New York Gallery Week May 7 -10

04 May 2010, Posted by Jason in events, 0 Comments

The New York Gallery Week is only from May 7 -10 and links up the countless galleries of Manhattan for all to enjoy. The week includes gallery tours by well know curators, artist forums, and more. Definitely take advantage of the talks and tours if you can, but if not, visit your local gallery soon!

From the official site:

New York Gallery Week is a series of art events in the spring of 2010, celebrating the most vital gallery community in the world.
NYGW will be an annual event, concentrating on programmatic and artistic rigor, with a mission that aims to ignite the New York art scene and direct focus back to artists and galleries.

The building blocks of post-modern art.

24 Mar 2010, Posted by Jason in art, current events / news, 0 Comments

Nathan Sawaya creates an exhibit made entirely of the stuff of childhood dreams – LEGOs. Somehow, I don’t think he followed the provided instructions to make these.

On exhibit in New York now through April 13th at the Agora Gallery.

Sometimes, its all about perspective.

17 Mar 2010, Posted by Jason in current events / news, technology, 1 Comments

Originally only meant to be shown in-house at DK Publishing (UK), this is one truly smart and inspired short video worth watching.

No skipping ahead!

An Architecture office asks not to be judged by it’s cover.

22 Jan 2010, Posted by Jason in design, 1 Comments

Our mother’s always told us not to judge a book by it’s cover, and Atlanta-based architects David Yocum & Brian Bell remind us why we shouldn’t. The two took a run-down car mechanic shop across the street from train tracks and turned the inside into an amazing work-live space. If anything, their work on the space serves as a great sales tool for any clients who visit their office! See pics below, and to see examples of the firm’s nice work, click here.

The exterior of the work-live space.

A view of the empty sign and train tracks across the street.

The windows with closed metal shades.

The very discreet signage and doorbell for the architecture firm.

A view of the office with the windows open, offering a glimpse of what lays inside.

The work area of the firm.

The kitchen.

The dining room table.

The bedroom, with closets behind the bed.

The bathroom has stones on the floor, which is used for drainage, and translucent glass to allow light in while maintaining privacy.

The courtyard in the center of the residence.

Toyota Prius Factory’s Impressive Green Efforts.

03 Dec 2009, Posted by Jason in awareness, technology, 0 Comments

While the Prius seems to be one of the move well-known eco-friendly cars, it has been criticized for the pollution is causes during production. While Toyota admits it does require more to produce the cars, Toyota also states that within a year of a car’s life, the car’s low-emissions offset the difference.

The truly amazing thing, however, is how eco-friendly the Prius factory, located in Toyota City, Japan, really is, and to what extent Toyota has gone to make it so.
Toyota has just announced they have engineered two flower species (to be grown at the factory) to help lower the production costs even more: One plant absorbs harmful gases released during production, and another reduces water vapors, which lowers the outside temperature, which then requires less cooling efforts internally in the production plant.

While this is quite impressive, they also have other very impressive green features at the plant: specially-engineered grass that needs to only be cut once a year, solar panels on the roofs, mirrors to shine sunlight into rooms, and special paint on the building to absorb harmful gases.

All in all, a very impressive effort by Toyota!

Original info was found on the New York Times.

Tim Burton Career Retrospective @ MOMA

17 Nov 2009, Posted by Jason in events, 1 Comments

Taken from the MOMA’s website:

This major career retrospective on Tim Burton (American, b. 1958), consisting of a gallery exhibition and a film series, considers Burton’s career as a director, producer, writer, and concept artist for live-action and animated films, along with his work as a fiction writer, photographer and illustrator. Following the current of his visual imagination from early childhood drawings through his mature work, the exhibition presents artwork generated during the conception and production of his films, and highlights a number of unrealized projects and never-before-seen pieces, as well as student art, his earliest non-professional films, and examples of his work as a storyteller and graphic artist for non-film projects. The opposing themes of adolescence and adulthood, and the elements of sentiment, cynicism, and humor inform his work in a variety of mediums—drawings, paintings, storyboards, digital and moving-image formats, puppets and maquettes, props, costumes, ephemera, sketchbooks, and cartoons. Taking inspiration from sources in pop culture, Burton has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as a spiritual experience, influencing a generation of young artists working in film, video, and graphics.

Burton’s films include Vincent (1982), Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), Beetlejuice (1988), Batman (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns (1992), The Nightmare Before Christmas (as creator and producer) (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Mars Attacks! (1996), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Big Fish (2003), Corpse Bride (2005), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), and Sweeney Todd (2007); writing and Web projects include The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories (1997) and Stainboy (2000).

For more info and tickets, go to the MOMA link

Lee Clow, father of Apple advertising steps down.

03 Nov 2009, Posted by Jason in current events / news, design, 2 Comments

Even if you don’t recognize his name or face, there is no question you are familiar with Lee Clow’s work. Today, he stepped down as CCO at TBWA, where for decades he put out some of the most iconic ads that everyone is familiar with: from the infamous and widely considered greatest commercial of all time, Apple’s “1984″, the “Think Different” campaign, the silhouette iPod commercials, the Mac vs PC commercials, the Energizer Bunny to the Taco Bell chihuahua.

Not even being a designer, I remember seeing the 1984 commercial for the first time in a business class and being completely wowed. The story is the ad only ran once, during the 1984 Super Bowl, Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Alien, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down) directed it, and the world was introduced to the Apple Macintosh. His iPod commercials captured the product better than I could ever imagine, the Mac vs PC spots took a stab right to the heart of PC users everywhere, and the Energizer bunny is one of the longest brand ambassador’s I can think of.

As much as I like all the above, his “Think Different” campaign is my favorite. For anyone fortunate enough to be in New York, go to TekServe and you can see these all printed and framed in the store for yourself. For the rest of you, I’ll let some of the work speak for itself.

1919-38 Bauhaus Retrospective @ MOMA

30 Oct 2009, Posted by Jason in events, 0 Comments

Curator Barry Bergdoll will lead a tour of the exhibition Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity, the first comprehensive treatment by MoMA of the Bauhaus since 1938. The show with over 400 works examines the Bauhaus in its historical moment from 1919 to 1933—the exact years of the tumultuous tenure of the Weimar Republic—and considers it as a vibrant school rather than solely as an artistic movement.

For more info: follow me…

Fantasic iPhone app.

30 Oct 2009, Posted by Jason in brands, technology, 0 Comments

I’ve been using Zipcar for about half a year now, and from day one they have had not only fantastic branding across all their platforms (the cars, website, mailers, happy hour meetups they arrange, and keycard used to unlock the car), they have also made using their service nearly effortless.

While it seems like it may have taken longer than expected for a hip, online company like Zipster, they finally came out with an iPhone app that is simply amazing. In brief, it can locate where you are, find the nearest Zipcar garages and/or specific cars, let you extend time you rent the car on the go, provide directions to return your car, give you one-touch access to Zipcar to report any problems, and perhaps the coolest, it lets you lock/unlock/honk the horn of the car you rent on the app.
Anyone with a Zipcar membership and an iPhone needs this app.