Mac Kenzie Childs Furniture

I forgot about Mac Kenzies Childs Store, 20 years ago. I still love it and now I love their furniture because of how they combine the colors, texture and material. I think they are influenced by Memphis design. Put any piece in the house and it becomes an instant art work, may it be a kettle or even a napkin. 

This is such an inspiration to me that I think I could paint my plain furniture to something like this and make it my own. Here are some of my favorite pieces.

What do you think?

https://www.mackenzie-childs.com/furniture/living-room-furniture/

ROI for Twitter

@Twitter. If Twitter wants to bring more ROI, ads can play a larger part to the picture. This is my solution and that is to design all the ads in black n white, full bleed in width for mobile devices for every other 5 tweets or every one vertical swap, there could be an ad, because that gives a visual break to the tweets and help in the reading process.

Right now, the white background with the world cup info is not doing the advertisers any justice as it is too light.

Before
The ad on the top has regress into the background.

After
The ads stands out but not overpowering the rest of the tweets.

Do not think that color is the only way of getting attention. Successful design is how you combine the design elements to make the visual work.

The Vitra Conference Pavilion – Tadao Ando

The Saskia’s Studio – Tadao Ando

I have always wondered where this concept came from. I finally realized that Tadao Ando has designed the level of the pool to the level of the sea with great succession. I love this idea and it is used in many hotels now especially in Singapore.

The Saskia's Studio is built in Sri Lanka. Here the minimalistic style of Tadao Ando speaks with volume. To me, though concrete walls seem cold and sterile, but there is a sense of continuum when lines leads to another and fall into unexpected space. All well thought out and masterful.

The Saskia's Studio

Church Of Light, Osaka – Tadao Ando

“In all my works, light is an important controlling factor. I create enclosed spaces mainly by means of thick concrete walls. The primary reason is to create a place for the individual, a zone for oneself within society. When the external factors of a city’s environment require the wall to be without openings, the interior must be especially full and satisfying.” –Tadao Ando

Concept
For Ando, the Church of Light is an architecture of duality – the dual nature of [co]existence – solid/void, light/dark, stark/serene. The coexisting differences leave the church void of any, and all, ornament creating a pure, unadorned space. The intersection of light and solid raises the occupants awareness of the spiritual and secular within themselves.

Design

Formally, Ando’s Church of the Light is minimalist and reductive of religious paraphernalia to a simple cruciform extrusion, which is often criticized as disturbingly empty, void, and undefined. Although it has been stated to be nothing more than six walls and a roof, there is a whole level of design aesthetic implemented by Ando and his contractors that is misread and unrecognized by the occupants. As a modern, minimalist structure the Church of the Light emits an architectural purity that is found in the details. The reinforced concrete volume is void of any and all ornament that is not part of the construction process. The seams and joints of the concrete are built with precision and care by master Japanese carpenters, along with Ando, that have worked to create an immaculately smooth surface and accurately aligned joints. So much so, that the seams of the concrete formwork align perfectly with the crosses extrusion on the east side of the church.

The concrete construction is a reinforcement of Ando’s principal focus on simplicity and minimalist aesthetic; however, the way in which the concrete is poured and formed gives the concrete a luminous quality when exposed to natural light. Ando’s decision to place the cross on the east façade allows for light to pour into the space throughout the early morning and into the day, which has a dematerializing effect on the interior concrete walls transforming the dark volume into an illuminated box. Ando’s approach to light and concrete in the Church of the Light, as well as his other projects, has a surreal effect that perceptually changes material into immaterial, dark into light, light into space.

Construction and Structure

The church has an area of roughly 113 m² about the same size as a small house. The church was planned as an add-on to the wooden chapel and minister's house that already existed at the site. The Church of the Light consists of three 5.9m concrete cubes (5.9m wide x 17.7m long x 5.9m high) penetrated by a wall angled at 15°, dividing the cube into the chapel and the entrance area. One indirectly enters the church by slipping between the two volumes, one that contains the Sunday school and the other that contains the worship hall. The benches, along with the floor boards, are made of re-purposed scaffolding used in the construction.

It took more than two years to complete. The delay in completing the work was due to problems in raising the necessary funds. Initially it was feared that it would cost more than the budget and Ando even considered building it without a roof, but the construction firm donated the roof and this became unnecessary.

Trailer Ando documentary from matfrick on Vimeo.

Sources:
Wikiarquitectura
Archdaily
Galinsky
Wikipedia

6 Creative Everyday Things...

... That Shows Form And Function

Moo MicroFibre Slippers: You know how some little kids are like pets? They have no idea of hygiene or organization and it takes a lot out of you to train them. Sometimes it is utterly impossible... so you have to work around them. This natural cleaning slipper is a great creative way that shows form and function.  I do wish they make it for adults too... It is cute right?

Mr Tea Infuser: Aweee... he is so adorable in my tea mug. My chubby companion that will keep me warm in cold winter days. There is something in this design which is enchanting and compelling to buy for gifts and to own it. First I think it is the way he sits in the cup, and he has a belly that house my exclusive tea leaves as it oozes the tea fragrance as it infusers. What a pal!

