Subtraction

Generally I’ve no truck with heavy metal music and like it that way, as there’s almost nothing about the genre that appeals to me. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop me from enjoying the hell out of Sacha Gervasi’s 2008 documentary “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” which I watched a few nights ago. The movie tells the sometimes hilarious, somewhat sad and shockingly heartwarming story of an indefatigable Canadian metal band that, some three decades after their initial, minor brush with success, continues to plug away in search of rock stardom. It’s surprisingly well made, being gorgeously photographed and incisively edited, and is also universally appealing, even if like myself you prefer a lot fewer serifs in your music, if you’ll permit me to contort a metaphor for novel purposes (you know what I mean!).

Nothing to do with MessagePads, but rather a clever hack in the form of a benign virus or screen saver that subjects all of the elements on your screen — icons, menus — to the forces of gravity, as if they were physical objects. The brief demonstration video explains it much better than I can. Via Creative Review.

Truth be told, I was pretty nervous before facing off against Nicholas Felton in our Layer Tennis exhibition match last Friday afternoon. I’d never played the game before, and its structure, in which two visual artists volley a collage-like series of images back and forth under the scrutiny of a stopwatch, seemed very high pressure. Plus, my opponent was none other than Feltron himself (as Nicholas is sometimes better known), a designer famous for autobiographical annual reports in which he creates gorgeous visual narratives from nothing more than the statistical mundanity of everyday life.

All that trepidation wasn’t without good reason, as it turned out. You could hardly count layer tennis as physically demanding, but its breakneck speed and creative intensity do require dexterity and stamina — the fifteen minutes allotted to each volley is surprisingly intensive and vanishingly brief. Still, what I didn’t expect was how much fun the live atmosphere of layer tennis was. In the past, I’d always come to layer tennis matches after they were over and done with, perusing each match’s archive of volleys after the fact. Layer tennis in real time, though, is where the fun is.

A project dedicated to visually dissecting the Fab Four’s historical data. “These visualizations are part of an extensive study of the music of the Beatles. Many of the diagrams and charts are based on secondary sources, including but not limited to sales statistics, biographies, recording session notes, sheet music, and raw audio readings.” Some of the work is quite beautiful and, like an increasingly large portion of information graphics these days, quite useless, too. Also see the Flickr group. Via Information Aesthetics.

Starting last autumn, BBC Creative Director Ben Gammon led a global rebranding of the Beeb’s digital products, enlisting the help of Neville Brody’s Research Studios along the way. The effort was ambitious and the results are quite handsome; this post goes into quite a bit of detail about what they produced and give some insight into the challenges of undertaking such a massive exercise in digital branding. Truly worth a look. (Also, you can download the manual to peruse in greater detail.) Thanks to Nedward.org for the link.

By the time I thought to go see Mike Judge’s third live action feature “Extract” at my local cineplex it was already gone, having disappeared almost as quickly as it debuted back in September. I then promptly forgot about it — until I remembered it again, and realized a few weeks ago that it had been out on DVD for over a month already.

Most people, I suspect, regard Mike Judge’s movies with similar levels of mild interest, even those who are devotees of his unexpectedly great classic of the cubicle age, “Office Space.” At first glance, Judge’s movies are deceptively unremarkable, even generic. But upon closer inspection, they turn out to be surprisingly memorable — very nearly indelible — and his thus far brief oeuvre has already made for a directorial record that many other auteurs would envy. The satirically dystopian future he imagined in “Idiocracy,” for instance, is probably more accurate and certainly more entertaining than most of what science fiction has ever offered us. It also happens to be more hilarious than most movies of any genre.

Tune in this coming Friday afternoon for Coudal Partners’ Layer Tennis, in which I will have the honor of matching my graphical prowess against Nicholas Felton of the famously self-aware Feltron Annual Reports. It’s sure to be a cornucopia of wild, free-ranging visual expressionism. ’Cuz y’know, that’s what both Nicholas and I are known for. What’s more, the venerable John Nack of Adobe will be providing the commentary as Nicholas and I parry back and forth.

