heather o'neill

steven found out that heather o'neill, who you might know from wiretap and this american life, is at the harvard bookstore tomorrow evening at 6:30.

still early for a school day, but I think it might give me just enough impetus to sneak out of the office a little earlier than usual.

learn more about the event here

new smog video

I was tucked up watching the new res dvd (a bonus of subscribing to the magazine, highly recommended) and saw this:

There was also an incredible short on the preview DVD called PHOBIAS by Bert and Bertie. I can't find the video on the web anywhere, and as resfest no longer comes to Boston, all I can do is invite you over to come see it!

wears + wares, pass it on!

know anyone crafty? who makes pretty things? or brilliant things? my friend kelly and I are starting a young designers' market (mentioned in a previous post) and we are starting NOW! So, any referrals you can give me, all the better.

just tell them to look at the wears + wares website and fill out our online application. Or, they can write me a note!

as a nerdy aside, this is the very first time I have tried to do anything more complex than a php mailing list sign-up. One thing I am having trouble with, and I think it is a flash focus problem, is in the image uploader (website > application > image uploader link for those who don't have a website). I got some great help from Danny Patterson and Tink (a blog reference from Newstoday, although his site seems to be down at the moment), and realized part of my problem is that the file uploader won't work on Intel Macs. But one glitch remains: you have to hit the "Upload" button twice in order to get the upload to start... strange! Any ideas?

Great custom video messages from Mini

This is from a Mini campaign in the UK. It’s one of the best of these things (whatever you call them, message maker, custom video messages, e-cards…) that I’ve seen. It’s strength come from mostly limiting your choices and working them into the video seamlessly. There are a few jumps in the video but overall it’s great.

I customized a message for Steven.


Check it out.

If you want to return the favor you can do it here:
http://aveaword.glueserv.com

Mouth

Just a bit of silliness.


click for video

new project

with the dress shop in a holding pattern until spring, I am keeping my mind "shop" focused with a new exciting project. my friend Kelly asked me if I was interested in helping to start a young designers' market in boston, much like emerge NYC, that would be a regular, indoor Saturday market. A space in downtown crossing has offered us their lobby for Saturday usage, and now we have to get cracking on rounding up wonderful designers and getting the word out... So if you know anyone making neat stuff, please send them my way -- or direct them to wears + wares.

here is a snapshot of what I think the site will look like. I have to make an online application, but one trick is I don't know how to allow people to upload photos (vs. sending them by email). Does anyone else have words of wisdom on this?

new product

I am working on some new ideas for the mittenmitten booth at the bizarre bazaar!




does anyone have ideas for me on a re-concept of the wallets? no one gets that the pop rivets are just a fastener, everyone thinks they are a snap... maybe a flat top rivet? how do I do those?

el perro del mar

steven sent me a morning treat — a new video from el perro del mar!



the illustrations are great! done by asa arnehed who says (on animation)
"I am fascinated by small, gentle and graceful movements that are filled with meaning." and (on illustration)"The brutal and the cute get to meet on paper or outside in public places."

girly?

I am starting to get into adding details and fun stuff to the activewear site project. One of the main concerns for the "look" is that it remain pretty "girly" while still having lots of punchy color (i.e. every item comes in this set of colors, and to play on that I want to keep navigation and features consistent while shifting their color identities) and emphasizing the "mantra" thematic as a selling point.

I bought Buffet Script to help with this, and I think it adds a good girly-side surfer-nostalgic pop to some of the text/detail. What do you think?

Ramen = Freedom

I'm not 100% sure what's going on here because the site is written in Japanese, but I imagine that it's about how Ramen Noodles give humans the freedom to live on the moon, right?

Can't get enough Ramen? Recipes!

insights

Chris Grimley (who, along with brilliant wife Kelly, will someday bring scintillating ideas to the Ann&Ani dress shop) is now featured on designinteract, extolling my favorite rss news reader, NetNewsWire!

Tiny Showcase

Although I realize I am often talking about it, but haven't yet bought a print, this is one of my favorite little things about the web: tiny showcase



I love the idea of small runs of prints, I love the idea of a virtual gallery, I love seeing lots of new work, and overall I love that many of these prints are so reasonably priced at $100 or less. Plus, the artist picks a favorite charity to which a portion of the proceeds from the sale are donated.

Here are a couple of my favorites. Or sign up for the announcements and you will get an artist preview the day an edition goes up for sale.

the secret stash
glass store
on the lounge
winter trailer

Bravia

Ad for a new Sony TV. The shoot took 10 days and 250 people, the clean up tool 5 days and 60 people.

