iancul

Great article about the glittering, Vegas-rivaling, Tokyo pachinko halls on Ping Mag, made by Tokyo Odyssey (check their website for more projects).

Seeing these amazing lighting solutions proved me yet again that light is one of the most impressive means of building architectural volumes, but also one of the most underestimated. Strange how we, humans, as civilization depend so much on our visual perception and still are toying around like dumb kids with one of physics strongest energies. It also pains me every time I’m involved in interior design projects, on one degree or another, to see how of little importance the lighting is to the architects or the client (can’t blame the latter, though, especially in Romania).

One of the rare things that impressed me during college was the lighting lecture kept by a great designer (even if he was a former doctor and also a plastic arts graduate), Mr. Savel Cheptea, one of the founders of the Design College in Cluj. He taught us the importance of good lighting, the effects it has on our eyes and especially on our working/reading stamina—by extending, the huge importance lighting has on our mood (ever wonder why you’re grumpier on rainy days?—it’s the lack of strong, warm sun light and the omnipresence of cold, shadowless light, not the rain itself). I bought that week a 200 watt light bulb for our student room, it boosted our drawing efficiency by at least two times, being able to draw till 4 or 5 in the morning without our eyes feeling the fatigue. After two weeks we got used to it so well that we could sleep with the light on, as others were working.

Most of my 3D renderings were light studies, I could fine tune radiosity and light scattering for days, but got bored in modelling in just three hours tops. The biggest pain while working as an interior designer was that the company made just 3DSMax scanline rendering for the clients, with no real light simulation whatsoever. Sure real light took hours of rendering compared to the 20-30 minute basic renders, and of course clients were visually uneducated (and sadly, still are in Romania). But lighting is one of the most important parts in interior design. Build anything you like, using the most amazing materials, put a 50 watt bulb inside and you’ve got nothing. Use just plasterboards and LED lighting and you can suggest any mood you’d like, from burning hot to freezing cold. And even if the client is uneducated, presenting a light study rather than a washed out top view image will help you sell the project a lot easier. Engineers can easily make top views, an architect should sell concepts, moods, impressions (Monet anyone?).

Sadly, romanian architecture is in the dark. The majority of public-interest buildings are either washed out with cheap lighting (not cheap actually, cost-inefficient to be more precise) or totally “stealth”, like haunted houses on a creepy road.

Concluding, here are some examples of superb lighting. You can easily guess the succes they have as a retail marketing and branding tool.

The “well-dug-in-the-ground-reaching-for-help” Bruce

Illustrator Martijn Rijven wrote several weeks ago about his involvment in redrawing Akzo Nobel’s “Bruce” during the rebranding project started by Saffron and finished by Pentagram. It was a beautifuly-written article about ups and lows in the design process, about the final version proposed by Saffron and the final-final version approved by Akzo under Pentragram’s watch (probably a “design-by-comitee” solution) and its short-comings. A rare-to-read insight in the development of large rebranding projects.

Unfortunately, Akzo (or Pentagram, who knows) felt that the article was not the kind of PR their new logo needed so they brought in the big-mean-law-guns and forced Mr. Rijven to censor the article completely. It’s a real shame. I can understand commercial interests, hell, we are working with them in mind on daily basis, but freedom of speech and design ethics should not be trampled under feet. In the end, we’re graphic designers, it’s not like we’re saving lives every day, we just make people’s lives a bit easier and more pleasant—or, if you prefer the empty side of the glass, we just help sell things people don’t really need.

But I guess nothing else matters when big money is involved.
It’s the cold, chilling truth.

Funny take on the Warner Bros logo:

Get your tshirt here.

New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual (1970) (photo set on Flickr - Swiss design proves to be unbeatable once again - wonder why the weird spacing though) contains some clear rules:

No littering - No spitting - No smoking.

I sure wish we had such plates every 100m in Romania.
Especially against spitting.

