MILO

Peter Molyneux with Lionhead Studios has created an artificially intelligent thing through project natal that actually communicates back at you. In the Demo of Milo, you can literally talk to and communicate with a little boy they have named Milo. Here you can hold conversations with, complete activities with, and have him see and hold things that you hold up to the camera. You can see your reflection in the water and even swish the water with her hand.You can view the video on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDvHlwNvXaM. This new form of interaction using the camera feature natal is quite advanced, a pretty revolutionary product to be seen soon. They are just testing it now with the x-box 360, but it looks really interesting and somewhat eerie.

Make-up Magic

Make-up artist design in a way we don't usually think of as design. Make-up gives movie stars their images and sci-fi its extraterrestrial beings. Without their make-up the beautiful stars that light up our screen look like average everyday people. A lot of the times they are almost not recognizable because we are use to seeing them in such glamorized photos.

Make-up can do much more then design a beautiful face that captures the eyes and hearts of millions across America. It can also make characters who they are in a movie. In the new batman movie the Joker's character was made by his make-up.

Make-up creates a persona in many cases for movies. Whether it makes them an insane psycho like the joker or the beautiful lovable creature we all see online it really does work like magic.

Pulse Smartpen by Livescribe

This amazing pen has various features that connect old fashion schoolwork with modern technology. The pen has capabilities beyond that of any other pen. The pen's abilities include taking notes that when plugged in to the computer the notes are already scanned up there. You can also record speeches and and audio notes that go with the written notes. When you push your pen to the notes you took while the audio was recorded you can play back what was recorded through the audio device. There is an infered camera that allows all of the transference of both audio and visual elements composed. There is a speaker that allows playback through the pen. There is a USB connector to connect the pen to the computer to either print the notes or just save them electronically. There is an audio jack that allows for listening through headphones so not to disturb a class with the playback feature. There is a microphone that allows clear audio to be recorded. It can even hold 1 GB worth of information inside the pen.

This smartpen is a revolutionary product that changes everything we knew about old school note taking. This gadget has so many useful features in one is simplifies our lives. We not longer have to type our notes, once the pen is connected it will do it on its own. It is hard to match written notes to audio recordings, but now they will be matched up together. Everything is made easier with this smartpen. The problem is found in paying the price. The pen and started kits start at around 150 dollars. Then there are the 20 dollar ink cartridge refills and 25 for the extra paper notes. However, if you have the bucks, it is truly an investment worth taking.

On University Blvd. at the University of Arizona picture tons of college kids moving into dorms and excited to be away from their parents. What better way to get excited and ready for college then decorating your dorm room? There parked is an Ikea ad in the form of a moving room. Inside you can see a bed, a desk, and other well coordinated decorations for your room. This would be very effective in first attracting an audience, and second convincing students to go to Ikea to get their furniture. Not many ads are seen in the form of a windowed vehicle carrying the product. This is different enough to spark attention and interesting enough to convince you this is what you need. The room shows all the decorations and coordination's and gives you an idea of what you need to make your room look exactly the same. The ad is in a small room much like dorms so it appeals to college students. The small room looks roomy in the ad despite the small space. It appeals to the students because it gives them the illusion that they can make more room within their college dorm.

Sid Dickens Tiles

I'm in the process of moving back to Tucson. I'm living with my Aunt now. She is a collector of Sid Dickens Tiles. She buys them all as soon as they come out. She has hundreds of these tiles around the house and she is building a new house with huge wall spaces so that she can mount all of his tiles in the same approximately. So I wanted to know what the big deal was with these tiles. This is what I found....

"Tender is the offering of innocence born.Giving freely; therein lies The rosebud bloom of youth."

"The stars and symbols hold a magic key; heavenly influences to chart our path."

"Birth is a divine gift. Eyes of wonder open wide celebrating the child and the child in ourselves. Innocence born and innocence regained."

"Winter is the season to dream the beginning. Like this great tree we are all rooted in one earth, ever changing, ever growing."

