A mosaic of humorous animated gifs about nonstop design work can be seen at iamnotanartist.org. The project was created by communications agency Soon in Tokyo and started with 56 animated gifs. It’s hoping to expand on that by allowing people to create and add their own gifs through the site directly — either frame by frame or using personal webcams. I love the idea of an online creative community expressing themselves through 3 second repeating animations.

Strangely, this isn’t the first time I’ve posted about moving gifs. Apparently I have a weakness for them.

This shopping bag design by Prompt, is such a cute and simple idea. Using peel back tabs, it allows shoppers to personalize the front of their own bag. It kind of makes sense that it’s for chocolate which is such an emotional food (alright, at least it’s the one I turn to when I need to eat my stress away). Now you can buy chocolate and then use drawings or letters to reveal your mood, your sense of whimsy or just random swear words. Thank you Kokoa Hut. (via the dieline)

I love the idea behind this collection of wallpapers by milan duo known as Carnovsky. The cool collage is made up of 3 different colored patterns overlayed on top of eachother. Each pattern, representing various animal/plant worlds, can be identified clearly when seen through the filter of a red, blue or green light. Is it wrong that I want to have this in my living room with special RGB track lighting dimmers?

Links tend to come in waves. The theme of this latest set of links is high-end flash sites for fashion + furniture. All of them are story or series-based and focus more on the experience and mood. Here are 5 of the more interesting/bizarre ones:

Louis Vuitton teamed up with Gorbachev, Keith Richards and Agassi for their “Journeys” campaign. Even Al Gore and climate change were integrated into LV land. The strange ensemble cast of celebrities are each interviewed about their home cities, what it’s like traveling around them. The photographs are gorgeous and the multimedia pieces are really well-produced. I have to admit, it’s compelling branded web content.

The furniture store Mio’s site features four different narratives from British Colombia, Paris, Isla Margarita, and El Ombu. As the video stories unfold, white dots appear on the screen. The video pauses every time your mouse rolls over the stage and zooms in to reveal more information on that particular product. You can immediately find out what kind of wine glass the romantic lead is drinking from and how much it costs.

This bizarre site called 360 snap for Vidal Sassoon claims to be combining fashion, music + shampoo. I haven’t been able to make the connection necessarily between the product and the design except that the people all have shiny hair I guess. But it kept me entertained for a few minutes while trying to figure it out. Click on a thumbnail and watch them rotate.

I came across these Ikea ad sites built by Forsman & Bodenfors last year. I love their use of video, photography and space. The first website uses a variation of choose-your-own-video interaction. Once you decide on a floor/scene you can click on the item that you would like to see the person interact with. The second website in the ad campaign utilizes the same style. Instead of watching video however, use your mouse to spin left and right through the different scenes. It’s completely addictive to rotate through the frozen dynamic scenes and the sense of perspective is wild.

And last but not least is the Uniqlo UT Loop. They’ve done several interactive heavy loading flash sites revolving around fashion and music. They ask their community to create loops using different dancers associated with different music tones. Their online projects are always well-designed and very interactive.

There were a few mentionable tidbits from the print world that I came in contact with this weekend.

I found this postcard among the free beer samples at the Amsterdam Brewery. This cute knife series (yes, they made knives cute) is promoting a culinary event where Toronto’s top chefs will be cooking several course meals in the name of charity. Really nice and simple design — and Amsterdam’s new Pomegranate beer wasn’t bad either….

Wired Magazine had a great article “The Inconvenient Truths About Global Warming”. I kind of want to make out with these double-truck type-driven layouts. I’m a sucker for large fonts on photographs. Great coloring and image pairing.

This last one doesn’t have to do with design, but I thought it was humorous. I came across graffiti artist, Banksy’s, new book while on a casual scout through the bookstore. This quote was on the back.

I just found out that an image campaign I did for The Movie Channel got nominated for a Broadcast Design Award (BDA). These are the boards for the animation.

The directive was to promote “Splatterday” a weekly series that features horror movies. This idea is based around a series of tips; make TMC the “learning” channel for horror fans. It’s the place to find the tools on how to survive stereotypical horror movie scenarios. The tip tags were used on the website and different tips were created as the campaign grew. It was super fun to work on.

I have a huge weakness for single concept projects that involve many visions. I was just exposed to two great ones.

Christina Black sent me this link to a project from Jacob Trollback. He asked his designers to create a personal animated piece illustrating their last thoughts before sleeping. Six designers, six different styles + short narratives. I particularly like the first one by Tetsuro. It’s a mood piece where subliminal visuals show the fleeting thoughts that flash through your mind while you’re drifting off.

