Acetio | Blogma

I'm a sucker for this style of design. I don't know what it's called.

The designer, Aaron Wood, has prints for sale on his Etsy shop

http://www.etsy.com/shop/Justonescarf?ref=seller_info

https://plus.google.com/u/0/114468593663912084118/posts

Game of Thrones has captured a lot of attention. I've seen a few episodes and wonder if it's not just Mad Men meets Lord of the Rings - a very slick and polished period soap opera set in Middle Earth.

But the intro is gorgeous. It is reminiscent of Tolkien's books, with a map at the very beginning to show you the world the characters inhabit. Supposedly it will change over the course of the show to reflect the changes to the world.

I've been having trouble keeping track of all the characters, but their animal representatives help keep them in order in my head

Stark = Wolf
Targaryen = Dragon
Lannister = Lion
Baratheon = Stag
Arryn = Eagle
Greyjoy = Squid
Tully = Fish

Wikipedia has an article on all the currency symbols used in the world.

My favorites are the Israeli shekel:

₪

which looks like a hand putting money into another hand, and the Georgian lari:

ლ

The Indian rupee is pretty cool, to:

₹

If I taught a design class, I would have an exercise on designing a new symbol for the dollar.

Son Lux - Making of: "We Are Rising" Album Artwork by The Made Shop from anticon. on Vimeo.

Even with the sound turned off, this was an interesting look at all the work that goes into something like an album cover.

The Wikipedia entry for the Codex Seraphinianus states: "The Codex Seraphinianus is a book written and illustrated by the Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini during thirty months, from 1976 to 1978.[1] The book is approximately 360 pages long (depending on edition), and appears to be a visual encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in one of its languages, a thus-far undeciphered alphabetic writing."

The book is truly fantastic, full of animals, inventions, customs, cities, and other aspects of a fantasy world. The idea of an encyclopedia of a wildly different fictional place created in a mad-up language reminds me of the Voynich Manuscript but while that seems to have been a hoax, the Codex Seraphinianus seems to be 'merely' an art piece.

The look is quite similar to the movie "Fantastic Planet" from 973.

"A first person walk through of 'Machine', a steam punk horror show we built and performed in our garage."

"it took about 18 months of tinkering in the garage to build it, we've been planning and designing it since way before. There's one top secret bit of kit we had to build first to enable the the machine to travel between scenes. The whole set is only in a normal sized double garage. One of the most time consuming bits of the build was the brick walls in old London, each brick hand carved from polystyrene, that might have been a mistake."

Tilt-shift is still cool.
And 3-D is still cool.

3D effects can be achieved by simulating a tilt-shift style - essentially by selectively adjusting an image's blurriness and color saturation.

ArtCyclopedia has applied these techniques to some of Van Gogh's paintings with amazing results.

These lamps are fun. They remind of Pixar's Luxo

http://makersmarket.com/seller/kozolamp

There's not really enough value in this to make cities need to install them everywhere, but it's one of those ideas that at least makes me pause to think about it.

Pop-Up is a set of platforms that is embedded in the sidewalk and can be pumped up or down by anyone. The advantage is in being able to free up sidewalk space when not in use, while also not requiring other storage space for bulky furniture. Also, since each component can be raised or lowered independently the furniture can be used as benches, tables, or some combination.

Downsides:
A) Potentially filthy (dog-doo smears on your table?)
B) Some kid decides to pump your seat up or down while you're sitting on it and you have to chase him away.

Maybe you have to be in Holland for this to work.