SOLIDQUALITY

Stefan Sagmeister has been around for a while and he has always had a storied design career. Stumbling into design and winning over such creative clients as the Rolling Stones and Talking Heads. He has kept his studio small and focused never growing it bigger than it needed to be.

Then he really took the cake with his sabbatical years. He finished his second on this past summer and I only recently listened to this interview of Stefan Sagmeister on Design Matters (player on the Design Observer).

And watched his TED talk here.

Of course it is easy for a rich, successful person to mold their future. Or is it? Is he successful? I would say he seems to have time to work on great projects and with great clients. And financially stable enough that he can take off for a year and resume his business upon return. Is he an anomaly? What of his personal life? Does he have a family? Does he just try to keep it private? Do I ask because family is important to me and influences my decisions. Ultimately, it is less the design accomplishments I admire and more the resolve and focus to do and accomplish exactly what your heart desires. And it isn’t an easy feat. I assume that is why he has determined that he needs to take off every 7 years.

Ever since I started web design and hand coding HTML the limited fonts available to me was the bane of every layout. You would have to design to an adjustable layout to accommodate the variations in how different machines would render fonts.

Well, finally developers are getting serious about a solution. A system by which fonts could be uploaded to servers and called in via CSS to get exactly the font/effect you want. It may be while before a standard is accepted and fully installed in the user base, but it is promising that there seems to be a solution out there and now it is a matter of time for it to work its way into the system.

Two articles that help explain it all:

Technology Review – Gives a more complete picture with Microsoft format featured.

Ars Technica – Focuses more on the WOFF format and its origins.

A trend that seems to be growing is home grown photo essays involving the toys of our youth in real world scenarios. A lot of these appear on Flickr. One popular one started by Stefan and features a pair of Storm Troopers in all sorts of high jinks. Recently another blogger picked highlights and called it “what Storm Troopers do on their day off.” These are all very inventive and well shot. A great source of inspiration.

Recently, a friend has also engaged int his pass time with a toy figure of Yao Ming. Tung Trinh started posting the photos to his blog. He has a great eye and hope he continues to refine his talent as I will continiue to enjoy the fruits of that labor. See more of his other photography here.

I always loved Craigslist’s Missed Connections section. Some of course are crass, but most are honest little haiku’s of fleeting emotions. Passing looks and wandering imaginations of what if.

Well, Sophie Blackwell has put her talent towards the admiral attempt of putting visuals to the most interesting of them. And she does so with great success. Learn more about her and this work at her blog.

Bravo Sophie! Bravo!

As Roger continues to win/almost win all the majors, he is showing signs that the ride is almost over. How can I tell? The decided up tick in the branding of Roger and his apparel.

Lacoste and Perry before him, Roger has learned that the branding is best started while you are on top. The ‘RF’ is huge on the clothing and why not his is by far the biggest thing to hit tennis since…since…Sampras. Pete didn’t really have a personality. Roger not so much either, but there is a certain coolness that comes across the court but now in his clothes.

The logo, I think is quite nice. It has an air of familiarity while staying modern. A modern traditionalist if you will. Almost as if he is trying to class up tennis after years of Agassi and over grunting teenage girl players. A sense of class and luxury/wealth. For the longest time tennis meant wealth. Gold trim and details being that sense of luxury to the clothes as well as signaling the gold standard of a true champion.

NYTimes has a good article on this topic here. Forgive me if my post sounds like the Times piece. I had actually thought about posting about it before the Times, but alas they are pretty savvy people there.

Consistently one of my favorite blogs and resources for all things design, is the Design Observer. They recently went through a redesign and for the most part I like it.

First, I would say they did a good job of adding more of an aesethetic to the site. Before it was really bare bones, which is usually fine for me. I like sites like Craigslist and Google. But now that the new design is here, I’m glad it is. It has enough design to feel still stripped down compared to other sites but a new flair that says “this is no longer the small time.”

Second, although the design/style is better, it is very hard to navigate. Partially in the sense as far as I can tell, because they are mixing old content with new.  A lot of their articles are evergreen type stuff, so generally that’s ok. Its just that previously, the focus was on recently posted items. Now that they have a vast library of great articles I guess they are trying to showcase the breadth and depth. But as an avid online user, I feel a bit lost by not having that ‘date posted’ up front. I’m not sure if the content is relevant before I read it. I guess I just need to learn that all their content is relevant and not to sweat it. (I did learn since that the main article is new, but they neglect to post the date on the main page. I like seeing the date.)

Third, the observed link section on twitter. Ok, twitter is an interesting feature and a social organism, but frankly, I am too old and cranky to learn a different way to talk about the same stuff, just because the new way is new. I mean technology is going so fast we hardly have time to vet whether it was a good idea to begin with before it is superseded by a similarly useless medium.

Anyway, go here now.

