Crinid » Inspiration

Design Thinking Made Visible Project

Rick van der Wal — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 20:43:28 +0000

Browsing through my tweets I stumbled across this little gem of a presentation on solving problems in the 21st century. A flashy presentation by Humantific takes us through various ways of ideation/creation in the new type of teams and organizations required to tackle the problems of today. Through various methods of ‘free thinking’ research the eBook finishes with 10 key findings on how Design Thinking is affecting students of today, and how Design Thinking is being used to help us with increasingly complex problemsolving.

Say it with Kinetic Typography

Rick van der Wal — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:46:26 +0000

A picture speaks a thousand words, or so the old saying goes. But add animation to the mix, and some cleaver use of typography, and the scales might tip back in favour of words again.

With the help of design and animation the typography itself tells the story. It amplifies the emotions often hidden behind words (especially the written ones) and creates this compelling way of conveying meaning behind words. Most if not all are done using the Adobe program After Effects which requires experience and skill, but the way fonts (fontsize) and proximity are used could be of great inspiration to anyone trying to supercharge their ideas with emotion and immersion.

I’ve listed a dozen of the most impressive examples below. See for yourself how they reveal, amplify and convey emotion through typography (turn of your sound if you really want to grasp the concept instead of just the creative idea).

The perfect girl

Blink 182: Online Songs

Braveheart: The William Wallace speech

Capsule: Welcome to my world

Court TV: Red

Dane Cook: From the ‘Harmful if Swallowed’ album

Fight Club: Chemical Burn

Full Metal Jacket

Her Majesty

Look at what you’ve done

Montefiori Cocktail: Gipsy Woman

Oceans Eleven: The Planl

A Poem by Taylor Mali

The Machine is us/ing us

The Restaurant at the end of the Universe

Typography in Motion

Piggy Trouble & 26 other great Info Graphs

Martin in't Veld — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:48:44 +0000

A picture is worth a thousand words. Cliche as it might be, these infographics tell you it’s true. Communicating by pictures, illustrations and other styled data elements they can explain some of the most complex systems or events with great ease. As an added bonus, they allow you to ad an emotional layer to the data, or simply make it attractive and entertaining to look at!

Piggy Trouble

I want you to Want me

Bob Dylan

The Economy

Bank of Amerka 3D Data visualisation Mirrors

Who’s coming to America?

Kill Bill Infographic

Consoles and Videogames

Herman Miller Thoughtpiles

The Phantom of the Opera

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

Bicycles of the World

Shakespeare Tube Map

On Driving – The automobile history in the USA

Poverty by Age in the US

Permutations of Coffee Chart

Google News visualization

The Indian Economy

Cost of Ownership

What’s in the mail?

Digg Labs

Fairytale Little Red Riding Hood

Leisure and Poverty

Blocking Intersections

Bird flu Virus

The Hulk

The Endowment Flowchart

Ecltectic Method: Visual Mash Up artists

Rick van der Wal — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:23:27 +0000

I am a HUGE fan of mash-ups artists such as GirlTalk and 2ManyDJ’s. The skill involved in mixing and mashing fragments of existing songs into new compositions just as much an artform as creating the original songs in my opinion. But the Eclectic Method group takes the art of mixing various video and audio fragments into a new song/video to a new level. Their remixes are creative and often carry a message (mostly anti-copyright) and a pretty good tune:

Eclectic Method is a trio of video remix artists who rearrange the sights and sounds of music videos, motion pictures, and video games to the thrill of live audiences around the globe. Their cutting edge remixes have served as promotional tools for global brands and artists. You can view their work online, on television, or at the club by live performances. The Tarantino remix below is definitely one of my favourite examples of their work, but you can see all their work over on Vimeo.

Experimenting with logos

Rick van der Wal — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:57:16 +0000

An amazingly creative animation, introducing the sponsors of OFFF2009 ‘Fail with Grace’ International Festival for the Post-Digital Creation Culture (Portugal) by the Dutch animation agency Onesize. The result is an 8 minute promo where the logo’s become the stars of the animation as they are being experimented on. The animation carries a great message (watch it through to the end), best explained by the director himself:

The challenge here was to tell a story which would, in a fun kind of way, show the audience38 logo’s wrapped in this years’ theme “Failing Gracefully”. Our main focus was to let the logo’s star in this film and not to let them act as “secondary cast”. The logo’s are what the film is about, they are the main ingredient.

In design, we fail gracefully all the time. As a matter of fact, sometimes these failures bring out new ideas, which can bring the design or concept up to a higher level.
Zlad Klitschko (our casted researcher) encounters numerous failures in his quest for … something….

But in the end Zlad manages to “create” something that satisfies him by accident, but still needs a little tweak. Zlad Klitschko; “Good enough, just a little tweak and I am done…”

Watch the full video here: Experimenting on Logos by Onesize.

The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun

Rick van der Wal — Sun, 24 May 2009 12:13:48 +0000

‘The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun’ is a quick but pretty presentation of what ‘fun’ means to us, and how to feel more of it. The very colorful, visual style and animated ’slides’ give some nice pointers on how to bring more fun into your life (and ideas!). Made by Bungay Stanier.

School of Art & Design challenges patterns

Risha Pradkin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:26:42 +0000

The Panamerican School of Art and Design found a great way to challenge patterns. The concept is simple: create a grid or structured pattern, then give students/visitors/teachers an opportunity to actively engage in changing these patterns and create diverse, individual concepts:

What the World needs now

Rick van der Wal — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:51:35 +0000

Where would we be without the Guitarifle, the MowerCycle or Wateringsneakers? We’d probably be right here, because Steven M. Johnson’s inventions are so ’sneakily outrageous’ they are unlikely to see the marketplace anytime soon. Or in Johnsons own words: “I have decided an idea has no practical worth and would never be likely to be adopted seriously (like most of my ideas), but I like it anyway.” This does not make his book ‘What the world needs now‘ any less entertaining or inspiring even – reminding us how to think outside that ‘box’ again.

Paper Beats Internet

Risha Pradkin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:14:30 +0000

Paperbeatsinternet.com is an analog social networking for artists, developed by GrandCreative and Graham Roumieu for the New Directions in Ocutoral Design class at the Ontario College of Art and Design. The site is a digital home for entries that focus on exploring the use and relationship between hand-rendered type and images. The work is a dialogue between students and invited guests.

Digital painters & sculpters tell amazing stories

Rick van der Wal — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:52:27 +0000

The canvas is often replaced by empty documents by the creatives in the 21st century. Where artists used to compose in paint modern Graphical artists of the CG Society tell their stories with meshes (digital 3D objects), textures and after effects.

The beautiful compositions are often inspired by pure imagination – there are no limits in the completely virtual worlds inside the 3D programs. Every visible detail is carefully planned by the artist and this turns the images into great scenarios, often depicting surreal and visionary scenes.