Cotton Swaps Noir: Have you ever seen black cotton swaps? For Noir lovers like myself... this is the ultimate and beyond. Imagine - black decor, minimalistic and stylish in the bathroom vanity. Place this in a simple, Swiss designed glass container and you got the ultimate original look that your guest will talk about and remember.

The Eco-Amp: I own a smart phone that is not loud enough in crowded places. Maybe I am hard on hearing and I do not usually carry a headphone with me all the time. This eco-amplifier would be an emergency solution as it is light weight, flat and easily carried. What wonderful designs and colors to choose from too. Great solution Eco-Amp!

Giant Clip On: I love to have my morning coffee or tea with me when I work. This is a great resource of space saving by clipping your mug to your table. What a great idea! And it is bright enough to catch the attention of not spilling. I love the lime one very much.

Monster Key Caps: Have you ever had so many similar keys that you wish that there was a identifier? I vote for this awesome monster key caps. It is creative and fun that makes your key holder a conversational connector.

I think this makes great gifts for any occasion and are less than $20. Creative and useful gadgets usually are. Most of all they are appreciated and have a lasting memory.

Professional Embossing Technique in Photoshop

I always wanted to share how to create the perfect embossing technique to send cards and stationery to "Wow' your user experience.
Here is how to by Shutterstock.

Method:
1. Create your basic design. Bear in mind that during real-world letterpress printing, each color is applied separately, using a different plate, requiring the machine to be reset, making complex, multicolored designs hard to pull off. So letterpress tends to rely on line art, bold graphic elements, and limited color palettes.

2. Lay out your artwork in Illustrator, then bring it into Photoshop and merge the design into one layer.

3. Import two different paper textures, one for the printed, compressed area, and another for the blank background. I chose a handmade looking paper with highly visible tooth to it, ‘Watercolor paper background texture’ (Image ID: 57042394) by Ambient ideas for the background and a second image that also has visible fibers, but is more flat, ‘Paper texture’ (Image ID: 59705827) by R-Studio.

4. Command+click on the design layer to make a selection from the artwork, and mask the pressed paper texture so it covers the same area as the design. Place this behind the design layer. In the layers palette, set the artwork layer Blend Mode to ‘Multiply’. This will allow the texture of the paper layer to show through and give the colors the look of ink soaked into paper. (This is where the lowered opacity on the darker colors comes into play.)

5. Now we are going to begin to build out the indentation effect. Select the design layer and apply an Inner Shadow layer effect (at the bottom of the Layers palette). Tweak the settings until the scale and darkness of the shadow looks right.

6. Copy the background paper layer (the other texture), and place it on top of the design. Command-click the artwork layer to make a selection (same selection you made for the texture layer behind the design). Cut a hole out of the top paper layer. Apply an Inner Bevel (also found at the bottom of the Layers palette). Tweak the settings until the scale and darkness look right.

 7. Add a layer mask to create knocked out areas. These imperfections occur frequently in actual letterpress prints, and will add an additional note of realism to the image. For this I used ‘Great for textures and backgrounds for your projects’ (Image ID: 23399209) by ilolab. Desaturate the texture image and copy the grayscale version onto an alpha layer in the Channels palette. Make a selection based on this alpha channel, then make a layer mask on the main artwork layer and fill the selection with black. Adjust the levels until the prominence of the knocked out areas looks good.

Extra Impact
You can make things more interesting by embossing designs onto the non-inked parts of the of the paper. I added a border of dots around the artwork that I included in the indentation.

 Viola!

Multi Touch - the new technology

Interface surface computing is the way to go. It can be done on glass surface anywhere in your business or homes. I just hope that this can be sole to consumer in next 3 years. Can you believe it? Microsoft.

New Windows Touch on Glass Surface - More amazing videos are a click away

The Venus Project

The Venus Project advocates an alternative vision for a sustainable new world civilization unlike any social-economic system that has gone before. It calls for a straightforward redesign of a culture, in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty, hunger, debt, and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable, but totally unacceptable.



Jacque Fresco: Futurist
Mr. Fresco's background includes industrial design and social engineering, as well as being a forerunner in the field of Human Factors. Mr. Fresco has worked as both designer and inventor in a wide range of fields spanning from biomedical innovations to totally integrated social systems.

The Venus Project reflects the culmination of Jacque Fresco's life work: the integration of the best of science and technology into a comprehensive plan for a new society based on human and environmental concern. It is a global vision of hope for the future of humankind in our technological age.

A major documentary, titled Future By Design, on the life, designs and philosophy of Jacque Fresco in now available. This is produced by Academy Award Nominated and Emmy Winning filmmaker, William Gazecki. The film Zeitgeist Addendum featuring Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project produced by Peter Joseph was recently released. It can be viewed at www.zeitgeistaddendum.com

Design Philosophy

I cannot understand why a painting should look exactly like a photograph. If it has to be, then there must be elements that are unusual enough to arouse the curiosity.

