© Sean Sevestre (via Vimeo)
Journey is a short animated film that I unintentionally started making in July 2020 as I moved back to Scotland in the midst of pandemic happenings.
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Taking me on my own meta-journey of combining 3d and animation with my paintings in new ways in an effort to unlock new potential to bring my work to life. The culmination of this organic play being Journey.
— Scottish artist Sean Sevestre about his artistic short animated film Journey
Welcome to our library of original guides to the world of typography, which the Google Fonts team is producing in collaboration with typographic experts from around the world. Google Fonts Knowledge enables designers and developers of all skill sets to choose and use type with purpose.
— from Google Fonts Knowledge
I’ve been an admirer of the great (typographic) work¹ of Elliot Jay Stock for quite a while already, so I was thrilled to learn about his recent collaboration on Google Fonts Knowledge. After consulting his blog –like the article series on ‘Advanced web typography’– for years now, this might become my new go-to resource when it comes to web typography.
¹ Amongst other things he created the beautifully designed magazine Lagom, which unfortunately was discontinued after ten issues. I still browse my copies from time to time –not only for the interesting content and the beautiful photography but particularly for layout and typographical inspiration. Even though the Lagom store is offline nowadays, there are apparently still back issues available to buy: There’s a dedicated contact button for this purpose on the about page of elliotjaystocks.com.
© ladelune / Haeri Cho (via Vimeo)
The idea started with my everyday repeating life, and I found the concept of ‘Repetition’ is a common ground between the pattern and everyday life.
So, what if the normal actions in our daily life could turn into rhythmical and enjoyable moments with patterns?
The entire goal of this thesis is to explore various moving patterns using various mediums and creating a short film with visual interests through those patterns.
— South Korean designer Haeri Cho about her beautifully crafted thesis project Routine Rhythms.
Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
© Ingrid Michaelson & Zooey Deschanel / Andrea Love & Phoebe Wahl / Hornet (via YouTube)
My goal was to make it the cutest, coziest, warmest video ever. It’s supposed to be a little over the top, but almost in a ‘I can’t stop watching this and I need more’ kind of way.
— Andrea Love about the stop-motion music video for Merry Christmas, Happy New Year by Ingrid Michaelson & Zooey Deschanel
hellohornet.com/andrea-love.html?project=merry-christmas-happy-new-year
Better to know a knot and not need it, than need a knot and not know it.
— the motto of Animated Knots
Nothing fancy, just a well-structured website with a lot of different knots explained with neat little stop-motion clips accompanied by short descriptions. Bookmarked:
PS.: Why not wrap your Christmas Gifts with a ‘French Sinnet One’ this year for example!?
© Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (via YouTube)
© Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
© Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
© Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Before I decided to join the creative industry to make a living, I wanted to become a marine biologist and I’m still fascinated by the manifold creatures of the sea. There’s a lot of beauty in nature –not just in the ocean, but everywhere– providing valuable inspiration for the different branches of design in my opinion.
Just look at the graceful movement and the very textile appearance of this giant phantom jelly –the bell is one-meter in diameter, the arms can grow to more than 10 meters in length– living in the so-called midnight zone of the deep-sea in ~6600 meters depth for example. I think, there’s a piece of clothing waiting to be made here.
If you want to learn more about this rarely documented jellyfish and some other exotic animals check out the “Creature feature” section on the website of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, there are interesting forms and colour schemes to discover and a lot of fresh inspiration to gather.
© NOW (via YouTube)
Tell them you have a new project. It will never be finished.
— from the poem The Art of Disappearing by Naomi Shihab
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
© Hannah Sun (via Vimeo)
The animation explores the topic of screen addiction, the new norm of our life today with digital technology, and the feeling of isolation and distraction a lot of us share but often neglect.
This short by Hannah Sun is addictive in itself, I could watch this all day. Superb colors, buttery smooth animations, amazing sound design, and a spot-on concept on a relevant topic. Brilliant.
© A24 (via YouTube)
Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels, the film is a hilarious and big-hearted sci-fi action adventure about an exhausted Chinese American woman who can’t seem to finish her taxes.
I have no context on this movie beyond its description, but once again A24 got me hooked with an amazingly crafted trailer, this time for Everything Everywhere All At Once.
This interpretation of the idea of a “multiverse” looks really charming, I would love to watch it unfold on the big screen.
Related: Why movie theaters aren’t dead yet (a video-essay on YouTube from Vox)
The Internet has been monetised by social media, by big tech, by search engines. Fuck, it’s been monetised by pretty much everyone. The whole concept of netizens and a community around the web, from the late 90s and early 00s, have been lost to the sands of time.
As made clear before, I think the world wide web –or at least social media, which unfortunately replaces the real web for way too many people now– is in a bad state this day and age. Or, to put it in the flowery language of Kev Quirk; The Web Is Fucked.
Don’t worry, there’s some positivity within his “manifesto”, too.
In the unlikely case, that you missed the current furor;
The Facebook Files and the insights shared by Frances Haugen made it clear once again how ruth- and wreckless –at best naive– Facebook (now Meta) operates and how well researched the negative ramifications of the social network internally really are.
Probably a good occasion to bring up Mike Monteiro’s talks from 2013 respectively 2018 again, addressing us, the people within the industry: ‘How Designers Destroyed the World’ (vimeo.com/68470326) and ‘How to Build an Atomic Bomb’ (vimeo.com/268704084).
© ANTI / Fleet Foxes (via YouTube)
me by myself on the longest night of the year… honoring the loneliness of 2020 with a nylon string and some songs new and old.
In December 2020 on the winter solstice —just a few days after New York declared a state of emergency because of COVID-19 and forced a wide lockdown, Robin Pecknold performed acoustic arrangements of “some songs new and old” from various albums of his band Fleet Foxes as well as a Nina Simone cover (‘In The Morning’) and a traditional tune (‘Silver Dagger’) at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn. The recording of the live stream finally got a proper digital release –on Spotify for example– with physical formats to follow in Spring 2022.
A Very Lonely Solstice is a haunting depiction of the isolation a lot of us experienced in one way or another throughout the last two years and another beautiful cultural-historic document of our time. Furthermore, it’s the perfect score for dark winter days and a wonderful alternative to the more traditional –and often cheesy– Christmas time songs.