Color

Creativity Explained – Color

I’m really loving the “Creativity Explained” series from Adobe these days. In their latest installment they teamed up with Portland based OddFellows and Pentagram partner, Eddie Opara to talk about color. The impact color has on design, and Opara’s view on how color influences graphic design outcomes. OddFelllows work is once again spot on and does a wonderful job of bringing Opara’s voice over to life.

“Multifaceted design-mind and Pentagram partner, Eddie Opara sheds light on color and helps demystify the rainbow.

Creativity, Explained is an animated series from Adobe that explores the fundamental principles of art and design. Part education, part inspiration, each segment is voiced by a luminary in the field and provides highly relevant advice for hobbyists and working creatives alike.

Our challenge was to create a consistent storytelling approach and wrap it in an aesthetic unique to each topic while feeling like part of a cohesive series. In this second segment “On Color,” we explored the emotional side of color along with its theory and application in design.” Chris Kelly – Oddfellows

“All the Things” You Need For Wednesday

It’s a rainy Wednesday afternoon, and I’m creatively spent. My brain has been drained by a fast paced time-consuming project that has left me mentally spent. So I set out to find some creative inspiration, and refuel for the second half of the week. While cruising around on Vimeo I came across the video below and a link the project breakdown on Behance.

All the Things from Chris Guyot is a wonderful animated short filled with oversaturated colors, fluid animations, great sound design, and absolutely no real story. I love it. 8 short vignettes in a minute and a half that left me with a smile on my face and the desire to create something just as fun.

“All The Things” is a collection of individual narratives, unified by a cohesive style.

Our intention was to work on a short, simple piece. As many of you know, sometimes personal projects evolve and take on a mind of their own. As the months rolled along, we found ourselves frequently going back and adding more content to each scene. We had a lot of fun allowing our imagination drive the development of the various narrative.

Full project breakdown and BTS here: behance.net/gallery/45468431/All-the-Things

Pink and Blue and 80’s too.

When Pantone announced the top two colors for 2016 were pink and baby blue I kind of thought it was a joke. It isn’t those two colors are showing up everywhere, along with 80’s inspired graphics and animation treatments. The good news, is it looks like the long trending sketch book look might finally be dead. We can only hope right?

The first video is from Contra for Izzy Bizu. It has a great look to it. And the story makes watching all the way through worth it. The second is a series of indents for Nick at Nite from TransistorStudios that embraces the pink and blue fusing it with some really nice stop motion, CGI, and traditional animation.

Logo Modernism from Taschen.

Over the last seven years, Jens Müller has been collecting and compiling modern logos created from 1940 to 1980. As Müller puts it, this was the golden age of the modernist aesthetic in design, architecture, art, product design. And to a point he is right. Some of the most visually memorable brand marks and logos come from this four decade period. Müller’s collection is what makes up the content of Aachen’s 6000 page tome Logo Modernism.

The book covers pretty much every business and organization of note, and represents a sweeping retrospective modernism and how the style changed over time. Broken into specific sections the book’s main chapters cover Geometric, Effect, and Typographic. Each sub-chapter breaks down each style even further into sections such as dots and squares, overlays, alphabet, color, etc.The book features an introduction from Jens Müller on the history of logos, and an accompanying essay by R. Roger Remington on modernism and graphic design. In addition there are series of designer profiles on masters of the craft Paul Rand, Yusaku Kamekura, and Anton Stankowski focusing on their legendary work.

In typical Taschen heritage, the book is physically huge. at 10 by 14 inches in size and 432 pages of content. And as always from Taschen, the book is multilingual. It’s available for pre-order and this just made my list of books to add to the reference library. Oh and it’s affordable. Just $69.00 on the Taschen site.