Entries Tagged 'Design' ↓

So many ways to go with designer Yen-Hsiang Skeet Wang’s “buttpack,” above, all of them at least a little offensive.

Plus, it’s ugly as hell.

[via yankodesign.com]

Especially if the only clock these illiterati have in their cribs, for some odd reason, is this ultramodern, computer-controlled number, above.

We call it a “number” ironically, though, because, clearly, it’s absent any. The QLockTwo, by German manufacturers Biegert & Funk—and you know the Germans always make good stuff—displays timely text to tell you the time. Plus, fashioned with a polished acrylic face, and finished in a wood back under four layers of lacquer, it’s clearly made to time-tell a long time.

QLockTwo is also compact—17 3/4 inches square and 3/4 inch thick—yet large enough to see in any room. Most of all, it’s available in five yummy colors—that’s Cherry Cake (huh?), above, Black Ice Tea, below—and six different languages.

Five varied hues? Six diverse tongues? At only $1,282 each, I’m getting Flavor all thirty.

[via 1designperday.com]

Gay Tony‘s hitman, Luis Lopez, lights up the night

The audacious geniuses of Rockstar North are back, appropriately, with a vengeance. (That is, if you can believe the word of someone who used to work for the parent company.)

The Ballad of Gay Tony, second Xbox downloadable episode for the multi-million-selling Grand Theft Auto IV, is out October 29th. (The biker thriller, The Lost and The Damned, was released on February 17.)

The first of Gay Tony‘s, certainly, several trailers, each deepening the sordid narrative of the game’s fictional Liberty City, dropped yesterday. Titled, “You’ll Always Be the King of This Town,” it’s a whirlwind of beautifully chaotic scandal.

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I don’t believe in reincarnation. But if there was such a thing, could you think of a more deserved next life for coke-shoveling crime boss Tony “Scarface” Montana, above, than to spend  his days as a sales call-answering schlub?

Neither can UK artist GsG Scar. That’s why, in “Callface,” his hand-signed and -numbered, limited-edition-of-50 print, Tony doesn’t invite you to SIE ALLO TUH MAH LEEDOH FRAH!! No, as played by the diminutive Al Pacino, he is your little friend, pulling up your order of 8-950s, rotor pumps, or whatever it is people who wear headsets at desks do all day.

Eight-color screenprint on acid-free 300 gm paper, 19 3/4 inches by 27 1/2 inches,  $156.50, incl. s/h from the Kingdom.

[via posterwhore.com]

In the book, From Control to Design: Parametric / Algorithmic Architecture, thinkers and practitioners look at the way today’s most aggressive and innovative firms are using computation to make the art of creating space a wholly new and radical venture.

This 26-foot-high, 69-foot-long, 17-ton aluminum sculpture, above, “The Morning Line,” by artist Matthew Ritchie, architects Aranda/Lasch and civil engineers Arup AGU, typifies the kinds of complex structures, and constructions, with which creatives are now playing. As the book reasons, the types of innovation possible are only increasing exponentially.

If the first generation of digital modeling programs allowed designers to conceive new forms and processes, a new breed of digital techniques is being discussed to control and realize these forms. How are these techniques affecting architectural practice and what potentials do they offer?

Architect Irene Hwang, one of From Control to Design‘s editors, is the guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, August 28, at 2 pm ET.

You can hear her ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.

For years, conceptual designer Syd Mead has been the man to whom companies go when they need to advance an audacious vision of the impending future.

Sydney Jay Mead was born in 1933, in Saint Paul, MN, to a Baptist minister and his wife. After graduating from the Art Center in Los Angeles in 1959, he worked at Ford Motor Company’s Advanced Styling Center in Dearborn, MI for two years. He then spent part of the next decade rendering now legendary concept illustration for U.S. Steel, above. “He painted,” one Mead fan site notes, “using a slick, detailed method that made the future seem fresh, clean, and thrilling.” He started Syd Mead, Inc. in 1970.

