Coffee Time

Love this. No idea how this translates (Нет предела – оформление продуктов) but Coffee Time is just plain beautiful.

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Design feeds?

Part of this year’s goal was to reduce my RSS / Blog reading by 40%. I did just that a week ago and while I’m glad to not be weighed down by the excess reading, I’m finding myself in need of some fresh design / artistic blog reads.

What sites do you guys recommend I begin reading? A few criteria, I like a site with good pictures in the RSS feed, full posts are preferred (though notcot.org still sits high on my list), and my preferred posting frequency is in the 1-20 posts per day (for a design / art news site). Current sites I’m reading; Shape + Color, Motionographer, and Abduzeedo.

So, what’s it going to be?

Paper animation

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

Photos and sound

I love how this piece makes me feel like I know the subjects. And also it feels a little like Cloverfield.

1704 (clean) from Ryan Aylsworth on Vimeo.

fliesmovies

It’s cool. Wonder if we can get these to generate openers?

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Real life Photoshop

I am really, really loving this. Extremely clever.

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3D sketching

Duuuuude…

ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

Pattern Inspiration

Not enough words to describe how I love these pattern illustrations by Daniele De Nigris.

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Stop motion mastery

I especially love the 2:00 mark with the paper wall in this incredible work by jemapur + max hattler: aanaatt (via).

Jemapur: Aanaatt from Max Hattler on Vimeo.

iTV

Nice little app I came across today, meet iTV. It’s a TV Guide style browser for shows and movies. A few features that mean I’ll be using it quite a while:

- customize to your shows, channels
- location aware, sets channels based on your geographic location.
- includes previews for TV and movies as well as a brief summary.
- free (a winner in my book)

Go give it a try and check out these screen captures.

One year of art, philinthecircle.com

www.philinthecircle.com sums up one year of art (which exists, then is promptly destroyed) in 10 minutes. It’s a long clip, but enjoyable. I did skip around a bit, but overall was quite inspired.

Thiago Ribeiro de Santana

I’m a sucker for the portfolio of Thiago Ribeiro de Santana. Very nice stuff.

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NetFlix Origami

NetFlix Origami – Recycle Paper

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Noriko Ambe

What would you do with an old book? Read it? Shelve it? eBay it? If you are Noriko Ambe you probably said “sliver it into many, many layers and create some beautiful artwork. This would look great on my coffee table.

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** Today’s takeaway, find some sort of physical art and begin interacting with it. Forget about my 1200 layer AE composition that continues to crash on me.

Old Games in the Real World

Old Games in the Real World featured on Abduzeedo. This is clever and I sure wish I’d thought of it first.

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Mario Wagner

I love MARIO WAGNER’s illustration style.

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iPhone wallpapers

Love these iPhone wallpapers. I have the first one on right now.

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RJD2, Magnificent City Instrumentals

If you aren’t listening to this, if you don’t find yourself to be funky but desire to be, if you need a style injection, if you should take up your groove and cool factor a few notches, you couldn’t do much better than RDJ2′s Magnificent City Instrumentals.

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This entire album is (1) lyric free save for some BGVs, (2) bossa-nova and trip hop influenced, (3) and could be my favorite new collection of music this year. It’s full of gritty, buzzy sounds, trippy drums souped up with a vinyl flair, and maybe a horn section or two. If you know me you know I don’t like the brass… this album makes me take it all back. Loving it. Sample a bit of it here, the run off to Amazon or iTunes and pick it up. Make sure you get the instrumental version. It’s much more delicious.

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Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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Day off + Willow Arts video

Today’s Friday, and Friday means day off. Oh the plans I have, the plans I have. I had to custom order one of the windows for our house and it came in. I’ll probably be tackling that this morning first thing. I’m sure gym, grocery shopping, and errand running will fall in there somewhere as well. Along with my Friday chores, I was going through my photos from the Willow Arts Conference (www.towardwonder.com) and found a lot of photos I haven’t shared yet. And there are a few videos that I snagged as well. The quality’s not stellar, but the intent was to capture the moments so I could remember them later.

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This is a capture from my Canon SD1000 (which explains the quality) from this year’s Willow Creek Arts Conference. I love the visual style and tempo of this piece. It’s a guy’s testimony, but told in a very creative manner.

Now, I’m not convinced that the dude dancing would be suited for NewSpring’s stage, but it does work in the suburbs of Chicago. Even still, I’m inspired and encouraged to explore interview styles and avenues like this. It was very impactful.

As a sidenote, I’ve been trying to place that synth sound ever since I heard the piece and it just hit me where it’s from. That’s the demo song that first launches when you fire up Propellerhead’s Reason. Cool.

Video testimony piece – Willow Creek Arts Conference from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

I’m home!!!!

Though you may not have noticed, the AV Club has been run by happy little robots for the past two weeks (how very Matrix of me, no?). I was on a family vacation for the first week, puttering around the house for a few days, then off the the Willow Creek Arts Conference for all of last week. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll probably feel a little more connected than if you don’t. Wifi was spotty in places but the iPhone was comfortable for Twittering and general minute (that’s My-Nuuute) web interaction.

However, if you’d like to know what I learned on the trip, check out my avclubbreakout Twitter feed. I split it from my main feed so as not to tick off my friends and inundate them with information. Here’s a brief image… expect about 100 more later this week as I offload my camera.

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I’ve had the opportunity to sit in an airplane, a subway train, and in several cars (as well as in coffee shops, in airports, and in hotel rooms) with minimal distractions over the past few weeks and thus have been able to digest some new media. Here are a few things I’m digging:

Choosing to Cheat by Andy Stanley; RJD2′s Magnificent City Instrumentals; Weezer’s Pork and Beans; DJ Tiesto’s In Search of Sunrise 7 (didn’t get the Armani Exchange T-shirt); Wicked; a cool Chicago Art gallery opening; Starbuck’s (probably visited 6 different stores in the past two weeks)

More on what I’ve learned later.