Layer tennis, for those unfamiliar with it, is that curiously un-aerobic Internet sport in which two graphically adroit competitors, armed with Photoshop, swap a single image file back and forth, embellishing each volley with collage-like visual ornamentation. Oh, and it’s all done under the watchful eye of a stopwatch, so the pace can get kind of frenetic; each volley is fifteen minutes long, and the match is over after just ten volleys. Fun stuff. Check out the archive of previous matches to get a sense of what’s ahead. And point your browser to Layertennis.com on Friday to see Nicholas probably kick my ass.

Fifteen illustrators each pick one of their favorite books — everything from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” to “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” to “Geek Love,” and others — from which they illustrate a scene once a month. The contributors are generally young, hungry and extremely talented, and some of the work they’ve been turning in so far is superb. As far as responses to the rapidly changing value of illustration goes, this is an excellent one. Check it out here.

Alex Cornell’s roundup of various strategies for getting past artistic stumbling points, including notes from Erik Spiekermann, Nicholas Felton and others (including yours truly).

The School of Visual Arts’ MFA in Design Criticism program, run by my friend Alice Twemlow, is gearing up for its second school year starting this autumn. There’s not another program in the country, to my knowledge, that gives students access to a wealth of critical design knowledge on this level:

Create original segments in a radio and podcasting workshop with PRI’s “Studio 360” senior producer Leital Molad and host Kurt Andersen; voyage deep into 20th century design with design historian Russell Flinchum; learn investigative journalism techniques with Change Observer editor Julie Lasky; curate exhibitions with MoMA design curator Paola Antonelli and Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum curator Matilda McQuaid; and find your critical voice with Ralph Caplan, Akiko Busch, and Andrea Codrington.

The core curriculum, which trains students to research, analyze, and evaluate design and its social and environmental implications, is supplemented by the specialist knowledge of more than 40 visiting critics and lecturers per semester. Recent guests include Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review, industrial designer Ayse Birsel, documentary filmmaker Gary Huswit, Gawker.com editor-in-chief Gabriel Snyder, New York Times perfume critic Chandler Burr, author and critic Rick Poynor, and Cathy Leff, director of the Wolfsonian Museum.

More about applying here at the D-Crit site. Also you might be interested in my 2008 interview with Alice.

All told, I think I did a pretty good job of ignoring “Lost” for years, in spite of all the raves and recommendations from friends. Mostly, it was out of self-interest; I couldn’t afford the time investment that another hugely complicated television series would require, especially one that seemed to inspire such obsessive fandom. But now, living with a “Lost” devotee as I do, I find I can no longer willfully ignore the persistent phenomenon that is J.J. Abrams’ labyrinthine television saga. I started watching a handful of episodes here and there last season, and when the show’s sixth season debuted on Tuesday evening I joined Laura on the couch to take in its latest two hours.

Here’s my assessment so far: it’s a superbly crafted entertainment but it executes itself haphazardly. I find myself easily drawn into its fundamentally strong storytelling tactics, but even after watching the best episodes, the momentum of the series inspires no real confidence that the next installment will be any good.

And, frankly, I don’t really get what’s happening. What is this show about? A time shifting island? A fractious fraternity of metaphysically-challenged losers? A just-in-time catalog of bogus belief systems? I have no idea, really, but to the show’s credit it’s all good enough to keep me thinking about it. Herewith, then, are some random notes from a Viewer New to “Lost”

Just clicking through this bevvy of gorgeous and incredibly fun pattern designs from the very talented, young, Argentinian illustrator Gastòn Caba (and others) is just plain joyful. I know everyone thinks I’m all about grids and minimalism and monochromatic palettes and being very serious (okay, guilty), but it doesn’t mean I don’t also find this stuff to be totally great, too.

It’s not as if I haven’t had a point of view on all of this tablet computing device stuff that’s been lighting up the Internets for the past several months, but for professional reasons, I’ve had to keep mum. Suffice it to say, I’m really excited about Apple’s iPad, announced today, and I’m even more excited about what can be done with it.

However. I’m pretty sure that I’m in the camp that believes that this is not the salvation that most publishing companies have been looking for. Not that the device falls short in some way, but rather because nothing can save publishing as it’s been operating for the past several decades. The iPad does nothing to change the brutal mandate that has been pushing publishers to change for these many years; if anything it compounds the imperative.

