JabrWoky - Following the white rabbit since...

Year of Helvetica

It seems like it's the year of the Swiss typeface Helvetica. The documentary film on the famous font appeared a few months back. Now Blanka has this spectacular poster collection celebrating 50 years of Helvetica. And these are my favorites:

 

the little things that matter

Google has only a few link buttons or elements on their main page. The only image or graphic out there is in fact the Google logo. And the beauty and genius of the Google folks is how they have made the logo the creative centerpiece of the site. It's customized according to the seasons, festivals etc. For Halloween you might see a pumpkin face staring at you, snow falls and reindeers fly while it's Christmas. I was in fact very much delighted to see the Googleised version of Edward Munch's expressionist masterpiece 'The Scream' to commemorate the Norwegian painters birthday which was yesterday.

77 million paintings

Brian Eno has yet again done what he does best. That is being an alchemist who analyzes and understands the fluid underpinnings of technology and art. He has delighted us with his wonderful alchemy of audio ambience. This time around, he has created the subliminally trippy collection of constantly evolving paintings, created with light. And it's not just one painting, it's 77 million paintings slowly blending into each other on one canvass - your computer screen.

Eno's idea stems from his belief that television is basically just light beamed to us from a screen.  The stuff we watch on TV are actually an interplay of lights that are color processed and coordinated through the picture tube. His light paintings are about manipulating those light bulbs to beam beautiful moving images fused with a background music. Watch it to believe it.

Moreover from a great branding perspective, it is with the help of the Apple tools that he was able to pull this off. As mentioned in the crossover promotional piece on the Apple site. The Apple site also showcases some other collaborations (worth checking out) it has done with some of the most cutting edge agencies of our time. Like the creative blitzkrieg of W+K Tokyo Lab or the superlatively insane but brilliant work of CP+B to drive the point about the maneuverability of the latest VW Rabbit. The success of Apple is I guess in how it knows it's core audience and how it associates with them and helps them to showcase their work.

art!

"Art does not reproduce the visble; rather, it makes visible."

- Paul Klee (Swiss expressionist painter, teacher & cartoonist 1879-1940)

[From Scott McCloud's book "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art"]

album cover art

Here's two that caught my eye while lending my ears to Pandora.

November 8, 1943

Jackson Pollock's first solo show opens at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of the Century Gallery in New York.

[Still from the movie 'Pollock']

October 16, 1942

[Still from the movie 'Pollock']

Q&A: Jackson Pollock

A 'Life' magazine journalist once asked the American painter, Jackson Pollock, this question:


And this was his brilliant reply:

[From the movie 'Pollock']

Show-off

The Show-off Gallery is worth a watch for the eclectic range of artists and personalities who have contributed their work. Here's what they have set out to do.


My personal favorites are Alan Fletcher's 'People and Places' (obviously) and Rob Duncan's 'Summer in San Francisco' (for it's quiet tranquility).