I Love Houmous Like A Hawk

I do actually love houmous, preferably spelt houmous and not hummus. Just chick peas in general are genius. Houmous and pitta for lunch is criminally underrated. I don't like houmous quite as much as these chaps but I do like the idea of a 'Houmous Gentlemen's Club'.

This music video was made by German company Harde Baas Paard for Crookers. 'Hummus' is a track on their latest album 'Dr Gonzo' that was released last week. You can buy it here.

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The Spirit Of Apollo

The above is a trailer for a 60 minute documentary about the groundbreaking collaborative album by N.A.S.A. recorded in 2008/09. The line-up of artists on this record is jaw-dropping: from Kanye West to KRS-One, from Santigold to Chali 2na, with DJ AM and DJ Z-Trip making it a real A-to-Z of incredible musical talents. The album is primarily a hip-hop album but appearances from the likes of Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tom Waits and Lykke Li turn it into a brave experiment boiled up into a genius concoction.

As well as recording behind the scenes on this amazing project Sam Spiegel and Ze Gonzales also contacted some of the most sought-after street artists to produce animated music videos. The documentary previewed in New York in the last two weeks and comes over to the UK in the next month showing at the BFI as part of the Onedotzero_adventures in motion festival. Book tickets here. Click on the album artwork below to check out the awesome track listing and buy the record.

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Dodocase

Handmade iPad covers that look like sketchbooks.







Now available for Kindle too...



Dodocase.com

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Alphasphere

Check out this promo for an innovative new instrument. It reminds me of the Tenori-On, another pretty cool piece of kit, but the ability to produce and program bespoke sounds into the system enables even more possibilities. I can't imagine it being used to produce music on a studio level but I can see Bjork using it in a live show!

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The Mill Touch

No introduction needed to be honest. I've posted a fair amount of great work by The Mill on this blog over the years, embedded videos on blogspot, what could be a better way of viewing their beautiful work? Ahem...

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Wakyak Architectural Visualisation

Right, now I've posted enough catch-up posts, time to get in to the pure digital awesomeness I have been gathering over the last few months. Watch this video to the end. At first you might question it's intrigue, but the reason you should stay tuned, is because literally everything you are looking at in this room is created via some fancy 3D software called Blender. Don't believe me? Keep watching, it will prove it in a moment...

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Dotmogo

I'd like to introduce readers of The Weakest Leg to another blog I have been writing for these past few months... Dotmogo. It is a collaborative effort alongside the creator and writer of the VFX blog Uncle Shriek's World Of Idents, an expanded remit to include more of an overview of UK motion graphics. As well as the usual write-ups and latest videos, there is a job board and a growing directory of companies and freelancers.

Here are links to my first seven posts for Dotmogo. You can also follow us on Twitter @dotmogo. There's lots more good stuff coming up, trust me.


Only The Brave Foundation


Blac Ionica


Ron Arad's Curtain Call


Abbie Stephens


Making Future Magic


Joan Masoliver


The Wombats - Techno Fan

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New Blood

Yeah, so it was a little while ago now, but I thought I'd write up my feelings on D&AD New Blood. Beforehand it had been banded about that the theme this year would be digital and that extra emphasis would be given to work with new technology. When it came to it though, I couldn't see any difference from the year before in terms of the work on show. A lot of digital agencies were invited to the private viewing, but it seemed many were walking round frustrated.

For this very reason, any ideas mocked up on an iPad or displayed on a laptop were given a bonus 5-10 seconds to be stared at, but that wasn't enough. Set in a whitewashed warehouse as usual, the show immediately felt akin to an art gallery with a 'hands-off' vibe that noone had aimed for. This works well for showing illustrations and posters, but it always takes a little bit of time, nudging and smiling to get people to pick up anything hand-crafted, let alone interactive!



At this point it's probably best I address the bias in my writing - I was displaying my work on the Twitterwall hashtag aggregation project. Having a digital project at New Blood was actually great and I got to meet a lot of nice people through it. Sadly it went unnoticed in the judging. Meanwhile, three doors down a student from University of Huddersfield won a Best New Blood award for his Twitter project aggregating tweets with the hashtags #love and #hate. Gutted, but in all seriousness, congratulations. Still waiting for that email if you want to collaborate mate.



