Fluidesign Blog

These are my new friends. I am a sucker for vintage ephemera disguised as “inspiration.” Really I just like old things. Aren’t they so cute, all together?

By Andrew Bush, via a lovely little designer’s blog, pretty.pretty.paper. There is a huge page full of these beauties on Andrew Bush’s site.

I don’t know much about the publication, but I really enjoy the well-designed layout and type in NewWork Magazine. The site even offers scans of the issues and neatly organized them into sleekly scrolling pages. It was disappointing to find no zooming function, since I wanted to see the fine (and probably finely kerned) type.

But then I realized even that wouldn’t solve this problem, something that has defined the web design industry. We’re limited to a screen that simply won’t allow the type of freedom a large-format paper does. To compensate, we have scrollbars and zoom. But the experience is different. I’m still looking at the composition in the browser window that’s in another frame, the operating system. Plus, I would never interact in the same unreserved way with a pricy piece of printed glossy paper as I would with a blog. I don’t have an answer or a solution, but I’m sure that just as much as web has impacted print, print will do the same to the web. After all, there is such a variety of great print design. It probably also relates to the medium itself, the web is still young compared to print. I’m confident web design will one day be more original than print design, partially because I like working under constraints, including large format.

Being that tomorrow is the official first day of summer and longest day of the year, here’s something to inspire your weekend out of doors, if you’re a girl that is.

Tim Walker at the London Design Museum. Prints and books of his beautiful fashion photography are available here.

Dropclock is a motion screensaver that expresses every minute of real time with heavy helvetica numbers dropping into water in super slow-motion.

Art Direction / Design : Yugo Nakamura
Film Direction / Edit : Erica Sakai

How come some brands are more loveable than other brands? Perhaps because some brands facilitate an easy way to get all intimate, emotional, and passionate with them.

Take these two interactive, immersive, game experiences involving a very intimate act, kissing.

Here at the Happiness Factory, you get to control some ridiculously adorable puppy creatures on their adventure path, to ultimately win each level by kissing the gold at the end of the rainbow, in this case the bottle of coke. The whole experience is awesome, try it out here. Let me know if you can taste the coca-cola, k?

(Shift Control won the Webby for this one.)

Mentos came up with a pretty clever fight game concept where you have to out kiss your component. I’d say there’s a place in everyone’s heart for a well played passionate kiss fight. You can try it out here.

(Props to BBH.)

Check out the Feltron Annual Report. This last one is a visualization of designer Nicholas Felton’s life last year.

As sites like lastfm.com, mint.com, twitter.com, etc. record and graph our life’s minutes, we will begin to see everything getting aggregated, spewing out reports on us and the world amongst us.

This pretty song just feels like a weekend roadtrip with the windows down. Despite feeling like my head is incased in a jelly-like concrete substance (read: i am sick, ugh), this video makes me excited for the weekend, for the end of may (get out of here already spring!) and finally SUMMER.

Take a looksie

Even if I’m a developer, I like art. Particularly Pop Art, Surrealism, and impossible structure from M. C. Escher.

These paintings are great. But for us, living behind a computer screen, we’d like to see animation and arts in many different ways.

This morning I discovered 3 videos that I’d like to share with you.

First, a 3D exploration of Guernica, Picasso’s painting:

Then, a short film animating a character from Guernica in other artists’ paintings:

Finally, maybe not the most artistic but the funniest:

I like to see these types of videos where old art takes life on screen.

Brand Tags is a site playing off the idea that whatever it is people say a brand is, is what it is. All tags are generated by people like you, so have at it.

For example, here’s what people are saying about Nike.

Check this absolutely stunning live action animation from BLU.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.