Thank you, Vimeo. You never fail me. You never ever ever show me sucky videos.

Like this one, for instance. This is awesome!

First of all: I love quizzes, and I love movies, and I love animation, and I love animated movie quizzes.

Second of all: repeat.

I dug around a little and found that the “motionographer” of this video is Evan Seitz, who works for Indigo Studios in Atlanta, GA, which also happened to produce this Bills Rockpile creative for Coors Light. Small world.

Check Evan’s “motion” out above. It’s enjoyable.

-Ben

Artist Ian Sklarsky is paid to keep his eyes off the paper. 

(Check out his tumblr here).

- Maggie

Zeetus lapetus, the future is upon us. While we may not be able to control our dreams entirely, the Japanese Yumemiru app aims to at least influence them. Detecting the different stages of sleep cycle, the app plays a specific preselected soundtrack as one enters REM sleep, influencing the lighter sleep state in which dreaming occurs. Dream themes include the forest, visiting the beach, flying, becoming rich, and gender specific romance. Creepy/cool? My primary concern is the lack of Haagen-dasz ice cream theme.
- Maggie

Zeetus lapetus, the future is upon us. While we may not be able to control our dreams entirely, the Japanese Yumemiru app aims to at least influence them. Detecting the different stages of sleep cycle, the app plays a specific preselected soundtrack as one enters REM sleep, influencing the lighter sleep state in which dreaming occurs. Dream themes include the forest, visiting the beach, flying, becoming rich, and gender specific romance. Creepy/cool? My primary concern is the lack of Haagen-dasz ice cream theme.

- Maggie

Ask a Block Club Boy: Patrick

We’re going to be introducing some fun new features to Club Haus over the next few weeks! While Club Haus will always be a platform for us to share weekly inspirations, intriguing design work and news, you’ll also see more original content in the form of interviews, design and business recommends, and one-on-ones with the faces of Block Club Creative. 

But first, some introductions! This week, we’re checking in with Patrick, founder and principal of the company - a job that involves growing the company with new products, services, and of course, clients.

                                     

Continue reading…

Do-it-yourself Valentines: Cover Girl!

cut up beautiful magazine faces

smush beautiful magazine faces together 

- Maggie

Kinfolk magazine does branding. And they do it very well.

Here they merge filmic storytelling with a mythical narrative, telling the story of their reader’s lifestyle. How they come to the table of Kinfolk, and all that this relationship coveys. It’s an artistic stretch, implying that every reader canoes up to their friends’ charming candlelit dinner on the riverfront. We can all dream, can’t we? The point, as is stated below, is that their approach to branding here has to do with knowing who they are as a magazine. Who comes to the table is anyone’s guess. But it’ll probably be someone cool and smart.

A few notes from gymclassmagazine’s fantastic mag blog:

Magazines are brands. And like all brands, they signify to others who we are and to what we aspire. A rolled magazine under our arm is a sign, just as much as the trainers on our feet or the shirt on our back.

Kinfolk’s identity got us thinking about semiotics (university flash back!). It got us thinking about how some magazines have a strong sense of what they’re about and who they’re for (such as Kinfolk)… while others seem to struggle.

So the big question at Gym Class Magazine HQ this morning is: What do magazines with a confused identity say about the people who read them?

-Ben

This is not the first time someone has compared domestic and international magazine covers, but it’s worth pointing out as it appears to be a trend. Especially with Time Magazine, which has once again dumbed down, as some are putting it, the cover story for their American readers while printing more serious, inarguably more relevant stories about the world for international readers. Kudos to any blogger or journalist bringing this to life, as I can’t assume most would ever be in the position to notice such blatant discrepancies.
What do you make of these sanitized American covers? Are we dumber than the rest of the world, or is corporate media money shielding us from actual news? Or both?
-Ben

This is not the first time someone has compared domestic and international magazine covers, but it’s worth pointing out as it appears to be a trend. Especially with Time Magazine, which has once again dumbed down, as some are putting it, the cover story for their American readers while printing more serious, inarguably more relevant stories about the world for international readers. Kudos to any blogger or journalist bringing this to life, as I can’t assume most would ever be in the position to notice such blatant discrepancies.

What do you make of these sanitized American covers? Are we dumber than the rest of the world, or is corporate media money shielding us from actual news? Or both?

-Ben

I recently came across an old journal of mine and spent the entire day pouring over it, fascinated. I remembered writing the words - I occupied the same physical space, shared the same bones -  but the person who spoke them was a complete stranger. It’s amazing how continuous our experience of being feels, while every day is a constant process of changing; a scene, a movement, a thought - each moment leaves behind the person we were without it. 

Photographer Bobby Neel Adams captures the raw physicality of this change in his project, Age Maps. He performs what he calls “photo-surgery,” a montage technique in which he merges a subject’s childhood photo with the adult self, “telescoping the slow process of aging into a single picture.” Preferring to avoid digital editing, Adams develops each photo to the same scale and then, simply tearing them, combines them as one: 

“The point at which the images are physically torn together becomes the boundary… between decades of passing time.” 

- Maggie

Ashley Rodriguez, of the lovely Not Without Salt blog, shines a light on the once mysterious gradient cake, and it is very, very pretty. 

- Maggie

A blog of inspiration by
block club.