Newgray's Newblog

Here is another work from my design student, Nicole Boffa....

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:09:00 -0500

Here is another work from my design student, Nicole Boffa. Thumbs up!

From Design & Typography class at the Department of Media Culture, CUNY.

Here is a work from my design student, Steven Martinez. Very...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:06:00 -0500

Here is a work from my design student, Steven Martinez. Very good! From Design & Typography class at the Department of Media Culture, CUNY.

These are very nice center labels from Center Of Attention...

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 15:06:00 -0400

These are very nice center labels from Center Of Attention website. Good inspiration source for usage of shapes, colors and typography. More can be seen online at: centerofattention.me

“cinemetrics is about measuring and visualizing movie...

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:25:00 -0400

“cinemetrics is about measuring and visualizing movie data, in order to reveal the characteristics of films and to create a visual “fingerprint” for them. Information such as the editing structure, color, speech or motion are extracted, analyzed and transformed into graphic representations so that movies can be seen as a whole and easily interpreted or compared side by side.”

I am curious what are the benefits of those visualizations for us to perceive/understand movies any better. Would be great to read the full thesis though. Here is the brief list of things come up to my mind when I look at the results:

Average color-scale of the whole movie might give us a clue about the atmosphere and the mood of the movie.
Dialogues can be extracted to make a tag cloud or list of frequently used words.
We can visualize the flow of the soundtrack to see rising moments, tensions and relaxing scenes.
We can analyze pace of the movie by looking at cut/transition frequencies.
Repeating patterns might be visualized as well, gun-shots, car scenes, conversations, etc.

The list can grow however, I believe we should always keep in mind that the movie itself is a very different experience than its visualizations. Storytelling and audience feelings can’t be communicated enough with visualizations. More information and videos about the project is available on cinemetrics website.

Pages from the original copy of NASA’s identity guidelines from...

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:00:05 -0400

Pages from the original copy of NASA’s identity guidelines from when they re-branded to the ‘worm’ logo, dated January 1976. NASA’s logo is probably one of the most memorable identity design on earth. Would be great to have and study this guidelines book.

“The average color of the New York City sky, updated every...

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:09:56 -0400

“The average color of the New York City sky, updated every 5 minutes.” Nskyc project is simple, clever, elegant, focused and about colors. Thumbs up!

Stamen released their latest mapping project, onebayarea...

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 01:54:03 -0400

Stamen released their latest mapping project, onebayarea maps. It filters the view by the travel time between areas, and the median price of homes in each area. Important points:

1. It is not based on google maps but geoIQ. Map is nicer and more suitable for data mapping.
2. Median Price Data is not from census data but ABAG data. Most probably better organized and reliable.

Finally there is a mapping project which shows contextualized data based on a daily case and looks nice. Good Job from Stamen. You can also read the original post about their project on their blog.

Digital Archives

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 16:13:05 -0400

I just gave a presentation at the Interior Design Studio, Parson School of Design about Digital Archives, particularly the work that I did at the New Museum. Obviously there are wide range of resources on archives. I would highly suggest Jacques Derrida’s book Archive Fever as a critical/philosophical start.

If you like to go technical, here are some links that you may want to check it out.

Of course wikipedia is a very good resource to learn about the concepts and terms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_library

If you are talking about Digital Archive, one of the main issue is the Metadata. Here is the Metadata resources: http://archive.ifla.org/II/metadata.htm

If watching is easier than reading;

http://www.ted.com/talks/brewster_kahle_builds_a_free_digital_library.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlOQuuLYavY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCOXC5PTJj8
Smithsonian
LOC

Archiving is a lot of manual work, even for companies like Google;

Telegraphs Article

G oogle Fingers

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt video is online

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 16:09:07 -0400

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt video is online

FRANZ XAVER MESSERSCHMIDT DOCUMENTARY FILM

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:41:56 -0400

We are proud to announce that we finalized a documentary film project on Franz Xaver Messerschmidt’s work and life. It is going to be on view at Neue Galerie New York between September 16, 2010- January 10, 2011.

The Franz Xaver Messerschmidt exhibition is one of the most anticipated shows in New York City and it will be the first exhibition in the United States devoted exclusively to this major late 18th-century Austro-Bavarian sculptor. It will focus on the artist’s so-called “character heads,” among the most important works of sculpture from their era. The exhibition is organized by Guilhem Scherf, chief curator of sculpture at the Musée du Louvre.

