Last weekend my sister invited me to be part of an informal panel at Fatima, a portuguese catholic Sanctuary, on a short talk about the way someone from advertising looks at images and, to a further extent, to reality.

An image is worth a thousand words

Most of the times, this is quite true. Images are easily recognizable and a lot more easy to understand than words. Pick any blog, and even if the writing is good, we all know that rich imagery is more effective in creating interest and sharing knowledge.
In advertising, images are used to a larger extent, increasing the frequency of visual messages so consumers could easily recall what a brand is trying to communicate.

Simplicity

But not all images are equally important or relevant. For instance, they shouldn’t be too complex, as this would made them harder to understand. This is particularly crucial when designing something, as we should strive to explain a concept or message in the simplest way we can.
The design principle of “form follows function” is one of the main advocates of simplicity, focusing on the purity of function and the real usefulness of objects, instead of the decoration of the form. In a more spiritual sense, we all find beauty in the simple things of life, as they are shown to us with not too much information to interpret, just “being”.

When we design something, if we add some irrelevant information, we’re hurting the message quality and it will become less useful. On a practical scenario, when a sales person is pitching their Powerpoint quoting word-by-word what’s on the slide, they should be aware that their clients are seconds away from getting another cup of cofee.

Rules of thumb

Sometimes it’s easier to communicate visually, if we have some shortcuts available. Art, design and visual imagery in general, all share interesting patterns that we all can use to help people understand messages:

• Archetypes:

  
  These common traits are shared between most cultures, and found in myths such as death and rebirth, or the heroes stories (from Gigalmesh to Superman). Advertising often uses brand-ambassadors as a representation of heroes or highlights the healing features of cosmetics as a reminiscence of rebirth.

• Mathematical patterns
  
  The Fibonacci series, the golden section or the rule of thirds have been successfully used in art, so you should try it sometimes and see if it helps to better explain your message.
• Face-ism
  Humans tend to prefer faces that are more average, more healthy and have rounder shapes. No wonder kids are a regular presence in ads.

Emotion carrier

Usually advertising has a more materialistic take on visual imagery, using them to represent the brand or company values, announcing that a product is fresh or a service is secure.
But sometimes, through their simplicity or using established patterns, visual messages have the power to awaken feelings, and cause a solid emotional reaction.

These are the times when images have the power to open up our hearts.

Back to another Shameless PromoTion feature, highlighting the portuguese designer David Carvalho.

David has just relaunched his portfolio at hellokarpa.com, replacing the previous electroclandestino.com with some new work, now under the roof of Spirituc. Having started Pkage Design, he also funded other online portuguese projects such as Camouflage (offline) or RuaDeBaixo.

Pkage site theme

A prolific artist, he’s part of Musa Collective and featured in projects like: Rojo Magazine, Dif Magazine, Orgasmik Design, Musabook, WIWP, NLF Magazine, Passvite, My Brand, Magnolia, Blank Magazine, Le Cool Magazine, Search Megazine, 1976 DVD, Digit Magazine, Victionary Books, Dezperados, Pink boy, Karacter Models, Puma, Bloop & Loop Recordings.

At Hellokarpa.com you can also find the various exhibitions were David was involved and a news section with some personal rants.

A tip to David: how about a RSS feed, so we can pull the good stuff?

The rock festival posts are not over yet! But this time, it’s from Richard Turley and the process he went through covering the Glastonbury Festival for the Guardian.

Photo: Martin Godwin/Guardian

The article speaks about the troubles, fun and hard work his team had to deal while setting up the design in the middle of one of the biggest music festivals in the world. And i found myself totally agreeing with Richard when he says

How do you capture the feeling of your senses being numbed by the heavenly punishment of dirt, music, art, people, performance, rain, insomnia, cider and exhaustion whilst being simultaneously kicked out of the sleepy trudge of day to day life?

