Teebs “Moments”

The astounding Paul Trillo has once again come through with a very colorful and inspiring video, Teebs “Moments.”

200 smoke bombs were used to create this very gaseous, color-filled music video. The very familiar and dreamlike fragments add to the video’s nostalgia and beauty. The video itself is a glimpse at the time traveling sequence Paul is imagining for his Happy Birthday Mr. Bracewell short film.

On that note, Happy Birthday Mr. Bracewell has reached its goal! Congrats to Paul! Feel free to still donate to his campaign.

PBS Arts: Off Book: Type

Featuring interviews with two personal design heroes and one heroine: Tobias Frere-Jones, Jonathan Hoefler, and Paula Scher. This informative, and insightful little documentary talks about everything typographic. Much of it isn’t new, but it’s well done and it’s great to see a short film dedicated to type (Helvetica withstanding.)

One Day on Earth

This magnificent, phenomenal trailer is an art piece, exploration and adventure presenting recordings during a 24 hour period throughout every country in the world. I was immediately astonished not only by the enormity of this undertaking but also by the beautiful imagery in it.

Aside from just finishing the film, the filmmakers plan on keeping an online global archive; which I think is pretty brilliant. Donate to this ambitious project on their Kickstarter page.

Polack, now from home!

Polack is the documentary I worked on, my friends film about the source of Polish jokes and the examination of his own heritage & sexuality.

You can now watch it on Vimeo, courtesy of the magical powers of the internet.

Up There

One moment I’m in LA the next I’m in the Sierra’s. I came across this fantastic, beautifully shot documentary about sign painters through a tweet by the Type Directors Club. Listening to the painters tell their stories combined with the gorgeous visuals do you get a sense of how time consuming and scary it is to create these ephemeral staples of our environment.

An unexpectedly simple, captivating film about the visuals and people we pass every day on our walk or drive.

James Levy Studio

This is a quick post while I get caught up on emails sitting in some valley Starbucks. I’ve been running around like mad in the great expanse of LA this week getting settled. I caught James Levy’s work on the Motionographer quickies. I love his fluid style. His works goes from one side of the spectrum to the next, ranging from the surreal to the literal. A seasoned designer, having worked for Mirada/Motion Theory, Blind, and Superfad, he certainly has some impressive names on his resume.

Oh and anyone with a fetus in their portfolio gets high marks in my book.

The Future

The Future is Miranda July’s newest film, which I had the good fortune of catching at this years Sundance Film Festival. The screening ended with a wonderful Q&A, where she and a few members of the cast gave some insight into the film. You’ll either love it or hate it, I loved it. I appreciate the sincerity of Miranda’s film and the deep honesty and quirkiness they convey. Me You and Everyone We Know was brilliant, but this film is a different animal altogether.

Read a great article about her and the film at the New York Times.

Happy Birthday Mr. Bracewell

Happy Birthday Mr. Bracewell is a really charming concept, yet-to-be produced film by fellow CCA Alum, and filmmaker Paul Trillo.

Paul’s got an enormous amount of talent, and he’s an amazing storyteller. Check out his short films Bela: L’Homme Chat and Something For Rockets. Both are sincere, nicely shot wonderful films. I have a soft spot for Bela: L’Homme Chat, the captivating short about the Cat man of Cannes. The film was created with Real Ideas Studio during this years Cannes Film Festival, which I had the pleasure of participating in 2009.

I can’t wait to see how Mr. Bracewell evolves and look forward to seeing what’s next from Paul. Donate to Paul’s Kickstarter, he’d appreciate it.

State of Design 2011

Last week I was at the PromaxBDA conference in NYC and I was fortunate enough to attend Motionographer founder Justin Cone’s State of Design presentation. Justin’s a cool, smart guy, his talk was both informative and enjoyable and it was great to see some amazing work.

His lecture was broken-down into different categories that his selections (and much of motion graphics these days) fall into. My favorites of the bunch are under the Storytelling and Surrealism categories: Apache and Tactile Waveforms.

Overall, it’s a very thorough review and I recommend anyone with a passing interest to take a gander at a few.

Faux Fi

CN: The Pirate / Meindbender

FVAP: This is My Weapon / Imaginary Forces

Analogue Ambiguity

“Game of Thrones” Opening Credits / Elastic

TUI Weather Spot /  Lucas Zanotto

Google eBooks / Buck

Process

Short Stack Film Festival / Roger

BBC Knowledge: Honk if You’re Human / Sean Pecknold

SVA Portfolio Show Package / Adam Grabowski

Epic Docs Animation / Varathit Uthaisri
→ Motionographer Interview

Storytelling

Daniels Holiday Card / Daniels

NBC Peacock / Nathan Love
→ Thanksgiving version

Apache / Ned Wenlock

ShapeShifter / Charlex

Surrealism

FUEL Surrealist Dollhouse / Brand New School

55DSL: MTV Sight / ilovedust

Tactile Waveforms / Nando Costa + Superfad

A Very Brief Typographic Survey

Make it Better / Climent Canal and Sebastián Baptista

Visual Essay

Pledge to See This Film / Buck

Turbine-Free Wind Power / Buck

BBC Knowledge / weareseventeen

One Last Thing…

Saul Bass Closer

New Creepy-cool-ickiness

The masters at Imaginary Forces, the same people that brought you the iconic MadMen titles have unveiled their newest creations for Discovery’s Science Channel Rebrand promos and network IDs. The IF team were given the task of creating a memorable identity that would fit with their newest logo or i.e. “Morph,” as the silvery bubble has been nicknamed. Morph has been used to represent a number of weird, organic creatures that carry the brand-logo on them. It’s completely unexpected and presented in a very slick inventive way with an air of War of the Worlds to some of the characters.

Read more about the Science Channel Rebrand at Brand New.