Our Ravensbourne stand still attracted a fair bit of interest, thanks mainly to the big yellow arrow won by Mike Scott for his portfolio of work. I particularly liked his stamps depicting Olympic world records — as clinical as Usain Bolt on a race track.



Bournemouth University won best stand with an impressive collection of work, elegantly displayed. This Talk To Frank poster caught my eyes in several ways.



The stand of Loughborough University caught my attention too, with their milk float branding designed by Ben Marsh. Having had a good look at his site he's got a lot of neat projects: from animated titles for Tron, to condoms packaged like Gameboy games and even a sharp, spikey Scouse font, like. I also really admire his sketchbooks which are just as interesting to look at as the final outcomes.



There is also a write-up on Creative Review about New Blood 2011 that is worth a flick-through. Although this poster below summises my general feelings on the show.

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Twitterwall

For the Ravensbourne2011 Degree Show I joined the installation team hoping to create something I could hand in as my final typography project at University.

We were tasked with filling the college with interesting installations using digital media. The theme was vague - simply 'concrete canvas'. Alongside two fellow Ravensbourne students Dan Palmer (coder) and Rupert De Paula (producer), we came up with this concept to project what was happening on Twitter during the show live onto the wall.



Working as the designer on the project, I concentrated on the user experience and the visual design of the Twitterwall. Here is my project report for the entire project:




The project went live on the day of the show, 28th June and was also selected to go to D&AD New Blood, the creative festival on Brick Lane. We re-coloured the project and made it follow #newblood and other D&AD-related hashtags, rather than #ravensbourne. We received a lot of positive feedback from both shows and it was a great way for us to keep up with what people were talking about at the events. We were also nominated in the Ravensbourne2011 Awards for 'Innovation in Digital Technology'.



You can view the D&AD Twitterwall live now at this link. It is best viewed in Chrome on a Macbook or Macbook Pro, or even on an iPad 2, as you can tilt the screen and control the gravity affecting the balls.

Finally, here is a short 'making of' we made for the project:

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Motion Graphics Degree Show

Check out the showreel for the 'Class of 2011', the first year of graduates from the Motion Graphics course at Ravensbourne.

I was charged with the role of degree show rep for my class and ended up with the responsibility of organising our exhibition at the degree show. Somehow, it all came together!



We built two giant cubic structures to display our work, all MDF, white paint and sweat, with a little help from Jade's dad.

It was great to see everyone's work populated the displays, each with a unique style/brand/personality.





Juliana and Ron helped put together the pixelated, hexagonal-grid branding which we used for giant signage and to top and tail the showreel.

On the big screen we had everyone's showreels playing along with some animated caricutures from Fariq and this hilarious spoof title sequence from Adam.



As well as editing the class showreel, I edited reels for Juliana and Jade. Everyone in the class's websites are available to view on the Vimeo page.

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Ravensbourne2011

So, first this summer, there was my degree show. Taking place in the brand new building next to the O2, the whole college somehow managed to pull together to have a 2-day show that involved nearly all the BA courses. It was mad-cap, there was a lot of 'design-by-committee' in the build-up, and a never-ending stream of buzzwords, mostly hypenated.

Naturally, the branding of the show was a much discussed issue, with it's garish colour scheme and awkward degree show logo referencing the initially controversial university logo by Johnson Banks. But I think it came together well and there was some nice brand extensions around the building.




I snapped a few shots during the fashion show, with a catwalk that thrusted out onto the 4th floor atrium. It was also filmed in 3D and broadcast in the '3D Experience' on the second day.

It was a busy couple of days for me, as I ran round with my time split between two installations: the Twitterwall and the YrWall, as well as the Motion Graphics exhibition. I will post individually about each of these in the coming days.



The degree show ended in the perfect way for me, as I was lucky enough to be awarded the 'Most Accomplished Creative' in a fiercely-competed category across all courses in the college! It already seems a long time ago, I will certainly continue to miss and reminisce about my time at Ravensbourne, I learnt a lot and I'm proud to have studied there.

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