"Love, truth, friendship. Marked like an eternal blessing in the palm of your hand"

So each of these tiles comes with a little poem about the meaning of the tile. Each piece has a much deeper meaning then can be seen with the eye. It is a beautiful idea for which each tile is created like a pictograph to resemble. Each of the ideas represented hold more then an idea but rather a moral or quote to live by. I found that each of these tiles is only made in a certain quantity then sold. The artist will the retire that piece so there will be no more of it. This is a good plan, it is as if the artist can only give the pieces of himself to so many people, before he has to make other pieces of himself to give. These tiles are romantic and poetic and the meanings behind them truly shine through.

Venetian Masquerade Masks

"Venetian Masquerade masks Barroque masquerade mask handmade in Venice, Italy, with crystal stones and pearls."

http://www.amasquerade.com/store_masks.asp

Costume designers are other important designers for all different venues. They work for parties but mostly for movie and television purpose. At "A Masquerade" the website there are masks from Venice, Italy. These masks have been a tradition for Venice's Carnevale or Carnival. This occurs from Ash Wednesday to Marti Gras. It use to be outlawed during the revolution in Italy to wear the masks, but eventually they were allowed to wear them some months. Today it is customarily used for their Marti Gras celebration and Masquerade Balls. The Masks, for the Venetian are a sign of upper class wealth, It is only the privileged that are able to attend the balls.

These Masquerade Balls were designed as a game for the upper class. The point was to come masked and dressed so unusually that you would be unidentifiable. It was humorous and pleasurable for the people in attendance.

Not matter what the occasion, these masks, can be seen a beautifuly designed costumes and art. In Venice they are handcrafted each different from the next. The truly original ones are often expensive collectables. Each different mask has a different theme. Some are jokers while others are kings and queens.

Target Kitchenwares

There are some uniquely designed kitchen wares that can be found at target. There is a parakeet garlic press, a shark pizza cutter, a toucan can opener, a mouse cheese grater, and a monkey potato peeler. These are just a few of the many animal kitchen wares you can find there. I would say that this design is intended for mothers who have small children. It probably entertains the children that their parents have such lively tools. However I would say the design targeting children is somewhat dangerous. You really don't want small children playing with these. A pizza cutter is hardly something you want you're four year old to play with. So although designers did intend to entertain people through marketing such animal like fun tools, they probably didn't rightfully consider the damage of if the animals appealed to much to children. If the children see their parents "playing with these" they themselves might want to. The colors and animals look just like their toys to it would be hard to warn against using them. Amusing however too dangerous when you have small children. This product looks as though it should be marketed to children however parents need to consider the vital consequences if they choose in investing in these kinds of tools.

Lush - Re-thing Bathtime

While in Lahina Town Maui I stumbled on an interesting shop called Lush. Upon research I found that it is a multi-national company that hand makes products such as Shower Jellies and Solid Shampoos that are organic and oftentimes Vegan. This new kind of soap "Shower Jellies" are made into a gelatin soap. I purchased one and found it quite amusing. The scent lasted a lot longer on my body then conventional soap. I was pleased with that product.

Another particularly interesting product is their solid shampoos. They say this is environmentally friendly in that 1 bar saves 3 150 mL shampoo bottles. They have bars made out of different oils, flowers, and nuts. They even have shampoo bars made with plants and fruits that can lighten your hair color.

Yet another uniquely designed product is their massage bars. These are oils kept as a solid until you want to use them. The heat of your hand melts the oil, however if not touching you at room temperature the bar remains solid. These two are made with all natural ingredients with seed and nuts oils that enrich the skin.

Although there are many other uniquely designed products the "bath bomb" will be the last one I talk about. These powdery solid balls come in all kinds of forms. There are ones that make bubble baths, there are moisture ones that leave your skin moisturized, and then there are the fizzy ones that color and strongly scent the entire bathroom. All of them scent your skin and the scent is long lasting.

