You can now create images as you would on Photoshop, but on the web… And for FREE!

http://www.pixlr.com/editor/

Fellow EMU Art professor Jennifer Locke roped me into assisting her and several others to make a short film for the the 48hr Film Project. Above is our entry for festival. Each group was given a different film genre, ours was comedy. Every group had to incorporate the character Liam or Leanne Butler, a painter, the prop of a book, and the line “why don’t you explain it to me.” If you live in a city that is hosting this event, I recommend you give it a shot, it was good fun.

This is so much fun and a great way to waste some time. I like to how different designs sound. Have a go!

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

ToneMatrix

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to allow other authors of the blog to be able to embed videos. I think the problem has been fixed now with the installation of a plug-in. If you are trying to post something with video and cannot embed, please let me know. If you are embedding video you can use the Upload/Insert dialogue icons on the top of the post or paste the code in the html editor (pasting in the visual editor may or may not work).

In the meantime enjoy this nice video from Charles and Ray Eames on the Polaroid SX-70. It not only made a great video to test with but also is a great camera which allowed users to adjust the depth of field/focus. In other Polaroid related news it appears a group of scientists are trying to revitalize the Polaroid system, read about it here.

In preparation for the future re-design I have recently upgraded the version of Wordpress this blog runs on. Those of you who make posts will notice a difference in the user interface. If you want to get better acquainted with the new version you can visit Wordpress.org for more information.

In addition to the upgrade I deleted several users who made few contributions over the years. Those of you who I have personally invited or who asked for access still have access. If for some reason anything happened to your account password lost, posts missing, etc. please let me know, or if you wish to still contribute let me know and I can reinstate the account.

I heard stories before of blog spam hiding in the source code of the header in the document, mucking things up, destroying all that is sacred and beautiful. If you visit this site from time to time and recently noticed some bizarre behavior it is because this lovely blog was besieged with spam. The latest attack on the site actually modified the source code entirely of the header of the document making things very hard to read. It is somewhat fixed for the time being and will be 100% soon.

On a separate but similar note on the aesthetic of this site. The blog will be undergoing renovations soon thanks to former students Nick Woods and Shawn Lee, who promise me amazing things.

Former EMU graphic design student Logan Walters has been getting quite some internet play for his recent re-imagining of WuTang album covers as if they were Blue Note records. Congrats to Logan for his success and the great project. You can read more about the project here, here, and here. I really like the treatment of my favorite Wu affiliated album Liquid Swords (below).

Josh Rogers, from the design entrepreneur class, sent me this link from boing boing. It is a great short film relevant to the topics and issues we are exploring in the class. Everyone should watch it.

it’s official: spike jonze and dave eggers have combined forces to bring maurice sendak’s best work to life. the teaser also features a not-as-good-as-the-original version of my favorite arcade fire song -” diet wake up.”

just to keep things designy… i really like the handmade type.

If you like FFFFOUND, then you’ll probably like Dropular. If you like to save images and compile a library of inspiration, you’ll like ImageSpark. Check them out!