Sing Sang Sung.

Beautifully animated video for AIR’s song ” Sing Sang Sung”. Animated by Parisian studio Mathematic, the bright colors and rhythmic flow have a great Srgt. Pepper’s quality. Doesn’t hurt that the song is just as good.

AIR MUSIC VIDEO SING SANG SUNG from MATHEMATIC SAS on Vimeo.

Sweet Lou.

Great interview on Monzuki with illustrator Lou Romano who’s been a concept artist for Pixar on films like The Incredibles, Ratatouille and the most recent Up. I enjoy his style and love all things Pixar so I really appreciate his insight in this interview.

Check out the interview on Monzuki here.

Check out the color script story boards that Romano did for Up.

Logolympics.

With Obama over in Copenhagen trying to persuade the Olympic commitee to let Chicago host the 2016 games, I thought I would bring up the most important part of any Olympic games…the logo. Anyone who watched the Beijing Olympics during the summer of 2008 knows that with hundreds of hours of coverage spanning multiple networks, websites and all things media, you see the Olympic logo branding ALOT. These logos are normally fairly conservative (minus the now famous abortion known as the London 2012 Olympic logo) but offer a graphic style of the host nation and some kind of world-peace-everyone-hold-hands theme. This time around though it seems the bidding nations have opted out of the typical olive branch designs and gone more contemporary with thier branding.

Chicago’s logo, which looks oddly Obama-campaign-ian in its design, has orange gradient “buildings” with blue gradient “lake” reflections divided by one of the six-pointed stars on Chicago’s city flag. While I’m no stranger to gradient designs and I do like the type treatment (not sure the typeface, Avenir maybe?) I’m not a fan of this logo overall. The idea of having the Chicago star as the main graphic element seems too city specific and less America specific. The orange and blue reflection is a nicely composed display of complementary colors but I think is better executed in Chicago’s first pick for a logo the “torch” design. That design has the same buildings/lake reflection effect but mimics an Olympic torch. This was apparently dismissed by the Olympic commitee because no marks are allowed to have Olympic symbols/rings/torches/etc. Also, I’m not entirely sure its appropriate to depict Chicago engulfed by fire after the famous 1871 disaster.

The logos for the other 3 bidders (aka losers) Rio, Madrid and Tokyo are decent but even less effective then the Chicago logo. Rio’s logo is some sort of Brazilian style leaf, which doesn’t make much sense to me. Madrid’s is a Spanish style handprint, which I guessing it supposed to represent all the colors/races of the world having the same handprints. Tokyo’s logo I am most disapointed with. For a culture so wilding renown for innovative design, they went uber conservation with a traditional Japanese knot typing that colors of the Olympics together. Snor.

Today is the big decision for the 2016 host city, so start your U-S-A chants now.

Beautiphil.

Nice! Congrats to THE Philadelphia Phillies for winning their 3rd straight NL East title and clinching a spot in the post season. Plenty of premature celebrations and champagne popping ensued after the game, but what was really great was seeing the team champagne douse the HK banner on the left field to honor the man himself Harry Kalas. As is tradition now with every Phillies win, they played Harry’s sing-along video for High Hopes after this excellent occasion.

33RPM.

The 33RPM | My Favorite 12inch Records Exhibition has a great collection of Japanese vintage vinyl record covers spanning all genres of music. View this flickr page to see photos of the exhibition if you cant make it Gunma, Japan this month.

Found this on DesignRelated.com

Red Zone.

Yesterday’s dust storm in Sydney, Australia, lead to a boatload of grounded flights and asthma attacks.

Most importantly, some great photos. Check them out here on Flickr.

Illustrated Sports.

While perusing the Sports Illustrated site I stumbled on their archive of previous SI Covers over the last 50 years. It’s interesting to see the progression from the classy straight forward shots of the 50’s, the semi-psycedellic styles of the 60’s and 70’s and the eventual more framed action shots of todays covers. I was mostly interested in the highly styled illustration work during the 1960-70 run of covers. Today, creative graphic work in sports reporting has been replaced by the FOX Network’s dancing robot fighting the Galloping Gobbler on Thanksgiving, so it’s great see high concept illustration and design created for sports coverage.

Check out the 1960’s cover section of their site here.

Live Together, Design Alone.

Combining my 2 favorite things, design and LOST, the fan site Damon Carlton and a Polar Bear is releasing fan art posters which key in on prominent LOST themes. Some are better than others, I prefer the screenprinted 1950’s horror film style of the Locke wheelchair poster and simple line art quality of the Four Toed Statue print.  These posters are for sale and I recommend you buy them all…and give them to me.

Night of the Living Dead.

As a former resident of beautiful Burlington, Vermont, I’ve experienced my share of the Queen City’s major tap-friendly export, the Magic Hat Brewery Company. While the company may be seen at the most “commercial” of Vermont’s endless amount of great breweries, they have always impressed me with their ability to design and market their product in unique ways. Wether using worldwide powerhouse design firm and next door neighbor JDK (responsible for label designs like Magic Hat’s #9, Hocus Pocus, and organic brew Orlio) or outsourcing the package design to local artists, MH’s package and label design bring a unique touch that your average brewery doesn’t consider. That being said, MH has released their new fall mixed-bottle box called “Night of the Living Dead”. The package design has some great skeleton illustration work which carries over into their site at Night of the Living Dead. This also works for promotion of their halloween event The Night of the Living Zoo in Washington DC featuring the always great funk-jazz-r&b group Soulive. Check out the design, the event and of course the beer.

Designing Obama.

Politics aside, you have to tip your hat to last year’s Obama presidential campaign for fully realizing the power of design and technology in today’s mindless 24-hour news cycle overload. Both parties had campaign promises, cross country townhall meetings and televised advertisements bashing one thing or another. A major difference in Obama’s campaign was their use of social networking, technology like iPhone applications and most importantly a top notch design effort across all their campaign collateral. From Sender LLC’s ”O” horizon mark to the iconic “HOPE” poster from Shepard Fairey, Obama’s blue and red Gotham-laced design efforts made him a global brand that reached far beyond any political spectrum.

Scott Thomas, the design director of the Obama campaign, has put together a collection of  work entitled “Designing Obama”. The 360 page book collects works from designers all around the world who contribute and comment on this design phenomenon which had never been seen on this scale before.

Check it out at Designing Obama.