Behind the Design: The Mindanao Blogger Summit Poster
A few months ago, Blogie, one of the organizers of MBS1, shot me an email asking if I could design something for the Mindanao Blogger Summit. I was in the middle of a web building project that seems to never finish, and I needed something fun to do, so I agreed.
When conceptualizing a design, the first thing I do is “pull out” the elements. Elements are keywords in the project, the main points. In this case, Bloggers, Mindanao, and Summit. The next thing I do is identify themes or any message that clients need to communicate, I thought of diversity, unity, importance, blogosphere. From there concepts are made with minimal arbitrary design decisions. With that in mind, lets go into the elements of the design:
How I Made The Mix CD Wedding Souvenir
We have already decided to give out a music compilation CD as our wedding souvenir. Its less boring than a small useless figurine. Plus its more modern and fun to make. The problem is what songs to put in?
For me a great mix CD has to have the following characteristics;
Site of the Month: Layer Tennis
When thinking of something that goes well together, there are few things in the brain that rushes to the front of the line. Peanut butter and jelly, gin and tonic, coffee and cream, milk and cookies. But we, designers, are a weird bunch, Coudal Partners, a Chicago based design agency thought simultaneously about tennis and designers. Whatever train of thought that led them to that, we might never know, but what came after is a novel and fun website.
Silverchair – Young Modern Review
Time hasn’t been kind to Silverchair, after a hugely successful run, three albums long. The boy band got bored, so they changed gears and added orchestra and other pretentious gank to their sound. As a result, their fourth album Diorama flopped. Besieged by anorexia and arthritis, their singer, Daniel Johns was forced to quit touring for a year or so. So in between pleasing his Natalie and collaborating guitar-less-ly (arthritis remember?) with another Australian dance star, Paul Mac. He decided he misses his two mates, and Silverchair has now made a comeback with their fifth album, Young Modern. What has changed?
Simpsonize Me or The Simpsonizer
In one of the more interesting promotion for a movie, Burger King and 20th Century Fox presents a cool web app that will turn your picture into a Simpson caricature.
Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix – Film Review
Reviewing a Harry Potter film is not an easy task. It is akin to a prism channeling three kinds of perspective into one conclusive edict of its merits and demerits. If any one of you know of a talking prism, let me know. Until then, here is my attempt to do just that.
Monumental – a poem about ???
I mark on this moment, a monumental shift
In its wake is a blank space,I wish not a rift
The time together was heartfelt
But in this, there was a blow dealt
I have caused this riven
for that I beg to be forgiven
The desire still burns and scorches
but the needs kill and the mind confound
I thank you for the shelter and providence
and with these words, I am unbound.
Improve Gmail or How Gmail stopped being ugly
Look at the pic above…A new version of Gmail? Nah! Gmail miraculously finally out of beta? Nope! Its just a pretty nifty Firefox extension called Better Gmail. It customizes Gmail’s interface so that next time you get an angry e-mail from your boss, its packaged attractively! Get it here.
Oh in case you haven’t guessed you need the Firefox browser and a Gmail account. Sorry Internet Explorer users, no amount of plug-ins will improve that POS (piece of shite)
Interpol – Our Love to Admire review
Interpol is rock’s greatest hidden treasure. A band that displayed an astounding level of musical maturity right out of the gate on their debut (Turn On the Bright Lights) and follow-up (Antics), Interpol will manage to astound listeners once again with their latest album. Our Love to Admire finds a band that has achieved oneness with every aspect of music production;
1. Paul Bank’s voice – still perfectly distinct and now improved with nuances and high notes that markedly expands the admittedly limited emotional dimensions to past Interpol songs.
2. Instruments – the bass line inspires delirium, but the percussion grounds you. The guitars leads confidently until Paul Banks enters the scene where it becomes a competent second in command.
3. Atmosphere – dripping wet with atmosphere on the opener track (Pioneer to the falls) and the closer (Lighthouse) and sprinkled throughout the album with faint keyboards, wailing guitars and bass drums.
4. variety – each songs does what it aspires to do. You will feel the anguish, despair, hopelessness, anger, passion and other emotion when the song demands it. Slow tracks that don’t feel like a drudgery, hard rock songs that pound like a monster, catchy as hell sections on every song, and absolutely no filler.
5. Layered – Like all great albums, you will need to peel off layers and layers of listening until the album unravels its qualities. This album’s resistance to the law of diminishing returns doesn’t disappoint.
6. Lyrics – Interpol always puts emphasis on the lyrics as much as their melodies, theirs’ are symbolic but not to the point of abstract, and on some songs, lyrics are rather straight forward. This makes the songs more real as compared to bands that follow a lyrical ambiguous template.
7. The song arrangement – the first song on their every album always serves as a summary of the album, the loose concept, followed by the early singles, and with more powerful songs in the middle, the highlights comes after to elevate the listeners to aural heaven and the more melodic ones in the later part serves to gently put your feet back to the ground.
Like traits of other great geniuses, Interpol is meticulous on their music even on their live sets and their aversion to the press shows that they are true musicians that will consciously evolve themselves to attain musical greatness. This album shows just that. Masterful, intelligent, accessible and profound and a distinct progression from their already excellent past albums, Our Love to Admire propels Interpol from one of rock’s hidden gem to one of its greatest treasures.
Highly Recommended
BEST SONGS: Wrecking Ball, Pace is the Trick, Theres no I in Threesome, Rest My Chemistry
Transformers Film Review – Awesome Nonsense
Transforming cars? it could happen…
A shrinking giant cube? someday…
An extremely hot girl who’s into auto mechanics? You must be kidding me.
Transformers – the hotly anticipated Micheal Bay (Armageddon, Bad Boys) film arrives to theaters with a subtlety of an angry 30ft giant robot. If you’re looking for the baddest and awesomest sci-fi ACTION blockbuster, look no further. Thats “action” spelled in full caps, baby!
Expect a near lethal dose of awesome when you first see the robots transform, the battle scenes and the destruction. The crowd clapped and jeered throughout the film, something I never saw happening before in this part of the planet. Its also very funny, particularly with Shia Lebouf. For hot blooded men, theres the ultra super fucking hot, Megan Fox, lets hope we will see more of her(literally!). The graphics are impressive and you will believe they’re really there and not computer generated. An easy thing to overlook is the sound, its amazing! Sound effects and the voice-overs are a huge part why this film rocks.
