Nerdalert:

I’m not even going to pretend to be enough of a geek to understand how this is done, but I do have an enormous amount of respect for anyone that can program the laws of physics, fluid dynamics, and materials science into a computer program.  The ramifications for the motion graphics and video game industry (assuming consoles can handle the intense processing going on) are pretty enormous with this kind of control and granularity.  Even if you’re not a total dork though, you can still enjoy it if you have a thing for flying digital goo-rabbits.

Mmm, charcuterie + design.  Be still my beating heart.

The Official Manufacturing Company is a trio of former big agency guys – Mathew Foster, Fritz Mesenbrink & Jeremy Pelley – that, when combined, perform Voltron-like feats of design.  These guys look like they have a blast at work.  Going well beyond your normal print and web shop, they do album covers, coffee packaging, freakin’ wool blankets…

Check out their full portfolio, go buy a ‘Fuck Haters’ shirt, or send them a postcard.

My Associate Cornelius, a one-man shop run by Micah Smith, was just that talented artist hired to create the poster for last weeks’ show.  He specializes in posters and apparel for the music industry.  His work follows a simple but often difficult to pull off formula of a striking illustration, tastefully incorporated typography, and a restrained color palette.  Lots of good stuff in his portfolio and shop.

*These sentiments are my own and do not necessarily definitely do not represent the sentiments of some other authors of OK Great.  Whatever.

All students of design (and really, everyone) should probably get together and write a big thank you card to Dominic Flask, aka DangerDom, for the epic amount of work that he put into creating Design Is History.  Designed as part of a graduate thesis, DIH is a teaching tool, a reference, and basically an entire design history lesson wrapped up in a neat little site.  Ever wonder what the 1920’s Russian Suprematism movement was all about?  Feel like you need a little more Alvin Lustig in your life?  Can’t tell the difference between U&lc and UC llc?  From Gutenberg to Sagmeister, the clean type of Crouwel to the insane type of David Carson and everything else in between.

Head over to Design is History and learn something.

Go ahead and spend the next sixteen minutes watching Marian Bantjes give your brain a workout.  Bantjes discusses her transformative experience in her career, where she went from being your run of the mill graphic designer to, as she calls herself now, a graphic artist.  Her process involved injecting that heretical thing that graphic designers are never (NEVER!) to inject into their work – ego.  I have a lot more thoughts on this topic, but I think I need to let them marinate for a little bit… So until then, just watch the video and soak it up.  Tons of great insight, and lots of gorgeous eye-candy.

Hey there local OKGreatsters – tonight is PechaKucha night in Durham.

PechaKucha Night is a networking / meetup / presentation event for designers, thinkers, and anyone else with an open mind.  The presentations at PK follow the 20 x 20 rule - twenty slides, twenty seconds per slide.  The slides progress automatically and the presenter hopefully keeps up with the action.  I’ve also heard there’s beer involved (I’ve never been).

Looking through the presenters list, it looks like a lot of interesting ground will be covered – from ‘Ephiphany Farming’ to ‘Advancing Civil Rights in Raleigh’.  Entrance is free, beer is free, but you have to register ahead of time (before 6pm tonight).  See y’all there.

For all of you out there who aren’t lucky enough to live in our fair Triangle, there’s probably a PechaKucha night near you.  Of note - renowned ‘Fiercest Town in America’ will be hosting one on June 24th.

In anticipation of one of the world’s most anticipated sporting events, all eyes are focused on the million dollar stadiums and years-of-development new soccer ball Jabulani of the 2010 World Cup.  But being possibly the most popular sport on Earth, while also being one of the simplest (one ball, two goals, and a handful of players), soccer is played on every level from the elite World Cup all the way down to back-alley pickup games.  In the documentary Pelada, two former collegiate soccer players, unready to be done with the game, seek out the common denominator between prisoners in Bolivia, moonshine distillers in Kenya, construction workers in South Africa, and futbol enthusiasts all over the world – the pickup game.   Pelada premiered last April at Durham’s Full Frame Documentary Festival, and continues to be shown across the country.  I saw some earlier cuts of the movie, but haven’t been able to catch the final version – hopefully they’ll head back to the Triangle soon!

Also, don’t forget to enter our World Cup Pool before kickoff on Friday – details here.

Here at OK Great Worldwide Headquarters (ie. each of our individual living rooms), we’re all getting psyched about the World Cup – donning our favorite country’s facepaint and tuning our vuvuzelas. We’ve put together an ESPN group bracket challenge – kind of like the college basketball tournament challenge, but times a billion.

You can join our bracket here – just make sure you fill it out and submit before Friday’s kickoff.  Also, when you’re picking teams, the order that you select each team out of the group round determines where they are seeded for the round of 16.

Winner will enjoy epic glory, immortal fame, and four straight years of bragging rights.

John W Fesken is a painter, illustrator, scrawler, video artist, musician, installation artist, dioramist, poet, and all around Renaissance Madman.  He weaves fairy tails on window panes and in boxes using found objects and other ephemera, painting, burning, and scratching his stories from junk.  His pieces all tell a story, and his characters have histories and feelings of despair and hope.

I met John at the Artsplosure a few weeks back.  If you are a Triangle native, you are probably familiar with Artsplosure – an outdoor art market in Raleigh, mostly filled with run of the mill nature photography, paintings, and jewelry.  So naturally, I was drawn to the sore thumb of the event (I mean this in the most admiring / endearing way).  His booth was full of dark scenes of creepy characters in dingy settings and a table full of hilarious / gross / dirty magnets (I got one with Han Solo and caption “Self-described asshole”).

But his real passion are his characters – like the doctor, who employs morbid tactics to save his love, or the woman waiting for the pink moon.  Not content to let the characters live statically, he pseudo-animates and films their actions and struggles into shorts, giving them life beyond their wooden box settings.

Someone get this man a real website so he can get off Myspace.

Tom Beddard is a former physicist turned amateur fractal guru, who, you know, in his free time, likes to dabble in self-generative fractal programming to build out images like the video above, and the jaw-droppers below.  Above is an example of two continuously morphing Mandelbulbs, a sort of 3D analog of the famous Mandelbrot set. These self-generative and self-repeating shapes can be infinitely zoomed in on to reveal shapes that mimic the shape of the whole (I’d recommend you pop over to vimeo and watch it in HD).  Totally stunning stuff.  If you take a peek around his website, this and other projects are all publicly available to play with.  Want to create your own Mandelbulb, generate some free-form fractals or Droste effects, maybe some guillochés – it’s all there to play with, along with all the math to back it up, if you’re into that sorta thing…

(via bdif)