The Mill 2009

There are three certain things in this world: death and taxes.
And the fact that every The Mill showreel will be awesome.

Have a look at the 2009 showreel. Full screen and a decent audio output strongly suggested.

photo.emiliovanni.com

In the long lasting (laaaazy bastard I am) quest to update all my websites, including this blog and the portfolio (last updated... years ago), searching for new content management systems and online tools I came across and I'm testing CargoCollective from the folks behind the SpaceCollective community.

I discovered Cargo thanks to the always fresh and wonderful blog of the amazing London based illustrator Cookie: Made in England.
Again I discovered his blog searchig online for the vintage styled delicious "prints" and art that you surely spotted in The Incredibles movie, not to mention the closing credits.
If this wasn't enough, Cookie played an all english match of Layer Tennis, hosted at my not-so-secret favourite place on the web.
Here's his Cargo Folio by the way.
Surely you need to add his blog to your rss aggregator.

Cargo is a light-weight and really easy to use CMS system. I'm testing it with some of my photos (I always wanted to publish somewhere outside flickr some of my favourite shots) alongside my standard portfolio.
It's super fast to set up. The provided interface it's in the perfect minimal style for an online folio, and you can still edit it and modify it to suit your taste.
I'm still experiencing some quirks in Firefox (sometimes page reloads lead to funny things) but it's still in beta and really promising.

No invites to give, but you can surely email them and apply for a beta account.

The view from there

Awesome animation from WOW Japan.
Visualization of Japan and transports. Seen today at the Science Museum in London.
Opening animation of "Japan Car, designs for the crowded globe".

WOW animation from 'Japan Car, designs for the crowded globe' at the Science Museum from Architects Journal on Vimeo.

Stop Motion

Here's a short "stop motion" clip I made with long exposure photos taken at the Tate Modern months ago.
While organizing the photos I simply noticed the animation while flipping through the Aperture projects.

The music is "All Stars Fall" performed live by The Cinematic Orchestra at the Roundhouse in Camden last Friday (amazing gig by the way).

Tate Modern | Shibboleth | Stop Motion from Emilio Vanni.

Diesel XXX SFW

The new, brilliant, Diesel XXX SFW ad.

I love it, I saw the same idea somewhere before. German Internet Porn Blocker ads, via the uberlegen Copyranter.
Idea probably lifted here.
Nice evolution though.
Enjoy. And don't miss the party.

Procrastination

Welcome to my life:

Awesome short movie by John Kelly.
It's just missing one tiny bit: procrastination is watching YouTube.

Form follows function?

This is simply absolutely brilliant: Instant Origami.

"Instant origami is the contemporary interpretation of the traditional Japanese paper folding technique - focusing on speed and imagination rather than on the technically brilliant execution."

Surreal Lines

I loved this gallery by Chutney Bannister so much that it deserves a bit more than a standard sidebar link.
Beautiful photography of subway advertising billboards juxtaposed with subway riders.
Sad note, riding often London's subway I'm able to recognize all the billboards. Even the blurriest ones...

Surreal Lines Gallery at the ever-fresh File Magazine.

Things to do before you're 30.

Something like "design the new UK currency" sounds okay to me.

So, here in England a 26 year old graphic designer, Matthew Dent, won the contest created by the Royal Mint in 2005 for the new coin designs, with an astonishing result. My most sincere compliments to Mr. Dent. The only other designer I know who designed currency (for Honk Hong, where he lives and works) is none less than Mr. Henry Steiner!

The new design, based on the Royal Arms is brilliant, and makes Euro coins looks like Monopoly money.
Oh, wait. The new US five dollar bills are even worse.

Update: Creative Review interviews Matthew Dent.

Lovers

Dan Hillier produces some amazing drawings, depicting victorian (or Lautrec) styled figures sapiently mixed with deliciously disturbing tentacles or other "alterations", as you can see in his online gallery.
This afternoon I bought "Lovers" one of the limited prints he sells on his website or, easier way if you are in London, directly from his stall in the Sunday Upmarket in Bricklane.
All the prints, in various sizes and prices, are stunning.
You'll find him easily one the left area of the market if you pop in from the main entrance.

Swap Meat in London

Can't resist buying stuff online.
I finally received my four Billy Davis Ghost Prints from Coudal's Swap Meat. The prints look awesome. I had them framed (Frame Factory, in Haverstock Hill, near my new residence in London), so now I have a new decor on the the yellowish walls of my humble studio flat.

