Posts in category: Design

Design 07/31/2008

Hey, Nice Clock!

I can’t find any info about this vintage clock except that someone bought it from a man in Beijing. Great design though.

Design 07/24/2008

This is Nice Package Design

.

Design 07/22/2008

Good 50x70 competition

Wow. There were some really nice posters designed for the Good 50×70 ’08.

If you don’t know about the competition:

THE PROJECT THAT HELPS SOCIAL COMMUNICATION.

If you ask most people, they’ll say that advertising, and the communications industry as a whole, sells people things they don’t need and can’t afford. It might be occasionally entertaining, but by and large it’s fundamentally wrong and unnecessary.

As we work in it, we’d prefer to focus on the positive side. The communications industry is also the best in the world at grabbing people’s attention and getting them to act on what we say.

The aim of Good 50×70 is to use these skills to highlight more important things than beer and trainers. It’s a competition to raise awareness amongst the creative community of the power we have to be a force for good.

There are 7 briefs from 7 charities on 7 issues that affect thousands of people around the world. All you have to do is pick a topic that inspires you and submit a poster on that theme. 210 posters (30 from each brief) will be selected by our jury of leading designers and exhibited around the world and published in a catalogue,but more importantly they’ll be presented to the charities for their use as a potential campaign.

Even if you create communication tools every day, this time your poster might really have a positive impact on thousands of lives.

It’s time for our industry to give us something back.

Design 07/18/2008

Board Graphics

So it looks like we’re starting to move towards skateboard type graphics on surfboards, and I’m curious what you guys think.

These are the new Slater/Merricks designed by Emil Kozak, Thomas Campbell designed a graphic for Dane Reynolds, and we’ve already seen what Super Surfboards is doing with their graphics.

I’m having mixed feelings about it. While I think they’re looking pretty cool, and the artwork is great, I definitely feel like it makes the boards look “cheap”. You totally lose the hand-crafted feeling, and it seems to turn the board itself into something that’s not so special.

If you went to a party and 63 other guys had on the same exact dress as you, it makes your dress seem a little less special. So why would it be any different to paddle out at Rincon and have 63 (of the 400 or so) other people are riding the same exact looking board as you? Does that make your $750 board feel less special to you? It seems like it would.

Here’s what it says on the Channel Islands site about the process:

“Recently you may have noticed many of our team riders have been experimenting with graphic art on their surfboards. This is a collaborative project with HP (Hewlett Packard) in which we directly print an art piece (that has been designed for them by one of their favorite artists) on the fiberglass. It is then layed on the board and the glassing process continues like normal. This eliminates the need for big laminates which soak up resin or heavy paints which ad weight. Both Dane Reynolds and Kelly Slater have been working with artists and have come up with some really cool stuff. Cost is $60 per side / allow 8 weeks for production.”

I mean hopefully where this is going is that you will be able to create your own custom graphics and give them an Illustrator file to use. Then your board will feel completely custom, which would be AWESOME! But if it’s just like the skate/snow industry, and all the graphics are mass-produced, I’m not so sure.

So what do you guys think? Do you like it? Would you spend the extra $120? Do you think it kills the “organic” (artistically, not environmentally) feel of a board? Does that matter at all, or do you just care about ripping?

Let me know.

Click-thru for a few more pics

Read on…

Design 07/08/2008

Insight - Dopamine

Well, the new Insight ad campaign “Dopamine” is out, and again, it’s AWESOME! These guys are so on point.

Click-thru to see all of the images, or to check out bigger versions, and watch the films, click right here

Read on…

Design 07/07/2008

Monster Children

While I was in Australia I was finally able to pick up a copy of Monster Children Magazine, and it’s really nice. Both the design and content of the magazine are a refreshing change from the standard “action sports” mag format. It’s a little more like Lowdown. Unfortunately, a subscription here in the U.S. will run you about $100 a year for 4 issues (ouch), so you might just want to check out their blog instead if you’re poor, but it’s not nearly as cool as the magazine itself.

Design 06/24/2008

The Book of Surfing

From the creators of the September Project, Stranger magazine and cult freesports mag Adrenalin comes 288 pages of illustrated loveliness on surf culture. Representing the work of some of the greatest lensmen, pensmen and artists ever to train their sensibilities on the beautifully meaningless act of riding a wave, The Book of Surfing is a tempestuous, full color celebration of the surfing life.

The roll call of contributors include: Thomas Campbell, LeRoy Grannis, Albe Falzon, Ron Church, Art Brewer, Jeff Divine and Rick Griffin – and there’s everything from an ode to the feral surfer, an anatomy of surf wagons, sketches of the influence of surf music and the surf T-shirt to riffs on Dora, Curren and Tudor. Hipping the legions of the newly stoked to the breadth and depths of surf culture as well as keeping the old salts smiling, the whole package lands as the 21st century’s coolest guide to surf-culture, like, ever.

I had a chance to check out this book the other day while I was in London the other day shopping at Harrods (‘cause that’s how I roll), and it’s actually really nice. It’s hard for me to get excited about surf books these days (we’ve seen a lot of bad ones flood the market in the past few years), but this one is really well put together and interesting. Job well done by Michael Fordham and his crew.

Where to Buy

Amazon $39.20 / bookofsurfing.com / Random House $40

Design 05/31/2008

Carry 2 Coffees in 1 Hand

We’ve all had the pleasure of going for a coffee, when your friend says “oh, will you grab me a triple tall non-fat soy no sugar latte please?”.

Well this saves you from having to leave the coffee shop by opening the door with your back, and it looks much more stable and easy to carry than the current flat 4 compartment tray we currently get when we order more than one drink. Pretty smart, and oh so sheik.

If you can read German, there’s more information here. But when I used babelfish to translate it, I found out all it says is:

“You to it already times didn’t wish that there is a carrying bag for a Coffee 2 go? (thx leopoldogolba) Who does not know it: One carries oneself a coffee forward, but is already loaded to above eh. How is one to be able there still to rauskramen its autokeys? Now there is the answer: The carrying bag for the coffee, even directly for two!”

Which is pretty much what I said anyway.

Design 05/28/2008

Spaghetti Bench

Wow! The Spaghetti Bench by Pablo Reinoso sure is cool!

[ via: productdose ]