Fluidesign is an award-winning interactive design agency based in Santa Monica, California. Visit fluidesign.com to check out our portfolio of hyper-text and pixel magic.
I recently discovered Triple Canopy, an online arts magazine that involves a collaboration of different types of artists and writers sharing their perspectives on current social issues. The site itself is quite nicely designed. The intuitive interface almost makes users feel as if they’re flipping through a printed magazine—hitting the arrow key to go to the next screen feels just about as natural as turning a page.
The third issue is now completely live and is a tribute to the city of New Orleans and its residents, commemorating the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The issue reaches viewers on multiple sensory levels and has a powerful impact.
The issue begins with a short introduction that talks about the symbolism of the tragic event. It goes on to include artwork by Rudolph Radlinger and Roy Ferdinand, both local New Orleans artists. Also featured, is photographer Will Steacy, who spent time in the city during the year after the storm, taking beautifully disturbing photographs that document its aftermath.
The section titled Homemade Memorials introduces an ongoing sculpture project that memorializes desecrated, destroyed, and forgotten buildings using photographs that readers have submitted. I’ll be interested to see the future pieces that result from this project. This issue also includes a directory listing various community projects, organizations, and other ventures in New Orleans, as well as virtual tour through NOLA’s Ninth Ward. This article points out how isolated the region has become and how its devastation has, sadly, become a spectacle for tourists.
I found the audio portraits of struggling Ninth Ward residents to be particularly moving. There’s something about hearing stories of people’s experiences told from their own mouths that makes the reality of the tragedy hit home.
Shorpy is a blog about old photos and what life a hundred years ago was like: How people looked and what they did for a living, back when not having a job usually meant not eating.
Get lost in time perusing these magnificent images depicting life in the first half of the 20th century. Pictured above is Thomas Burgess.
In 1911 Thomas W. Burgess was the second man to swim the English Channel. It took him 22 hours and 35 minutes. It’s not clear if this photo is from that event, but he’s definitely not dressed for recreational swimming. Burgess also swam for Great Britain in the 1900 Summer Olympics. George Grantham Bain Collection.
I’ve been there on Saturday and I really enjoyed it. Check it out…
This Side of Paradise: Body and Landscape in L.A. Photographs
June 14, 2008 – Sept. 15, 2008
Library West Hall and Boone Gallery
“Contrary to popular belief, Los Angeles does not defy description so much as provoke it. Literary representations of an “earthly paradise,” a “city of dreadful joy” and, more recently, a “city of quartz” are among the best known in a seemingly endless stream of identifiers. Over the past 150 years, potent relationships between glamour and catastrophe, sunshine and noir, have fascinated photographers trying to explain an elusive Los Angeles…” more information
This is just the trailer and I didn’t see the movie yet… but I’m quite sure it must be obviously interesting.
Especially after I’ve seen their exhibition 2 years ago in the north of France and after I’ve seen Geoff McFetridge exhibition at the Red Cat a few months ago.
Their pictures looks like layout to me : a calculated front or profile angle provide a clear and objective documentation of each structure. 40 years of archiving different kind of anonymous architecture…
Next to B&H Becher, there is August Sander’s pictures.
He also made something like 30 years of archiving, showing German people of the beginning of the XXth century.
Sometimes it pays off big time to troll blogger for interesting ideas/projects/people/inspiration. Usually you wind up clicking through blogs written by a passionate brasilian soccer fan, a family who home schools their children, another family who just likes their children, something in russian you can’t understand, etc. BUT I recently struck blogger gold.
Camaras Fotograficas is a super neat gallery of cameras made from non-camera material. Obviously we are way pro-technology here at fluidesign, but it’s nice to take a break and appreciate things made by hand, (when that hand is not attached to a wacom tablet or mouse), from time to time.
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.
