Finished up a corny little animation for a school project the other day. Had the idea of creating an e-card that displays a message in lights on the surface of a planet viewed through a telescope, though I wasn't able to create a custom message input in time for the deadline. So I settled with "miss you". Even though the animation itself comes off as a little simple, and was clearly done by a beginner, I was pleased at the way the alpha channeled .png layers of clouds, stars and planets interacted with each other in the rendered output of the .swf.

Watch it here.

NOTE: the zoom at the end of the first scene sometimes breaks into a seizure-inducing loop that doesn't end for 5 or more cycles. I think this may have something to do with my pre-loader being broken. I'll fix it when I have a second. Until then, just give the flash a minute or so to load at the title screen before pressing the start button.

mixtape 02

I was thinking the other day what kind of music I'd want playing at my funeral. I'm not being morbid, I just think there is a very specific mood associated with funerals that is captured in the sort of darkly-surreal-heartbreaking-yet-uplifting-atmospheric-nostalgic-aesthetic of modern dreamwave/dubstep/electro. Plus it gave me an excuse to head up a mix with one of the more 'epic' recordings ever cut in wax, which, coincidentally, is the song that is going to be playing on my radio when I drive a vintage Lancia Stratos into an erupting volcano at midnight on my 80th birthday.



Track List:
001: M83 - Lower Your Eyelids and Die With The Sun
002: Phaseone - Sage
003: SALEM - Frost
004: DJ /rupture - Uranium: Moving Ninja
005: Air France - Maundy Thursday
006: The Knife - Still Light
007: Telepathe - Can't Stand It
008: Memory Cassete - Surfin (Sail A Whale Version)

Get it.


Mixtape 1 Re-Up:
Get it.

Starting to learn flash...

been making my first baby steps into flash animation. more to follow.

Playing with CSS

I've really been trying to buckle down and teach myself CSS in the wake of some truly mediocre classes this past month. Still have a long way to go, but i was pleased that i'm beginning to be able to view the code as a tool to achieve my designs rather than as an unpleasant obstacle preventing them from coming to life.

Here's a pretty mediocre layout i did as an experiment in layering CSS divs.

Type Treatment: Shiny Cliché Web 2.0

Playing around with shiny type for an upcoming project.

Mixtape

Summer's ending. Fall's rolling in. The leaves are splashed with faint shades of yellow/orange. The sun is lower in the sky. The air is electric with sharp, cold smells. Time slows and accelerates concurrently.




Artist//Track

Gentle Friendly//Rip Static
Hot Guts//Ballad Of John Simon
No Age//You're a Target
Wild Nothing//Cloud Busting
Washed Out//Feel It All Around (Toro Y Moi Remix)
Delorean//Seasun
The Sound of Arrows//Into The Clouds (Fear Of Tigers Remix)

Get it.

Typeface Design: Circlet Sans

I created this typeface as an extension of a logotype I did for a school project some months back. I wanted something light, modern and legible, but still decorative, playful and idiosyncratic.

The uppercase letterforms need work. They came after the lowercase, and still feel like an afterthought.

InfoGraphics

I recently bought copies of Tufte's "The Visual display of Quantitative Information" and "Visual Explanations". I loved both works' clear, consise and spare design aestheic. While I was in class last week, I came up with these tabloid-size posters that are meant to evoke the type/art style presented in the book. I started with the vague idea of visually relating exponential growth to a series of three abstract concepts, and came up with these two related pieces.

Fever Ray

creepycreepycreepy.

When I Grow Up from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

Seven from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

If I Had A Heart from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

Triangle Walks from Fever Ray on Vimeo.