When designing, it’s very easy to get stuck on a specific direction or style. I often find myself “working” on a project, but end up just going in circles and not making any real progress. In most cases I find that the more I work on a design, the more I tend to overwork and over think it. It’s easy to get wrapped up the fine details without looking at the design as a whole and considering all of the options.
The best advice I ever heard, though it may seem obvious, is to “sleep on it.” It’s amazing what can happen when you step away from the sketchbook and computer and give it a good night’s rest. Unfortunately it doesn’t magically work itself out while you’re gone, but it does allow you to approach the design with a fresh perspective which often triggers new ideas and concepts. So if you’re ever stuck on a design, illustration, or any type of creative project, drop the pencil and mouse, take a break, and sleep on it.
Just got back from a great week at the beach with my family. While most people prefer to just sit around and soak up the sun, I’m usually busy attempting some type of crazy sand sculpture. I’m certainly no sculpting pro, but I always enjoy the challenge.
Being a typography geek, I thought it only fitting to create an “amper-sand” out of actual sand.
Forget sand castles, we decided to create a gigantic foot that ended up being about 12ft long! We got plenty of laughs and strange looks from the people walking by.
There’s something fascinating about the temporary nature of sand sculptures. Though they do take a lot of time and effort to create, it’s also fun to watch the tide come in and wash them away in only a matter of seconds. It takes the pressure off of getting every little detail perfect since the creations only exist for a brief period of time.
Awesome opening titles for the Typophile Film Festival created by BYU design students. The thing that makes this animation even better is that everything in the film is real and there was no CG used. Sure this could have been produced digitally with lots of special effects, but there is something about using real materials and photography that cannot be replicated. The way the materials react with each other and the slight imperfections of the objects all add to the rich viewing experience. Looks like it would have been a ton of fun to work on as well. Read the full story here.
Awesome work by photographer Bela Borsodi. By combining everyday objects and precise angles, he creates visually stunning compositions that form giant letterforms. My personal favorite is definitely that uppercase ‘A’ in the first photo below.
Rhett Dashwood spent some time using Google Maps not to get directions, but to spot letter forms throughout his home state of Victoria, Australia. Such a clever idea!
A few years ago I discovered a company called Nooka and was immediately drawn to their minimal design and unique methods of displaying time. The traditional way of reading time using the big hand and small hand has been around for ages and I never really questioned it until I found Nooka. The different systems that Nooka uses to display time are not only more intuitive, but also visually stunning. The simplicity, clean lines, and beautiful construction is all combined into an amazing product that is much more than just a timepiece.
I received my first Nooka watch (zot al nt pictured below) in the mail today along with a collectible NookaNooka and couldn’t be happier. I am looking forward to more great products from Nooka in the future.
Some really interesting work by Savas Ozay, a designer and illustrator from Istanbul, Turkey. I like his use of geometric forms and clean type treatments mixed with bold colors. My favorite piece of Savas’s is the Playing Cards. I’ve always thought it would be fun challenge to design a deck of playing cards in a purely typographic style, and as you can see below Savas has done this quite successfully.
“The striking, cracked trees, 14 in all, are situated throughout the library building and are installed vertically, flush to the floor and ceiling to resemble supporting, structural pillars. Each tree is, in fact, a real oak trunk and displays carved passages of text from literature within the library, the typeface of each passage chosen carefully to suit the nature of the text – which is where Why Not Associates comes in.”
Interesting 3d clothing design by Mashallah Design that was created by scanning human bodies and then using the data to create sewing patterns. I like the idea that the clothing is no longer meant to be wearable, but is rather to be viewed as beautiful sculpted works of art.
Here’s the technical explanation:
Three people are portrayed digitally by scanning their bodies. The output of this scan is a 3d file, which resolution is defiend by the amount of polygons, similiar to pixels in a bitmap graphic. The 3d data is turned into 2d sewing patterns by the use of the unfolding function which is a common tool in industrial design process to make paper models with, the single fabric pieces and the inner interface which defines the edges are cut out by the help of a laser cutter.
