Category Archives: Design

Coming up: Illustrative Berlin

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Image by Bozka

For the 6th time, Berlin will see a festival of illustration art, called “Illustrative”.
From the 31st of August until the 8th of September, 2013, numerous leading illustrators, graphic artists and collectives from all over the world will be shown in a central exhibition in the heart of Berlin. The range is from the established illustration art to the latest generation of young artist; from painting, drawing, installations, papercraft, book art and animation. This year’s focus will be on Polish artists especially.

I can recommend the Illustrative as an inspiring place to see some really good graphical work and meet interesting people.

Venue:
Direktorenhaus Berlin
Am Krögel 2,
10179 Berlin-Mitte

Find out more at the Illustrative Website.

Top Image by Bozka

Giordano Poloni - House in Kobe

Sigrid Calon - Vrij

Seb Jarnot - coll-egarement

MR-808: When digital goes analog and back

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How cool is that?! Here is a “real” drum machine inspired by the legendary TR-808. A “drum robot” which consists of a complete drum set built in a big box, with each instrument being triggered by Midi. So, what started to be the first digital drum becomes analog and goes back in the digital loop. Hard to understand? Watch this video.

MR-808 – mechanic drum robot from Sonic Robots on Vimeo.

Moritz Simon Geist who built this says “… we are the first ones to transfer the electronic sounds of the most influential electronic drum computer TR-808 into the real world and make it highly playable for a musician! The idea behind the installation is to highlight the origin of the sounds in a way no conventional media of electronic music production is usually able to… We mainly used motors and solenoids as actuators, which are triggered by a power electronic device and an Arduino. The musical control is realized with MIDI, the latency and the lighting control system are implemented in MAX / MSP.”

Find out more about the background and its nerdy technical features

But that’s not all! There is also a band, “Science Fiction Children” who sound a bit like The Rapture or Bodi Bill, check out their hit “Rise of the toys”

Rise of the Toys – Science Fiction Children from david campesino on Vimeo.

Microsoft Innov8

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Microsoft Innov8 BerlinVor ein paar Wochen war ich auf der “Innov8”, einer Art Jam Session für Design und Innovation, ausgerichtet von Microsoft. Inspiriert vom Metro-Design sollte in kleinen Gruppen über Innovationen diskutiert werden, ich war Experte und Schirmherr für das Thema Kommunikation.

Die Herausforderung einen so breiten Komplex in so kurzer Zeit zu behandeln, nahmen wir und ich hatte viel Spaß in meiner Gruppe, die aus Designern, Unternehmern und Studenten bestand. Einig waren wir uns darüber, dass Design und auch das Grundsetup von Geräten in Zukunft noch viel mehr Filterfunktionen übernehmen wird, um die Informations- und Kommunikationsflut für jeden Einzelnen handhabbar zu machen. Außerdem wurde uns klar, dass sich Kommunikation in der Zukunft auf noch mehr Plattformen und über noch mehr Schnittstellen ziehen wird und konsistente Standards, auch im Design, daher auch für das Zusammenspiel immens wichtig sein wird. Die Macher haben einen schönen kurzen Clip gedreht, der einen guten Eindruck von der Veranstaltung liefert.

The most impressive public display projects

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I have always been interested and fascinated by projections and screens in public space. Not the usual tv in a metro which shows news but visual elements that change the environment and use them as integral part. Back in 2007 I wrote about my friend Frederic Eyl who invented the “parasite”, which can be placed at the outside of a metro wagon and projects on the outside wall so travelers see the visuals from the inside.

In 2001 I was witness to one of the most impressive projects, a whole house as a screen, using single windows with lamps behind as digits! Blinkenlights took place the first time in Berlin at Alexanderplatz, watch a video documentary:

Even more impressive was their work on the French national library in Paris one year later:

Nowadays projection artists and technology is advanced enough to project pictures on buildings which take the specific form into account. Here is project from Hamburg, from last week:

But my current favorite is the opera house in Sidney which folds in the end:

Always looking for more of this kind, do you have any links?

animago award winner 2011

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This video won this years animago awards “Sonderpreis der Jury. It’s DROPLETS by Simon Fiedler. Very skillful animation with drops, balls and shapes.

DROPLETS from Simon Fiedler on Vimeo.