Photo: [with the light] and [in the dark]

Update: thanks to the guys at Coudal Partners for the link back to this post.

Observing the Observers

Along with a friend from Rome visiting me here in London, on Sunday afternoon we headed to the Tate Modern. A long tour to explore the building and the Tate permanent expositions (and take some "forbidden" photos too in the galleries).

The Turbine Hall, contains Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth, a semi-permanent art installation and, maybe one of the biggest attraction for casual visitors (like me) to te Tate Modern.

When nobody falls into the Shibboleth that, in my personal opinion, it's very difficult (if not intentional) since the cracks on the floor are pretty small, it's quite interesting to observe from the above floor how people "interact" and observe Salcedo's installation.

I've spent some time taking long exposure shots (from three to five seconds, no tripod, doh!) of people roaming around it. Here's the result:

Ooops

Looks like I missed Carole Guevin's presentation Being Creative is not a Job at Central Saint Martins two days ago here in London.
Damn, I should check my feeds more often!
At least, we can download the poster.

Faces

I've always been fascinated by faces and expressions of people I met randomly during my day. In the traffic, on trains, restaurants, offices. Now, living in London takes it to its extremes. Different cultures, subcultures, habits, appearances, something that is less common to find in Italy. I'd like to take portraits of some of them. Capture them. Almost impossible when you're in the tube, or walking fast down the streets to arrive on time at your appointment or at work. But you see them. You spot them all.

With this idea in mind this evening I fortuitously landed on Brett Walker's photostream on Flickr: a fantastic collection of portraits. Faces. Emotions. A must see.

www.flickr.com/photos/brettwalker/

Inspired.

Apparently the nice folks at my favourite design shop, Coudal Partners (yes I'm blatantly venerating here...), appreciate the way coudal.com home page looks on my messy desktop.
So, a new quick contest is born: go read, and win!

Update: it looks like I got owned.
(and that's all with Coudal Partners today, I think...)

Creative License

The Adobe "banner", hosted on Coudal's Layer Tennis page, promoting the Adobe Creative Suite 3 is awesome.
I enjoyed the new banner advertising champaign Adobe is using for the CS3, but this one really did it's job in catching my attention. Screen capture: [closed] [open - overlay].

JPG Magazine #12

I'm, again, proud to tell you that one of my photos has been included in the upcoming issue of JPG Magazine (issue #12). The photo, called "Stripes" depicts the INAIL building located in EUR, Rome. Some more shots of it on my Flickr account. The photo was submitted to the "Creative License" theme sponsored by Adobe.
Now, I just can't wait to receive my printed copy of the issue!

Update: It's here [click for photo]

Untitled

I'm quite proud to tell you that one of my photos taken last summer during the Air Show in Pratica di Mare Airport is now photo #1187 in the delicious FILE Magazine Collection.
I celebrated with take-away sushi for lunch.
This is going to be a good day.

Social Advertising

Zooppa.com is the new online advertising generator that will capsize the traditional idea of advertising, by putting the consumer itself in the very center of the creative effort.

Zooppa.com's purpose is to create a community of professional and amateur creatives and videomakers that compete in creating the best and the most viral commercials ever.

Fly on zooppa.com: president and CEO, mr. big ZOOPPA, will introduce you to the revolutionary world of social advertising!

Book Collection(s)

Design books are every designer's treasure. We usually spend hours in bookshops looking for rare volumes, reprints, volumes everyone else is not interested in.
"Helvetica? What's interesting in a book about a font (aaargh! it's not a damn font!)?" is the usual reaction from your friends, co-workers, girlfriends... or everyone who is with you in these particular moments.
That said, I'm proud of some of my book, as an example: Raster Systeme (actually bought at YouWorkForThem), Typographie, and some books gifted to me by some designed I worked with as assistant and intern.
But looking at Joe Kral collection made me drool, go have a look to his collection on flickr!

PS
Any designer should have a couple of Heller's book in his collection! I think is an unwritten rule in the design field.

Works is not a job.

Works is Born. Works it's training for creatives. A communication project for your own style training, your creativity knowledge, your need to be fresh while working... Who is works? Works are creatives, designers, copywriters, art directors, photographers, architects, styling designers, physicists or anyone who wants to be creative in all fields. Works is made by people who work, or study, but they all share one common thing: they want to create something no client asked, that wasn't included in an estimate or nobody ever appreciated.

Works is not a job.

Netlag

From Pleix:

"1609 outdoor live webcams all over the world. For each cam one image recorded every 10 min From 29-01-2004 18:40 GMT to 30-01-2004 18:40 GMT."

