WICKED! Nokia N96 + Bruce Lee...

A very cool bit of video editing here... in this commercial for the Nokia N96 - Bruce Lee Limited Edition (I wouldn't mind having this phone). Watch the embedded video above or via YouTube, here - enjoy!

Via swissmiss - cheers!

An Evening at The EX...

Went to the opening night of the 2009 Red River Exhibition (aka 'The EX')... this solo ticket booth operator perhaps is a sign of the recession (i.e. less 'disposable' income for families to spend)? Hmm...


If I was in the mood for rides, I wouldn't have had to wait very long as line-ups were non-existent.



All the favorites were still around on the midway, with a few new(er) additions here and there (or perhaps just refurbished classics?)...


...the 'crowds' must have all cleared out near the end of the evening (capped off by fireworks) ;D


Highlights were, awesome Carnival typography, vivid lights + motion = interesting photo opps, plus the usual sights you only see at Carnivals. ;) The one item to draw the most attention from the crowds this year would be my corn-on-the-cob purchase... drawing inquisitive looks from attendees and staff (even with some queries as to where I bought it from)!


One can't go to the EX and not get mini-donuts... ;P We ended up buying out the last batch of mini-donuts, much to the dismay of the line-up behind us (oh well, they can always go to the Forks).


My first encounter with the new Pepsi logo on a vending machine... it just so happened to be out of order. Which was quite funny considering it was placed beside a vending machine with the old Pepsi logo, which was still working... things that make you go hmm... - would "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" apply in this situation? ;P

Anyways, please do check out the rest of my photos from the evening, in a Flickr set on my Flickr account, here, or view it as a slideshow - 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!

Recommended Viewing | GDC Manitoba's June 2009 e-Newsletter...

The latest edition of the GDC Manitoba e-Newsletter has been released! Jeope Wolfe, MGDC (Chapter Communications Chair) was responsible for putting it together. Jeope says:

It's summertime (or is it?) and the living is easy. School's out – and with that comes a fresh crop of design students hitting the egg-frying sidewalks. Work is humming along like power lines on a hot, muggy day. And for all of us at the hustle/bustle of GDC Manitoba headquarters, the forecast calls for a 100 per cent chance of Blue Sky… Curious? Grab a cold one from the cooler and read on…

Go and check it out for yourself, here - enjoy!


On a side note, the latest GDC Manitoba promo item has arrived! Also designed by Jeope, these black tote-bags are pretty slick... thanks again for all your hard work Jeope! Cheers!

Visit Jeope's blog Jeopopolis.
Learn more about GDC Manitoba.

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!

Euro-English...

The following news release (j/k) arrived in my inbox this morning...

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The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.

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Thanks to Doug Fedrau (The Orange Kid) for sending this to me - cheers!

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!

WICKED! Type War...

Too cool. This typographic animation/ad was created by Optix Digital (Hamburg), for Inlingua Business English schools. Watch the video embedded above, on YouTube or via Motionographer, here - enjoy!

Thanks again to Mr. Simpson for the link - cheers!

COOL! Micrography: Text Art and Typography...

Image: Obama word portrait by Jeff Clark.

Wikipedia says "Micrography, also called microcalligraphy, is a Jewish art form developed in the 9th century, with parallels in Christianity and Islam, utilizing minute Hebrew letters to form representational, geometric and abstract designs. Colored micrography is especially distinctive because these rare artworks are customarily rendered in black and white.”

View some beautiful examples of this art form, here - enjoy!

Thanks to Mr. Mark Simpson for the link - cheers!

COOL! Graphic Design - The Forgotten Web Standard (Video)...

Graphic Design: The Forgotten Web Standard on Vimeo.

The following video was played as part of Mike Kus' talk at FOWD London 2009. It's sped up footage of Mike designing his slides for his talk. Mike thought that it would be interesting to show it because he thought it would interesting to see the design process he went through whilst making them. It also features a footage of slides being designed that never made it to the final slide deck... it's quite neat IMO.

You can view Mike's presentation at FOWD London 2009 , here - enjoy! Thanks to Davin Greenwell for posting the link to the GDC Listserve - cheers!

COOL! Book Cover Archive...

A very cool and handy website to share, www.bookcoverarchive.com - is a website dedicated to the appreciation and categorization of excellence in book cover design (all covers are the copyright of their respective publishers).

Browse covers via designer, book title, genre, etc., - go and check it out for yourself at http://www.bookcoverarchive.com/ - enjoy!

Thanks to Ian MacCausland and Rob Peters for the link! Cheers!

Recommended Viewing | 99DS.net

From the website:

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99DS.net is a collaborative exhibition featuring artwork digitally illustrated on the Nintendo DS handheld game console by local Wellingtonian artists Greg Broadmore and Christian Pearce. A shared, public exhibition showcasing the first two completed collections is scheduled for the 1st of February 2009. Each collection exhibits a series of full-colour digital sketch artwork - as prints, in books and on screen. Animated reels revealing the illustrative process behind each piece will be on looped playback throughout the exhibition. Housed in custom-made containers in Wellington's Civic Square, 99DS aims to show a fun and frivolous way art can be created on the digital media available to us today, free of symbolism, metaphor and manure...

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All the artwork was created using Colors! (a digital sketching/painting program) on the Nintendo DS! If you're familiar with the DS, these pieces are amazing to say the least... go and check 'em out for yourself!


99 Dodgy Slips by Greg Broadmore...


99 Deadly Sleds by Christian Pearce...

Very cool stuff indeed! If you're curious to see what some other artists have been creating using Colors!, go and check out the gallery over at the Colors! website. Thanks to my good friend, local designer/illustrator, and fellow Guardian Dojo Karate-ka, James Gillespie (KALAMAFRAZ) for the heads-up on this one! Cheers!

COOL! 1934 BMW R7...

Curious member of BMW's classic division were pleasantly surprised in 2005, when they opened a crate in the archives storage to find this gorgeous bike, 75% assembled.

Now fully-restored to showroom/working condition, this bike is a truly an object of beauty. Read the original story on Cool Hunter, here - cheers!

2009 RRC Creative Arts Open House...

On 7 May 2009 the Red River College Creative Arts Department held their annual open house show. Student portfolios and sample works were on display at the Princess Street campus as local industry professionals mingled.


Eric Crone, MGDC unveiled the award winning poster design for the inaugural Bruce Gillespie Collection Scholarship - designed by Melissa Archer, GDC Manitoba's *NEW* Activities Chair. Melissa will be taking over my role as the Manitoba Chapter's Activities Chair, I'm very excited to see what she's got planned. ;)


Rich Roat from House Industries was this year's guest speaker. You can view more pictures from the Open House and Rich's presentation on my Flickr, here - enjoy!

Congratulations again to the graduating class of 2009! Cheers!

Recommended Viewing | How to Destroy Civilization with Nanotechnology...

How to Destroy Civilization with Nanotechnology.

Slowly-but-surely, I'm starting to make a dent in my '2B_Blogged' folder residing on my desktop. ;)

This little gem of an animation was sent to me a while back by my friend, Paul Kletke... I thought it was quite well done. Watch the embedded video above or check it out on http://www.5min.com/ - enjoy!

Thanks Paul for sending me the link! Cheers!

Recommended Viewing | Modern Samurai...

You have to watch this amazing Japanese video showing Modern Samurai - Isao Machii (I think my jaw was on the floor for the entire duration of the video). Amazing would be an understatement.

Check out the embedded video above or watch it on Youtube, here - enjoy! Thanks to my brother Ashley for sending me the link - cheers!

12welve...

Congratulations to the University of Manitoba's 2009 Graphic Design Thesis program graduates. This year's graduating class show was dubbed 12welve (in light of the fact that there were only 12 students in the thesis program), and was held at the Martha Street Studio.


The exhibition space was packed with people... in some areas, attendees were literally shoulder-to-shoulder.


This set of posters was one of the first things that caught my eye when I stepped in through the doorway... my first reaction was "WTF? When did the GDC have a presentation on Design and Ethics? How come I've never heard about this..." only to realize shortly thereafter that it was a poster assignment... LOL. Good job! It totally fooled me. ;P


There was quite a few pieces on display that I thought were very well done... I particularly enjoyed this poster (designed by Tess Vincent) about Morse code. You can see a few more pictures from the event on my Flickr, here - enjoy!

Congratulations again to the 2009 graduates! Cheers!