I’d like to write more about this, but only have 2 words right now: Friggin Cool. My favorite would have to be the picture I’m showing here, and all the other underwater ones.
An interview with him in the UK’s Guardian newspaper is here.
Or you can check out a gallery of some of his work right here.
There’s something to be said about the design of advertisements compared to that of… well… designs that aren’t graded on their ability to bring in money.
There are some spectacular advertisements around the world, both in print and video, that spark the imagination, and give you a sense of awe that you just can’t get anywhere else. Being 30 seconds long, or a single page in a magazine, these advertisements have to grab your attention, hold it, and make you remember the ad later. Some commercials, to be honest, are pretty horrible. Not just from a technical standpoint, but they either aren’t memorable at all, or they try so hard at being memorable, most people make fun of the brand instead (I’m looking at you, Geico Gecko!)
On the other hand, some companies have found the sweet spot for these commercial spots. One brand I want to show you in particular is Johnnie Walker, with their slogan of “Keep Walking.”
Most recently, they have been showing their commercial spot usually simply called “Keep Walking” or “The Striding Man.” Featuring great feats mankind has done in the past 100 years, the commercial calls you to wonder what kind of things we will do in the next 100. One reason, I like this commercial so much is the use of Karl Jenkin’s In Caelum Fero, which I have been listening to recently. (Once I heard the opening of the peice, I was like “I’ve heard this before…”)
The other commercials of note are The Man Who Walked Around the World, (which is not so much an advertisement as a short history of the brand, but don’t let that dissuade you), Android and Fish. All three are amazing pieces of film making, not just advertising. The first two are shown in their entirety, embedded below.
Another group that has some outstanding commercials is Sacred Noise, which is known mainly for the music they provide the spots. One to check out is the ad they did for worldchanging.com.
This is an awesome picture of every space mission in the past 50 years, all on one map. Totally want this as a poster.
“Each line represents a different space mission, highlighting notable missions, including those from different countries, those of historical significance, and those which have failed.”
via National Geographic (original)
So I was walking around Best Buy yesterday, checking out their incredibly underwhelming variety of gaming headsets and cpu fans, when I heard something I wasn’t used to, dance music. Sure, Best Buy, like many other electronics retailers, constantly have sound systems and televisions blaring, but this was out of place for one reason: It was coming from the video game section. Many people who listen to dance music could easily identify Benny Benasi’s Satisfaction, but what baffled me is that it was coming from the console that is usually playing Guitar Hero. Has Guitar Hero broadened their music selection beyond band/rock music? And how exactly would you play something like that on a guitar? I was intrigued.
As I peered over the boxes of overpriced usb ports and wifi routers, I saw something that looked like Guitar Hero, but in just as many ways as it looked liked it, it was different. The ‘highway’ was there, though it was curved, as if you were looking at the edge of a spinning record. The colors were there, but the symbols blew my mind. And then I looked at what the player was using to navigate this club hip-hop beat. A TURNTABLE. wuh-waaaah? My eyes quickly shot to a display box of what game he was playing: DJ HERO. wuh-waaaah?
I swallowed the small amount of vomit collected in my mouth that usually comes from when you realize something is terribly wrong with the world. Before I say anything else, let me say this: DO THESE PEOPLE NEED MORE MONEY? (ok, silly question)
But then I thought about it a little while, and it all started to make sense. I’m going to be honest, I don’t play Guitar Hero, and I don’t particularly care for it. The main reason being that I don’t listen to that kind of music. I’m not a mainstream music goer, so I don’t know these songs, and so I don’t really want to ‘play’ them. What I do listen to is techno/club/dance/trance, which I was sure they would never have a Guitar-esque game for. But when I heard the remix of Gorillaz’ (do the plural possessive rules still apply, even if it ends in a Z?) Feel Good Inc., my time was immediately invested into finding out more about this wonderful device.
The ‘controller’ is a turntable, with 3 buttons on a ’scratchable’ faux-record, and a stationary button to the side. You play it similarly to Guitar Hero, but instead of strumming on beat, you press a specific color and ’scratch’ the record back a forth. Imagine for a moment you are playing charades, it’s your turn to play, and you must depict a DJ. What do you do? That’s exactly what this is like. I can see how this may seem like a cool idea, but I gotta get something off my back about it. THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS! On a guitar, yes, pressing on certain parts of the guitar while strumming will make different sounds, I get it. On a turntable, there is more to mixing music than scratching the music at defined intervals. But I guess having a sound archive of hundreds of songs and sounds, bass and treble modulation and a full size sound board would make the game too “real.”
I feel like they could make a game where you have to write a book, sell you a color-coded keyboard, and make everything you type come out in another language. Just so you know that, once you become a pro, all your hard earned skill and precious time couldn’t be put to doing the real thing.
Anyway, I definetely see the appeal of a DJ Hero. Giving those who enjoy other types of music a chance to shine. Though, while I can see this being a good party game (to listen to), I don’t know how you would actually have anyone playing with you and make that fun. Maybe next we’ll see Cowbell Hero. Oh right, too real.
More like LAMESHOP for the LAMEMAN!!
ok, actually, this is really cool:
PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage from Tao Chen on Vimeo.
“We present a system that composes a realistic picture from a simple
freehand sketch annotated with text labels. The composed picture
is generated by seamlessly stitching several photographs in agreement
with the sketch and text labels; these are found by searching
the Internet. Although online image search generates many inappropriate
results, our system is able to automatically select suitable
photographs to generate a high quality composition, using a filtering
scheme to exclude undesirable images. We also provide a novel
image blending algorithm to allow seamless image composition.
Each blending result is given a numeric score, allowing us to find
an optimal combination of discovered images. Experimental results
show the method is very successful; we also evaluate our system using
the results from two user studies.”