When brainstorming about blogging and what cool designs I could discuss next, I had an Oprah-esque “AHA!” moment. We don’t give The Earth/Mother Nature/Spiritual Higher Power enough credit for the natural designs found in the landscape of this planet we call home. So here’s a look at some of the absolutely fantastic designs that were naturally created.
Painted Cliffs, Tasmania
Garden of the Gods, Colorado, USA
Angel Falls, Venezuela
Taughannock Falls, Finger Lakes Region, New York
The Oregon Manifest held a contest in September of 2011 to find the “Ultimate Utility Bike for Modern Living”. They sought to find a bike that would meet the needs of Americans who want to live a healthier and more sustainable life.
The judges panel was made up of leaders in the bicycle industry including the President of the United Bicycle Institute and the VP of Innovation Design and Special Products at Nike. Tony Pereira of Pereira Cycles came up with a truly innovative, exciting, and winning design, and got a $3,000.00 prize for his effort!
Although this bike is impressive, I think the true winner has to be the ‘People’s Choice’ winners, IDEO and Rock Lobster Cycles. In a contest where you’re designing a product to be used by people, this award is a big deal. I have to agree with the voters, this bike is pretty cool.
Let me introduce you to Faraday…
Just one day after releasing their newest product, Apple lost one of their co-founders and greatest minds. Steve Jobs was an irreplaceable member of the Apple team and will surely be missed by the company. His latest invention, the iPhone 4S is merely an extension of the groundbreaking iPhones, iPads, and iPods. As a tribute to Jobs, take a look at the greatest smart phone of all time and its evolution through the years.
The original iPhone was launched in 2007 to an exclusive network, AT&T.
This first iPhone had a rear, still-only camera. This iPhone had a rounder frame and was a little chunkier than the newer versions. It also had less capabilities, and could not store as much information.
With the arrival of a 3G network, came the iPhone 3. This phone was quite similar to the first model, but had more memory space, a better camera, and offered 3G coverage.
A year later, Jobs released the iPhone 4. This phone was a game changer. The iPhone 4 looked significantly different than the iPhone and iPhone 3G, but it also offered a better App store, a front and rear camera, video camera, ‘face time’, and could be owned by Verizon customers as well.
The iPhone 4S seems to be quite similar to the iPhone 4 although it does offer a better camera, improved voice recognition, and better service coverage. The iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S are available in both black and white.
Jackson Pollock was one of the most innovative artists of his time. His work was outside the box, and nothing like it had ever been appreciated before. Many still don’t see the beauty in his creations, and some will tell you that their 5 year old could do it better. Some said he created the most exciting and artistic creations they had ever seen.
Pollock was involved in a fatal car accident on August 11, 1956. As a belated tribute to his life and art 55 years after his death, here are a few of his more famous and beautiful pieces.
Male and Female – 1942 – Philadelphia Museum of Art
Lucifer – 1947 – Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts
Easter and the Totem – 1953 – The Museum of Modern Art
Living in the South, you will inevitably come to love some hole in the wall, middle of nowhere, run by an old married couple barbecue joint. They always have the best food, and there’s never a wait. There are a few places like this in my hometown, and I love driving down a road and seeing an sign or restaurant that reminds me of one of these places.
There’s absolutely nothing like home, but a good ole’ barbecue place with great fixin’s and lots of sauce can run a close second.
Here at Basis we take a special interest in the annual Academy Awards. With the caveat that all awards shows are essentially meaningless and nominations truly are an honor, it’s fascinating to see how public acclaim, critical acclaim, and industry acclaim all merge into one glitzy explosion of self congratulation and, yes, acclaim.
We’re a design blog, and we’re addicted to the big show, so this week (the Academy Awards are on February 27th, a Sunday) we’ll be looking at a few of our favorite categories: Cinematography, Art Direction, and Costumes. Today is Cinematography. Here are the nominees for this year:
Black Swan (Matthew Libatique)
True Grit (Roger Deakins)
The Social Network (Jeff Cronenweth)
Inception (Wally Pfister)
The King’s Speech (Danny Cohen)
This is a very interesting list indeed. The King’s Speech is an exceptionally odd choice, as the camera work in that film is about as dull as dishwater. Nothing against the movie itself; but there is certainly no outstanding artistry in how it was shot. While Inception was a very good movie and the special effects were tremendous, one has doubts whether the actual lighting and camera work had much to do with the look of the cities folding in on themselves, impressive though those sights were. (This is why no pics of those films).
In the humble opinion of this humble blogger, only Black Swan, True Grit and Social Network are nominees worth considering in this category. And they’re all quite different.
Black Swan depends on changing colors, film stocks and focus depth. It’s a wild and inventive visual ride, and matches the movie itself thrill for thrill, intensity for intensity. It reflects the emotions of the movie, projects them for the audience. It’s definitely the most obvious, the most showy, of the nominees, and it’s a major achievement from Matthew Libatique.
True Grit is another outing from the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan, and their magnificent Director of Photography, Roger Deakins. Deakins, I am convinced, can do anything. The cinematographic style in Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Big Lebowski and Intolerable Cruelty could hardly be more different. He’s a master of all looks, all genres and all techniques. In True Grit he goes for a natural look, but a hard one. He photographs vistas, battle, and most impressively, the flight and plight of a pure black horse on a pure black night, ridden to exhaustion and beyond.
The Social Network is diamond cut. Precision is a David Fincher trademark, and his DP, Jeff Cronenweth, makes it happen. He also shot Fight Club – The Social Network uses the same colors, the same subterranean lighting, but removes every bit of grime – precise as a computer. It’s extremely effective in the film.
