Jacques Tati is a French filmmaker who’s new site recently won FWA site of the day.  I have seen more and more hand made / crafted sites and designs lately but this one is one of the better ones out there. A lot of thought and effort goes into creating something like this and the best part is you can take a look at the making of Jacques Tati’s site. 

I will be out of town for a couple days so have a great 4th of July everyone and be safe.

Dating back to the time I was still in school and throughout my career, like many, I constantly found myself reading up on the current news in my industry to try stay on top of things and to remain relevant.  One of my main sources was reading through design related magazines such as Print, Computer Arts, Computer Projects, Communication Arts, How Magazine, and the list goes on.  I understand the hard economic times everyone is going through these days and that people have to do what is necessary to keep moving forward but one thing I have noticed that is making me think twice about making a purchase is the rise in price of design magazines.  Some of the main publications have increased their prices in 2009 quite significantly compared to last year while the content and amount of material for each magazine seems to remain the same if not even trimmed down a bit.  I purchased one of my favorite magazines, “Communication Arts” back in 2008 and paid $16 for the Interactive Annual and today I noticed this yearly issue was on sale again but for the price of $24.  “Print” is another well known magazine that has increased the price from about $12 an issue now up to $19.  While these prices are still affordable for some, for others I think paying almost $20 for a magazine that has not increased it’s content is starting to get a little costly.  Some magazines such as New York Times and Computer Arts have tried ways to save money for the consumer by slicing the overall width and height a couple inches thus saving a little bit on print production and keeping the prices relatively the same.  I know it’s not easy for all publications to do this and for some it’s much harder than others but I personally think an $8 increase per issue without some added content or additional value is making it a very hard purchase to make. 

White Swan is the latest music video for artist Lolly Jane Blue directed by Swan is Sil van der Woerd. I am unfamiliar with both the artist and the director but after watching the very short trailer and checking out some of the production stills of this video I have to admit it looks very promising and fascinating.  The way the video was captured and produced from the cinematography, lighting and special effects I have a feeling this video is going to give the viewer something very aesthetically pleasing to watch.  The video is scheduled to make it’s full debut on July 11th, but head over to the site now for some additional information and details.

Creativity Online recently posted some interesting interviews of people in the design and advertising industries.  The set of interviews titled “Creatives You Know” can be a little misleading, while I’ve heard of most of the companies and have seen their work, I never knew who some the Directors, CEO’s and Owners were. Perhaps a better title would have been “Creatives You Should Know.” Nonetheless, Creativity Online did a good job rounding up a talented group of people and getting them to spill some personal information.  Some of the companies that were involved include Wieden + Kennedy, McCann Erickson, Mother and Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, this is definitely worth a read if you have some extra time of your hands.

The Sounds - My Lover

The Sounds - Dorchester Hotel

The Sounds - Midnight Sun

Swedish band The Sounds have returned with their third album titled “Crossing The Rubicon”.  Don’t let the simple album cover fool you, their latest release is nothing close to being that simple or basic.  The Sounds seemed to have picked up exactly where they left off after their previous album “Dying To Say This To You”.  They have continued their synth, pop sounds throughout the album along with their occasional theatrical sounding intros.  Of course there is still the diverse vocals of lead singer Maja Ivarsson that helps tie everything together. 

The High Line has opened just in time for summer in NYC.  I first heard about this place 2 years ago during Open House New York when it was still in it’s construction phase.  The park is open daily from 7 am to 10 pm and is located in the Meat Packing District along 10th & 11th avenue. The High Line use to be part of a rail road track project back in the 1930’s but that came to a haul in the 80’s and no trains have ran on that line since. The track was preserved and thus turned into what it is today.
Photo by Joel Sternfeld

