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..

As I was browsing through Ad Age the other day I came across an interesting post about the designer who rebranded the new Tropicana look, Peter Arnell. Some of you may already know that ever since the newly designed carton came out Tropicana’s profit has plunged 20%. Ad age has the video of Peter explaining his new design and the concept behind it. First off, to the average person who doesn’t know much about design I think his explanation is way too deep and over thought.  The new bottle cap which resembles an orange is designed so when the consumer twists the cap to open the carton they are squeezing fresh orange juice into the carton, if it wasn’t for the video who the heck would have ever thought of that? I can picture some random soccer mom pouring a glass for her kids thinking wow this cap really makes the OJ seem pure and natural.  With all due respect the re-design of Tropicana has failed, Pepsi the manufacture of this brand is already switching back to the old cartons but keeping the new cap.  Pepsi basically spent tons of money re-brandng Tropicana which lasted just a couple months.  With the failure of Tropicana I kind of wonder if the brands sales has really dropped because of the re-design or perhaps it’s a coincidence that the economy has been struggling even more this time around. Some people have been saying the carton looks like a store brand which I can understand, but my only argument with that is despite the fact that it may look like a store brand OJ you still see the words Tropicana, so are you not going to purchase it because you don’t like the new design? 

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Hysteric (Acoustic)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Soft Shock (Acoustic)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Skeletons (Acoustic)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs latest release It’s Blitz was quite a surprise for my ears when I first heard this album, they still have the same crazy sounds, fast beats, personality and unique voice of Karen O but what made it different was the number of acoustic songs they include(4).  For each acoustic song there is also a normal version which is the type of music you expect from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.  I listened to the album a couple times before deciding whether I liked it or not and I have to admit I actually enjoyed the slow stuff. It’s a change of pace for the band and reminds me a bit of Karen O’s side project Native Korean Rock which seems to have been put on hold to make time for the YYY new album.  Whether you prefer the faster stuff or not this album definitely displays two sides of the band. 

Here are a couple quick shots from the Cherry Blossom Festival that is currently being held in Washington D.C. until April 12th.  It was a good change of scenery being in a smaller city with warm weather, if anyone gets a chance to go there I would recommend it, I took the Bolt Bus which was fairly cheap I think around $30 round trip with free Wi-Fi which helped the four hour drive go by a little faster. 

Quantum of Solace’s online multiplayer game that I worked on while at Big Spaceship is now a finalists for this years Flash In The Can Awards.  If you have a minute please vote here for it, thanks.

I was fortunate enough to recently be interviewed on Design Taxi for their Travel Album feature Design City: New York City. The feature focuses on uprising stars in different cities and for this edition it was NY.  Check out the feature here.

I know this has been around for a while now but it’s really incredible and flawless, pretty much stop motion animation at it’s best.  Patrick Bolvin has a good amount of stop motion videos he has created out of toys.  Most of them are super heroes competing against one another in some type of form and also a few choose your own adventure type videos.  Click the images above to watch the videos, first one is Bruce Lee vs Ironman and the second one is a break dance battle between Batman and Joker, definitely worth a watch you won’t be disappointed!

I’m probably the last person to find out about this but Google Labs created a feature in Gmail that I could have used many times as I am sure others needed as well, ‘Undo Send.’ There have been plenty of times where I have sent emails to clients and after sending the email I go back and realize I used the wrong word or spell check didn’t catch a misspelled word and I think to myself I wish Gmail had a Undo Send button like AOL did way back in the day.  Well to my surprise, this feature does exist and I can’t believe I never knew about it! If there is anyone else out there that has yet to discover this but needs it, in your Gmail account click on Labs and scroll down towards the bottom and enable the Undo Send, once you do that from now on whenever you send a email the Undo Send button will appear for 5 seconds before going away. 

I came across this article by Eric Demay which he has made 50 posts of his trip to China, each post on a different day accompanied by some interesting photos and some brief words. Worth a look.

I was contacted a couple weeks ago by the curator of the Digital Art Gallery for MacWorld and he told me that Steve Wozniak saw my design at the show and wanted a signed copy for himself to display in his home.  For those who don’t know Steve he is pretty much the Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Edison of our time, Wozniak created the 1st ever Apple computer in the mid 70’s and is a co-founder of Apple along with Steve Jobs, he was also recently on Dancing With The Stars haha.  When I first heard the news my instant reaction was “Wow, damn what a huge honor, I can’t believe it!”, to have someone with such a status as him wanting one of my design’s is just shocking.  I received the printed poster earlier this week and signed it then dropped it off at the post office where it will now ship back to California to get framed before getting delivered to the legend himself, Steve Wozniak. 

I recently stumbled upon this new compilation titled “Dark Was The Night” a benefit project hosted by the Red Hot Organization whom are dedicated to fighting HIV and AIDS.  This album is filled with tons of amazingly talented artists including Beirut, The National, Arcade Fire, Ben Gibbard, Yo La Tengo and just too many to list but take a look at the image above to see who else has contributed to this album. Many of the tracks in this album are relatively mellow and slow making it a very pleasing sound for the ears.  Dark Was The Night will also be having a very limited tour with some of the artists later on this year which I’m sure will sell out pretty fast.