News
Mark Your Calendar: Dwell on Design
Mere months stand between you and Dwell on Design, a veritable feast of modern design in the form of thousands of products, oodles of presentations, modern home tours, and demonstrations galore. This year’s ideas- and inspiration-fest takes place June 21-23 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Among the highlights in store for the eighth Dwell on Design is a keynote address by architect and product designer Michael Graves (have you tried his tweezers?), who will share his insights on universal design and design’s direct influence on quality of life, and a series of panels featuring speakers from organizations such as the Getty Conservation Institute, MOCA, LACMA, and Architecture for Humanity will tackle issues in the areas of design innovation, sustainable design, and the business of design. This year’s show also features the first ever Dwell on Design artist in residence, Tanya Aguiñiga. The Los Angeles-based furniture designer, craftsperson, and community activist will create a living exhibition of upcycled furnishings that after being displayed on the show floor will be donated to local shelters.
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Deblurring Comes (Finally) to Photoshop
It was way back in 2011 that Adobe first demonstrated advanced unblurring abilities in Photoshop, thereby generating speculation that this functionality would be added to the upcoming CS6. Alas, that didn't happen and we haven't heard much of this since. In yet another teaser leading up to Adobe's MAX Creativity Conference, the firm has now released a clip, shown below, demonstrating a fully integrated version of this functionality. Will this be available in CS7? Or will it be first made available to Creative Cloud subscribers, as is increasingly the case. No word on that to date but details will no doubt revealed during the conference, running May 4 through 8.
Giving Cancer the Finger
Quote of Note | John Maeda
“It all began at Graham Hill Elementary School in southeast Seattle, when my third-grade teacher, Ms. Horita, told my parents at a parent-teacher conference that I was good at two things: math and art. My father, a Japanese immigrant, owned and operated a tofu store for 27 years in the Chinatown International District. The day after the meeting, he proudly announced to one of his tofu customers: ‘John is good at math.’
At the time, it signaled something to me that he left out the art part; I just didn’t know what. In hindsight, it was my first experience of the prejudices that cling to accomplishments in the arts, and a catalyst for me to push for the power of interdisciplinary thinking.”
-Rhode Island School of Design president John Maeda, writing in his recent Seattle Times op-ed on the RISD-led “STEM to STEAM” initiative to add Art and Design to the national agenda of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education and research in America. Maeda and the initiative will be honored next Friday in NYC with a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award.
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Mark Your Calendar: Inside 3-D Printing
Put on your rapidly prototyped dress (the one pictured is the work of fashion designer Iris van Herpen) and get the inside scoop on the technology that Wired editor-turned-robotics entrepreneur Chris Anderson recently described as having the world-changing potential of the first desktop publishing tools at Inside 3D Printing, the first business to business conference and expo to delve into the present and future impact of 3D printing. The two-day confab gets underway on Monday, April 22 in NYC, with tutorials and seminars that will give you a blueprint for how to invest and utilize 3D printing in the coming years. Score a DIY discount of 20% off the Gold Passport by entering UnBeige3D at registration–purchase by Sunday to get an additional $200 in savings.
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Introducing UC.Quarterly
Tips Are Appreciated (and Anonymous)
If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times: “I could tell you this Big Design News, but then I’d have to kill you.” Now you can give us the scoop and skip the messy task of plotting murder, thanks to our handy “Anonymous Tips” box nestled in the menu bar at right, just below the search box. Simply type in your news—design happenings, movements of the Revolving Door, a bit of gossip, a designer’s hidden talent, or any newsy, design-y morsel—and click “Send.” And for those not inclined to clandestine tipping, we’re still just an e-mail away.
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Free Foxit Reader Updated for PDF Tasks
LibreOffice Updated for Open Source Document Creation
Palestine Says
Design Jobs: The Boston Globe, KGTV, Pyramid Consulting Group
This week, The Boston Globe is hiring a digital designer, while KGTV needs a chief photojournalist. Pyramid Consulting Group needs a graphic design coordinator, and Morris Media Network is on the hunt for an assistant art director. Get the scoop on these openings and more below, and find additional just-posted gigs on Mediabistro.
Find more great design jobs on the UnBeige job board. Looking to hire? Tap into our network of talented UnBeige pros and post a risk-free job listing. For real-time openings and employment news, follow @MBJobPost.
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Adobe Releases Photoshop Lightroom 5 Open Beta for Photographers
Call for Entries: The Pentawards 2013 Packaging Design Awards
Golden, Angry Bears
‘Tidal Wave of Technology’ Is Transforming Museums
How can technology reinvent and deepen the museum experience? New York’s 92Y recently convened a panel of forward-thinking museum pros to tackle the question, and we sent writer Nancy Lazarus to report back on what the future of museums may look–and sound and feel–like.
A visitor gets in touch with the Cleveland Museum of Art’s “Collection Wall,” a 40-foot, interactive, microtile wall featuring over 3,500 works of art from the permanent collection.
King Tut may finally have met his match: interactive technology. “Digital technology is as much a game-changer now for museums as blockbuster shows” were in the late 1970s, said Cara McCarty, curatorial director of New York’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The Metropolitan Museum’s 1976 Tutankhamen exhibit was a pioneer of the blockbuster, and now many of the Met’s ancient treasures are also viewable on interactive touchscreens.
McCarty moderated a recent 92Y panel about technology trends and the future of museums. When she said, “Technology is hitting us all like a tidal wave,” she wasn’t lamenting, but referring to the overwhelming options. The panelists agreed, including Mark Robbins, director at New York’s International Center of Photography. “Nineteenth-century museums were comprised of a privileged set of objects,” he said. “Now museums offer more immersive experiences without walls.”