Admire: Netlag

Miscellanea

Searchscapes Manhattan: astonishing (via Zeldman).
Reminds me Alex Gopher's "The Child" Video.

New video from BMW for the launch of the K1200R (love this bike...).
For no reason, short video for the biker meeting we organized the 23-24-25th of may in Rome: er-mukken.

Already linked in the sidebar, Jill Greenberg Studio: The Manipulator.
Enjoy Music:Rock River Music.

Spring/Summer 2005.

Panic Inc launches it's goodies shop today, selling T-shirts designed by co-founder Cabel Sasser, and featuring the coolest drag 'n drop Shopping Cart I've ever seen on the web.
It's Panic: Shockingly Good!

Simply: Quattro.

Quattro is a prototype alarm clock, designed by Didier Hilhorst and Nicholas Zambetti, students at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea.
The Quattro alarm clock changes its function according to positioning: on side, upright and horizontally, working respectively as a radio, an alarm timer and as a clock.
It reveals touch sensitive controls as you go near it and even uses a teddy bear for remote operations/control.
The Quattro prototype (and others projects from the students of IDII) are the result of "Strangely Familiar: Unusual Objects for Everyday Life" course at IDII, that endend in an exibition last week in Turin.

Go see on Didier website. Amazing!

Archivio Albe e Lica Steiner.

The new Albe and Lica Steiner Archive, has been inaugurated, last Tuesday, at Campus Bovisa (Politecnico di Milano).

More info.

Net Phone.

It' only me, or do you think that Takara's ethernet enabled internet phone has an ambiguous design?
I mean... it also sports a "toy port"!

On another topic: photos updated.

Coast to Coast.

Some astonishing in-flight photos today on exitwound: from Oakland to New York.

In Motion.

Final Cut Vs Premiere is long time gone, now it's time for the brand new Motion Vs After Effects.

TV Listing Journey!

This night the first episode of Six Feet Under will be on air on Italian TV.
I don't want to miss it, so this afternoon I tried to check over the internet (I use Safari, Mac) wich channel, and at what time, shows the premiere.
I know for sure that Mediaset (biggest italian TV network) is airing it, so the first thing that comes to mind is to check mediaset online website for TV schedule - simple no?

Mediasetonline greets me with a wonderful floating banner (that suggest a poorly designed layout) and supa-famous Porn Star Aria di Giovanni innocently looking at me, caged into another banner linking to a nudes site.
I then spot the Canale 5 and Italia 1 links and go to the respective sites:

on Canale 5 site I'm not able to click on the lef hand links, the ones I need to reach the schedules, because of another floating banner (later I noticed that I'm randomly able to click the links on the left, don't know why - your experience may vary).
Italia 1 is a way better, but unfortunately, for no particular reasons the TV schedule shows only morning-afternoon shows: yeah!!!

After 15-20 minutes trying, i gave up, discouraged, and finally found the information I wanted using the teletext system (now that's really hot new technology) on a TV set downstairs...

While the rest of the world is converting to web-standard, clean and/or rich looking, usable websites, we still need to learn designing almost decent ones (me included)...

Ah, I forgot, finally I found that the show is at 22:50.
Now: where's that huge popcorn bag???

Xeroxing!

Xerox Art.
(Via Coudal, via The Cartoonist!)

Dropshadows?

Just a pair of quick notes.
Mr. Zeldman wrote an interesting entry about the use of drop shadows in webdesign.
I really can't believe there's people who use drop shadows out there :)

Postearte is a growing gallery of weblog designs (at present time, 65 designs and growing), in spanish, perfectly crafted: enjoy!

Hey, the Ban ComicSans thing has evolved after a Vincent Connare (the ComicSans designer) interview at Snog Blog.
Read comments to the entry for the full story!

Speak Up Revitalized!

Speak Up gets better: an overall redesign, a new logotype and a new, better organized, structure, to serve some of the best design thoughts and discussions on the internet these days!

And, oh "v_2" is gone: there is a new address too!

Love Within Us.

Do not miss Scene 360's digital book: Love Within Us.
It's a huge (about four megabytes) download but it's worth the time waiting.

ID3

Independents Day: rebirth.

Flu.

Being stuck at home with the flu can have positive aspects:
to became a Worldwide Champion at Simcity 4,
or visit again a site I linked some time ago, discovering some new gorgeous photoshoots!

Louise Fili Ltd.