This company has decided to keep their products organic and hand made to help the environment. Their products come wrapped in recyclable paper instead of plastic. This is just one of the various companies who are trying to help our environment rather then hurt it. It would be worth your time to give their innovative products a try!

Home Housewares show in Cartoons

http://www.core77.com/blog/events/home_housewares_show_2009in_cartoons_12975.asp

The designing blog site Core 77 did a cartoon series are the new household inventions that were in the Housewares show in 2009. The cartoon shows how in the attempt to improve household items, there have been a lot of just adding useless materials and starting over. This is a big part of design. Sometimes improvement involves starting over and other times you just add or remove some things. The cartoon blog was an attention grabbing and interesting way to exploit the truths about the various products that were in the show.

These cartoons are blog of Core 77 that are exposing the sometimes frivolous inventions that are tried out. It shows what might be interesting and succeed as a product and what might fail as an experiment. It shows the truth in that many already good products are changed just to find out that the simple may be better.

Wedding Cake Designs

Kate Sullivan is the artist of the above cakes. She makes the most beautiful unique wedding cakes in New York. Her design of these cakes is so unique people around the country are interested in investing in such art. The real question is do you really want to eat such a beautiful work of art.

These are a collection of wedding cakes by Michelle Wibowo. She runs cake shops around London England. She has unique talent for baking cakes. She makes cakes for all occasions with just as much flavor for design these imaginative wedding ones.

As you can see design can encompass even the aspects we never dreamed about design being apart of. Like even our wedding. My wedding is just around the corner and in the process of planning it I never knew how much I would actually have to design. The cake is just one of the many items necessary.

Blogs To Follow!!

http://www.core77.com/

This professional blog site has tons of articles on new innovations. This site blogs about the appearance and workings of the latest and rarest designed inventions. There are a variety of different inventions reviewed and talked about. Everything from water purifiers to the next car is discussed here. One blog I found most interesting was the ANTMBL a new idea for an automobile. It is completely different from anything I've heard of. They want you're vehicle to be completely redesigned and summoned by phone. You can read the story at http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/the_end_of_driving_mike_and_maaike_introduce_the_autonomobile_13908.asp

http://www.underconsideration.com/quipsologies/ This blogging site has a variety of different types of blogs. Some are on particular paintings that are done in series, others are on everyday designed items such as licence plates. The title of the blog site is quipsologies. There are articles on typefaces and pretty much a lot of different two dimensional works of art. The motto of this site is "Quipsologies is about sharing your interests, recommendations and intrigues: Keep it useful and fun." This is precisely what is done here. One I liked was on "Treasure Everywhere" This was a plethora of photos of old sign for stores and locations and such. It showed that there is still beauty in all the old antique signs of the time before.

Design Culture and Language

Culture has been defined as an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends on the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning according to Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluchhohn in Culture a critical review of Concepts and Definitions. Design is the planning that lays the basis of everything. Another name for design is engineering of which there are different aspects of design. Language is a system of communication shared between people in the same region. Culture and Language work together in a way to allow design to occur. Culture is what causes things to been designed and influences why and how it is designed. Language allows people in their culture to communicate and initiates the discussion of how a design will be carried out. Altogether there is a power in language that allows the culture to communicate and design and engineer things for a better world.

My Design Mindmap

Here are the various areas of design. This mindmap, although armature shows just some of the different aspects that design entails. Design is such a vast subject there are so many branches of it. Even in this one I forgot ceremonies such as weddings, churches, and other many things that we couldn't place one there.

Ads

Advertising is a big part of design in today's world. Advertisements can range from commercials to sculptures and everything in between. Generally people think of a boring commercial or a billboard with a picture of alcohol, however, there are some diverse advertisements out there that were designed to catch your attention. No everyone will stop to read a billboard or watch the commercials between televisions but advertisements such as this are hard to turn away from.