FRANZ XAVER MESSERSCHMIDT 1736-1783
From Neoclassicism to Expressionism

—————————————————————-
September 16, 2010-January 10, 2011
Neue Galerie New York

January 26-April 25, 2011
Musée du Louvre, Paris
——————————————————————

Directed by
Hakan Topal

Produced by
Newgray
New York

Camera
Gregor Grkinic
Hakan Topal

Editing
Hakan Topal

Art Consultant and Researcher
Margaret Samu

Location Sound
Marc Orleans

Location Assistants
Shai Zurim, New York
Boris Steiner, Vienna

Editing and Story Consultant
Kari Conte

Sound Mastering
Nate Greenberg

Interviews

Barry X Ball
Artist
New York

Deborah Coen
Assistant Professor of History
Barnard College, Columbia University

Charles Janoray
Art dealer, European sculpture and works of art
New York

Dakin Hart
Institute of Fine Arts
New York University

Ronald S. Lauder
President
Neue Galerie New York

Ian Wardropper
Chairman, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Film commissioned by
Neue Galerie New York

2010 © Newgray

Prospect New Orleans website is updated

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:39:15 -0400

Prospect New Orleans website is updated:

As part of our development plan, we updated the Prospect website specifically for Fall 2010 events and integrated with Facebook and Tumblr blog. Prospect staff will have the ability to update the site and interact with their users more effectively. And it looks good!

Newgray's new website is up and running

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:48:00 -0400

Newgray's new website is up and running:

This is another test with Canon 90mm Tilt-Shift Lens

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 13:07:20 -0400

This is another test with Canon 90mm Tilt-Shift Lens

I finished shoting the Franz Xaver Messerschmitt documentary...

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 13:04:00 -0400

I finished shoting the Franz Xaver Messerschmitt documentary with a 5D setup. Since I always use prime lenses, it is hard to match the quality with other video cameras which usually use zoom lenses with smaller CCD chips. For FXM documentary all the scenes was shot in doors and I wanted to try my new lens outside. Here are two test shots. Vimeo one will follow.

Prospect New Orleans Blog: Art and the Oil Spill: A letter from Dan Cameron

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:13:45 -0400

Prospect New Orleans Blog: Art and the Oil Spill: A letter from Dan Cameron :

New Orleans
Art and the Oil Spill: A letter from Dan Cameron

Prospect New Orleans founder, Dan Cameron, has released a letter addressing the devastating effects of the BP oil spill and the role of the city’s artist community in this dire time. Below is Mr. Cameron’s letter:

Some beautiful plastic cameras (via UPPERCASE/karenh)

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 05:13:23 -0400

Some beautiful plastic cameras (via UPPERCASE/karenh)

Principles of Icon Design

Mon, 24 May 2010 20:28:00 -0400

Principles of Icon Design:

I’ve never over-run on a talk. Ever. Usually I embarrasingly finish around 10 mins early, leaving plenty of time for questions.

Until last week at Future of Web Design that is. When it… via hickensian

Everybody talks about the iPad hype. It, for sure, is a media...

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:14:08 -0400

Everybody talks about the iPad hype. It, for sure, is a media hype however on the other hand it is the most advanced tablet using touch screen technology for today. For me it is important because it brings the spirit of tablet devices into the society. I believe there will be a significant push of the tablet branch in mobile devices. There will be many developers and designers producing many nice ideas for the device. Not only as a piece of hardware but also as a device for social interaction it may change many small details in daily life.

The first interesting app for me is already released by Autodesk: SketchBook Pro. As you may see in the video by using sketch pro you can make sketches without using any brush, paint, canvas or tools. I am sure there are many problems of the usability and sensitivity in the recent version of the app however, once we think about the future of this practice what may change for designers and illustrators?

No mediator tool anymore? No brush, paint?
Will drawing education change?
How could it be possible to optimize the ‘touches’ depending on the finger?
How collaborative drawing may evolve? Sketching together online?
What could be the expressionist styles in finger touch sketching?

I don’t have the answers and I am not sure how finger touch devices may improve in the future but it is for sure that there will be many changes in the field of drawing and sketching. If you are interested you may see some more ipad application demos at macrumors.

I spent my last friday watching the presentations on 99%...

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:51:00 -0400

I spent my last friday watching the presentations on 99% (Behance’s think tank). I think there are really good ones like the one from Threadless guys or one from Michael Bierut. But my personal favorite was from Ji Lee (Creative Director of Google Creative Lab).

He talks about how personal projects may bring new perspectives and opportunities into one’s life. I was thinking on the same issue for a while that the best projects in creative career are the ones that you earn more less no money and I believe it is an important thing in life to follow your personal interests and even obsessions. His viral ad-spoofing bubble project is a genius idea and no surprise that many agencies adapted the idea later but that is for sure none of them were crazy enough to be the first. I think being creative is related to being brave and taking risks to be the first in something new.

"Dieter Rams’ ten principles to “good design”: * Good design is innovative * Good design..."

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 19:08:00 -0400

“

Dieter Rams’ ten principles to “good design”:

* Good design is innovative
* Good design makes a product useful
* Good design is aesthetic
* Good design helps us to understand a product
* Good design is unobtrusive
* Good design is honest
* Good design is long-lasting
* Good design is consequent to the last detail
* Good design is concerned with the environment
* Good design is as little design as possible

”