iancul

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.

Last year I had the pleasure of playing with a “brush pen”. The beauty of its lines blew me away. Writing and drawing with it was such a pleasure! Drawing type, logos, sketches, everything looked different from a normal pen, free, vibrant, ever-changing in thickness, ranging from hairline-thin to broad, thick brush strokes. And everything without the hassle of dipping it in ink every three or four strokes. Just cap it back and put it in your pocket. I had to have such a wonderful tool.

Several weeks of searching on the web only brought me frustration. Sure you could find it easily. But finding someone that would ship it to Romania was a different story. After a few months, a colleague told me she was going to Tokyo. You can easily guess my plea :) She brought me some brush pens—thank you Delia—and I was finally able to enjoy drawing with them every day (another friend brought back from Paris a big Corto Maltese poster, one could not ask for a better subject to copy and practice the brush pen). But the pleasure would’ve soon ended, since you can’t refill them (there are other refillable brush pens, a little more expensive, but the problem is the ink, you have to use special ink since other types would dry and make the brush tip useless).

Fortunately, last weekend I showed the brush pen to my sensei and he told me its real name: fude pen (”foo-day” pen). Searching again on the web, this time with the proper name, gave me the much expected results: someone that would ship fude pens to Romania. So here you are, JList ships almost everywhere in the world a lot of Japanese merchandise, fude pens included. Be sure to check out the wide variety of fude pens. I’d recommend the bold line one, the others I still have to test (the shipment’s on the way, can’t wait).

So, if you’re an illustrator, any kind of designer or artist, or just an asian-caligraphy enthusiast, the fude pen is a must have—no other drawing tool will ever compare (ok, fineliners excepted) :)

(foto taken from wikimedia commons)

(view larger on flickr)

Superb concert last night in Bucharest. It thrilled me to see that not only did they know in which country they were (this may sound odd, but many artist coming here for the first time mistook us for Budapest—a big mistake, considering the ancient national issues between romaniand and hungarians), but most of their impressive type&image screen kept rolling strong headlines in romanian, among some being facts about our political problems. It really showed how serious Del Naja is about his campaigns and how much it means to him to fight for an idea through his music and shows.

And the music… well, it was enchanting, hypnotising, hair raising. Can’t wait to get the new album :)

It’s so wonderful to be reminded from time to time that beauty can be so breathtaking, no matter where you find it.

(via garancedore)

Markwald&Neusitzer are a design office based in Frankfurt, Germany. And one of the first reasons I eventually became an identity designer. Their Stadt Wuppertal identity—their hometown, I guess—made me choose a similar topic for my diploma project and hope of working one day on such complex and challenging projects.

I remember that I was enchanted by the clearness of their design, of their layouts. Little did I know at that time of Muller-Brockmann, whose influence is so obvious now :) Take a look, it’s surely worth it:

And the culprits, at their diploma exhibition:

(via September Industry & AisleOne)

Got a tag from Pentru ochi—there’s a first :D. And it’s a nice one, to name seven songs that keep humming in my head these days. Here goes:

Oi Va Voi - Refugee
DeVothchka - How It Ends
Adriano Celentano - I Want To Know (part two)
Daft Punk - Aerodynamic
Archive - Fool
Faithless - To All New Arrivals
Placebo - Song To Say Goodbye

Enjoy.

(via CR—made by Shaz Madani)

Just as always, when it comes to doing something for personal use, I am clearly my own worst client (as Mrs. Marian Bantjes very well describes). I’ve been planning on a new layout, new logo and new domain for some time now, but procrastinating seems to be a designer’s deep-rooted habit. I managed to buy the new domain just after the RoBlogFest competition, but the logo was still a sketch on paper while the blog’s layout was a more-than-vague idea in my head.

The credit for changing the domain name and showing the new logo today goes only to Globehosting, my hosting providers, who promptly responded to my last night’s questions and moved the whole website to the new domain (I only wanted the information, but they really did a good thing going further, this kick in the butt sure helped :D).

In short, the new name is iancul (I will explain it when everything’s finished), the old bookmarks will still work as ibarbar.ro is mine and redirects to the new domain, but please update your links with the new name—thank you. I hope I’ll finish the new layout soon (sooner than before, hopefully :D). For now, you can admire the new logo. Comments, critics, ideas are welcome, as always.

Later edit:
- feeds seem to be working well now. If you have any other problems please let me know. Thanks.
- I’ve managed to make a reversed-colour favicon as well. Neat :D

I remember that when I was a small kid, Kinder Surprise eggs had inside wonderful toys. In pieces, for me to mix’n'fix. Cars, planes, boats, dinosaurs, clowns, wacky flying machines, you name it. Putting them together was such a joy, especially if you didn’t look on the tiny guide.

These days we have Ikea. Every time I buy something from them I can’t wait to get home and spread all the parts on the floor, trying to figure out what goes where, first without looking at the guide :)

(the lamp in this photo didn’t take much effort to install, but the toy.. let’s just say that making models during design school certainly has its beauty, in spite of all the shortcomings - view larger on flickr)

Brad Bird, talking about Pixar’s modus operandi through nine valuable lessons, touches a very-often-forgotten aspect in most companies: morale.

Brad Bird: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. [what’s true for a movie is true for a startup!] If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.

Read the whole interview here.
(via Daring Fireball via Kotke)