Favorite Website Award (FWA)

Too much work for this week so I just say briefly in this post. You can send you website to FWA to evaluate. They have the whole process to evaluate your website. After all, you can know their evaluation about your website (good/bad or more). However, I'm not sure about their fee for a evaluation (may be it's free).

Besides, you can link to many websites that have been evaluated. Visiting those websites, you can see how people work and get some inspiration for your project. The design of FWA are clear and easy to use so come and see.

Link to FWA: http://www.thefwa.com/

Screen shot from FWA

Information & inspiration about art

That is http://crossmind.net/. You can find a lot of stuff about design in this website. This is somehow like Hung's post about cool "websites of the day". However, in my opinion, crossmind.net is better. Besides cool websites, this has a lot article about designs, latest news, reviews about people's works.

That is not all, this also have articles about new technologies, games. I mean you can know something new here. In addition, forum in this website is quite good. It created a community for people who love art to discuss many issues.

Although there are many things on this website, its design is clear. Believe me, come and check it out. You will find many useful stuff there. However, 1 bad thing about this website is that they don't have new post regularly. It takes a long time to have a new one.

Screen shot from crossmind.net

Nature of ideas

This video is made by a Canadian artist (Mark Okon). The author wants to focus on "the interpretive nature of ideas". Mark gives us some information about how to generate and develop ideas. I think this is his experience about creating and idea. Although he just shows some basic things (don't have many details about the process), I think that is enough. We learned about process of generating ideas in class and this is another way. However, the main point is that we don't have to focus on any technique. It's just the instruction. Everyone would have their own process which is helpful for them.

About the design, I believe any of us can do this. It's like a film introduction that we did before. This video used mass layers technique which is nothing new with us. The remain thing is how to animate it. In short, I like this.

Link to the video: http://www.markokon.com/new_site/video_01.html

"Reason"

I really like this flash. From the beginning, I thought this was a game because it created a horror feeling. But I knew I was wrong. This is about something in mind. The author want to give some hidden message to the visitors through images. With me, that is the evil side and the memories inside people (may be inside the author).

In general, people might stop playing forward if they get stuck in this flash. However, there is something keep people to engage with this. The success of this flash comes from the curious feeling that the visitors have. The true is that I wanted to stop playing for many times but the curiosity kept me with this flash.

About the design, in my opinion, the author is an artist and he used a lot of time for this flash. The way that the author used the color is perfect. The dark tone make me feel something sad, evil.

That's my feeling. How about yours? Explore by yourself: http://www.thetruthiswhatyoubelieve.com/painting/

Screen shot 1

Screen shot 2

Screen shot 3

"Pretty Trendy Vector Stuff"

I read this article this morning. It talks about "vector art" as the author said (that is vector images). The author believes that "vector art" is a trend and it is simple. However, I don't agree with the author at 2 points

Firstly, about the term "vector art is a trend", what is a trend? The author talked too much about "vector art" but he didn't give any evidence that it is a trend. May be he is a "vector art" lover so that is just his bias.

Secondly, the author said that "vector art" is simple. In my opinion, art is not simple. the artists must use time, emotions, inspirations to create an art work. The author show a tutorial to make a vector image from a photo of a car and he said that is a "vector art". Art is not a copy from the real. Therefore, I think the author misunderstood about art and making vector image from a photo.

Anyway, that is my opinion.

Screen shot from the article

Here is the link to the article:
http://crossmind.net/cnt/issue/issue.detail.php?issueid=77

For you guys who want to see more about "vector art":
http://serzhant.deviantart.com/gallery/

Free New Zealand art

Here are some photo that I took several weeks ago. They are all from New Zealand. In those posters, I like the "Severed Head" the most because it is very simple. Although there is a lot of white space in the background, the middle head draws all viewers' attention. It's somehow like Milton Glaser's posters.

Lisa Reihana, Taniwha Grrl: Fire House, 2005

Francis Upritchard, Severed Head, 2005

Andrew McLeod, Count Your Fire!!!!!!, 2005

Narrative in games

I read an article about narrative in games last week and here is the summary about how people apply narrative in games. I think this could be helpful for you guys.

Evoked narrative:
- Create the world that players have in their fantasy. The world that they know through story, movie.
- Base on that world, game designers would expand old story or build up a new story.
e.g.: Star War

Emergent narrative:
- Game designers don’t have a narrative for game
- Players make their own characters and a story for them
e.g.: The Sims, The Movie

Embedded narrative:
- Base on an exist story, game designers would create a physical world for players.
- The players would know the story once they examine the game and unlock the secrets.
- However, players might ignore the clues & facts that help to understand the story.
e.g.: Still Life

Enacted narrative:
- The story is build base on the character’s actions, movements
- Mostly use for action games
e.g.: Cold Fear

Reference: http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/games&narrative.html

Last post about Milton Glaser!!!

