Lust, Caution

I have seen Ang Lee movies since I was young and, though I could not yet appreciate or understand the emotional intricacies in each of his movies at the time, I always knew he had a mission in mind - a curiousity and sense of eagerness to force viewers to contend with issues around cultural differences and social issues that we may not even realise. He gave us classics (in my book anyway) like "The Wedding Banquet" and Eat Drink Man Woman, and now he is back with Lust, Caution.


The movie is "filled with great beauty and danger, Lust, Caution might end up as the definitive film on pre-Revolution Shanghai, its decadence and brutality, its glamour and hidden debauchery... Highly sexually charged, the film pushes Tang and Leung to their physical and emotional limits as Wang and Yee, and they rise to the challenge: their scenes together are exquisitely shocking." (TIFF)

From New York Movies, Ang Lee said that "each time they have intercourse, it’s like a conversation—and sex is the ultimate body language... Every nuance, each time they have sex, progresses into something different... I feel like I’m doing sister films; Brokeback Mountain was about a kind of lost paradise, and this is more like hell... Only through inflicting pain could he know what she did was real; [w]hen somebody’s in pain and says ‘I love you,’ you don’t know if it’s true. When they scream, you know it’s real... If you had just put them in a missionary position, the scenes could be more comfortable, more sexy, but the contortion of their bodies visually represents what they inflict on each other."

View the trailer here.

Murakami for Kanye

Up until 5 minutes ago, I did not know who Kanye West was. I still would not have known, if I had not read about Takashi Murakami's involvement in his music album project. Murakami headed up the design for the various album covers, which I do think are really quite intriguing:

Manifestos

Everyone has ideas about how the world should be (in terms of design). It molds and shapes our interactions with (designed) objects around. In turn, designers create objects for us to interact with. Reading about the motivation behind designers to do what they do is infinitely interesting to me because it lets me glimpse into their world for a bit and compare my thoughts with theirs. It certainly makes me see things in a different light and forces me to think more thoroughly about any given design issue. Well, if you enjoy reading about these matters as well, here are some excellent and thought-provoking ideas from the most influential designers today.

Jury Duty Stamp

I do realise that jury duty is community service and should feel honoured to be called, but I still hope to never be on a jury panel, especially if the case involves distressing and disturbing details. I have heard of horror stories of people, having sat through gruelling sessions (for months or even years) for horrifying cases, needing therapy and still suffering from nightmares every night. Perhaps because of this that jury duty suffers a terrible reputation. Well, that is exactly what the US Postal Service is out to refute:


With this stamp, the U.S. Postal Service calls attention to the importance of jury service, an essential obligation, shared by all eligible citizens, that is a cornerstone of democracy in the United States. "By showing a diverse group of 12 representative jurors in silhouette, art director Carl T. Herrman and stamp designer Lance Hidy emphasize that, under the U.S. Constitution, the American jury system guarantees citizens the right to a trial by a jury of their peers... [Mary Anne Gibbons - Senior Vice President of the Postal Service - said that] "serving on a jury is an important part of public service to our communities... It is a role that should be taken most seriously. This stamp is an excellent way to highlight its significance." (Yahoo)

While I cannot say I like the gradients in the stamp (I think solid colour would work better, especially in CMYK), I do like the graphical simplicity of the stamp.

“I have always been interested in media that reaches a really broad audience, and postage stamps are a prime example of that... They’ll be collected and lovingly cared for by stamp collectors for decades to come.” (Boston Herald)

I'd take a jury duty stamp anytime over a summon!

Amnesty International Ad

Amnesty International (AI) is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights. Human rights is very much a political issue, and DDB smartly used politicians as subjects for an AI as to great effect!

Fallingwater

The Kauffmann House, or better known as Fallingwater, is one of the most iconic residential houses in the world. It continues to be one of the most studied works today, and rightly so:

"We try to put into that house a sense of unity - of the altogether that makes it a part of the site. If the thing is successful... you can't imagine that house anywhere than right where it is. It is a gracious part of its environment. It graces its environment, rather than disgraces it." (Frank Lloyd Wright)

For those of us who are not lucky enough to go visit and experience Fallingwater firsthand, here is an animated short created by Cristóbal Vila:

Photoshop Branding

With the uproar following CS3 application icons, it is not surprising that the same would happen following the reveal of new Photoshop branding:


However, where I saw merit behind the concept of the CS3 icons (I personally do think they are very effective - once you get used to it), I do not see the idea behind this logo. According to John Nack, "to represent this rich family of products, Adobe is introducing the Photoshop visual logo. This logo will soon appear in all Photoshop-related marketing... The Photoshop logo on a product, service, or technology, represents the rich legacy, technical quality, and attention to detail that has made Photoshop the gold standard in digital imaging." I think this logo , while graphically strong, does not represent Photoshop well at all. It is stylistically different from the direction that Adobe seemed to be striving for with CS3. However, I do believe that this could be so because Adobe is now targeting the mass market (especially with Photoshop Elements) instead of the select group of professionals. What do you think?

How Luxury Lost Its Luster

I absolutely adore the cover for this book by Dana Thomas titled How Luxury Lost Its Luster:


The sculpture is a creation of Tom Sachs; the font choice conveys the idea accurately and wonderfully. A title like this is intriguing enough, but I think the artwork really works to pulls you in. Well, it pulled me in enough to read the synopsis anyway:

From Amazon, "Telling the story through characters like the French mogul Bernard Arnault, she details how the perfection of old-time manufacturing, still seen in Hermès handbags, has bowed to sweatshops and wild profits on mediocre merchandise. After a brisk history of luxury, Thomas shows why handbags and perfume are as susceptible to globalization and corporate greed as less rarefied industries. She follows the overarching story, parts of which are familiar, from boardrooms to street markets that unload millions in counterfeit goods, dropping irresistible details like a Japanese monk obsessed with Comme des Garçons."

I just might get the book!

Symphony in Red

I was completely floored speechless when I saw this advertisement, created by Jung von Matt, for Konzerthaus Dortmund titled "Symphony in Red". The (technical and emotional) execution is flawless: beautiful surrealist imagery with amazingly enthralling music by Fazil Say combine to create a truly exquisite advertisement!

Hand-Built School

Sometimes (and, unfortunately, not often enough) design can come about out of pure love. It is this love that makes the work and end result much more meaningful. And every time I hear of a project like this, it reinstates my confidence in design as having the ability to help better lives of others out of genuine interest. So it is no surprise that this project in Bangladesh was really heart-warming:


Modern Education and Training Institute (METI) in Rudrapur, Bangladesh, was hand-built in four months by the local community and volunteer architects from Germany (Anna Heringer) and Austria (Eike Roswag), using easily available local materials to create a new model for school construction that is beautiful, simple and humane. From AR, "this school is built using brick, loam, straw, bamboo and rope, plus some steel pins. Refining the local technique of using very wet loam to build walls, the school has a brick foundation, a damp proof course, and walls made of a mixture of loam and straw, the latter acting as a form of reinforcement. The loam and straw are combined by getting cows and water buffalo to tread them in."


"The ceiling and first floor are constructed using bamboo as the chief material. Three layers of bamboo sticks, bamboo boards and an earth filling make the surface of the floor. The upper walls and roof comprise a frame construction using four layers of joined bamboo sticks, and vertical and diagonal poles; steel pins are fixed with nylon lashing from the junction of the sticks (a modified form of traditional local lashing was used). The inventive architecture, allied to traditional materials, ...is clement, spacious and colourful. The architects sums it up thus: 'Comfort, durability and style as teaser – sustainability as concept'. It is the only two-storey building in the neighbourhood, and [they] hope that the principles that inform the school design may be replicated in relation to housing development, escaping the apparent tyranny of the earth hut."

Soop Plate

While looking around for resources on food design for my earlier post, I stumbled across a plate that outright encourages diners to play with their food:


Created by Soop Design, "Plate is for Pea" is created to "ping peas off your plate". It also allows you to " attempt tricks from an accompanying booklet and score as many points by flicking, rolling or even spitting peas into the numbered dimples."


I think I would have eaten my peas if my mother put them on this plate...

The World Without Us

Have you ever wondered what human effects are on Earth? John Blatchford says that "we are bringing about one of the biggest ‘mass-extinctions’ there has ever been. We destroy and pollute habitats, introduce alien species into established ecosystems, and are warming the planet faster than it has ever been warmed before."

So what would happen if the world was to exist without us? Alan Weisman had the exact same question. And he attempted to answer it:


In his book, "Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; what of our everyday stuff may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left... The World Without Us reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York's subways would start eroding the city's foundations, and how, as the world’s cities crumble, asphalt jungles give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically-treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us."

A truly fascinating take on what Earth could be like without us. Do check out the short animation of he vision.

Food Design

I used to dislike meal times when I was really young because I never really had any appetite. I did not like green vegetables (I only ate carrots, cabbages and cauliflowers), and I didn't care much for rice - a staple in every Asian diet. As a result, I would often play with my food, shaping mounds of rice into plateaus and sticking cauliflower florets randomly to create my very own gastronomic topography. Occasionally, I would even spoon some soup over to create rivers. That was fun for me, frustrating for my mother. While I no longer treat my food as plasticine, I still find it infinitely fun to see other food creations:


From useful + agreeable, Marti Guixe "believes that the most compelling, and neglected area of design is food. [He] maintains that most food is nostalgic and kitschy, not appropriate for the contemporary age. French fries and potato chips pretend they are made by hand and expensive restaurants typically engage in intensive time-consuming craftsmanship which is the equivalent of building construction without modern machinery. [Therefore] food is one area which has been largely untouched by modernity and Modernism."


"Solving the eternal question of what to do with a half finished sucker, Guixe has designed a three-prong stand-up version for Chupa-Chups, [as pictured above]. Taking sucker innovation a step further, Guixe decided to insert an orange seed inside an orange flavored candy. After the sucker is done, the seed is planted and the sticks are used for support of the new orange plant."


He also has some extremely bizarre ideas about food. One concept is Pharma-food - a system of eating through breathing. "We are constantly ingesting microparticles that are suspended in the air we breathe, such as the dust in our home. Pharma-food converts this into a new form of nourishment by spraying food particles into a controlled area. We inhale the particles which then combine with saliva to travel to our stomachs."

More of his fascinating food work here.

2058 Colours

While I do not deal with printed matters on a daily basis, I can certainly appreciate adding more colours to the standard PMS colours, which is exactly what Pantone has done by introducing Pantone Goe:


"Pantone Goe provides 2,058 colors arranged in an intuitive chromatic-like arrangement for simple, precise cross-media color specification. This System was developed for use by printers, designers, publishers, packagers, Web designers and pre-press providers, and will fill the needs of many other core users of Pantone Products that span the retail, manufacturing, government and education sectors", according to the Pantone Goe Whitepaper.

"The Pantone Goe System is not intended to replace the existing Pantone Matching System (PMS). Instead, with the addition of the Pantone Goe Library and its supporting publications, it will add a whole new dimension of spot color possibilities... [It] integrates with the original Pantone Matching System with which designers are intimately familiar. Some of the colors that reside in the Pantone Matching System (approximately 40%) are also in the new system but named with a Goe number."

With this, Pantone is also releasing myPantone palettes software:


This widget-like interactive color workspace is intended for colour selection and palette creation. Once you have a palette, you can also share it on a forthcoming myPantone website, which sounds an awful lot like ColourLovers.

Ad Hilarity

Hilarious concept + amazing art direction = memorable ad.

Created by Ogilvy Singapore:

Design for Needle Disposal

Granted, there are some issues in the Canadian health care system, but I still feel immensely lucky to have a system that is better than many other countries. I remember standard vaccination shots (I was too young to actually wonder what they were for - all I was concerned with at the time was the impending pain) were performed in primary school back in the country I came from. However, needles were shared among students. Each needle was used for 3 students. In comparison, the use disposable needles have been mandatory in Canada since the 60's, I have been told. Well, needle sharing is, very obviously, highly dangerous. In fact, according to the most recent information released by the World Health Organization, "some 16 billion injections are administered throughout the world annually. In 2005, contaminated needles led to 260,000 HIV infections, 1.3 million early deaths, and 23 million cases of hepatitis. WHO researchers estimate that as many as 50% of injections in developing countries might be unsafe." Fortunately, I am OK...

Anyway, it is this fact, along with a personal childhood ordeal she endured, that drove industrial designer Hân Pham to create the Antivirus:


From BusinessWeek, "Antivirus is a lightweight plastic cap that fastens to any metal soft drink or beer can, which medics can use to remove and sequester dangerous syringes. A system built into the cap dislocates the needles into containers; the design allows doctors and nurses working in harried conditions or developing countries to dispose of used needles easily and safely. The straightforward concept transforms a ubiquitous piece of trash into a potentially life-saving device."


Antivirus also improves on common isolation methods for used needles. The "safety boxes" currently used by the World Health Organization and UNICEF are essentially cardboard containers, which hold 100 needles and cost $1.60 to $2 a piece. But the boxes can easily be opened if improperly discarded. Pham adds that "[t]he boxes protect health-care staff, [b]ut once they've been put in a landfill, people—especially children—can be susceptible to infection." This would happen most commonly in developing nations, where its citizens can potentially come into contact with life-threatening waste while scavenging for food scraps.

"The cap's yellow color is a nearly universal indicator of biohazardous waste, and the thick, large overhang on its edges protects users' hands from being stuck by the needles being discarded, as well as preventing liquid splashback. Made in collaboration with SP-Moulding, a plastics molding company in Juelsminde, Denmark, the cap is designed to be disposed of with the can, eliminating another danger to handlers. And even small children's fingers cannot pass through the opening meant for needle tips."

UN Stamp

The United Nations Postal Administration (UNPA), the Universal Postal Union and Swiss Post has just issued four stamps to raise awareness of the importance of humanitarian mail in times of natural catastrophes or conflicts:


The stamps all share a common design – a letter carrier holding a letter in one hand as he floats over a sea of hands reaching for the letter. From Universal Postal Union, Robert Gray, head of UNPA's New York Office, said that "[t]he design symbolizes the UN's and the UPU's commitment to delivering food, aid, material and mail to the victims of natural disasters or armed conflicts. In certain cases, humanitarian mail enables people to find lost relatives and serves as a communication link when other communication means have been destroyed or have broken down."


Edouard Dayan, UPU Director General, added that "[t]he UPU... fully assumes its role when any of its member countries are devastated by natural catastrophes, pandemics or even armed conflicts. The postal operators of many countries often make their logistical know-how and competencies available to humanitarian structures, NGOs and UN funds and agencies."


"The range of areas in which mail is used to provide humanitarian support is wide and varied. After a devastating tsunami hit South Asia in 2004, postal operators delivered millions of donations to aid organizations and in the affected areas used their trucks and facilities to distribute and store humanitarian aid arriving from all over the world."

All the stamps were designed by Rorie Katz, senior graphic designer at the UNPA.

Hospital Design

Have you ever wondered why the word 'hospital' sounds so much like 'hospitable', yet hospitals are known more for its hostility than its hospitability? Bleached bedding, hard mattresses, whitewashed walls, pungent chlorine odour, indifferent demeanour from the staff, and bland packaged food. It is inhospitable for both the patients and their visitors. Surely a place for, literally, life and death must be more welcoming and caring of the emotional chaos that goes on every single hour? Perhaps it is this very cold sterile environment that causes the doctors and patients to programmatically utter "I'm sorry" or "Congratulations" without really meaning any of it when the situation calls for one or the other?

Fortunately, it seems that there is some change happening in the efficiency-driven design of hospitals evident in hospitals like the Intermountain Medical Centre in Salt Lake City, Utah.


According to Salt Lake Tribune, " the health care industry has realized the provision of care is not just in the science of medicine, but that you have to care for the whole being... Studies have shown exposure to real or simulated nature scenes can quickly relieve stress and boost comfort levels, reducing factors such as blood pressure... One study [even] found patients recovering from abdominal surgery who had a bed-side view of trees took fewer pain pills than those whose rooms overlooked a brick wall... Patients with brightly lit rooms report less stress, take fewer analgesic medications and leave the hospital more quickly."


"The newborn intensive care unit's four suites were decorated to reduce stress with natural themes of a farm, cherry tree, sky and pond. The campus also includes a walking path along Little Cottonwood Creek, two water fountains and four gardens. One is a labyrinth outside the heart and lung center. According to Intermountain Healthcare, such focused walking can lower blood pressure and reduce chronic pain and insomnia. Patients may also be surprised to find themselves walking on carpet in many places instead of linoleum, including in the main floor of the thoracic intensive care unit, usually the most sterile of places... The carpet is anti-microbial, so it is just as clean as hard surfaces like vinyl. It also reduces noise, a key factor in tamping down stress."

Wedding

Kevin and Chelsea, two good friends of mine are getting married in a few hours.

Ad Memorability

Here is yet another advertisement that I think works wonderfully. The concept is by no means unique (I have seen a few other ones along a similar vein) but there is a certain appealability to it that other lack, and it works towards the cause of the campaign. The ad is created by JWT:

RIP

Luciano Pavarotti, one of the greatest voices of this century, has passed away:

Green Structure

Telecommunication sites may be made into landmarks, but they are rarely architectural wonders. Someone (probably a structural engineer) must have designed them but, being landmarks, should they not at least be aesthetically pleasing? And a bonus if the structure is green? Well, Ericsson has just unveiled an innovative radio base station site concept designed by Thomas Sandell that is not only better for the environment, but also more cost-efficient to adopt and run, and much more attractive to look at:


From Financial News, Ulf Ewaldsson, Vice President and Head of Product Area Radio, says that "[t]he appearance of radio base station sites has not really been considered before. They have essentially been a steel tower and a container surrounded by a chain-link fence. With this new approach, we not only create a more attractive look for this essential piece of community architecture, but we have also developed a design that is better for the environment and more cost-efficient to run."


From the Ericsson Tower Tube campaign, "[t]he innovative design... represents a radical departure from conventional lattice or tubular steel structures... The ability to construct the tower using different colors, textures and shapes further supports its introduction across a wide variety of landscapes – both rural and urban. The slim design (about 5m in diameter) leaves a smaller footprint, reducing the need for land... [T]he modular concrete construction allows rapid and cost-effective deployment. Feeders are no longer required. All equipment is safely encapsulated at the top of the tower so very low feeder loss is experienced, increasing the network’s coverage and capacity. It also reduces the need for cooling, thereby boosting energy efficiency and simultaneously reducing operator running costs."

"The concrete used in the construction employs post-tension reinforcement technology. This allows for thin but robust walls to be constructed, substantially lowering the amount of carbon dioxide in the manufacturing process and further minimizing overall environmental impacts."

To read more about the project, and to view a few video clips of the design, please go to Ericsson Tower Tube.

Experiential Advertising

On the busy streets of downtown Vancouver are reminders for pedestrians to look both ways before crossing. A smart, functional design because people tend to look towards the ground most of the time (probably to avoid looking at others, or at homeless people). So, of course, this being golden real-estate for advertising purposes, I have also seen numerous advertisements on the floors leading to the skytrain stations. Unfortunately, many of these advertisements are not very memorable. Well, I did come across one today, created by J. Walter Thompson for Ford:

New iPods

For about an hour, the office was abuzz with talk of the Apple event this morning. My colleagues were frantically clicking the refresh button on their browser for every single morsel of information that flows out of Steve Job's mouth. The rumours were true - Steve Jobs unveiled new versions of the entire iPod lineup, which fits nicely alongside the iPhone. Check out the new iPod touch and a new commercial for the Shuffle on the Apple website. As usual, the design is sleek, sophisticated and oh-so-desirable. I cannot wait to see the new UI:

Capturing a Split Second

Photography is credited with the ability to capture a specific magical moment, to forever remind you of it within the confines of a picture frame. That is certainly true, but I often only think of this in terms of emotional content: the bare revealing stare from the eyes of a subject in a portrait, the quiet beauty of a dewy petal unfurling from the embrace of a flower bud, or the unnervingly calm vacuum right after the terror of destruction. Today, however, I came across a photographer who brought the notion of 'capturing a moment' to a whole new level, at least for me anyway.

From an interview on TMN, Martin Klimas said "In my pictures you see the world through the eye of a high-speed camera. This way of seeing provides for us something that we normally cannot see, this moment of transformation can really only be imagined by us. I provide a way for us to see this action differently. It is an in-between state. A state where rest and motion can exist together. I hope this situation can be applied and give us thought in our everyday world."


