N O U N : A design blog by Oliver Oike

Found at Mid Century Modernist.

It’s a year old, but it’s purty. From Sebastian Lange at My Name Was God.

via Craig Rennie.

Order here.

Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world.

Found via Caterina.net

Nice evolution of interactive periodical UI design, jump-started by the iPad.

Joe Wilcox from BetaNews recently retracted his criticism of the iPad, and made specific mention of the oft-heard criticism that it’s “…the CD-ROM of 2010…”

A short peek into the behind-the-scenes world of Pantone. Short interviews with John Maeda, Swiss Miss and more. More info at Creative Review.

How did I miss this? The last show I saw before moving back to Winnipeg from Vancouver in 2003 was Blur, and it was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to: a mature band, at the tail end of their run, in perfect form, running through an extra-long set of their best, in an ideal venue (The Vogue). This DVD looks to be the same. “Cut down on your porklife mate. Get some exercise!”

I have the good fortune of attending ICOGRADA’s Design Week 2010 in Vancouver at the end of April. The GDC is a Host Partner for the event, and a few good friends have been logging a ton of extra-curricular hours to ensure a world-class event. I’m really looking forward to it (not to mention the visit to Vancouver, my old stomping grounds).

Cur”rency\ The state or quality of being current; general acceptance or reception; a passing from person to person, or from hand to hand.

Design has the power to influence our core values, our identity, our expectations and our worldview. Design brings clarity and enhances meaning. Design Currency 2010 offers designers, business leaders and government the opportunity to experience current design thinking. Reshape your understanding of the value of design.

Register for Design Week Now.

For centuries, the blooming of cherry blossoms (sakura) in Japan has held a near-magical significance, inspiring poetry, art, music, and kimono designs, while also symbolizing new beginnings. After the heavy grayness of a long winter, there is something about spring that warms the shoulders, lightens the step, brings a smile to the face, and makes one feel more alive. Everywhere you look, pink is in season: sakura bath products, sakura sweets, and sakura tea. It is a time for new students (shinnyusei) to enjoy time with their parents at school entrance ceremonies (nyugakushiki), a time for new employees (shinshakaijin) to join a company. Weddings are often scheduled for this time, with the floating sakura making a splendid background for photos of the bride (hanayome).

Full article: A Springtime Walk on the Riverbanks of History

From Keiichi Matsuda. Thanks to Pomo Project for the link.

I was first introduced to Evan Roth’s work at FITC 2005. He was just finishing up his Masters at Parsons, doing incredibly beautiful work with digitization of graffiti and pulling funny pranks at US Post Offices. He was also running a personal project to become the #1 listing on Google for a unique string of keywords.

His work preceded & informed most of what is currently going on with projected interactive art, despite being focused mostly on graffiti. But mostly it’s just BAD*$$.

Graffiti Analysis is an extensive ongoing study in the motion of graffiti. Custom software designed for graffiti writers creates visualizations of the often unseen motion involved in the creation of a tag. Motion data is recorded, analyzed and archived in a free and open database, 000000book.com, where writers can share analytical representations of their hand styles.

More at Graffiti Analysis: http://graffitianalysis.com

I’ve always loved IdN. Beautifully-produced, eclectic subject matter and paired with a DVD of moving goodies, I treat myself to one or two issues per year. Turns out they have recently published a book commemorating 15 years of publishing. Lots to see here. Click on “View Fullscreen” in the area above to see all the tasty little details.

My co-worker Kevin (@kevinguenther) introduced me to the Black Harbor this morning, a “collective exploration of Art & Design”, where he discovered the oh-so-lovely Leslie & The Badgers, as showcased above.  A nice way to start the day!

Leslie reminds me a little of another of my female singer-songwriter heart throbs, Jenny Lewis, seen here performing on Ferguson last year:

Wait a sec — he didn’t ask! 

Despite the obvious theft of my oft-used online name — oo — I find this to be one of the sexier pieces of equipment I’ve seen in a while. Perhaps a test unit sent this way to make up for the oversight? 

via Engadget

The original Büro Destruct book came out while I was attending Emily Carr.  It made an impression on our class, capturing some of the design trends occurring at that moment in time. Post-graduation, I’d kept up with their work only loosely. Turns out they’ve been very busy.

The video above is a teaser for their third book, coming out tomorrow. They’ve also just released an iPhone app, desktop app  & accompanying desktop screensaver called “Büro Destruct Designer.”

Shake your iPhone to create a virtually infinite number of beautiful designs. (See examples on BD Flickr).

Using circles, squares and a set of rules, Büro Destruct Designer lets you find inspiration for color combinations and graphic shapes. Choose either full random colors or apply harmony rules to your color palettes. You can modify your compositions with gestures and the various tools from the menu. The results can be saved and shared by e-mail including the color palette.

Lots more great stuff to be found on their site and blog. Enjoy!

Photo by Wade Andrew.

Douglas Coupland handed me my degree at the convocation for the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design (as it was called back then) Class of 2000. He, along with Lynn Johnston and Japanese-Canadian artist Takao Tanabe, were honorary graduates (pretty great, no?). Whenever I feel homesick for my five years spent in Vancouver, I dust off one of his books and flip to my favourite parts. No doubt it’s all the beautiful images of Olympic revelry spilling out of there that finds me with Vancouver on the brain…

From “Polaroids From The Dead”:

The man with the horn was Frank Baker, a restaurant owner of that long-vanished era when “fine dining” meant a T-bone steak, three double scotches and a pack of Chesterfields.

Mr. Baker, who died in 1991, had onced owned a “swinging” kind of restaurant in West Vancouver where your parents would take out-of-town guests, but only after first getting themselves all revved up with Herb Alpert records.

Mr. Baker was always, to younger eyes, the embodiment of a certain type of cool, so cool that he had even bought the original Aston Martin DB-5 used in the James Bond movie Goldfinger. He was certainly a character, and his restaurant was an occupational puppy mill for a good number of friends during high school who bussed there and diced the vegetables and did food prep on weekends. pg 72

and…

In late 1986 I arrived back in Vancouver after living abroad for a year. On that first evening back I looked down at the bridge and saw that it had been garlanded with brilliant pearls of light along its thin parabolic lines. I was shocked – it was so beautiful it made me lose my breath.

I asked my father about these lights and he told me they were called “Gracie’s Necklace,” after a local politician. In the almost five decades since the bridge had been built, the city had been dreaming of the day when it would cloak its bridge in light, and now the dream had become real life.

Now, whenever I fly back to Vancouver, it is Gracie’s Necklace I look for from my seat, the sight I need to see in order to make myself feel I am home again. We often forget, living here here in Vancouver, that we live in the youngest city on earth, a city almost entirely of and only of, the twentieth century — and that this is Vancouver’s greatest blessing. It is the delicacy of Gracie’s Necklace that reminds me we live, not so much in a city but in a dream of a city. pg. 73

Tee hee. Thanks to Adrian for the link.