What if you were walking in the park and came across this bench? I believe that most people would take more then just a glance out of this. This took a creative designer who knew that people just aren't interested in the conventional ads. He knew that something such as a bench not really serving its purpose would draw the attention and even get the point across.

Here is another unconventional advertisement, even though it is only a picture it still has a message. From first glance you want to see why this girl has a post it on her forehead. Further examination shows that it is her name. This tells pretty much the whole story. This guy try to avoid not remembering her name in the morning after what seems to be a one night stand sticks a post it on her head to remember her name. This one again draws attention because of its uniqueness and humor.

Through examining these advertisements I would say that going the unconventional route get the message across more clear. If someone is entertained by the design of the advertisement or the meaning behind it they are more likely to remember it and discuss it with their peers.

Crash 2004

I watched the movie Crash directed and written by Paul Haggis. This movie is a piece of art that shows cultural diversity and the stereotypes that emerge from each as a result of our upbringing and societal influences. This movie shows the danger of allowing racism to rule our lives. It shows how thinking a certain race is a higher or lower class can damage the entire society as a whole. The movie has a perfect tag line that says, " You think you know who you are. You have no idea." This tag line represents the overall theme of the movie. It shows that even when we don't realize it, we can be judgemental towards other races that can actually change the outcome of events based on our responses and actions. The writer states that although people are born with pure hearts they grow up in their communities to learn prejudice. This is demonstrated by incorporating all races in a way where their lives cross and they are shown how their racist nature hurts not only themselves but the others around them.

"Design is where science and art break even."
— Robin Mathew

Robin Mathew is a graphic designer in San Diego California. She deals with designing and implementing websites. I found this quote from just reading through a variety of quotes by designers posted online at http://quotesondesign.com/. None of them really jumped out at me or described design how I see it as this one does. I'm studying physiology and basically the design of the human body. There is this exhibit called the Body Worlds that travels around. They dehydrate dead bodies then plastinate them. They are cut into different view of each and every part and died for better distinction. At this exhibit you can see the actual design of the body and how we get our ideas to design. If you really think about the quote design is where art and science meet. Science helps us build all the sky scrapers, the monuments, and the architecture as well as all of the tools and things that fulfill our aesthetic needs. Art added to the science of building and how things work allows us to make new products and things to enrich our lives and please our senses.

Typefaces

In the Wizard of Oz typeface for this movie poster you can see the whimsical nature that the typeface foreshadows about the movie. The multicolor, large, and magical text leads you to believe that you are about to see a fairytale. The shinning stars illuminate the letters giving hope to the audience of a happy ending to this magical tale. The text makes Wizard and Oz the largest to draw attention to the themes that will be presented in the movie. I really think that the waviness on the W and the R really play into the mystery and fantasy side of the movie. Had the movie just had the title written like "The Wizard of Oz" on the poster there wouldn't be so much foreshadowing to the mystical sense of the movie and therefore downsizing the audience to it.

On this movie poster "Casablanca" being italicized really shows the romantic nature the movie. There is a Shadow behind the original writing of the title that foreshadows the fact that it is not all happiness in this romance. It shows that there are some tribulations in the midst of the couple's love. The bright red letters show the passionate side of the movie. Often times the color red is considered a color for love and passionate. It is often the Eros love that of sex and passion. The typeface leads the audience to believe that the passion and love can overcome the Shadow in the background and whatever tribulations the characters are faced with.

This typeface really assists in portraying the fact that this movie will be scary, dirty, dark, and unknown. The end of the letters have been eaten away by dirt. they are disintegrating into the ground. Even the mixture of yellows and Orange colors that are dirty portray that the movie is mysterious but will slowly cause the rational side of your emotions to disappear and bring out the scared, erratic, and fearful emotions within you.