On a recent weekend, my family and I checked out the newly opened High Line park. Overall, I think the the idea and concept of the park is a very cool one. Make a green space free to the public out of a wasted space that cuts through a neighborhood recently seeing a rejuvenation, seems to be as good idea as anything I heard recently.

I guess one of the unique aspects of the High Line space is its location and size. The size cause it is so long really gives great views of the skyline and riversides. But the width is also a challenge. How to effectively move people along it while keeping enough room for greenery and the like.

The day I went was really crowded. It was hard to move around and I think appreciate the finer points of the park. It may have had to do with the access points available that day, most were closed, and it caused a lot of crowding to occur. Once they all open perhaps that will get better. Also, once the park is expanded and larger rest areas completed that will allow people to spread more evenly along its path. I am anxious to see it when it is complete.

The landscape design made you feel like you were in a park, but still retained the sense of the former use of the railroad tracks. And the vegetation selection even refers to the in between wild state that consumed the tracks after they were closed. Wild flowers and grasses mixed with concrete, steel tracks and dark wood really gives hope for urban blight. I mean, it really takes vision to make these materials feel inviting and complementary to the buildings/environs around.

See my photos on Flickr here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/solidquality/sets/72157620983752979/

Learn more about it here:
http://www.thehighline.org/

The Jenny Holzer exhibit at the Whitney, Protect Protect, has closed but I was able to catch it and several other good shows. I will write about those in seperate posts.

I half liked this show. It was made up of what I see as two parts even though they may have been related. One part was a set of her LED word art sculptures. And they were fabulous. Well, I would say I didn’t care mouch to read them. I’m not sure why, but I always appreciated her displays, but not really the content. Perhaps it is the visual designer in me that loves the look but feels a disconnect from the content.

The second part was some paintings and enlargements of declassified document around the Iraq and Afghan war. Some specifically about the war prisoners abuse. Very topical and very important issues. I just didn’t want this political debate to mess up my visual experience. I’m not saying art can’t have meaning, I guess I just felt like, the content was exploited for its relevance and once I felt that way I couldn’t take it serious anymore. Thus receding to only appreciate the visual nature of her signs.

You can see a video overview of the exhibit here.

It has been two weeks since I saw Waiting for Godot with what I would have to say is a supremo cast. Nathan Lane, Bill Irwin, John Goodman and Jon Glover. They are all the type of actor that really flourishes in dialog that out of context would seem mundane, but strung through their bodies an acting performance comes out unmatched. It really is a physical play. And again, these are all very physical actors.

I first saw the play in college and frankly all I could remember was that it was a real college type play. bare set, abstract ideas, vague references to a Christian god. Totally college. But that was of that time in my life and it was too easy for me to write it off then.  But I guess that is one of the points of the play. Life. The time we spend each day and what we do with it. Are we in control of how we spend it? Do we understand why we spend it the way we do? Could this repeating day with slight variations and the enduring desire for ways to make it go faster allude to that day job while we wait for the other to pay us a visit?

Oddly enough the play I think is becoming more relevant in these modern times. One could almost see the whole play as a commentary about a TV culture. Always waiting for the next program. Never ending or meaning schedules kept daily by folks not exactly knowing why they are watching, but just knowing they need to.

Ultimately that is what makes this a successful work of art. It allows so much interpretation and application that it doesn’t try to define things for us, but rather forces us to question how we currently define things for ourselves. When we are revealed the shabby construction of our society only then could we spot those areas in most need of repair.

Last night I saw the documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor at the Film Forum in NYC. And they had the director there with an editor from Vanity Fair do a little Q&A afterwards. Overall it was a great experience.

The movie gave a really great insight into one of the last iconic fashion brands and men as they were exiting the fashion industry. As a sign of the times, with hedge funds buying and ruining businesses, the film showed how critical the original creative force behind something as fantastic as Valentino. is crucial to the continued success. Its not to say the Valentino brand is dead as a business. But when he was involved and running the show , it was precisely just that, a show. More than a business, a grand show that made folks appreciate life, but especially the finest things of life. And as one result, a successful business occurred as well.  He created art for the world and we supported him. Perhaps you didn’t even feel like you were being sold something, rather acquiring some of the energy that made him reign for 45 years.

The other touching part was that Valentino’s lifelong partner was essential to his long success and frankly Valentino would not have been around for this long if it wasn’t for Giancarlo Giammetti.

So I say watch the movie. It was good film making, but it is easy when you have such characters as Valentino and Giammetti, set in the backdrop of awe inspiring fashion for the last 45 years.

I also wanted to say a quick note about being a master at something. There are scenes int he movie where you see Valentino sketching and he was so quick. And from sketch he grabbed the fabric and it seemed in a matter of minutes he had a masterpiece. Amazing that after all these years his creativity is still so bright.

And finally I have to shout out his seamstresses. They would make these amazing gowns in record time and they would exactly replicate the sketch Valentino made the day before. Note to self: surround yourself with talented people.

See trailer here: