SOME RANDOM DUDE

If you have spent any time talking with me, you are probably well aware that I am putting significant time into lowering my environmental footprint. This is a pretty common sentiment nowadays, with everyone taking a different path to achieve their goal. One day, on a walk with my wife after getting a remarkably hot cup of coffee, I took notice of the generic cardboard cup sleeve on my cup. It dawned on me that, along with the cup, there was no reason why a sleeve to insulate your hand had to be disposable. While it is easy to find a non-disposable cup (duh), I have yet to run into a reusable cup sleeve. I soon thought, why the hell not make my own? Then I thought, why not share the template so anyone can make one (hopefully better than mine)?
(more…)cardboard, coffee, coffee sleeve, cup of coffee, cup sleeve, disposable cup, DIY, do it yourself, download, downloadable template, environment, environmental footprint, fabric, insulator, mug, pdf, printable template, real man, real men sew, reusability, reusable, save trees, sewing, sewing template, sustainability template

A couple weeks ago, my wife and I took a drive through San Francisco. With us, we brought two laptops that recorded the drive through their webcams. Using Processing, the webcam video data was analyzed and reinterpreted into abstract visualizations. This project was a test-run of a larger project myself and a few friends are working on, but I thought it would be fun to show you what has been done thus far.

The concept behind this project was to take ordinary scenes from everyday life and turn them into something that would look completely alien, yet familiar enough to have the faintest semblance of normality in order for the viewer to digest what they saw. The data stream was too great for the application to read/analyze/interpret/output in absolute real time, so the videos appear to be sped up due to dropped frames. The size of the objects were based on the brightness in the relative area of the video, the colors of each shape mirrors the general color in that portion of the video. The captures were taken at night which is the reason for the strong contrast and bright colors.
(more…)abstract visualizations, aesthetics, bright colors, data stream, drive, everyday life, laptops, real time, san francisco, video data webcams

A little over a year ago, I wrote on the short-sightedness of the visual style which had been named after the technology it had been associated with - Web 2.0. As predicted, the masses have begun to tire of the current trend. Additionally, designers are beginning to write about their dissatisfaction towards the Web 2.0 visual trend and are proposing alternatives to it. As the visual style attributed Web 2.0 wains, we are inevitably going to see the rise of another all but arbitrary visual style take its place which will be adopted by the design masses without a second thought.
(more…)another style, design, designers, fluff, irrelevant, masses, missing the point, stereotypical, style, superficial, trends, visual elements visual style

Finally, I can write about this. I am going to keep this relatively short today, but I will try to write more in-depth about this project later on. I had the fortune to be the lead on Current TV’s Viewpoints project on design and development. The design and interactive features are pretty simple, but we wanted to make the experience to be have rich motion and subtle stylistic informational cues. The application was built in Actionscript 3 and a lot of the motion design just could not have been done without AS3’s improved performance. There are a lot of pieces that are still to come in for this project, but my hope is people enjoy playing around on Viewpoints and end up leaving webcam opinions of their own. If you do in fact like the design, concept, content or a combination of them all, I would really appreciate you putting out the word to your friends/colleagues about this project - Viewpoints will not work without extensive participation. One easy way to do this would be to add it to your delicious bookmarks.

On a side note, I am in one of the topics, but you will have to look hard.

More to come.actionscript, as3, cues, current, current tv, informational, interactive features, motion design, stylistic, viewpoints project webcam

I have seen this person’s work before and was immediately taken by it. I am truly glad to see this artist get some exposure as his art and its message are extremely relevant in today’s culture. I highly suggest you take a few minutes out of this day to watch the video as well as go to artist’s site.

On a side note, Current TV, the folks who aired this video, just won an Emmy. Congrats to them.art, artist, chris jordan, consumption, current tv, video waste