Honestly, this work from Tokyo-based designer Tomohiro Okazaki comes so fast & furious that I can barely process it—but it’s too impressive not to share:
Colossal writes,
Okazaki heads the graphic design and animation studio Swimming, and you can find more clips and glimpses into his painstaking process on YouTube and Instagram. (via The Kids Should See This)
I was such a die-hard Apple dead-ender in the 90’s that I’d often fruitlessly pitch Macs anyone who’d listen (any many who wouldn’t). My roommate would listen to my rants about the vile inelegance of Windows, then gently shake his head and say, “Look, I get it. But the Mac is like a monorail: it’s sleek, it’s beautiful, and it’s just stuck on some little loop.” Then off he went to buy a new gaming PC.
This funny, informative video explains the actual mechanics & economics that explain why such “futuristic” designs have rarely made sense in the real world. Check it out.
“A strange mixture between Futurama & Evil Los Angeles… The worst of urban planning and capitalism, plus some slavery for good measure. Welcome to Dubai, everyone.”
This darkly funny piece presents some eye-opening info on a petrodollar playground literally sinking into the sea. Along the way it draws comparisons to past misallocations of every sort of capital (e.g. as in Communist Romania, “Smooth-brained dictator + construction = dumb shit.”
I should hasten to say that I have never visited Dubai & don’t know of any connection with anyone connected with it.
Amazing. It does everything but actually print the letters. Check it out:
A few years ago I found myself wasting my life in the bowels of Google’s enterprise apps group. (How & why that happened is a long, salty story—but like everything good & bad, the chapter passed.) In the course of that we found ourselves talking with IT folks at Ocado, a company that’s transformed from grocery shopping into the provider of really interesting robotics. Check out this rather eye-popping demonstration of how their bots fulfill orders at crazy speed:
[Via Dave Musgrave]
It’s a little OT for this blog, but I really enjoyed this article as a discussion of design—of using art to solve problems.
I told Jerry, “It sounds more like a sound design issue than a music assignment. So, how about this? We treat the Seinfeld theme song as if your voice telling jokes is the melody, the jokes you tell are the lyrics and my job is to accompany you in a musical way that does not interfere with the audio of you telling jokes.
Also great:
Warren Littlefield had the unfortunate job of telling Larry, “I don’t like the music. It’s distracting, it’s weird, it’s annoying!” And as soon as he said the word annoying, Larry David just lit up. Like, “Really? Annoying? Cool!” Because if you know Larry, if you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, that’s what he loves most, to annoy you! That’s his brand of comedy.
Now, enjoy (?) Seinfeld meeting Kendrick Lamar:
Although I struggle to imagine this design getting any more widely adopted than every other flying car prototype from the last 100+ years of attempts, it’s certainly cool enough to share:
I’ve admired the motion graphics of Bradley Munkowitz since my design days in the 90’s (!), and I enjoyed this insight into one of his most recent creations:
What I didn’t know until now is that he collaborated with the folks at Bot & Dolly—who created the brilliant work below before getting acquired by Google and, as best I can tell, having their talent completely wasted there 😭.
OMG—I’m away from our brick piles & thus can’t yet try this myself, but I can’t wait to take it for a spin. As PetaPixel explains:
If you have a giant pile of LEGO bricks and are in need of ideas on what to build, Brickit is an amazing app that was made just for you. It uses a powerful AI camera to rapidly scan your LEGO bricks and then suggest fun little projects you can build with what you have.
Here’s a short 30-second demo showing how the app works — prepare to have your mind blown:
Even if I weren’t, to my surprise, watching the Netflix series The Punisher and liking it way more than I expected, I’d be a sucker for this kind of beautiful title sequence:
I have the show to thank for introducing me to this brutal Tom Waits banger, which comes equipped with its own surrealist nightmare of a video:
Netflix and Adobe are partnering to introduce The Great Untold; a short film competition meets a road trip across America. The next generation of creators are invited to submit their story idea in the form of a movie trailer via TikTok, for a chance to win a cash prize and have their work produced in their hometown with the help of Hollywood experts. Submit now: WhatsYourGreatUntold.com
“Write it in the sky in gossamer teardrops!” as Patton Oswalt might say: Firefly Drone Shows form incredible, ephemeral images via flying freakin’ robots:
Oh my God.