In the end, while the choice was hard for us here at Basis, it had to be made.
Congratulations, Matthew Libatique – you are the winner of the first of our fake February Oscar Pre Game Awards! Black Swan is gorgeous, harrowing, and a major thrill. Next up: Art Direction!
Do you fill that chill in the air? Neither do I, it’s like 100 degrees outside, but still; college football is just around the corner. Rather than wax poetic about the University of Georgia Bulldogs, their excellent color scheme, the unique silver britches, the Arch, the Chapel Bell, Uga, and whatnot, why don’t I do the charitable thing and acknowledge some really, really cool stadiums:
Sanford Stadium, University of Georgia
Oh what, I have to hide the belle of the ball? Sanford Stadium, with a capacity of over 92,000 people, is one of the most beautiful venues in the country. One end of the stadium opens onto a bridge from which tall people and children on the shoulders of their parents can watch the game for nothing, and the view the gap affords of campus is truly lovely. In my opinion, we oughta extend the third deck all the way around to the press box, and bump the number north of 100k.
The Big House, University of Michigan
The Big One. The Big House is the largest stadium in the country, capacity wise, and is only 99 seats short of 110k. It’s built into the ground, so that from the outside it doesn’t appear imposing; but inside, the sea of blue is said to be an awesome sight. One caveat; the rumor about TBH is that it’s very quiet. So quiet that fans actually jangle keys rather than yell during the games. This is sacrilege, and if Basis had ever been there and witnessed such an event, it would be left off the list.
The Shoe, Ohio State University
Partisans would prefer us to refer to OSU as THE Ohio State University, but we won’t, because please. Massive in size and attractive in layout, the horseshoe design for this stadium has become a template for stadiums across the country.
Neyland Stadium, University of Tennessee
Walking around outside Neyland (Either NAY-lend or KNEE-lend depending on who you ask) Stadium you could be forgiven for thinking it’s one of those tall, large, old-time roller coasters, or possibly the beginnings of a skyscraper. Built straight up, with an upper deck prone to give it’s denizens nausea, it’s big, loud, orange, and intimidating. The colors are hideous, but they’re all Tennessee.
Autzen Stadium, University of Oregon
As much an engineering feat as anything else, Autzen is the loudest stadium in the country. It owes it all to design; Nike founder Phil Knight is a graduate and paid for pretty much the entire athletic department. Very cool design, very cool result.
Sept. 4th can’t get here fast enough.
This is the Official EA Sports NCAA Football 11 Cover for the PS3:
It is an abomination, an offense before God and man alike, a stain upon the surface of the earth, and an obscenity. Forthwith, I give you an alternate, and altogether awesome, cover, which I shall soon be purchasing from it’s creators:
Check out some of this amazing furniture from BFD founder Andy Gregg. Using used bicycles, Gregg and Co. create some pretty radical furniture. We loves.
We mentioned in an earlier post that our homestate was Georgia. While driving through the northwest part of the state last weekend, I saw a large state flag, the new one, flying from the roof of a roadside fruit stand (watermelonohmygodohmygodohmygodsogoodgivemenow). We felt proud. The new flag looks like this:
A few miles later, predictably, we saw the old flag, the one that flew above the state house from 1956 to 2001. It looks like this:
The flag was controversial from the start. Many state groups lobbied for the Georgia legislature to keep the old design, a simple but attractive flag that had flown between 1920 and 1956:
Some even asked for the return of the flag flown until 1879:
The little fellow in the middle represents the defense of the constitution. But back to the ’56 flag. Instituted and voted in as part of a package of bills aimed at fighting federal attempts to integrate Georgia schools, and specifically targeting the effects of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision two years earlier, it incorporated into it’s design a carbon copy of the CSA flag – the Confederate States of America. For over a century, the flag represented to many treason, racial hatred, institutionalized slavery, and a war that killed more Americans than every other international fracas we’ve engaged in. A war capable of slaughtering more than 50,000 men in a single battle. For others, it represented nebulous notions of “culture,” “tradition,” and “history, not hate.”
The flag was a bitter point of contention for decades. When the Olympic Games came to Atlanta in 1996, many participant countries and American business owners and athletes complained about having to play under such a flag. At the time, Democratic Governor Zell Miller attempted to make a change but got soundly defeated in the legislature. It would not be until 2001, when another Democratic Governor occupied the mansion (Roy Barnes) that the flag finally got changed. And boy did it ever, to this monstrosity:
Several survey tagged this flag as the worst in the country, in terms of design and aesthetic appeal. It also gets bad marks for compromise, with a strange an nowhere-near appeasing inclusion of the ’56 flag under the “Georgia’s History” banner. Many Georgians were furious, and the new Governor, Republican Sonny Perdue, was elected in part due to a campaign promise to put the flag issue up for referendum; he would allow Georgians to to vote on which flag they wanted.
Of course, when Sonny won, he was put in a bit of a pickle; follow through on his campaign promise and reinstate a symbol of racism, shameful history and hatred on top of the state house, or keep the flag the way it was and be considered a liar, coward and same-old politician?
In the end, Perdue pulled off a pretty neat trick. He did hold the referendum, but the voters were given but two choices; the current flag, seen at the top of this post, or the hideous flag, seen at the bottom. Again, indignation and relief rose in equal manner.
As for now, the issue is settled. However, it’s interesting and revealing to note how much design can mean, even when (or especially when) divorced from aesthetic consideration. It’s not just furniture, color and clothes.
