from the website:

Made popular by the International Typographic Style movement and pioneered by legends like Josef Müller-Brockmann and Wim Crouwel, the grid is the foundation of any solid design. The Grid System is an ever-growing resource where graphic designers can learn about grid systems, the golden ratio and baseline grids. Created by Antonio Carusone, graphic designer and author of the design and typography blog AisleOne.

Some very cool and highly informative stuff (IMO) on this website... check it out for yourself at http://www.thegridsystem.org/ - cheers!

COOL! Optical Illusions...

Out of complete randomness while surfing the internet, I came across this cool site filled with neat optical illusions... view at your own risk of seizure/nausea/headache.


I think most of the optical illusions are self explanatory... check it out for yourself (if you're interested), here - enjoy!


Looking for a challenge? Count the black dots in the image above... ;)

*Note: The original website link stopped working, so I've replaced it with another one...

Cursive...

This past weekend I was in Brandon, Manitoba (with my brother) to attend the Battle in Brandon, a kickboxing/muay thai event (held at the Wheat City Golf Course/Curling Rink) where Guardian Dojo members, Sean Devlin and Rox Lui competed. Anyhow, while having dinner with my brother, we couldn't help but notice the diversity of the handwriting on the wall (signatures on charity donation cards)... it was interesting to see the variety, which brings us to the topic of today's post. When was the last time that you wrote/used cursive handwriting?

Now, I handwrite on a daily basis but, it's definitely not in the traditional cursive style (as seen in the above image)... I don't even recall the last time I wrote in true cursive. I wonder how many people today, can write the cursive alphabet without reference (do they even teach this in school anymore?). We tried while waiting for our dinner and both of us failed miserably... sad.

Give it a whirl! Don't look at the image above! See how well you recall your cursive - cheers!

Image via Wikipedia

Recommended | What? Clay Art & Curios...

Evelin Richter is a talented Winnipeg Beach based ceramist, I've blogged about her previously on MUHSASHUM, here. Anyhow, Ev's website/blog is now live (design by Circle and powered by Wordpress)! You can learn more about Ev, as well as see some examples of her work, visit her website/blog at http://www.whatclayart.com - enjoy!

Recommended Viewing | The Extreme Post-It Note Experiment...

From the same two guys that brought you the Mentos and Coke experiments, comes this video.

In collaboration with ABC's Samurai Girl, the pair have come-up with the Extreme Sticky-Note Experiment... you can watch the embedded video above or here, via Today's Big Thing - enjoy!

Via Today's Big Thing and EepyBird.com - cheers!

WICKED! Design Ignites Change Poster by Marian Bantjes...

My apologies for the lack of posts this past week... I've been rather busy (I realize that's not the best excuse - so sue me). ;P Anyhow, I received this awesome (understatement), Design Ignites Change poster in the mail last week and have only now, gotten around to opening the poster tube and snapping a couple pictures to share with you all. The poster was designed by the exceptionally talented, Canadian designer, illustrator and typographer, Marian Bantjes (who's work I've long been a fan of - see here).


This laser cut poster was designed for the AED (the Academy for Educational Development), as part of their ongoing AED Design Social Change Projects. The proceeds from this poster went towards supporting AED's Speak for the Child project, which provides assistance to children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Kenya (a very worthy cause in my opinion). You can read more about the laser-cut poster on Marian's website, here - and on AED's Design Social Change site, here.

This poster will go quite nicely with the other Marian Bantjes poster/work I have in my collection. Both these posters (as far as I know) are SOLD OUT! But, if my 'Spidey-sense' is correct, you can expect to see more amazing/inspirational work from Marian soon!



Images (from top to bottom): the Design Ignites Change poster, the poster back-lit on the Circle light table, a cropping of a portion of the other Marian Bantjes poster in my collection (sadly, pictures could never do this intricate, vector poster justice, it's run in a metallic blue ink on a heavy weight paper and the detail is mind blowing), a close-up detail from the above poster.

Go Marian Go! Cheers!

Recommended Reading | Let the (Logo) Games Begin... via Speak Up

There's a great article/experiment over on Speak Up, where Doug Bartow hires four 'inexpensive' online logo design companies, giving them the same visual identity problem, and critiques the results. It's a must read IMO. Check it out over on Speak Up, here:

http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/005099.html

Thanks to Jean-Sebastien Dussault for sharing this on the GDC Listserve - cheers!

COOL! 'Word Clouds' via Wordle.net

From the Wordle website:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

...great fun IMO. You can either enter in text yourself or submit a blog/RSS feed for the Java applet to draw from. Visit http://wordle.net/ to learn more, or to make your own "word cloud" - enjoy!

"Word cloud" image created using the Wordle applet and text from Circle's website. You can view the image larger on my Flickr, here - cheers!