They used a water based paint that is "safe enough to drink" and "contains the same thickeners that are sometimes used in soups"

More info


click for video

let's move to the country

last week, steven and I went to the DWR talk about pre-fab housing, inspired (commissioned? competitioned?) by the Dwell magazine proposition, manufactured by Empyrean, a company that traces its lineage from Walter Gropius.

although currently costing about $175/sq. foot, I have high hopes that the cost on these will come down. and by that time, we will have acquired a plot of land upon which to build our utopian "pleasant disposition" community.

read more here

being a nerd is so "in"

mister sinclair and jeff soto were just trading emails talking World of Warcraft. wow. being a nerd pays off.

for all you lowly proletariats who've never seen his work.... JEFFSOTO.COM

little miss

mmm....corbis just launched a retro playboy series.

peep the pretties

i pinch

i truly and deeply love this crab

These ads are great...totally whimsical and silly yest they seem to sneak in a lot of info about the car....sneaky like...a crab.

Your element can have more conversations with animals here.
(you have to play the game to have the interactions....)

How I Made My Own Jeans or: It Takes A Lot of Work to Make a Pair of Jeans!

I modified jean pattern from Built By Wendy, slimmed it out a lot, lowered the rise a 1/2", figured out how to make a button fly, and sewed like crazy. These where made from 2 yards of sample denim from Winmill Fabrics in Downtown Crossing, some metal buttons purchased in a misc. lot from eBay, and a little square of fabric from Ikea. I even employed Ann's Grandmother's newly re-calibrated serger. Totally pro!



I'm taking orders for jeans now. I'm only making size 30" waist, and I'm charging $1200 a piece. Any takers?

new project...

I have been working with a friend on her sportswear brand, a little late in the game, and now we are starting on redesigning her site and (a little refinement of) her brand.



She likes this the best of the initial concepts — and I like a number of things about it too, but I am looking for some suggestions on playing with the top and bottom of the site window. I want this to be a pretty wide site, the photos have lots of color, so I would rather keep all the navigation elements simple and clean. Also, I am looking for a good (alright, and maybe girly) script/handwriting font other than Smudger.

The current site is here

Costume Categories

How are these for Halloween costume prize categories?

1. Formidable Incognito (for dashing spies, and concealment of true identity)
2. Animal Kingdom (for animals such as the Narwhal)
3. Thrills & Chills (a general category for ghosts and scary things)
4. Caped Crusaders (superheroes)

and then two male/female categories:

5. Dazzling Haberdashery and Tres Chic (excellent execution of style)
6. Extra Brawny and Turbo Babe (hunks and foxes)

M&M's Dark Chocolate

In this game for M&M's Dark Chocolate you have to use the clues in the Hieronymus Bosch style painting to name titles of 50 "Dark" movies.



The concept is very similar to the Virgin Digital “Music Muscle” video David posted here in July but the added benefit here is that you can interact with it and get a confirmation as to how many you've answered correctly.

I started a game there and picked off the easy ones. To continue where I left off, go to the site and use the email addresss: info@the47th.com.

http://us.mms.com/us/dark/

Flying

Hoagy de la Plante took me up flying today in a DA20 Katana. It's a tiny little two-seater with a glass top. The plane is a lot of fun to fly and the view is amazing. I even got to take over the controls a few times!

We flew out of Hanscom and went out to Plum Island. We flew around there for a bit and did some "positive G's" and "Zero G" (does it sound like I've been flying my whole life?). After a while we landed for a few minutes at a tiny, tiny little airport. It was just a small runway by the side of a road. No control tower, just a soad a mchine.

The weather was just perfect today and I really had a great time. I can't wait to go up again.

Mauricio Tejerina took these pictures when Hoagy took him up a few weeks ago.


Hoagy and the plane


The view

Check out more of Mo's photos here:
www.mobotica.com/fromabove

The Small Stakes

Jason Munn, the man behind The Small Stakes does some great work for some of my favorite bands including Mates of State, The Decemberists, Pinback, The American Analog Set, Death Cab and Castanets.

Check out the poster shop.

Site Flash Stats

Thought you guys might be interested in knowing that 54% of visitors to our site have Flash 9 and the other 46% have Flash 8. No Flash 7.

This American Life

The This American Life website has added a new flash audio player that is much better then anything they've used before.







Check out the full archive here. You can listen to every show aired during the past 11 years!

New Orleans After the Flood: Robert Polidori

Memo and I went to see the this special exhibit at the Met a couple weeks ago. The things that struck me the most were the lines of sediment on everything and how high they had reached and also there where pictures of ceiling fans that had gotten soaked with water and turned limp so the fan blades where just hanging down almost like a dead flower.

Check out this podcast where the curator of the department of photographs talks with Robert Polidori about his photos.


2732 Orleans Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana, September 2005
Robert Polidori
more

The feeling in the New Orleans photos is very similar to the Pripyat and Chernobyl photos also by Robert Polidori.


Classroom in Kindergarten #7, "Golden Key." Pripyat. (June 6-9, 2001)
Robert Polidori
more


Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl
After the Flood

Fashion Show at the MFA

Hill Holiday is doing a bit of work for the upcoming special exhibit at the mfa. They're going to be showing this season's Paris collection at the museum. It's part of an effort to change the public's perception of the museum. I'll post more on their rebranding/repositioning efforts soon.


Fashion Show: Paris Collections 2006

The show seems like it'll be pretty cool, although I was disappointed to find out that it will only feature 10 dresses.

Either way, I'm really excited about doing more work for them. I'm sure there will be a lot of fun projects.

Verizon Beatbox Mixer

Our boy Mehmet "Memo" Irdel (working for R/GA) wrapped up this site for Verizon a couple of months ago. I've been waiting for him to post it himself but I don't think it's going to happen.

You can mixed videos and music in what Verizon calls a "cutting-edge cross between a music video, video game, and a drum machine."


Check it out!

Coach of the Year

We've been working on this site over at Hill Holiday for Liberty Mutual. Liberty's new campaign is based on responsibility and as part of that they've created a Coach of the Year award to honor the college football coach who show's the most integrity on and off the field.



The initial concept for the site was quite cinematic, very raw, back to basics site in all black and white with high contrast photos all from the coach's point of view, featuring a lot of sound design. It was designed to create an emotional connection with the user. Something that would be more of an experience and have more atmosphere then your average website.

We really wanted to do something that was more an embodiment of a college football coach and what the award stood for then a product website so that we could give some credibility to the award. Unfortunately we had to back away from this concept largely due to the fact that SEO (search engine optimization) was very important to them.

We've ended up with a good compromise. We've used flash elements throughout the site to add flavor and we've kept the rough and tough no nonsense feeling.

We'll continue to tighten up the site and add to it as the we progress through the different stages of the award.
I'll post again when the next major update is live.

Also as part of Liberty's "Responsibility. What's your policy." campaign we've created a survey site where each week we ask a question on the topic of responsibility. The site's not going to win any awards but it's proven to be pretty popular and there has been a lot of feedback.

The Dwell Homes by Empyrean at DWR

I know we've talked about going to a few of these recently but we never end up going... I'm really interested in this one so I'll be there for sure. I even put it in the calendar!

-----

In 2003, inspired by the success of the Case Study Houses, Dwell magazine sponsored a competition for architects to conceive an innovative modern home that embraces the economic and aesthetic advantages of prefabricated construction. The enthusiastic response to their prefab project has resulted in a partnership with architecture firm Empyrean International to produce a series of these innovative modern designs: the Dwell Homes by Empyrean. Join DWR for an evening of discussion about these homes. Joel Turkel, the architect of the Dwell/Empyrean Next House, will give a presentation on the project. An associate professor of architecture at MIT, Turkel is also on the staff of Empyrean. Refreshments will be served.

RSVP to cambridge@dwr.com by October 9.

Empyrean and the Dwell Homes
Wednesday, October 11, 7–9pm
DWR Cambridge Studio
1030 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Directions: http://www.dwr.com/cambridge.cfm

-----

you can get some more info and photos here: thedwellhomesbyempyrean.com

Effects Breakdown for "Spotless Mind"

Check out this featurette from Buzz image showing how they build some of the special effects scenes in Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind.



I didn't realize she was missing a leg until they highlighted "removed leg" on the scene.

link from Motionographer

MK12 Reel

I hadn't checked out the MK12 site in a while... thought I'd share their latest reel.


click for video

Microsoft Pricing Scheme

I was doing a little reading about the Microsofts Zune music player and the price scheme and it's just amazing.

They've devised a points system through which you buy music from them.

Songs cost 79 points... not 79 cents. 79 points is equal to about 99 cents. But it sounds cheaper....
It gets better. You can't just buy any arbitrary amount of points, like for example the exact amount you actually need. That would start to make sense.

You can purchase points in denominations of $5 for 400 points, $15 for 1,200, $25 for 2,000 and $50 for 4,000.

So if I wanted to buy just one song, I'd have to put in $5 for 400 points and if I wanted to buy an album (about 800 points) I'd have to buy 1,200 points or $15.

Carl Howe writing for Blackfriars' Marketing writes something along the lines of: If Microsoft spent as much time developing a great piece of hardware as they did hatching this pricing scheme they might actually have something.

For the exact quote and the rest of the article check out the Blackfriars' Marketing blog