As a general principle, there’s no way around evolution, and in this specific instance the reality is that there is no direct translation of the print experience to digital media. That is, the content can be translated, but it’s not likely to be as literal as many might expect or even hope. Those looking to the iPad to return us to some semblance of a print-like reading experience are basically wrong, I believe. In fact, lots of really smart people will continue to get this wrong going forward. We’re all still figuring out. That’s the definition of an opportunity.

A small but excellent selection of covers from “the definitive music and culture publication in New York City in the early 1980s.” I’d never heard of it before, but then in the Eighties New York was just an idea and not a real place for me yet. These covers evoke that dreamland of my youth though: gritty, plausibly if not authentically punk, confrontational and exclusive (who the hell were Human Switchboard? Oh, that’s who).

Since becoming a dad, I’ve been able to go out to the cinema to see just three movies in three months. Luckily, at home, the situation is a little better, thanks to Netflix, Apple TV and the new Blu-Ray player that I got for the holidays. Still a general lack of free time makes it hard to see as many as I’d like, and I feel lucky that I get to see any movies, let alone write about them here on this blog. The days of being able to knock out lengthy reviews of the sort that I once did for, say, last year’s “Public Enemies” or 2008’s (still underrated!) “Speed Racer” seem a long way off now.

I still like writing about movies though, still enjoy articulating my thoughts about them, trying to get at the core ideas in filmed media that matter to me. Whether or not anyone really likes them, or whether the generally design-centric audience for this blog finds anything relevant in them, I’m not sure. But writing about shit you like is one of the perks of having your own blog, so I’m going to keep doing it — when I can. I’m just going to have get used to writing more succinctly, and get over the embarrassment of sometimes only publishing my thoughts long, long after the movies have left the current spotlight. Here are three write-ups to get started.

“A painstakingly curated presentation of the best produced and designed iPhone applications…my goal is for this site to showcase new and emerging talent, current talent and represent the best of the best applications for the iPhone for design-minded folk.”

As the sheer volume of available iPhone apps grows beyond crazy huge into the stratospherically absurd realm, I think we’ll see more and more third-party attempts to make sense of the volume, both through hand-picked methods like this one and other, more automated means. 

One of those heartwarming human interest stories that’s completely invulnerable to cynicism.

“In 1998, aged just 14, aspiring young cartoonist Amir Avni decided to get in touch with the creator of Ren & Stimpy, John Kricfalusi. Being a hardcore fan of Kricfalusi’s work, Amir sent him an introductory letter along with a few cartoons he’d drawn, some of which contained relatively unknown characters of John’s. To call Kricfalusi’s response ‘generous’ would be an understatement…”

The letter itself, hand-written and partly hand-drawn, practically hums with warmth; see it in its entirety here. Also, if you’re not reading Kricfalusi’s blog — even if you’re nothing more than a casual admirer of cartoon animation — then you’re denying yourself regular insights into the mind of true artist.

Music. I listened to a lot of it last year. Not nearly as many as lots of people, I’m sure. But I had an Emusic account, an Amazon Prime account and a sufficiently generous credit card limit to supply me with days of listening entertainment — 1,530 songs played continuously over 3.7 days, according to iTunes.

Looking back, I liked a lot of the music I heard, and got reasonably excited about it too. Maybe not as excited as I used to get about music, back when I had a lot more free time, a lot less money, and a mistaken belief that pop music could be useful a framework for living one’s life. But for the first year in many years, I got genuinely enthusiastic about what seemed like a lot of new acts. Maybe it was a subconscious attempt to retain or rekindle youth as I entered parenthood, or maybe it was the fact that a brilliant record label run by a friend from my twenties came roaring back even more brilliantly than it had ever been before, but I found a lot to like when I plugged my earbuds into my iPod last year. Anyway you look at it, there were a lot of good tunes in 2009, and I’d like to share some of them with you.