Another recent group project is “Exploring the Lost ‘Art’ of the Film Poster”. Firecracker Rudy Jaimes told me about this art exhibit celebrating 70 years of film. Forty designers were asked to create their own interpretation of a film poster from the past. A full-on illustrator remix of the classics. It’s interesting to see the different uses of typography and design. Of course the real challenge would have been to redesign the less-than-classic Leonard Part 6.

This fiery promo for the Konzerthaus Dortmund concert hall’s new season is awesome. The agency that created it, Sehsucht, used fire and text to create a dramatic symphony of visual delight. I don’t just say that about everything. They really did. It’s an intense piece, the fire takes on an personality as it keeps up with the audio. (via motionographer)

I still remember their last motion design work for the concert hall, another beautiful audio-driven piece but using ink + soap instead of flames.

Greig Anderson emailed this photo our way to show what he was seeing at TEN:15. Poignant words from a bus station in Glasgow. The photo was cool, but his portfolio was even cooler.

He’s done a huge amount of work but I was most drawn to his self-initiated projects. Anderson is a conceptual designer and I found myself thinking “I wish I had thought of that” when looking through the projects. Simple, smart and really type-driven…SSRTD. Ok, that’s never going to catch on. Anyway, check out his work, it’s fun and I totally regret throwing out my spirograf.

The designer of this super cute shirt, Keith Hancox, created it for a friend of his who suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder, also known as Winter Depression. It’s kind of like a clothing version of the Transitions sunglasses, the UV sensitive ink gets darker when the shirt gets into the sun.

His portfolio is worth browsing through, conceptual and simple design. (via visual eye candy site, behance)

Design for Heel Magazine, a dog publication.

Part of a Paper Not Plastic campaign.

It’s funny the random things that you come across when you google stuff. I searched for paper and guns and came across this. Kidding. I was actually searching for ideas for a possible promo design — yes, they involved paper — and I found PaperWars, an exhibition of paper recreations of classic weapons. Not only is the level of detail pretty astounding, but I really like the fact that The Death Machine series uses design to make inert an icon that is so destructive. The exhibit was organized by a cool multidisciplinary design company called Postlerferguson whose sole purpose is to explore issues of technology, culture and economics through creative strategies.

Oh how many glue sticks were injured in the making of these structures. The creators take the right to bear arms a step further and make a few of them available for purchase to be built in the privacy of your own home. If you have the patience you can buy the paper grenade kit, all you need is scissors and glue.

FOOTNOTE: my search came up with multiple papercraft examples. PaperWars was the most interesting for sure, but I had to include the steak and carrots below. OK, so the carrots look more like yams, but the fact that this steak is made of paper blows my mind.

I was perusing The Serif in my attempt at productive procrastination, where I’m technically not working but it’s easier to rationalize because I feel like I’m learning something. I came across this poster by plusminus.ca (designer Peter Crnokrak) and fell in love. It’s solid proof that beauty and political awareness are not mutually exclusive.

The poster, A_B_ Peace & Terror etc., first caught my eye because of the large type and crazy vector shape. But beyond the design, it’s based on geopolitical research showing the quantitative degree that each of the member states of the UN has contributed toward peace and terror in the world. It’s a dual sided poster, one side — the A side — shows the peace, the other side — the B side — shows the terror.

The rest of Crnokrak’s portfolio is worth looking at; I especially enjoyed reading his general about section, it provides even more perspective on his approach to design and the greater picture:

in today’s visually literate society, users can no longer be effectively engaged with vapid pretty images and banal messages. instead an appeal to the intellect must be made using image and text….when a person asks why, they are much more apt to investigate and interact with a design than when given the answer.

I was watching A&E tonight more specifically their special sci-fi movie remake of The Andromeda Strain (don’t judge me). I’m a science fiction aficionado, but even with that, I can’t really recommend watching the movie. However, I can recommend watching the new on-air design for A&E. The redesigned logo was the first thing I noticed, it’s a huge improvement on their old-school mark, it takes advantage of the shapes of the letters and the ampersand…and of course, uses helvetica.

A&E logo before the redesign.

A&E logo after the redesign.

The channel is obviously trying to make a run at being a real network, they’re spending $680 million on new content and just launched with the tagline “Real Life. Drama.” along with the new look. What caught my attention during the commercial breaks was the simplicity of the type-driven design and the subtle use of animation. It kind of reminded me of USA Network’s redesign, sort of the anti-network; flat and clean, and the promos are very character driven.

In any case, I don’t know if it was just the comparison to the bad television movie, but I’m interested in seeing where they go with it.

(Here are some photos from the TV, not the greatest image quality and unfortunately they don’t show the animation or the longer spots.)

The rumors are true, the Diga/Surtees buttons are finally for sale on TEN:15. It’s the first set of designer buttons for the collaborative photo project, but we want to turn it into a monthly thing. Feel free to sport the flare, they make great gifts…OR just join the collective experiment and take a photo at 10:15 am on any day and email it in.