Los Angeles

ICONS at 1988.

Designers Dan Kuhlken and Nathan Goldman, also known as DKNG has a new exhibit of small works titled “Icon” currently on display at Gallery 1988 in West Los Angeles. The show features fifty works in Goldman’s distinct flat geometric style. All the works feature a bright but limited color pallet, and each image represents iconic places and things from some of your favorite movies and TV shows of all time. The image attempts to sum up an entire movie in a single 12 inch square.

Photoshop Adventures with Dave Hill

Los Angeles based Dave Hill, is not only one hell of photographer, he is one amazing photoshop compositor and illustrator. In his Adventure Series, Hill combines multiple images with retouching and painting to create photo-illustrations with amazing depth, color, and visual balance. In this series of photos Hill does a fantastic job a some thrilling adventure photos that depict incredible scenes of action, adventure and exploration. The video below shows the way he combines layers to create the effect. The images below are from the adventure series.

Mid Century Magic. The Foster Carling House, built by John Lautner.

If I had a cool 3 million lying around and were in the market for an iconic Mid-Century home in LA, I’d probably go for The Foster Carling House, built by John Lautner (1947-1950). This is really a stunning piece of architecture by a true genius, and one of his most significant works.

The house is located on a hillside above Mulholland drive with views of downtown Los Angeles. It is this house residence that brought Lautner together with yacht builder John de la Vaux, a partnership that lasted for 7 more projects.

The 2000 square foot house includes many innovative design elements that Lautner would continue to use throughout his career. There is a pool that flows from the exterior into the living room. The pool is separated by a retracting wall of glass. Lautner installed electronic controls that move both the glass wall and an entire living room section and built-in sofa, allowing it to swing out into the yard and face the downtown skyline, merging interior and exterior spaces.

If you want to see and or buy this, click here.

The Hot Wheels Double Loop Stunt.

Just in case you missed it live on TV, here is the Hot Wheels world record double loop drive through. That’s right drivers Tanner Foust and Greg Tracy set a Guinness World Record racing by driving two cars through a six-story double vertical loop at the X Games in Los Angeles last weekend. This is all part of a year long campaign that Mattel is running for the Hot Wheels brand that will involve a series of story driven stunts that are played out on live TV, as well as through social media and other digital outlets like mobile.

I think this is a great testament to the power of the Hot Wheels brand extending it beyond it’s core target audience of young boys. With over 115 thousand YouTube view since yesterday, this video is well on it’s way to going viral. With all of the other media and buzz that is building around each of the planned stunts over the rest of the year, you can bet Mattel is putting a lot of money behind these real life racing stunts. And it looks like they are paying off.

Be Inspired by a Wonderful Story. “Caine’s Arcade”.

When film maker Nirvan Mullick stopped into Atlantic Auto Parts in East LA, he discovered an elaborate cardboard arcade built by Caine whose father owns the store. After buying a two dollar fun pass for 500 turns, Mullick decided to change Caine’s life by creating a short film, organizing a flash mob, and setting up a scholarship fund.

This is such an inspiring little film. Caine is filled with so much life, and the kid is filled with that special innocence that only a 9-year-old could have. The movie captures that so well. I could talk about all the wonderful technical aspects of Mullick’s film. Color, cinematography, editing etc. but this is truly about Caine’s Arcade and the story behind it.

Adobe MAX.

I’m heading out to sunny Southern California tomorrow not for a week of R and R, but to attend and speak at the Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles. Because of this, posts might be brief over the next week. What I remember from last year is limited phone reception, and WiFi.

I’ll probably post brief updates from the conference itself, and I hop I don’t bore the hell out of everyone when I do. Now I am going to go and finish up revision 1,238,467.3 of my presentation.

RLR for the LA Zoo.

I am going to admit something that will probably make a few people mad. I love the zoo. I know keeping animals in captivity is wrong, and they should be free, and I shouldn’t like the zoo, but I do. I don’t go as often as I used to, but I still go occasionally. I could get into why I like the zoo, but that just opens the door for a bunch of negative comments, and that isn’t what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the new campaign for the LA Zoo by RLR Advertising.

This print campaign for the Los Angeles zoo of focuses on three topics “Colorful, Memory, Wisdom”. Each visual plays off the topic. An owl is used for “Wisdom”, an Elephant for “Memory” and a Gorilla for “Colorful”. The illustrations are by Salamagica and are constructed from objects that represent the word. The Gorilla is built from colored pencils, the Owl from newspapers, and the Elephant from computer parts. The final illustrations are accompanied by the primary term, (Colorful, Memory, Wisdom) a simple tag line, “Where learning comes naturally” and the zoo logo. What really makes this print campaign work, is the masterful and unforgettable illustrations that were used.

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