An entertaining tour of two New Yorkers’ obsession with a little-noticed relic of the mid-Twentieth Century located Queens. “The two Candela Structures — plus a third one that’s now gone — were built as exhibit spaces for the 1964 World’s Fair… The biggest mystery, though, is why these two amazing structures have languished in obscurity for so long. We hope this exhibit will give them the attention they deserve, and that it will prompt someone — maybe you — to help us fill in the missing chapters of their story.” What’s so great about this story is their architectural inquisitiveness; as our world becomes increasingly virtual, it’s refreshing to remember there are fascinating questions left to answer about the real world.

Designer Mike Rundle’s extraordinarily helpful overview of how he creates U.I. elements that evoke real-world materials. He even pulls back the curtain on his own technique by including a downloadable sample Photoshop file, letting readers pull apart a typical construction for buttons.

An appreciation of the legendary Milan-based graphic designer Bob Noorda, a Modernist legend and co-founding partner (with Massimo Vignelli) of Unimark International. Noorda passed away just over a week ago, on 11 Jan 2010, though it’s still tough to find an English-language obituary online. This write-up over at the excellent new mid-century Modern-focused design archive Display is not quite an obituary, but for the uninitiated it makes for a useful introduction to Noorda’s career.

Seoul, Korea studio UnPlug Design came up with this near-genius idea for providing makeshift soccer balls (okay, footballs) to third world children who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford them. A wave-like pattern is printed (or perhaps perforated?) on the boxes in which material aid to these countries is often shipped; once the box is empty of its contents, children and aid workers can follow the patterns to break down the cardboard and assemble the ball. More background and pictures here.

Last week, The Hype Machine, a sort of combination music meta-blog and playlist, published its round-up from the year just ended, including its listing of the top fifty bands of 2009, with each of the fifty slots illustrated by an invited visual artist. If you skip ahead, you’ll see that the indie pop contenders The Pains at Being Pure at Heart came in at number thirteen, and that the illustration was done by none other than yours truly.

An engaging and thoughtful question-and-answer session with the renowned Dutch design studio. Cornell asks for their opinion on a blog post I wrote last April called “Dear Designers, You Suck” in which I addressed the state of criticism in design today — and Experimental Jetset’s response is so different from my perspective and so interesting:

“We’re much more interested graphic design as criticism: the idea that a piece of graphic design is a manifestation of a certain way of thinking, a certain way of ordering the world, and that, by functioning in that way, that piece of graphic design is effectively critiquing the dominant way of thinking, the existing way of ordering the world.”

Read the entire interview here. While you’re at it, marvel at the rest of Cornell’s site to get a sense of why I’m so intensely envious of him: a young, talented, prolific designer with the authorial skills and time to publish regularly on his terrific blog. If only.

Update: Embarrassingly, I’ve gotten Alex mixed up with his employer, Scott Hansen. Sloppy mistake, sorry.

An appraisal of the new transit system map for the Bay Area. “Unlike the notorious 1972 Massimo Vignelli redesign of the New York City subway map, the new BART map didn’t make much of a splash in graphic design circles.”

As the semi-famous default theme for WordPress faces retirement later this year, The Huffington Post takes a look at how it came to be. It’s nice to see its designer, Michael Heilemann, get the credit, but the writer may go a little too far in playing up its importance:

“When Heilemann came to blogging, the Internet was studded with posts that were essentially diary entries, blocks of text with the occasional awkwardly situated photograph. The template he came up with was entirely different — at once elegant and open to innovation. Since its debut, Kubrick has helped change the face of cyberspace…”

A twenty-four point manifesto for independent video game designers and developers. While some points may come across as bromides, the whole thing is written with enough conviction to be a compelling read — and while aimed at one particular kind of designer, it’s applicable to designers of all kinds.

For a kick, also see this contrarian comment posted by one reader. Excerpt: “‘Fun’ is a word with a lot of bad connotations for me.” That’s what you call a hater.

Very illuminating and wide-ranging look at differences in mobile phone usage as a function of region, economics and history.

Hilarious, fictional letter-to-the-future from a decade ago reminds us all what idiots we were way back before Facebook and how our use of Facebook definitely does not make us all idiots, definitely not. Yay Facebook.