As all of you know, Milton Glaser is a famous designer. He has a lot effects in design world. I had some posts about him before. Today is a summary about Milton Glaser.

About his style, Milton Glaser is really a master of illustration because he has a special skill in drawing technique. In most of his posters, he can capture and present things, ideas in simple lines, curves and shapes. In the way he uses colors, he loves to use contrasting colors to draw people’s attention to some special points of the poster.

One more thing about his technique, he never uses computer for his design. He encouraged students to draw and develop their concepts clearly rather than "slick design".

Here is the poster that I like the most. It has a nice meaning that all of us may know.

Great Illustrators, 1982

In this poster, the eyes and the hands are represented for things that create art works and designs. Moreover, by drawing hands with different shapes and colors, it shows that the art works are multiform (Milton Glaser Inc., 2006).






In short, Milton Glaser is a amazing designer. Therefore, know something about him is good for us. Here is the link of the Milton Glaser interview. See it to know more about Milton Glaser: http://av.adobe.com/studio/miltonglaser/miltonglaser.html

Reference:
http://classes.design.ucla.edu/Spring05/155/projects/camilla_zecchetto/miltonglaser.pdf

Image & comment from:
http://miltonglaserposters.com/index2.html

Another design company's website!!!

The exciting thing in this website is its navigation. At the first glance, I think this is a game or something nice. It makes me feel curious to examine this website. After checking it for a while, it is just the same as other website. It's just an introduction about their works and nothing more.

About the design, in my opinion, too much white space on the main page. The pencil is ok but I think it's not a good idea to allow users to draw by using that pencil. It draw users' attention away when exploring its stuff.

May be you feel bored to see my post about design companies' website. The content is nothing attractive. However, the main thing here is about the experience. I just want people to experience how design companies do things. I believe that some of you learn or know something new in those websites. Once again, the navigation is cool. That might enough for us to see a new way to present things.

Visit http://www.leoburnett.ca/ if you concern.

Scene shot of Leo Burnett website

10 things I've learned from Milton Glaser (part 2)

Here are 5 more things that I've learned from Milton Glaser. As I said before, it's not easy to understand his ideas. I just try to understand it and say what I think. If I'm wrong, just let me know.

6. STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.
According to Milton Glaser, economic factors affect and change design styles. Each designer have their own style. However, people change their mind frequently. therefore, the question for designer is: How would they do to deal with people's wants without changing their style?

7. HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN.
"Thought changes our life and our behavior", Milton Glaser said. On the other hand, he believed that our behavior also change our mind. Therefore, if we want our brain good at something, we must do it regularly. That means we must practice our skill to improve it.

8. DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY.
Confidence is good for everyone. However, in some situation, we must do things flexibly. Our works aren't right all the time so don't protect it with all cost. People recommendations is might helpful for us. Consider other people's ideas to improve our works, ourselves is necessary.

9. ON AGING.
It's really difficult for me to understand this point. He talked about rules how to live longer. First rule is "It doesn’t matter that what you think". He talked about many things that I don't know what he meant. Just make a guess, when people getting older, they see things simply but sharply.

10. TELL THE TRUTH.
I'm not understand clearly but what I get is about the responsibilities of designers. we design things not only for clients but also for our society. Therefore, do it honestly. We must design things with all our abilities. Never say and do in deferent way.

Reference:
http://miltonglaser.com/pages/milton/essays/es3.html

Draw and earn money for fun!!!

Have you ever draw anything? Have you ever let people see your drawings? May be not because your drawing is ugly. Visit http://openstudio.media.mit.edu/ to see something interesting. We have youtube to share videos, flickr to share images. And now we have open studio to share drawings. Create a community like this may be not a new idea but I think it could be expanded in the future. This website allows users to draw anything they want. Then users can sell their drawings. This stuff doesn't give us much money but it's really fun. In my experience, joining this website might help us to have some inspirations for design because some drawings are very beautiful and abstract.

However, the user interface is really simple. The data is not well organized. It's hard to find a friend's drawing on this website. If they want to become a well known website, they must do more to solve that problems.

Here is the link to the related topic: http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/009176.php

Scene shot of Open Studio website

New way of making a website???

Firstly, please visit http://sofake.com/. The content of this website is boring. However, as I said before, websites of design companies don't have anything exciting except the technologies performances. And the exciting thing in this website is its navigation between pages. This is the first time that I see website like this. Web pages are contain in each other. When we move to the next page, the website just zoom in & zoom in. It's hard to describe it so explore by yourself. It might helpful for us in future.

Scene shot of 1 page in http://sofake.com

Zoom in from the previous page