Game Face, Googly Face – A Evening with Steve Matteson
GAME FACE
GOOGLY FACE
Creating Fonts for User Interfaces:
an evening
with Steve Matteson
font designer for Xbox 360, Google Android
Thursday FEBRUARY 5, 6:30pm
@ Art Institute of California-Sacramento
2850 Gateway Oaks Drive #243
Sacramento
FREE ADMISSION
Presented by:
Art Institute of California-Sacramento
Capital Creative Collective
& Sacramento ADAC
The Xbox 360 game console was released with a great deal of fanfare surrounding its new hardware design and user interface. Google’s Android phone environment endeavors to change the way the world uses the cell phone. Steve Matteson presents these two products from a type designer’s perspective: the design brief, the creative process and the unique challenges for developing fonts for less than optimal displays.
Forever / Universal Everything
Perhaps you missed UVA’s work at the V&A Museum in London called Volume, now we’re seeing a installation by Universal Everything called Forever. This piece will be up through February and features a reactive light wall that responds to music. I love these kinds of installations as they create such a profound effect and onlookers just gaze in awe as the light dances and shimmers across the their faces. I’m going to work on creating something a kin to this in Sacramento, I’ve already begun talks with the cities urban planners about some kind of interactive signage for downtown. Enough said.
Where to start..
I’ve been kind of torn lately. I don’t post nearly as often as I’d like to on this blog. It’s not for a lack of content, in fact I have literally hundreds of things to say to and share with you, but there are so many facets and areas of interest that I’d like to cover, that I just simply of freeze up and don’t know where to begin. What I don’t want is this blog to become an unfocused rift on design with reckless abandon.
In all honesty I had hoped, and still hope that this blog will become a community driven site and that you and other designers and creatives will contribute and the CCC will blossom into a full blown network. Personally I have tons of images, concepts, ideas and links I want to share. Eventually this blog will be redesigned and customized into something much more curated and organized but until such time, it will remain a space to rant, rave and generally carry one about art, architecture and design.
Let me know if you are interested in becoming a contributing blogger and adding you flavour to the mix. We’d love to have you.
January – Designer Pint Night
Just a quick little reminder that this coming Tuesday, the 13th is the designer meetup. Come out and join us for a few rounds and some great conversation
Bonn Lair 3651 Jst.
Tuesday, Jan. 13th, 7-11pm
The Cut&Paste event has grown to sixteen cities worldwide now and they have battles in 2D, 3D, and Motion Design. If you’re not familiar with the format, designers battle it out in 20 minute rounds live on stage until there is only one left. They will be hosting the first global championship in New York where 48 winners will converge in a Olympic style design competition.
CUT&PASTE TOUR DATES 2009
North America
Los Angeles February 21st
San Francisco February 28th
Portland March 7th
Toronto March 14th
New York March 21st
Boston March 28th
Chicago April 4th
Europe
Amsterdam April 2nd
London April 4th
Berlin April 18th
Barcelona April 25th
Milan May 9th
Asia/Pacific
Hong Kong May 15th
Shanghai May 23rd
Tokyo May 30th
Sydney June 6th
Web Design Sketchbook
This is cool. I personally do a lot of sketching, scatching and design drawing. I use it as a rough tool to breakdown and expand on ideas when they are very new. As we move more into a virtual business economy, we have to reimagine how people interact with the digital world. I found this the other day on Fubiz, it’s produced by interactiv. I thought is was a bit amusing and yet pretty cool in that it allows you sketch within the premade context of a browser window. It may help to visualize page layouts inside the browser. I for one enjoy those kinds of aids to more quickly realize the finished solutions.
Student work – Adirondack Chair
Design students Jeffrey Gerlach and Andrew Stanley show us how to quickly and easily take one useful object and transform it into another stylish sustainable chair. The Adironack chair uses Department of Public Works roadblocks that can be instantly returned to their original purpose. Simple, cool looking and wildly constructive. I would love to see more of this kind of product crossover or multi-purpose design.
Gerlach/Stanley Adirondack
A new addition.
Even in the face of economic depression, lack luster business and other downers, the holiday has been very prosperous for the CCC. The holiday spirit for us has always been about abundance, sharing and celebrating the plentiful with our families. So we spent the last few weeks building our tribe of friends and family and with great results. We added almost twenty new members to the CCC Facebook group alone and we’ve even connected with several other designers and architect outside as well. Our tribe is growing rapidly, which also means we’re adding more talented people to our design roster.
Granted I have special ties to the IADT, as I spoke there last year on typography for Jessica Mayer, and after which time a good friend of the CCC, Ladd Woodland began teaching. I then had the pleasure of meeting two other talented design faculty and the newest members of the CCC, Alex R. Trujillo and Steve Mehallo. both designers have really strong portfolios and unique styles. We’d like to welcome them to the Capital Creative Collective and many others over the next few weeks. Watch the blogroll for new additions to our pool of talented and creative individuals.
John Lennon back from the dead…
and he wants you to have a computer. In a creative new marketing video for One Laptop Per Child, John Lennon’s resurrected to extol the virtures of education and connectivity just like he would have wanted, kind of. I’m not sure this is right, but I do know that what Nicholas Negroponte is doing is great.
Happy New Year!
I just wanted to say that, even if it is a bit cliche right now. I feel that we have become to desensitized to saying such phrases and well wishing’s, as language and cultural slang can be so habit forming. The God bless you’s, happy holidays and thank you’s just don’t mean what they once did. We simply utter them in response or murmur “…same to you”, often losing the feeling entirely. The gratitude and optimism isn’t there even when it should be.
But this year something was different. The holidays just didn’t feel…well, merry. All the usual attendee’s were there, the family and friends, the gifts, the abundant food, the alcohol, but there was a new guest this year and she brought friends. Fear, depression, mass anxiety, economic uncertainty. I can’t say I felt them, but you could feel them in the air. I nervous buzz that quietly connected us all as our country faces an uncertain future, that we’re all inextricably tied to.
Over the last three months as the economy shrank along with portfolios and consumer confidence, I felt strangely optimistic. Energized with a new kind of confidence. It was as if this marked the end of some kind of collective ignorance, the death of our naivete. I feel as if the coming year is a revolution in the making, a coup to take back our creativity, our ingenuity and our faith. We are beginning to mobilize and collectively rise up to meet new challenges with growing fervor and imagination. It feels like a great new year. 2009 is a happy new year! Viva la Vida.
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