Just a quick reminder that tonight is opening night for the Academy of Art 2010 Spring Show. I’m going to be judging this year so I’ll be headed down a bit early to get things started. All the info is here and if you’re not near San Francisco you can check out a live blog of the event here.
Dusty Brown will be playing live this Friday (May 28th, 2010) at Harlow’s in Sacramento. Their shows are always worth checking out — few can match the intensity and raw emotion they exude on stage — but this one promises to take things a step further. They’ve put together a full band and reworked all the songs with fully live arrangements for this set. It’s always interesting to hear how predominantly electronic music works in a live context, particularly with a drummer. I saw Caribou and Toro Y Moi last night here in San Francisco and that was certainly a treat to hear how the songs had changed between the studio and the stage (more so with Toro Y Moi as Caribou’s records are essentially rock at this point anyways). I’m looking forward to the same from Dusty and co. on Friday. Hope to see you out there.
I am very jealous of any of our readers that are able to make it to this event. Starting May 22, the Less is More exhibit will be at the Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany. The exhibit surveys Dieter Rams entire body of work and is also accompanied by a lecture series. I’m hoping this Vitsoe sponsored roving exhibit will eventually make its way to California. Though the last time I wanted to visit a design museum, I had to all the way to Milan.
If you can’t make it to the event, do remember the 800 page catalog I posted on not long ago. This book is terrific. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, they are available from Vitsoe and Amazon.
Just a quick reminder I’ll be speaking at FITC Toronto today. The talk starts at 2:30pm in Toronto 1 room at the Hilton. Hope to see some of you out there!
A few weeks ago, Scott gave a lecture to my fellow Academy of Art students. The talk was part of the Designspeak lecture series and was open to students and faculty (and 20 lucky blog readers). The room was jam packed, with a bunch of people even crammed in on the floor. The talk covered a wide range of topics: early influences, current design process, Tycho, the blog, and much more. We even got a glimpse of the first poster Scott ever designed!
The lecture was about 1.5 hours long, with a 30 minute Q&A at the end. In addition to the Academy film crew, I was on hand with my 5DMKII to capture some of the evening. Given the massive file size, and limited continuous shot duration on the 5D, I only recorded sporadically, and wasn’t able to capture everything I would have liked. I shot until my memory card filled up and was able to capture a total of 30 minutes of the talk. I selected the shots you see in the video above from this sample.
As I said in my intro that night, it would be hard for me to convey how much I’ve learned from Scott over these last two years interning at the studio. I consider myself enrolled in two design schools (Scott’s, and the Academy) and it was really exciting for me to see these two worlds combined. I’m very glad that everyone at the Academy was able to get a glimpse into Scott’s world and I’m also really excited now to be able to show you all at least a little bit of the talk. If you haven’t been fortunate enough to see one of the talks in person, I highly suggest you make that happen (I think Toronto is your next opportunity). In the meantime, hopefully this video will tide you over.
Recording the talk was another great test run with the 5D and I learn something new each time I take it out. This time, audio was the main issue as I wasn’t able to find a suitable solution before the talk. What you hear through most of video was from the Academy microphone — at the end is what it sounds like off the internal mic on the 5D. Basically the on camera mic is completely useless. It helps for syncing external audio to the video, but that’s about it. For future excursions I am definitely going to look into some form of either a mounted shotgun mic or wireless LAV.
I’ll be giving a talk at the Academy of Art in San Francisco this Thursday evening, March 18th. I’m going to be covering a lot of ground — the talk is 2 hours — mostly talking about background, inspiration and process along with a question and answer period. The talk is limited to students (AAU students get in with ID) but the Academy has given us 20 additional seats to give away on the blog. If you’re interested in going just comment on this post and be sure to leave a valid email in the “email” field (email will not be published). We will then contact you with full details for the talk and get you put on the list.
Please only enter if you intend to go, spots are limited. Also, if you’re reading this and there are already 20 comments below, don’t give up! You’ll be put down as an alternate for people who end up not being able to make it (in our experience a lot of people either drop out or are unreachable via the email they provided.)
I’ll be speaking at this year’s FITC in Toronto (April 25-27, 2010). My talk should be on April 26th at 2:30pm, but seeing as it’s still a ways off this may be subject to change. I just got back from Last week’s FITC in Amsterdam (will try and post pics soon) and it really was an incredible event. Toronto should be even better, in my experience over the past couple years it’s a much larger event as it’s held in the home town of FITC. I will be posting more info as it becomes available, you can also check the events page.
The third season of Layer Tennis starts today! I must say, today’s lineup is one of the best I’ve seen; this promises to be an exciting match for sure. Khoi Vinh, Design Director of The New York Times, will play against Nicholas Felton, designer, blogger and creator of the Feltron Annual Reports. Coincidentally, both competitors were part of the Creative Block post…hopefully they each will take their own advice and create something awesome.
It all starts today at 2pm (Chicago time). Tune in here.
I’ve just finished packing for tomorrow’s trip to Amsterdam where I’ll be speaking at FITC (sorry, the event has sold out). I’ll be talking about my background and theory along with some in depth process stuff, should be fun. I am not sure if they’re taping, I’ll check when I get there.
I’ll be bringing along my D80 and trying to get some good shots during my week there. I was going through some photos from last year’s trip and it really inspired me to get back into photography. I’ve been super busy with music and design lately so the only work the D80 has been doing lately is product photography stuff so it will be nice to give it a workout in such a beautiful place. Seeing those old pictures also reminded me that I need to get them up; I stopped posting halfway through an around the world trip I took a couple years back and there’s a lot of shots left to process and post (like the wing over Stockholm above).