(via Subtraction)

Great animations, very insightful, by Lev Yilmaz. Visit his site to see his works, beautiful in their simplicity, honesty and last but not least, drawing detail.

Watch this one called Branding

This one, however, called How to break up, really takes the cake :))

Thanks Gina ;)

GK Graphics have been doing design for almost 40 years now. Packaging, identities, wayfinding, you name it, they’ve done it.

(via PingMag)

Another british design studio, The Partners (yes, naming doesn’t seem to be a british trait, even Pentagram got its name because Alan Fletcher was reading some ocult books). Nevertheless, their work

Great portrayal of Steve Jobs’ by Robert X. Cringely.
(via Subtraction)

I was suprised by the iPhone’s price drop, but even more surprised by the open letter to all iPhone customers. The tone was polite, honest and direct, but I had the feeling it left no doubt about who’s in charge. It was obvious long time ago that Apple designs with arrogance (Clay Shirky beautifully writes on this topic in this “A Brief Message” post). But Mr Cringely manages to strip down Mr Jobs entirely, exposing his marketing genius, leaving no doubt about the recent price drop and it’s purpose. You almost get the feeling, as you read in awe, that Steve Jobs is the new Palpatine, soon to take over the entire universe in his white&minimalistic iDeath Star :))

Joke aside, this useful insight which proves Apple can and does do anything it wants with it’s customers only underlines the true power of design (no, not the dark side :P). The whole Apple strategy is dead simple, make the best looking and coolest designed stuff people need (or we think they’d need, since we, designers, know better, right ?) and the cash starts flooding in. Why ?
Because we still have little real, good, efficient design around us. We think we do, but we don’t actually. This is why a well thought product manages to sweep the market so easily: because it has (almost) no real competition.

The only problem is when the unchallenged leader begins to slow down, overconfident with its size and power. Or when it becomes so engulfed by it’s arrogance that it begins to lose contact with the end of the chain, the buyer. All great empires have fallen, as history unkindly has proven (well, capitalism seems to be the most succesful so far, but I don’t want to imagine what would replace it, should it fall). But for now, Steve Jobs still wants to show everybody he’s won. So the show will still go on, with, maybe, the best to come. And in the end, it’s all good for us, users.

(via Subtraction)

Please vote here against this shameful identity and please give the reasons, maybe they’ll understand that design is also a profession, not a hobby.

Grab your torches and pitchforks, romanian public administration has a new identity. Actually, I really hope it is still a proposal (they’re not very specific on the site), or even better, an April’s fool. First, “enjoy” the logo (isn’t it about time we left the so-called revolution behind?):

I won’t start complaining about fonts, symbols, colours, readability and so on. Even if professionals will spot the problems right away, sometimes it’s also a question of taste (even if there are unbreakable rules in design, after all). But seeing this will surely give you a clear idea of how knowledgeable the designer is (if he/she is a designer at all):

Since when is 50% black the same with C62 M53 Y53 K24? But wait, there’s more: why, oh why, do you have to put gradients over the symbol (on this biz card, some other stationery and the wep page layout)?

Here’s what different counties’ logos supposedly should look like (spot the “i”’s, if you can):

Visit the site (romanian) if you want to see(endure) more.

I am optimistic by nature, even though many friends keep saying that we should just leave this damned - as it many times seems to be - country. This is actually quite a trend among romanian advertisers, wanting to leave the country for good, in search of the graphic-design-el-dorado or something alike. Wonder why they seldom do :P

But, seeing this kind of work so often, especially for big companies and institutions (if only they could just copy from other great designs, like the spanish government did), and, on the other side, hearing about great countries that worship design, like UK, Nederlands, Denmark, Norway and so on… Man, do I feel my feet burning.

(got the word via Kit)

Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but whatever man builds, that all of man’s industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent working over draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?

It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship’s keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of the human breast or shoulder, there must be experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.

by Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Taken from Patagonia website, be sure to check their fascinating brand history, pretty long, but worth it.

(via Sacul cu ganduri)