Soon, Hollywood came calling with movies that required his ultra-hard, visually authentic and tactile designs. (Mead lists his favorite metal as “chrome,” and his favorite color is, gulp, “Cherenkov radiation blue.”) His indelible technological notions were then emblazoned on sci-fi like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Aliens, and Tron. (Indeed, some would argue that his US Steel snow walker, above right, obviously influenced another one in a galaxy far, far away, below right.)

But it was Blade Runner, right, Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic, on which Mead’s dystopic gigalopolis, both below right, most sears every frame. “In essence,” says author Paul Sammon (Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner), “what you’re seeing in many shots are almost three-dimensional representations of Syd Mead’s art.”

Sammon, Mead, director Steven Lisberger (Tron) and other industry vets testify in director Joaquin Montalvan’s 2005 documentary, Visual Futurist: The Art & Life of Syd Mead. The film tells Mead’s story from his own perspective, as well as from that of the people with whom he’s worked. It’s a rich document about a little-known man, but one whose whose ideas are deeply and widely embedded in American popular culture.

Joaquin Montalvan is a guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, August 21, at 2 pm ET.

But first we’ll speak to Jason Del Gandio, author of Rhetoric for Radicals: A Handbook for 21st Century Activist, a guide for the ultra-political on how to effectively communicate. “Here’s the underlying logic” of his book, Del Gandio says:

• Change the rhetoric and you change the communication.

• Change the communication and you change the experience.

• Change the experience and you change a person’s orientation to the world.

• Change that orientation and you create conditions for profound social change.

You can hear Jason Del Gandio’s and Joaquin Montalvan’s ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.

James Cameron has not directed a feature film in a dozen years. However, his last was 1997’s Titanic, still the all-time box-office champ, at $1.8 billlion grossed worldwide. That means there are enormous hopes riding on his upcoming December release, Avatar. That, a quarter-billion-dollar budget, and one swivvy advance poster, above. And this teaser trailer.

In high school, Etsy craftsmaker VulvaLoveLovely says she “was more than an outcast, I was an untouchable.” Hurting desperately to connect with someone, she tried to drown her pain in meaningless sex, but only ended up getting abused, assaulted, and despising herself more.

It wasn’t until she saw a performance of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues that she began to peel away the layers of self-denigration that she’d built up.

And how. Today, the artist not only fashions pieces like this 2-inch pudenda-positive polymer clay pendant, right, but also creates massively hysterical works like the huggable “Utera Maxima,” above.

“Utera” is 20 inches tall, 29 inches wide, with a fallopial tube “wing span” of 69 inches. The piece is

crafted out of fuchsia fleece. The detailing is done in dark pink, light pink, and white candy striped detailing.

“Utera Maxima” should look great in your car, riding shotgun, flickin’ the finger to drivers who get too close; draped across your bed, where fortunate boudoir visitors can pay due homage; or seated in a place of esteem on your living room couch when you serve tea. Plus, the next time some nosey kid asks you where babies come from, you can just point. Vagina Pendant Necklace, $17 + $1.99 s/h. Utera Maxima, $45 + $12-$25 s/h, depending on country of destination.

[via thingamababy.com]

Whoa: Check out this dramatic, new teaser poster, above, from Jamie Foxx’s upcoming thriller with 300‘s Gerard Butler, right, Law-Abiding Citizen.

In the story, notes IMDB.com,

An everyday guy [Butler] decides to take justice into his own hands after a plea bargain sets his family’s killers free. His target: The district attorney [Foxx] who orchestrated the deal.

Directed by F. Gary Gray (Set It Off; The Negotiator; The Italian Job), Law-Abiding Citizen breaks the rules on October 16th.

[via impawards.com]

When I noticed a lot of my fellow Twitterers sporting stylish, 1960s-style customized avatars, I asked how they were doing this.

I was quickly turned on to MadMen Yourself. It’s a promotional site for MadMen, AMC’s hit series about randy ad execs in JFK’s America. (Season 3 of the award-winning drama starts August 16.)

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