Anand Agarawala demos BumpTop | Video on TED.com

The New Way of Living

THE SMART GLASS

This is really innovation where information is a touch of your finger tips. Just imagine a world without paper, a cleaner and more efficient world. This will replace plastic, TV, mirrors, wood... metal... the way we work, basically most surfaces if you wish.

I cannot wait to see this take place.

The Sketch Chair

The general style of these chairs is more startup-loft utilitarian than luxury comfort, but SketchChair's designers (like most open-source types) are more interested in building a creative community than manufacturing luxe fetish objects. The app lets you export your design files to any digital-fabrication service you like -- they suggest ponoko.com -- and with the press of a button, you'll receive neatly CNC-milled plywood parts in a flat package ready for hand-assembling on a weekend afternoon.

Read More:

Alice Neal

Art Could Be Called A Search - Alice Neal

Alice Neal is an artist that truly paints art for art sake. She has a gift of looking deep into people's psychic, into the souls of people and capturing that moment of truth abut them. Portraits are her specialty.

Alice Neel (1900.01.28 – 1984.10.13) was an American portrait painter. Her paintings are notable for their expressionistic use of line and color, psychological acumen and emotional intensity.
More about her

Reflections:
Art is a discovery all the time and it has to be otherwise it is not art - Sharon Shamiko Lee

My Favourite Selections Of Her Paintings:

Japanese Crest

I stumbled upon a educational site about Japanese family clans and crests. Now when we use some graphics, we can refer to the reasons and have more meaning to design.

Japanese Clan

Jackson Pollock with Fractual Expressionism

In contrast to the broken lines painted by conventional brush contact with the canvas surface, Jackson Pollock used a constant stream of paint to produce a uniquely continuous trajectory as it splattered on to the canvas below. A typical canvas would be reworked many times over a period of several months, with Pollock building a dense web of paint trajectories. This repetitive, cumulative, "continuous dynamic" painting process is strikingly similar to the way patterns in Nature evolve.

Other parallels with natural processes are also apparent. Gravity plays a central role for both Pollock and Nature. Furthermore, by abandoning the easel, the horizontal canvas became for Pollock a physical terrain to be traversed. His approach in working from all four sides replicated the isotropy (having the same properties in all directions) and homogeneity of many natural patterns. His canvases were also large and unframed, similar to a natural environment. Can these shared characteristics be the signature of a deeper common approach?
Read More...

Julius Shulman, Modernist Architect Photographer

What Makes Good Photography?

I stumbled upon Julius Shulman and I found his work superbly well composed and powerful. Julius is one of the most talented and influential American Architectural Photographer in the century. His best known photograph "Case Study House #22,  Los Angeles, 1960 by Architect Pierre Koening, simply gave a phenomenal spatial presence. In my observation from Julius work, there is a sense of dynamism. For any picture to be interesting, there must be a strong sense of movement. The perspective of the roof and the city horizon almost meet in point gives visual impact. Julius contrast the hard lines with softer organic ones like women in dresses and a plant outside. This adds interest to the story of what he was trying to portray. He framed the picture with planes, shooting towards the building. Your eye travels from one point to another. He also combines the texture of hard lines of the roof to the smooth glass planes that may shutter at any moment...
(BTW, the lady is actually sitting on a Kohler toilet seat...  pretty cool!)

Another of Julius's incredible photograph is shown in Convair Astronautics, San Diego, CA, 1958, Architects, Pereira and Luckman. I wanted to analyse why this photo works so powerfully. In the composition Julius loves the play on perspective. The contrast of near and far. Movement from one point to another is typical in Julius' photography style. Yet again, you see the organic beings climbing up the great path structure, adds to the contrast of grandeur. The reflection looks like a mirror of water or a reflection of light in contrast to the white, matte plane above. What adds depth are the vertical lines that makes it three dimensional.

More of Julius Shulman biography and works can be found here.
And more of the Stahl House in LA
http://www.juliusshulmanfilm.com/blog/

Robotics- Walk Again

Eythor Bender of Berkeley Bionics brings onstage two amazing exoskeletons, HULC and eLEGS -- robotic add-ons that could one day allow a human to carry 200 pounds without tiring, or allow a wheelchair user to stand and walk. It's a powerful onstage demo, with implications for human potential of all kinds.

Inpirational Shopping Bags...

That Made Me Think....
How wonderful these creatives came out with these ideas...
I could surely see this bag for Golds Gym or any Weight watches program doing this bag promotion.

Publish Post

How about the Adult Porn Store? This design is so applicable and classy. I cannot understand why Adult stores have to be so sleazy looking. If people are going to do something, they should go all out and do something great. Like go all out to be cutesy, or make the store look like a hello Kitty store or something like Victoria secret. Having a store and trying to be inconspicuous is not going to cut it... a store is out there and it is going to be seen anyway. Make it big!

This shopping bag could be for non-profit organisations. Or an advertisement that advertise for Kaiser, Stanford Medical. Even to promote a cause for autism or something to do with kids.

I love this one. I think there should be a woman and man with solid abs. This is definitely for any supermarkets.. what a great concept... it is not too expansive to promote as it can be in one color.. only
 for paper bags without handles.

 

Brilliant Concepts are always appreciated. Think BIG!