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New Yorker Cover Art, Painted with iPhone

Some people send text with their iPhones, and some play games. The artist Jorge Colombo created this week’s cover for The New Yorker with his.

Mr. Colombo drew the June 1 cover scene, of a late-night gathering around a 42nd Street hot dog stand, entirely with the iPhone application Brushes. Because of the smears and washes of color required by the inexact medium, it comes off as dreamy, not sharp and technological.

“The best feature of it is that it doesn’t feel like something that was done digitally; quite the opposite,” said Françoise Mouly, the art editor for The New Yorker. “All too often the technology is directed in only one direction, which is to make things more tight, and this, what he did very well, is use this technology for something that is free flowing, and I think that’s what makes it so poetic and magical.”

Mr. Colombo bought his iPhone in February, and the $4.99 Brushes application soon after, and said the portability and accessibility of the medium appealed to him. He began the scene by beginning with the buildings’ structure, then layering on the taxis, neon lights, hot-dog stand and people. (A video of the process is available at newyorker.com beginning on Monday.)

It “made it easy for me to sketch without having to carry all my pens and brushes and notepads with me, and I like the fact that I am drawing with a set of tools that anybody can have easily in their pocket,” he said. There is one other advantage of the phone, too: no one notices he is drawing. Mr. Colombo said he stood on 42nd Street for about an hour with no interruptions.

“It gives him an anonymity in the big city that an artist with the easel wouldn’t have,” Ms. Mouly said.

“Absolutely nobody can tell I am drawing,” Mr. Colombo said. “In fact, once I was doing the drawing at some place, and my wife was around, and they asked her why did I have to work so hard? I seemed to be always on my iPhone sending messages.” STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

From Business Week

It's amazing that the technology can do everything including drawing something looks not that digital. While mote technology come into people's daily life, the device tend to become more and more "natural", more close to the original way, more close to human's heart.

Ppt

View more presentations from halacharlene.

Ernesto Neto at the Armory

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/05/12/arts/10090512_NETO_SLIDESHOW_index.html

Cool Exhibition! Experience the the art by walk through it, smell it, feel it, Interact with it.

Interactive website

Hermes

I really love this website so much, I can play with it for several hours whenever I get on this site. The visual site really got my attention and makes me want to look more of their exciting products.

Great Data Visualization of Swine Flu From The New York Times

From Businessweek

Good present. That communicates!

Good example of good design can make people get the information in just a few seconds.

Luxury vs. premium

from Seth Godin's blog

Luxury goods are needlessly expensive. By needlessly, I mean that the price is not related to performance. The price is related to scarcity, brand and storytelling. Luxury goods are organized waste. They say, "I can afford to spend money without regard for intrinsic value."

That doesn't mean they are senseless expenditures. Sending a signal is valuable if that signal is important to you.

Premium goods, on the other hand, are expensive variants of commodity goods. Pay more, get more. Figure skates made from kangaroo hide, for example, are premium. The spectators don't know what they're made out of, but some skaters believe they get better performance. They're happy to pay more because they believe they get more.

A $20,000 gown is not a premium product. It's not better made, it won't hold up longer, it's not waterproof or foldable. It's just artificially scarce. A custom-made suit, on the other hand, might be worth the money, especially if you're Wilt Chamberlain.

Plenty of brands are in trouble right now because they're not sure which one they represent.

The comparison of these two is interesting. It's true that the brand should have their own position, and identification. Once they figure out the position of their product, then can do more successful strategy of marketing.

Future Food

FOOD takes a provocative and unconventional look at areas that could have a profound effect on the way we eat and source our food 15-20 years from now.

 

These investigations, like other probe projects, examine the possible consequences of various (long-range) social trends and 'weak signals' emerging from the margins of society. In the case of food, this involved tracking and interpreting issues like the shift in emphasis from curative to preventative medicine, the growth in popularity of organic produce, implications of genetic modification, land use patterns in growing what we eat, the threat of serious shortages, and rising food prices. The result was an extension to Philips Design's ongoing design probes program with three new projects; Diagnostic Kitchen, Food Creation and Home Farming.

 

• Diagnostic Kitchen, allows people to take a much more accurate and personally relevant look at what they eat. By using the nutrition monitor, consisting of a scanning ‘wand’ and swallowable sensor, you could determine exactly what and how much you should eat to match your digestive health and nutritional requirements at that moment in time.
• Food Creation has been inspired by the so-called 'molecular gastronomists.' These chefs deconstruct food and then reassemble it in completely different ways. The food printer, which would essentially accept various edible ingredients and then combine and ‘print’ them in the desired shape and consistency, in much the same way as stereolithographic printers create 3-D representations of product concepts.
• Home Farming explores growing at least part of your daily calorific requirement inside your house. This biosphere home farm has been designed to occupy a minimum of floor space and instead to stack the various mini-ecosystems on top of each other. It contains fish, crustaceans, algae and edible plants, all interdependent and in balance with each other. Water filtration, recycling of nutrients and optimum use of sunlight are all central to its appeal.
  From Pantopicon
  
  
  
  
  This blog reminds me of the project I did in the Digital Design class. Food could be creative and conceptual in the future too. The benefit from design of food may extend people's lifetime cause the controllable food and easier way to get the food. We'll see how it goes in 20 years. 

Business Card Hacks

Business Card Hacks from Core 77
Those are the good design that have sustainability and green ideas. Reuse the waste and give it a new life could be the trend of design. It's another cool idea for marketing too, as long as the business card has another function, people might keep it longer and more remember the company.