Lots of news out there today in the tech world about the out-of-nowhere announcement from Apple that Mountain Lion is coming this summer.  After we all collectively sighed and chuckled and realized, damn, we should have seen that coming, we can move on to more interesting matters like what it means for the future of interaction design. Read the rest of this entry »

One hour of video is uploaded to Youtube every second.  That’s kinda hard to comprehend, so some smartypants over there put together a slick website to illustrate just how big that number really is.  And the whole site is done with CSS and HTML animations and svg elements – no Flash!  If anyone can track down who the illustrators are, I’d love to know.  Really well done.

http://www.onehourpersecond.com/

A while back, I posted about a little side project I’d been working on and was raising Kickstarter money to try to get off the ground.  Well thanks in part to the generosity of you good-lookin’ OKGreatsters, we were able to raise the money we needed, and as of just a few weeks ago, Bound Custom Journals is a real live company.

I’m pretty damn proud.  From the beginning, Bound was something that first and foremost, we wanted.  When Joel (my biz partner) was going on a road trip a few years ago, he thought surely teh internetz would be surely able to create a custom journal with exactly the content he needed for the trip – calendars for planning, maps for marking sweet spots, blanks for sketching, lines for writing.  But unfortunately, it didn’t come through, so we set off to make it real.  Because we wanted one.  At the very least, we’d have our own journal.

But it turned out that a lot of other people wanted one too.  Kickstarter for us was just as much about validating what we thought was a good idea as it was about raising some capital to get things going.  It was a thrill – I don’t think email will ever be as fun as it was during those 50 days.

Fast forward through about 4 months of late nights of designing, coding, beer drinking, and a decent bit of profanity (mostly by my ridiculously talented brother, and Bound CTO, David, when deciphering shipping APIs), and we finally pushed our site live and caught our breath while we planned the next steps.  We enjoyed another beer, and then got back to work improving the site, adding content, and telling the world.

All this to say that I’m excited that Bound Custom Journals is live, and I think you should check us out.  Find us at boundforanything.com, or just click the link in the ‘Friends’ section in the right column.  And if you have any ideas for content, products, or just want to say hey, drop us a line or leave a comment.

Emory Allen is a whimsical and painterly illustrator of beasts, expressive characters, and typography.  About 80something days ago, he started a project called “An Exquisite Beast”, which I’ll just let him explain:

You know what, I’m not even going to post a piece of it, because the limited width of a blog post doesn’t do his work justice.  So go to the site, and start a-scrollin’.

Aaron Kizer is a speed painter.  I had no idea something like this existed, but damn, this is cool.  Watch the video above to see him live-painting a portrait of Steve Jobs.  For about the first 2 minutes, it’s all abstract blobs and lines, but somewhere around 3 min in, all the sudden Steve pops out of nowhere.  Pretty amazing stuff.

Steve Jobs made the practice and the appreciation of good design relevant, important, and cool, and the world is a better place because of it.

(image via Jonathan Mak)

Made by Hand is a new film series focusing the people, the tools, and the places that shape the products that are still lovingly crafted by hand.  The first film is about Brueckelen Distilling Company.  It’s beautifully shot, well-designed, and does a great job of capturing the passion of someone who makes something.  I’m particularly looking forward to the next installment which will focus on one of my favorite handmade objects, high quality kitchen knives. Enjoy.

Made by Hand / No 1 The Distiller from Made by Hand on Vimeo.

Jessica Hische may not have coined the term, but she defines procrastiworking.  In addition to being a prolific letterer, typographer, and designer, she also the proprietor of approx 1/7 of the internet (up to about 1/4 when you eliminate all serious sites).  One of her new endeavors is something a bit more useful – Inker Linker.  It’s a simple site where you can find printers based on the type of printing they do, your priorities for the job, and (soon) their location.  I think this will be a really useful resource for us freelancers who need to find an offset printer or a letterpressman for a print job.  Also, if you’re a printer, and you’re reading this, head over and post your info on the site so you can be listed.

I love the touches on the site too – like the crosshair for the cursor, and heavy use of CMYK.  Cooper Black also never looked so perfect.

I know it’s not even September yet, but the unbelievable-oppressive heat is giving way to just regular heat, so maybe Autumn creeped into my consciousness lately… Anyway, these posters for Movember by TBWA Singapore are amazing.

Tymn Armstrong has started a collection of fake logos, not fake as in they don’t exist, fake as in they only exist in fiction.  Pretty cool collection, check em out and see if you can id the movie/tv show before you read the caption.