Restaurants, food packaging specialists.
Wonderful.

David Carson Speaks Up.

Speak Up, in the person of Mr. Armin Vit, interviews David Carson!

Sagmeister to Students.

Everything you ever wanted to ask to Stefan Sagmeister.
Mr. Sagmeister replies on topics like "running a studio" through "designing for music" to "type and typography".
Don't miss it.

TVM.

Trevor Van Meter relaunches his website.
If you don't know him: check out the world-famous "Fly Guy", you'll love it.

Little Web.

Wandering through the AIAP site I found (actually, Chiara, found) graphic designer Riccardo Falcinelli who lives in Testaccio, Rome, the same building I live in.
Only now I discover his job... the web is little.

No Font.

Nofont, an old fav of mine, re-discovered today in the late afternoon during a little pause at the studio.

We are Robots.

Maik, from Pixelzentrum informs me that they launched a new project: We Are Robots.
Download your Dummy file and create your digital pixeliciuos mugshot!

We love posters!

Corey Holms has an impressive portfolio, including some breathtaking film posters.

Sam Potts Inc.

Sam Potts Inc. celebrates one year of hard work, one year of wonderful products according to its portfolio.

WR Release 3.

Webmaster Republic is online in its third release.
Check out the news and links about design, typography, advertising and more.

They Won't Stop Moving!

If you are willing to hurt your precious eyes, and interested in optical illusions, don't miss Akiyoshi Kitaoka's page about "anomalous motion illusion".
It's time to change your old, boring, desktop image!

Evening on the Web.

Enjoy:
Exitwound.
Threat.
Traktor.

Oxido.

Oxido.net by Javi Maseda, graphic and new media designer.
Javi studied (years ago) in the Spanish center of the Istituto Europeo di Design, the same institute I attended in Rome.
Don't miss the portfolio, especially identities and posters.

New Video.

Here's the video I mentioned in the entries below.
(Huge: 37 Mb, Quicktime).
I made the video for didactic purposes with Francesco Zöschg (Here's his latest web project) and Pietro Carretta.

Gls

Our friend Giuseppe La Spada has updated his personal site glsdesign.it adding his portfolio, and some impressive photo shots.

Meanwhile I'm finishing the infamous thesis project (I need to, the deadline is June 9th), so the next week I'll have back a normal (read healthy) lifestyle, enjoy the spreading summer... and shed some of the fat I accumulated in these days closed in my room playing with Final Cut.

Design from Finland

Bellston.com is Juhana Hurtig's online portfolio.
Clean, simple, with a very neat portfolio.

Enjoy!

Part of my daily web surfin'.

Kimm Saatvedt photography.

Annual Reports Study.

Do you like annual reports?
I do.

I've ordered (thanks Franz, thanks Pedro), through a site that delivers these free of any charge, some!

I received something like nine boxes: about 180kg of annual reports. Yeah!
I'll pass the week selecting those to be trashed and those to be saved!

More to come...

Communicate?

In one of his latest reports "our humble author", Mr. Zeldman, points out the difference between Art Direction and mere Graphic Design.

Design no longer serves the product; the product serves the design.

I've been discussing the same thing with some friends and co-workers of mine in the last months, and:
I couldn't agree more.

I wish...

I wish I could work for them:
grafica-design.

Please go to: portfolio > editorial.
Enjoy!

Print, Multimedia, Video.

Part of my Sunday trip through the web: Shawn Moore's Portfolio of rocketpoweredmice.

Il Viaggio

The institute has selected our video!
(14Mb, pops up in a new window)
It will be shown Saturday evening at the Roma Indipendent Film Festival, in Rome (obviously) in the Pasquino cinema, 22:00.

I made the video for an examination with other three students (classmates): Chiara Tosatti, Alessandro Zingaro and Francesco Zöschg.
We filmed inside Termini central station of Rome with two Mini-DV cameras and then created the clip using FinalCut Pro 3 and After Effects 5.5.

Imagination at Work

Just paper and markers: imaginationatwork.com

Book Design

I've spent almost one hour on Rebecca Gimenez's rebecky. She designs books,
she magnificently designs books.

Link found on typographica.

Zeldman Re-redesigned

Jeffrey Zeldman, "my" humble author, has redesigned is redesigning his site!
Check and reload.

The Pixel Engine

I found the engine design website address inside an old MacUser issue.
Just interact with "the machine" to explore the Engine design studio.

Create. Resist.

Quick Link: Creative Resistance Design Lab, wonderful works from this california based studio.