“Technology is a tool shaping museums’ future,” added Seb Chan, Cooper-Hewitt’s director of digital and emerging media. Interactive options enrich visitors’ experience, especially for storytelling. Chan described the mobile app at Australia’s Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. \It senses where gallery visitors are and delivers custom content, thereby eliminating wall labels. London’s Tate Museum has a similar app, the Magic Tate Ball, which promises, “It’s like having the Tate in your pocket.”
Another proponent of technology’s narrative power is Jake Barton, founder of Local Projects, a firm that designs media installations for museums. One client is New York’s 9/11 Memorial Museum, slated to open next year. He previewed an exhibit where visitors will use interactive maps to pinpoint their locations when they learned of the 9/11 news. Then they record messages about that moment, and their voices will play in the background as visitors view the exhibit.
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Quirky Community
Shepard Fairey’s OBEY Origins Made Into a Movie: Meet the 22-Year-Old Director
Twenty years on, Andre the Giant still Has a Posse, and now the subversive sticker campaign that ignited Shepard Fairey‘s worldwide propaganda delivery system gets its cinematic due in Obey the Giant, a narrative film that makes it online debut today (watch it above). Director Julian Marshall is fresh out of the Rhode Island School of Design, Fairey’s alma mater and the setting for the 23-minute film. Based on the true story of Fairey’s first act of street art, Obey the Giant is something of a portrait of the artist as a young skate punk–challenging a big-city mayor (the oleaginous Buddy Cianci, played by Keith Jochim) and the powers that be at art school.
“We moved heaven and earth to make this film,” Marshall (pictured below) told us of the ambitious project, for which he raised $65,000 through Kickstarter last spring. “Pre-production was about six weeks. We had to build an army of people, elaborate sets, a 27,000-pound billboard, and pull together an insane amount of props from the 1990s. It was an amazing time though. My crew and I truly became a family.” The Washington, D.C. native, now based in NYC and at the helm of his own film production company, told us more about how Obey the Giant came to be and the hot-button issue he’s planning to tackle next.
How and when did you first encounter Shepard Fairey’s work?
I first encountered Shep’s work on my first skateboard back in the 90s. I had just bought a World Industries deck and the shop owner slapped an “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” sticker on it.
What compelled you to make a film about him?
One morning, I was lying in bed, staring at the OBEY icon poster on my wall that Shep had given me when I interned for him, and I thought: Well, what better story to tell as a RISD student than a story of a RISD student? I had the connection to Shep having worked for him, so I emailed his wife, Amanda, pitched her the project, and a week later I heard back and she said, “Okay, Shepard’s really excited about the project, come out to L.A. and let’s talk about it.”
How did you decide on the format of this project, in terms of making it a narrative film rather than a documentary?
Documentaries don’t particularly interest me from a directorial standpoint. I love the intensity and edginess of the process of making motion pictures. So naturally, when I first thought of this story, I conceived of it in narrative terms.
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The Impact of Photoshop
The latest PBS Off Book episode, dubbed Photoshop Has Changed the World, takes a look at several aspects of the impact of digital image editing on illustration, retouching and online popular culture. It's a brief but worthy effort, although there's more to all this than simply Photoshop. For example, one can agree with the claim that, "With the ability to alter any image in the media landscape, everyday people now have the means to critically comment on culture and spread their ideas virally, leveling the playing field between traditional media creators and consumers." But those "everyday people" are for the most part not creating wacky cat photos with a product that sells for $1,299.
Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum Reopens After Ten-Year Renovation
(Photo: Erik Smits)
“Ten years of slow days / ten years of wakeful nights / till what was to come would be disclosed,” wrote Remco Campert in a poem commissioned as part of today’s reopening of the Rijksmuseum, the national art museum of the Netherlands. The long-awaited occasion was celebrated with a spectacular opening ceremony during which the soon-to-abdicate Queen Beatrix, wearing a large black chapeau that made her resemble a Playmobil figure or one of Rembrandt‘s beloved gang of Staalmeesters, followed her private preview of the renovated museum with a trip down the orange carpet to turn a giant golden key before an audience of thousands. Fireworks and free admission (’til midnight) followed.
Designed by Renaissance revivalist Pierre Cuypers and completed in 1885, the Rijksmuseum has been closed since 2003. “It’s a kind of Harry Potter castle. It’s a crazy building, a sort of neo-gothic Arts and Crafts building covered in images. It’s a comic strip,” said director Wim Pijbes in a recent interview with Apollo magazine. “It’s the last hooray for neo-gothic–just a year later, the Eiffel Tower was built, welcoming a new age.” The decade-long overhaul, which cost nearly $500 million, half of which was supplied by the Dutch government, includes the integrative building renovation of Cruz y Ortiz, who burrowed underground to link the museum’s two separate halves and add an atrium, a fresh installation (of some 8,000 objects) masterminded by Jean-Michel Wilmotte, and Copijn’s redesign of the surrounding garden. “What is the new Rijksmuseum about in one word? It is time, time embodied in taste or fashion, however you like,” said Pijbes. “We are a time machine.”
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Friday Photo: Snowflakes in Freefall
Spring has finally sprung, and so it’s possibly to gaze upon snowflakes–or at least images of snowflakes–without shivering. These fine specimens were photographed in 3-D as they fell by a high-speed camera system developed by researchers at the University of Utah and its spinoff company, Fallgatter Technologies. “Until our device, there was no good instrument for automatically photographing the shapes and sizes of snowflakes in free-fall,” says Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences. “We are photographing these snowflakes completely untouched by any device, as they exist naturally in the air.” In addition to taking the first automated, high-resolution photos of snowflakes, Fallgatter’s Multi Angle Snowflake Camera measures how fast the flakes fall and according to Garrett, “collects vast amounts of data that can be used to come up with more accurate and more representative characterizations of snow in clouds” for improved weather forecasting.
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