Thinkcage

The fact that I haven’t posted this says a lot about my work/life balance right now. But a couple of weekends ago I couldn’t fight it any longer — I wanted to make something with my hands. So I bought a new bottle of india ink and pulled out my pens, watercolors, and an unused Moleskine watercolor notebook. I did a few simple sketches, inked them and then painted in some color. It felt incredible. There is something in using traditional tools to make something real that cannot be replicated when you work on the computer most of the time. In fact I have been daydreaming about the brush on paper, the smell of the ink, and the utter concentration ever since. I am off of work next week taking a much-needed break and I hope to spend a lot more time off the computer and at the drawing table. I will post the results later.

The first was just a reproduction of a photo I found. The original had lots of great dark areas that would allow me to use lots of ink. The second image was an attempt to do some Frank Miller-style washes over ink silhouettes. I will have to work on that a little more, I think. It has been a long time since I drew or painted regularly and it is a shame. I hope to correct that soon.

I have been reading more than my share lately about creativity and productivity. A brief mention in the a recent issue sent me back to read Kevin Kelly’s New Rules for the New Economy from Wired 5.09 in September 1997. This passage, in particular, caught my attention (emphasis mine):

Wasting time and being inefficient are the way to discovery. The Web is being run by 20-year-olds because they can afford to waste the 50 hours it takes to become proficient in exploring the Web. While 40-year-old boomers can’t take a vacation without thinking how they’ll justify the trip as being productive in some sense, the young can follow hunches and create seemingly mindless novelties on the Web without worrying about whether they are being efficient. Out of these inefficient tinkerings will come the future.

Everything we know about productivity and what it is to be productive seems wrong. Ideas are the currency of the future. Measuring them by the metrics of the past is only holding us back.

Just spotted ShoeGuru, an online shoe store that has one of the nicest interfaces I have seen for shopping online. The site features a beautiful, subtle backdrop for really nice images of the products. The list view has only the essential information: the image of the shoe, the price, and the name of the model. The display isn’t burdened with categories, item numbers, reviews, ratings, “digg this”, and all of the other things that typically compete for your shopping attention.

The individual product detail page is even better showing a large photo of the shoe. The description, pricing and cart tools fade into the background, though still readable, making the shoe image really stand out.

Sure, this solution might not work for a company with significantly more or diverse products. But it is a great solution for what it is and a compelling offering of a great looking line of shoes.

As I wrote previously, ESPN page 2 writer, Paul Lukas, recently proposed a contest to design the uniforms for Oklahoma City’s yet unnamed NBA basketball franchise. I immedially whipped up a concept based on a little spoof piece I had done a few days earlier. The results were posted to ESPN.com today along with a nice mention of my entry. You can see it and the full list here in Lukas’s column:

Meet the Oklahoma City uni finalists

It is time once again, for A List Apart’s annual survey of the web industry. Last year nearly 33,000 took the survey, enabling ALA to begin figuring out what kinds of job titles, salaries, and work situations are common in our field. The results were very interesting and should help make this year’s survey even more effective.

If you work on the web in some way, please consider taking this survey and contributing to what we can learn about the field.

I have two kids under 11 years old, so it is a given that I see more than my fair share of movies geared toward children. And really, as a designer there is a lot to enjoy in many of these films even for adults—especially if you love design, art or animation. What is more, there has been a sort of mini-Renaissance in this genre of kids movies. Many of these movies come from books such as the Harry Potter films, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Bridge to Terabithia. They have a lot in common thematically (modern fantasy), feature tween-age protagonists, and share a similar visual aesthetic. And they also happen to be pretty entertaining.

When I was a kid there were tons of great movies in a similar vein such as Flight of the Navigator, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and The Neverending Story to name a few. These were imaginative stories not driven by pre-existing material or toy sales that really inspired me as a child. The newer movies seem to be a spiritual continuation of this greatness, albeit with much improved special effects.

With that said, it came as no surprise to me that The Spiderwick Chronicles was another enjoyable romp through a childhood fantasy. What did comes as a surprise was a bit of creature design that really blew me away. The scene featuring the fairy sprites was just a few seconds of the film but I wished it had lasted much longer. Sprites in the movie were depicted as small creatures that moved much like insects but were anatomically like plants such that they could easily remain unseen in a bed of flowers. They were colorful, imaginative, and sort of floated lithely on the air. Despite this they were designed in such a way as to feel very plausible (at least as plausible as fairies can feel) in a design that naturally follows the rules of our world, if only with a small injection of magic—far more believable than the other creatures in the film (though they were largely charming). I loved that this part of the movie was completely under-developed, in fact the sprites did not speak at all. They were left mysterious and with the audience wanting more.

Still, it was the design that really got my attention. As designers we are often asked to design as system or within a system. Even the most simple of visual communication interacts with a system of visual cues that recall language or other bits of many means of communication. So it is exciting to see this in other forms of design and creativity. I always have admired excellent design of life forms that either align with life on Earth or completely made-up worlds. I think Jim Hensen’s worlds such as in Labyrinth or The Dark Crystal are great examples. In fact, most of Hensen’s work shares a base aesthetic. But I’m equally turned-off when it is done poorly. For example, the bad guys in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films were very unappealing to me. They were, for the most, part too slimy, too detailed, and lacking any of the appealing design that nature provides. Even the ugliest creatures on earth have a sense of proportion and elegance that the LoTR crew never captured. Maybe that was the point of the design—that they appeared to be alien to nature— but that disagrees with the source material, and me. I like even my bad guys to be beautiful, like the demon character in Legend (pictured, though this is a much later action figure version. I could not find a decent still from the movie); still one of my favorites.

If you’ve missed Spiderwick or any of the movies mentioned, here they all come highly-recommended, at least from me. And there are more. What are your favorite movies in this vein?