LEGO has officially announced the new LEGO adidas Originals Superstar (10282) which will be available starting on July 1. The shoe has 731 pieces and will retail for $79.99. In the ongoing collaboration with adidas, LEGO has recreated the iconic Superstar sneaker in brick form. Instead of the regular LEGO packaging, the set will actually come in a shoebox for authenticity and even the laces on it are real.
I’ve always said that when—not if—I die in a fiery crash alongside Moffett Field, it’ll be because I was rubbernecking at some cool plane or other (e.g. the immense Antonov An-124), and you’ll remember this and say, “Well, he did at least call his shot.”
Suffice it to say I’m a huge plane nerd with a special soft spot for exotic (to me) ex-Soviet aircraft. I therefore especially enjoyed this revealing look into the Tu-22, whose alcohol-based air conditioning system made it a huge hit with aircrews (that is, when it wasn’t killing them via things like its downward-firing ejection seats!). Even if planes aren’t your jam, I think you’ll find the segment on how the alcohol became currency really interesting.
On an epic dog walk this morning, Old Man Nack™ took his son through the long & winding history of Intel vs. Motorola, x86 vs. PPC, CISC vs. RISC, toasted bunny suits, the shock of Apple’s move to Intel (Marklar!), and my lasting pride in delivering the Photoshop CS3 public beta to give Mac users native performance six months early.
As luck would have it, Adobe has some happy news to share about the latest hardware evolution:
Today, we’re thrilled to announce that Illustrator and InDesign will run natively on Apple Silicon devices. While users have been able to continue to use the tool on M1 Macs during this period, today’s development means a considerable boost in speed and performance. Overall, Illustrator users will see a 65 percent increase in performance on an M1 Mac, versus Intel builds — InDesign users will see similar gains, with a 59 percent improvement on overall performance on Apple Silicon. […]
These releases will start to roll out to customers starting today and will be available to all customers across the globe soon.
Check out the post for full details.
For what seems like forever, Adam Lisagor’s Sandwich crew has been lovingly adding more great visual jokes & well-crafted copy than just about anybody in the game. Their recent work for the Mighty app is just as delightful as you’d expect:
I have to admit it’s getting better, it’s getting better all the time…
Well, not everything, clearly— but it’s nice to be reminded about human progress and our place on its arc. I also enjoyed the well-executed little animations of Stefan’s ancestors.
Heh—I find this fan-proposed set (which is currently collecting votes) udderly charming:
We don’t need to subjugate humanity, we only need 10,000 votes to make LEGO consider turning it into a set. So vote today and avoid unpleasant probing incidents tonight!
I’ve long loved the weird mechanical purring of those flappy-letter signs one sees (or at least used to see) in train stations & similar venues, but I haven’t felt like throwing down the better part of three grand to own a Vestaboard. Now maker Scott Bezek is working on an open-source project for making such signs at home, combining simple materials and code. In case you’d never peeked inside such a mechanism (and really, why would you have?) and are curious, here’s how they work:
And here, for some reason, are six oddly satisfying minutes of a sign spelling out four-letter words:
How totally & completely here for this am I? It’s… beyond my powers to describe. 😌
Colossal notes, “For similar pastry builds like French toast, churros, and a triple-layer cheesecake, head to tomosteen’s YouTube.”
It’s OT from my normal content, but just because the design & tech (wave fingers!) are so cool, I’ve gotta share:
Oh my God in heaven…
I just went peak 80’s.
[Via James Hay]
“What if you could hear color?” asks with Play a Kandinsky, an interactive machine learning experiment created by Google Arts & Culture and Centre Pompidou. “Explore Vassily Kandinsky’s synesthesia and ‘play’ his pioneering masterpiece, Yellow-Red-Blue, with the help of machine learning.”
DesignTaxi writes,
Visitors are guided to click on different colors in an animated canvas. There, they’ll learn what each hue represented to the artist—yellow sounded like trumpets to him, red was the color of violins playing, and looking at blue would elicit a melody of organs in his head.
Oh man—now I totally want this 3D Starry Night set“
Or if you prefer things a bit more abstract yet:
