A throw back to the good ‘ole days of design school. I orchestrated a 2 hour charette for our production gurus along with F O R M O’s new Intern Intern (Angela) on Monday. Within that compressed time frame they were to concept new ideas for the DPS luxury  bags. The bags are a billboard for the brand and are utilized predominately in PR events to holster DPS property specific media such as books and brochures along with take-aways and gifts.

Afterwards, they posted their ideas onto the conference room wall and presented them to the entire team. I was very impressed and quite happy with the results. They questioned sizes, materials and colors and arrived at a range of ideas from complex and colorful to simple and elegant.  It warms my heart to know that a good charette still works wonderfully-Nice work!

I am very excited about this new Alpha project from Mozilla Labs. I just started using Ubiquity and the possibilities are very exciting. The ability to write new commands seems fairly straight forward so I can really imagine a very large library to subscribe to as the project grows. The below video is a great overview of the idea.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Working from a home studio has its advantages. This morning it took the form of a brilliant red/orange dragonfly that landed on the fig tree just outside my window. Mad dash to get the camera, makeshift tripod of a ladder, tin box and towel and I was able to capture this shot with my Nikon D5 / SIGMA DG 70-300mm lens. Thought I’d share.

I recently had a gallery reception at Tag Gallery in Santa Monica. This gallery is a collection of about 40 artists and not only provides an opportunity to show your work, but it is a great source of inspiration and collaboration. Each artist is responsible for their own show; from the signage on the windows to the hanging of the work to the mailing of invites. The gallery director drives PR and marketing support while the members all donate their time throughout the year for reception hosting and gallery sitting. I think it is a great example of how a community-based network of individuals can work towards the collective good of the group. Similar to what has happened with musicians leveraging the power of their fan base, vs. letting the labels dictate the when, where, how and what of their work. Not to mention a much more favorable split between artist and gallery, musician and label.

The FORMO team just got back from a pretty intresting shoot in Atlanta. We are in the process of putting together a spec video pitch for a luxury fashion brand. The concept involves a motion control shoot that will enable a user to interact with full motion video. For the spec shoot we used a neat alternative called the Skater Mini. We will post the finished piece in the coming weeks once it is complete. Wish us luck!

Below is a video showing how riveting the shoot was all day. 90+ degrees on a rooftop watching a little camera go back and forth all day. Shooting is soooooo glamorous

The FORMO team just returned from a video shoot for our client Snake River Sporting Club in Jackson Hole Wyoming. We worked hard but had a great time. Below is a slide show of some of our favorite stills. You can also check out some of the videos we shot over the next few week over at SnakeRiverLiving.com

As we develop digital strategies for our clients, we find ourselves more and more thinking about the relationships between a series of interconnected online experiences versus the traditional hub and spoke idea of one central corporate dot com. A brand exists online today in an almost limitless and uncontrollable number of places. From twitter “twits” to specialized social networks to mobile to your grandmother’s blog, brand’s must enable and foster the portability of their content while still trying to maintain some common threads.

The above diagram represents our current view on how we develop our client’s prescenes online. A “cobweb” of interconnected experiences that play a part in an overall brand expereince. Each piece has its own roll to play and enables a brand to engage a user at the appropriate crossroads in their life. The most exciting part of this concept is the flexibility that it gives the creative. By engaging people in numerous different environments we are able to contextually focus our messages and visuals resulting in a more authentic and engaging communication.

Today was eventful. I had the opportunity to fly with a stunt pilot.

As I sat in the front seat of the small cockpit, my mind raced back to the many years I spent as a Naval Aviator. The smell, the noise, the sensations as the engine came to life and the small plane began to roll forward. But perhaps what struck me the most today was the instinct that took over. We were completing a simple loop and as the airplane reached vertical and began to nose over towards an inverted horizon, my head instictively rolled back to look for the horizon and a reference point to keep the wings level.

20 some years and an eternity from flying an aircraft, but my instincts rolled my head back and looked for those simple reference points that I had been taught so many years ago.

The sensation changed from the exhileration of flight…to a reminisence of something I knew so well, so instictively so very long ago.

I was in control of an aircraft, I knew how to fly…and fly well…

What a day.

Art Of The Title
http://www.artofthetitle.com
From “Cowboy Bebop” to “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” this site is a fantastic collection of some of the best title sequences ever done. Each sequence is viewable in a very decent quality quicktime as well.

Gerd Arntz Web Archive
http://www.gerdarntz.org
This site is an unbelievable archive of the work of Gerd Arntz. From his pictograms and visual signs to his stunning statistical visualizations, this site can provide hours of inspiration.

Wordle
http://wordle.net/
Wordle is a JAVA Applet that creates beautiful word clouds. You can paste in any text you like and then adjust typeface, color and layout to create some very nice typographic layouts. FUN:)