Vitruvian

I have been collecting these sculptures that when I show them to most people they find them eerie and creepy. However I believe that many of them mimic Ancient Roman body sculpting. In the case of the kissing the hand and blowing the kiss sculptures I find these to show Romance that has been lost to our generation. The type of romance and chivalry demonstrated by these gestures seems to be in a different era. I consider it a lost romance because these gestures have been done away with and replaced with so much forwardness and vulgarity. These sculptures represent a time when courting was dreamlike as well as a fantasy come true. This time of Romance can be frozen and held on the sculptures faces forever and even serve as a reminder of a romantic encounter during our life as well.

Propaganda

This poster is a piece of political propaganda that really depicts how the party system in our government works. The party system was never meant to rip the people apart, but it is evident that in today's society it has. The United States citizens are stereotyped and at odds with each other because of the party system. Benjamin Franklin warned against the party system fearing it would cause the competition to hurt the integrity of the election. He said, "There are two passions which have a powerful influence on the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power, and the love of money. ...Place before the eyes of such men a post of honor, that shall be at the same time a place of profit, and they will move heaven and earth to obtain it. The vast number of such places ...renders the British government so tempestuous. ...[and is the true source] of all those factions which are perpetually dividing the nation [and] distracting its councils... " He was dead on in believing that because it has. Today if there is an election the candidates are at each other's throat. They bash the other candidate and tell more lies about how they are better. Why can't each just present their views and be voted on based on that rather then being judged by their party. The Republicans are considered right-winged nuts who value religion, and keeping things the same. The Democratic are considered sissy liberals who want to have no rules. This is how the parties are considered, however, honorable men and women have come from each party to contribute to the functioning of the government for good countless time. So you decide does the party system help us or hurts us.

James Victore: Artist Video

http://http://www.hillmancurtis.com/index.php?/film/watch/james_victore/

At the website above there is a video on the philosophy of one poster and political designer. He talks of how important it is to him to use his designs to convey a message to the world. One particular image jumped out me above all the others. There was a poster that said "celebrating Columbus" The poster had a picture of an Indian individual. The artist drew in a sewed up mouth, and hollowed out the eyes and nose of the Indian. The designer was pointing out that because of Columbus "discovering" America, it actually lead to the slaughter and relocation of the Indians, even when this was their home first. Other controversial images are used by James Victore to urge people to participate in their government, use condoms, and display the truth of racism still existing in the United States today. He brilliantly captures your eye and delivers a punch to your stomach with his in your face attitude through his art.

Visual Metaphors within Illustartions

Thomas Barbey Alters photographs in a way to illustrate his metaphor. His idea for this came from Hollywood and he calls this work "Tourist Trap." On his gallery website he gives brief descriptions of all of his works. One of his artistic devices he used was, "There is no light at the end of the tunnel because you don't know if you will ever get out," says Barbey. The author clearly demonstrates his metaphor by having cars enter such a large tree with so many arms it represent the different routes you could end up on if you travel through the mysterious tunnel. Its mystical in that while you are traveling into the unknown you are also going in an unheard of manor, through a tree. In a way the picture uses the interxtuality of the tree of life in the Bible. Here taking a forbidden path means you may never get out of the tree's grasp. Much like in the Bible story where eating of the fruit will allow you to understand good and evil, going through the tree can change you from naive to knowing what maybe you didn't want to know if you hadn't gone this route. It makes the adventure all the more exciting and enticing not knowing what will be on the other side.






In another collaged photograph of Thomas Barbey's entitled "Fish out of Water" his metaphor is abundantly clear once again. Once artistic device he used in this photograph was the clouds in the background. It is very difficult when you feel as though you don't fit into the place you are residing. Here it is not smooth sailing for the ship which in my opinion represent the person. The clouds indicate a storm which most likely represent the feelings of the person that feels secluded in his own society. The artist/photographer perfectly places the ship on a separate piece of land as if it is stuck secluded. There being no water represents that there is no compromising ground to be made in this area where the person feels they do not belong. The artist draws the audience in by the abstract way of illustrating of a simply phrase we commonly use when something is out of place. He draws on your emotions and how you feel when you are the fish out of the water.