Stairs

Check out these awesome and scary and weird staircases.
Click.

The Hollywood Sign

There has been talk of getting rid of the infamous "Hollywood" sign way up in the hills of Hollywood, California. However, there is a huge group of non-supporting protesters, hoping to keep the sign because of it's meaning and significance. Core77 posted about a designer's new idea for the sign.
"As far as I know the original "Hollywood" sign isn't anything close to the size depicted here, but you've gotta love Danish architecture firm Bay Arch's concept of turning it into a mixed-use commercial complex. The chief draw would be a 300 room hotel in the facade, but the nine letters would also house a wellness center and spa, a nightclub and of course, a movie theater."
Check out the links, they are worth a peek!

Phone Locked when Driving

NYTimes posted an interesting article about the solutions to the danger of texting and calling while driving. There is an obvious problem of too many people using their cell phones while their car is in motion, even though they know how high risk it is, and yet, we all keep doing it. New apps have come out to try and change the game.
They lock your phone while the car is in motion. it detects motion by the car's GPS. The phone literally shows a "phone locked" sign on the screen and doesn't all you to do ANYTHING except call 911. the texts and calls go straight to voice mail, not even making a sound to tempt you. the one problem is what if you're not the one driving? some of the apps set up a puzzle to solve in order to unlock it. if you're a passenger, that is totally possible.
This idea is really good, except no one is really going to buy the app. no one is going to set a parental restriction on themselves. It is a shame, because it could be really helpful. But, I don't see this succeeding.

David Carson

David Carson is a Texas born graphic designer mostly known for his use of experimental typography. During his early years Carson worked as a sociology professor but put most pride in his professional surfing career, ranking ninth in the world during his college days.

In the early eighties Carson worked as a teacher for the Torrey Pines High School in San Diego but soon he found himself attending a two week course in commercial design. Carson had found his new calling and spent a bit of time as a part time art director for a surfing magazine and then part time at a skateboarding magazine called Transworld which allowed him to experiment and create his signature ‘grunge’ style dirty type combined with unconventional pictures.

Carson became the art director of the magazine Beach Culture in 1989 and even though the journal only produced six issues until it folded Carson received over one hundred and fifty awards in design. David Carson was hired as the director of Ray Gun Magazine in 1992.In Ray Gun, an American alternative rock and roll magazine, Carson’s “layouts featured distortions or mixes of 'vernacular' typefaces and fractured imagery, rendering them almost illegible. Indeed, his maxim of the 'end of print' questioned the role of type in the emergent age of digital design” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carson_(graphic_designer). Within three years the circulation of Ray Gun tripled thanks to Carson’s innovative ideas. David Carson has been named ‘the father of grunge’ for the work he had done with his dirty type. He was immersed in the hippy bohemian culture of California and had found his bliss.

After taking leave of Ray Gun in 1995 Carson founded his own design company which holds offices in both California and New York. This is also the same year that Carson publishes his first book the “End of Print” selling over 200,000 copies and printed in five languages this became the best selling graphic design book in the world. The “End of Print” features various one-man exhibitions throughout Europe and Latin America, Asia and Australia.

In 2000 Carson opened a small private studio in South Carolina and only four years later became the Creative Director at Gibbes Museum of Art located in Charleston, South Carolina, the same area as his studio. Carson’s design firm continues to flourish and has had major clients such as Ray Ban and Pepsi Cola. He is attached to his creations; his work is different from other designers at the time. Carson created a type of work that allows the viewer to become immersed in the art, “ I.D. magazine chose Carson for their list of "America's most innovative designers", a feature in Newsweek magazine said of Carson "he changed the public face of graphic design"” (http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/?dcdc=top/s).

Carson has achieved numerous design awards including Designer of the year and Master of Typography. In 2004 Carson received the great recognition of being the most famous graphic designer on the planet by the London Creative Review magazine. Recently Carson has decided to branch out into film and television, directing commercials and videos. He made a short film with the same title of his first publication, “The End of Print”. He appears in others work and continues to keep his firm running. There is a documentary on Carson that is currently being filmed and looks to include much of Carson’s work along with a pleasing soundtrack.

Looking at David Carson’s work is truly an experience. Your eye focuses on what is most important, like the product brand name, and then moves around the work to focus on the other aspects of design and color. Posters created for the tsunami benefit in 2005 has you center on the text which is separated to seem like a letter is missing in the word help. Its quite creative, youre eye visually adds an extra ‘l’ to make hell .Carson’s posters made for the Obama campaign convey all the hope and change Obama had hoped for in the campaign. His text and placement makes the poster easy to look at but also incredibly fascinating to the viewer with letters that can interchangable with a consistant organic style.

Personally I believe that Carson’s work with Ray Gun Magazine is his most successful and creative pieces. The grungy text that jump started an era of design still stays as a common design technique today and I think it is beautiful. The text conveys a feeling which is what I believe a lot of designers try to achieve. Ray Gun not only started David Carson as a world phenomena but shaped Carsons work. Carsons designs at that time were new to people and really sent an image of grunge eighties style simply through text. Everyone else is simply trying to attain what Carson was able to do and still does today.

A world without texting

NYTimes posted a really fantastic article about how huge texting has become. It talks about a school in the Bronx who decided to do a project on not using texting for 2 whole days. This article really grabbed me. It is so hard for people to abstain from texting, facebook, chatting constantly through any kind of social medias. For me, it isn't hard at all. I do not have a facebook, I text very rarely, and when I do want to interact, I do it the way it should be done--call, meet up.
Kids these days are getting to used to communicating through technology and sooner or later, it will effect their social skills. Fathers can't put down their blackberries because they have so much work. Kids can't put down their phones because they feel they have to, want to be in constant touch with everyone, who ever it is that is messaging them. It takes up so much time! They've forgotten what it is to go outside, have a day out, be with their family, etc. I hate that this message isn't being screamed louder, I wish it was. I wish people would stop and realize.
get outside and live, interact face to face.

Solar Beats

Coolhunting wrote this article about this new music box. "UK-based Luke Twyman's Whitevinyl recently released Solar Beat—a music box looped using the orbital frequencies of our own solar system. It's one of those simple concepts where astrophysics is translated into a pleasing ambient loop soundtrack more profound than your average web diversion."
("Oh, and while it may take 248 "earth years" for Pluto to chime in, it's totally worth it.")

This reminds me of Apple's visualizer--starring into weird graphics and shapes and colors as your music plays.



Check em out-- white vinyl.