"The aspect of destroying is not the most important one in my work. Let’s say it is a catalyst to unleash and study this transformation. The hardest part of my work is to smash so many figurines until I find one that truly is showing me something new. I am in that sense a sculptor, but I have only a 5000th of a second to build my sculpture."

"I drop the figurine from the same height in complete darkness while the lens of the camera is open. When the figurine hits the ground, the sound triggers the lights to go off for a fraction of a second. I do this procedure many times or until I find the one frame that is just right. I keep just one such picture for every figurine. Every attempt yields a unique outcome, so I need to look for the one that best expresses a transformation of the figurine into a new form."

Virgin 1

Sir Richard Branson is probably the most revered figure among entrepreneurs. From Wikipedia, "[his] first successful business venture was at age 16, when he published a magazine called Student. He then set up a record mail-order business in 1970. In 1971, he opened a chain of record stores, now known as Virgin Megastores. With his flamboyant and competitive style, Branson's Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s - as he set up Virgin Atlantic Airways and expanded the Virgin Records music label." Today, he has a whole slew of other brands under the Virgin umbrella. And he is about to add another one: a general entertainment TV channel called Virgin 1 under the Virgin Media branch, set to launch in October.

Take a look at the logo:


From Guardian, Virgin said the logo has been designed around the concept of 'reclaiming red' and aims to cash in on the "colour forever associated with the iconic Virgin brand." Head of marketing at VMtv - Jon King - added that "We hope that our fresh approach to creating the channel identity will spill onto the screen and that we can engage viewers by giving them something that looks amazing but is also witty and a little bit out of the ordinary."

The logo and creative work has been developed as a joint effort between directing partnership Conkerco, affiliated with Academy Films, graphic designer Andrew Fairhurst and in-house resource at VMtv.

WWF Ad

Found another wonderfully memorable advertisement for WWF. Again, no credit information - please leave a comment if you know who created it:

Packaging Water

Have you ever wondered why mineral water is almost always packaged in blue? Why do we associate water with the colour 'blue'? Is water, in fact, blue in colour? From Wikipedia, the answer, in plain English, is that "pure water is [indeed] blue. According to its frequency spectra, water is a very light shade of turquoise blue. It is only when collected in a large body (like oceans, or even swimming pools) that the blue color becomes apparent." Blue is comonly associated with feelings and notions such as "cool, healing, relaxing, restful, openness, expansiveness, fresh, sense of wellbeing and serenity." (from Colour)

It all seems perfectly logical then to package water in blue. However, I often feel that, the plastic and shade of blue used (for the bottle and the product information - usually), negates all feelings of 'healing', 'fresh', and 'sense of wellbeing'. The plastic brings to mind industrial smog and waste; the garish blue seems more fitting for the packaging used to wrap around a blue crayon. I think we have simply grown so accustomed to seeing blue on packaged water that we no longer question 'is it really producing the emotional/psychological associations that a coolly refreshing glass of water is supposed to?' Basking in the warm glow of a restaurant table, platic bottles of water sticks out like a neon sign in a dark alley. Inded, a jarring juxtaposition.

Well, here is one that has reexamined the issue:


Antipodes Water: "Like our water, the thinking behind it is pure and simple. First we wanted to source one of the world's purest waters. It was a mystery to us why much of the bottled water in New Zealand was being shipped in from Europe – one of the most industrialised continents on Earth. In contrast, Antipodes is sourced from one of the least populated countries on Earth and in a place renowned for pure water, Antipodes is rated as the purest."


"It didn't have to stand out on a supermarket shelf, because it would never be on one. We didn't want it to stand out on a restaurant table either - even though it would most certainly be on one. We wanted it to compliment a table setting rather than dominate it. We believe the heroes of the table should be the wine and food, not the water bottle. So we kept the bottle short and fat and we kept it clean and simple. We wanted it to look as pure on the outside as it in fact was on the inside."

I do realise that using glass to bottle water would inflate the final pricing, and that the $1 bottles at your convenience store targets a different market, but I really do think that designers need to rethink the concept.