Cargo Collective is an easy to use, almost completely customizable publishing platform for designers to showcase their work. They have been around for a while now giving out beta accounts to selected applicants.  I recently had the chance to mess around with my account and I must say it is relatively simple to use as long as you know a little bit of CSS.  The end result is very slick, clean looking site to say the least.  Although they are still in beta at the moment, many designers have already started using this setup as their main site since Cargo allows users to point their own domain to this platform.  Once I started exploring around and updating my work to Cargo, I really wanted to make the switch as well. They already have everything broken out into templates so all you have to do is just upload your work and your basically done. It’s a lot more organized and faster to update work on their platform than it is for me to do on my current site, plus I’m not the best programmer so somethings on my site are rigged pretty badly just to function.  The only thing that made me think twice about making the switch was pointing my domain to another site where I do not have complete control over my files on my own server. Also, while they are adding a meta tag function for the next release, not being able to edit the whole HTML page is kind of a risk to me as well.  But we’ll see how the next version is.....

Allan Jardine a web-developer and designer has developed some really helpful tools that are available for free on his site Spray Media.  I haven’t had a chance to explore all of the applications yet but I did go through the main design ones which include the Grid, Ruler, Cross-Hair and Unit.  As a designer these tools are helpful in many ways and are quick to access.  Simple drag the application name into your bookmark folder and each time you visit a site and are curious about the layout or just need to measure the size of something go to your bookmarks tab and the application will open up on that site. 

For anyone who works in the advertising industry, this video titled “The Vendor Client Relationship” is a must see.  I know it’s been out for a while now but for those of you who have not seen it yet, it’s suburb, hilarious and very much true.  I can relate to pretty much all these situations as I’m sure many of you can as well.

Finally!  After about two weeks of being down my blog is back up and running, big thanks to my friend Ryan for all the help.  I recently had to upgrade my server at Media Temple to one of their newer and more advanced servers and in the process it completely annihilated my blog.  My blog is based off Expression Engine and so everything got renamed, redirected elsewhere, etc. and needless to say it was just a giant mess.  I can’t say I was pleased with the new ‘server upgrade’ but I must admit in the midst of all this chaos the staff at Media Temple were pretty helpful in trying to resolve everything.  I know I was a giant pain in the ass for constantly emailing them over and over questioning them on what was wrong and how this happened.  To my surprised each time not only did they reply back but they attempt to help me the best that they could, although they did not get my blog back up they seemed sincere about it and I guess it was just out of their ability.  Anyways, I’m glad to have this thing back up and I should have lots of updates coming soon. 

I came across a post the other day while browsing around wejetset and it featured the office of architecture firm Selgas Cano located in Madrid, Spain.  While I enjoy all the comforts of freelancing from my apartment in the city with a slight view of old buildings, sounds of honking cars and even the lack of sunlight that comes through the window, I must say having a office in the middle of the woods with so much natural sunlight and minimal clutter seems like an amazing place to work.  Some reason this place reminds me of the movie Robin Hood but I would definitely trade in some comforts of working at home to have a work space like that. 

On May 15, Coroflot is hosting an event titled Creative Employment Confab here in New York City.  This 3 hour event is intended for creatives to network with each other as well as seek employment by various companies that will be in attendance.  A couple of guest speakers will also be on hand to talk about what they are looking for when hiring new recruits.  If you are interested in this event but live outside of NY, Coroflot has scheduled this conference in other cities later on this year including Portland, San Fransisco and Detroit. 

One of the projects I worked one while at Big Spaceship, Quantum Of Solace Multiplayer Game was recently nominated as a finalists for the 2009 Flash In The Can Award.  After a couple weeks of voting I’m glad to say that Quantum Of Solace is now a winner under the Flash Games category. 

Sorry for the lack of posts this week things are picking up lately and I have been busy running around for meetings, phone meetings, working freelance in-house, etc.  I wanted to post this earlier this week before it spread across all the blogs but I didn’t get a chance to.  Anyways, for your entertainment you should definitely check out this seamless slow motion video directed by Adam Berg.  Yes, it may resemble the Matrix a little bit but it’s still pretty badass and impressive plus with HD option the quality is superb. 

A good friend of mine from Orlando recently just got engaged and was looking for some wedding announcements.  He wanted it to be a two sided post card style with a sort of organic theme, I gladly accepted to help design the announcements for him and his gf.  I’m excited for them as they are both really awesome people, congrats you two..