This same process and feelings need to be applied to the current state of web design, getting rid of the gradients and round corners, and injecting some fresh energy to stand from the web crowd. Having read Transcending CSS lately, it became clear that webdesigners must force themselves to design beyond the grid and push new boundaries in their projects.

Or as Ferrell McCollough visually puts it:

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen might just have a stroke listening to Richard saying “…if you embrace a very loose approach to the design process, then some things are always going to be beyond your control. And when you abandon most of the rules, how do you define a mistake?”, but i’m sure others such as Jason or Andy Clarke would agree.

With a prophetic self-criticism, he ends:

Newspapers are going through a paradigm shift in the way they are read and disseminated. Over the next 10, 20 years or so, at a speed dictated by technology, readers will drift more and more to receiving news via digital means. News design will adapt to that. Flash or its equivalent will become the tool of choice as packages of graphics, images, text, audio and video will be put together, which will be an incredible opportunity to really affect how people receive design. These are the last gasps of print based news design. But that’s not something to be sad about. Whilst we’re still doing it, let’s have some fun.

Source: http://www.designobserver.com/archives/026488.html

I already enjoyed the music, but i never imagined she had such a acid-retro site. How cool is that :)

Setting the stage for the release of the new album Kala in August, M.I.A. relaunched a site that is something between a souk and a indian market, blended with massive amounts of arcade games, surrounded by hallucinogenic animated gifs. But gosh, do i love this stuff. It’s almost as good as the 2012 London Olympic logo :)

As it should be, the myspace profile and the cover art also have the same retro-kashbah-tech look.

Boca (aka Marcos Ceravolo), a Brazillian designer living in Vancouver, produced “Typographics”, the ultimate lecture on typography.

Link to h.264 mov (19 Mb)

Together with Ryan Uhrich, they picked a quotation from graphic designer Jeffrey Keedy and illustrated it with some exquisite motion graphics.

Our objective was to use type as the main aestheic and design element
to create awareness about the evolution and main characteristics of
typography. Both the music and voice over used in the piece make
reference to 1950’s TV and Radio advertising.

Source: cpluv

This is the kind of thing that Pedro will dig, as he’s so interested in creative collaboration.

Adam and Dessi Price, inspired by their trip to the 11 Spring Project, turned a downtown building they owned over to the art community in Utah. They started this project only knowing one local artist and every artist that joined after came from word-of-mouth. In the end, over 144 artists participate in the project. Over 7,500 people toured through the building.

Learn more about this project here.

Source: Wooster Collective

Last April, after the show from CSS at LuxFragil, i gazed at the merchandising at the lobby. Trendy design, i thought. Well, it surely is, since the controversial 2012 Olimpics logo seems to have been designed by Lovefoxxx and company.

Well, it wasn’t. Instead Wolf Ollins was paid £400,000 to design the new branding that is causing quite a buzz, with online petitions to its withdrawal, with signs that it may be causing epilepsy.

As a souvenir, the video of the show, from the great Brazilian band Cansei de Ser Sexy (Tired of Being Sexy), at Lisbon.

Many books have been written based on blogs, but few actually receive my respect. Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design is the result of many writings by Michael Beirut at the outstanding blog Design Observer, with 272 pages discussing design with no pictures at all (only 79 different typefaces).

Michael made an interesting point on why to write (a book or a blog) :

“I’ve found that writing is a way to slow things down again, to question my own premises, to force myself to pay attention to things I might otherwise file away after the quick glance. (…)  I discovered that putting the words on paper changes the claim those words make on your attention. Is it better? Is it worse? The answer may be different for every reader. As a designer, I am very grateful I’ve been given the opportunity to let you see for yourself.

Guillaume Reymond is a Swiss artist (working at NotSoNoisy) responsible for a series of animation movies that bring back the retro look of vintage video games.
Some of you have probably seen Space Invaders, so if you were fun of it you can find the latest short movie at the Game Over Project.

Link to Pole Position: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywqu_8RIDvU