Here’s the rest, the winner list (sorry, no links this time), I watched a few and thought Droplets was nicest, too. Overall I have the impression, that last years videos were a bit more interesting.

Beste Postproduktion:
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Digic Pictures (Ungarn)

Bestes Character-Design:
Nuts & Robbers von ToonBox Entertainment (Kanada)

Bestes Game-Design:
L.A. Noire von Rockstar Games

Bester Kurzfilm:
Flamingo Pride von Tomer Eshed (Deutschland)

Beste Visualisierung:
Bacon, Anyone? von Florian Köhne/Hannes Hoepfner (Deutschland)

Beste Werbeproduktion:
SUBARU “The Car Parts”, INFECTED Postproduction (Deutschland)

Beste interaktive Produktion:
~sedna touch Touch Image von ~sedna (Deutschland)

Bestes Still:
WC von Juan Siquier (Spanien)

Beste Stereo-3D-Produktion:
Luigis’ Pizzaride 3D von Florian Werzinski (Deutschland)

Sonderpreis der Jury:
DROPLETS von Simon Fiedler (Deutschland)

360 degree videos and panoramic ball cameras

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Panoramic ball camera

Ever more often lately, I stumble across 360 degree or panoramic video and photo ideas, tools and gadgets. Now I even have the great pleasure to work on a project with that kind of technology together withe the awesome company called Yellowbird from the Netherlands. They do amazing 360° videos which are embedable and follow the linear story of a video along a timeline, and whilst the film is moving you can change the viewpoint of the camera, like looking at the sky or behind you. Their most successful video certainly is the one from a snowboarders perspective which went pretty viral which is understandable, have a look:
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My days at ADC 2011, this week Next

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Last weekend I went to the German ADC festival in Frankfurt. The Art Directors club (ADC) awards good ideas and designs from the communications world, from tv ads to magazine design, there is a conference and of course many parties. My expectations were to meet interesting advertising people to talk about how to implement social media in their work and scout some young talents for P3000.

And I really did have some good conversations, everybody was really interested but somehow I had the feeling that there still are a lot of cultural differences between the advertising and the social media world. I’ll explain that in another post. What I actually did not expect so much was to be inspired, I don’t know why, but that actually happened to my joy and surprise. The exhibition was full of nice small and big design and advertising stuff: photos from magazines, print poster campaigns, even some good online stuff and I it was cool to stroll around and let the eye get caught by the vast variety. You can take a look at all the winners here and watch some picture after the break.

Next event I will be attending: Next 2011 I am particularly interested in Peter’s Social track and Nico’s branding day, to bad it’s simultaneous, so I’ll be hopping back and forth supposedly. Continue reading →

Animago Awards 2010 Winners

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Gestern war ich auf der Animago Conference und der anschließenden Verleihung des Animago Awards. Animago bringt Spezialisten aus der Animationsfilm- und Special Effects Szene zusammen und zeichnet herausragende Arbeiten aus. Ein richtig guter Nachmittag im Potsdamer fx Center mit erhellenden Vorträgen zum Beispiel zur Visualisierung von Architekturprojekten, zum Worksflow beim Aninmieren und Special Effects, vom Unterschied zwischen Modelling, Composing und Shading, zur Produktionspipeline von Pixar Pictures und vielen beeindruckenden Beispielen aktueller Produktionen wie Moby Dick oder dem neuen Eastwood Film “Hereafter”.

Besonders der Vortrag von Thomas Zauner, von ScanlineVFX, eine der bekanntesten FX Firmen der Welt, die sich besonders auf die visuelle Simulation von Flüssigkeiten, Feuer und Rauch spezialisiert haben, war fantastisch. Tatsächlich ist es für den Zuschauer inzwischen überhaupt nicht mehr zu erkennen, was realer Film und was nachträgliche eingebaute Effekte sind.

Abends wurden die Animago Awards verliehen und auch hier gab es einige herausragende Arbeiten zu sehen. Wenn möglich, habe ich hier die Filme eingebaut, leider sind nicht alle online zu sehen oder haben nur Trailer.

Hier ist der offizielle Award-Trailer, toll geschnitten, der einen Überblick über die Einreichungen vermittelt, nach dem Klick dann alle Gewinner-Filme.

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