Hello Rewind
Recycle your old tee into a cozy laptop sleeve and provide safe employment to women seeking to escape sex trafficking.
Last April I attended the99Percent conference in NYC and met Greg Wong. It was kind of a random thing because we actually had some mutual friends and just happened to strike up a conversation during a lunch break at this event. Last week Greg and friends from Restore NYC launched HELLO REWIND, a really creative social enterprise that allows customers to mail in their favorite tee shirt (new or used) and women formerly sex trafficked in New York City transform that shirt into a laptop sleeve for your 13″, 15″ or 17″ laptop.
Purchase a Hello Rewind laptop sleeve! You’ll help sustain their mission and protect your laptop at the same time.
LifeChurch.tv: Break Free
I got an email a few weeks ago from @DanPena at LifeChurch.tv in Tulsa asking me if I’d design them some song support graphics for the Hillsongs United song Break Free. He had seen some worship graphics I had done previously that were a little “spacey” and liked them so I decided to stay in that same vein but put a new twist on it. Here a taste of what I came up with…
URBN OUTFITTERS: Dwnld 25 FREE TRACKS!
That’s right! 25 FREE TRACKS from Urban Outfitters. Download ‘em now and enjoy the killer jams from artists like: Avi Brown, Beach House, Blood Feathers, Cold Cave, Fanfarlo, Field Music, Janka Nabay, JBM, Tycho, and a bunch more. Never heard of them you say? Doesn’t matter, just click the button and get the tracks. You’ll thank me later.
V.V Brown
The Amy Winehouse-shaped hole in the retro-pop market has been officially filled. British newcomer V.V. Brown’s “Shark in the Water” is iTunes free single of the week, and as has happened many times before with artists like Owl City, Phoenix, and Adele, what begins as a free single ends as a radio hit. So get ready… I’ll give you 60 days before you hear this song when you’re running errands around town.
STEAMPUNK: Keyboard Mod
If you’ve never heard of the Steampunk style, think 19th-century mad scientist in leather waistcoat with goggles and a pocket watch. It’s based on the scientific romances of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Johnny Depp would fit perfectly in this world. Read more
Johnny Kelly: THE SEED
The Seed from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.
Making of ‘The Seed’ from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.
THE FUTURE OF PUBLISHING
Contrary to what Apple would have you think about their “magical” iPad: It’s not the hardware that’s “magical’ … it’s what the developers are going to DO with it.
Today e-readers, as cool as they are, still are nothing more that static digital copies of static printed documents. The future of digital publication is not in static digital media, but in fully interactive digital publications. Books that animate between pages, have images that when clicked become video, and pages that re-organize their layout based on the orientation of the device. This is the future.
This conceptual video is a corporate collaborative research project initiated by Bonnier R&D into the experience of reading magazines on handheld digital devices. It illustrates one possible vision for digital magazines in the near future, presented by the design partners at BERG.
The problem is waiting for the software to easily create these interactive documents. I’m a designer not a developer, so I need help to bring all this interactive potential to life. Adobe’s CreativeSuite5 is sure to include alot more tools for this sort of document, and InDesign CS4 can actually do quite alot of different things like “live” tables of contents, embedding media and creating buttons/hyperlinks. Until CS5, I’m leaning into ISSUU.com.
Issuu presents documents in a visual interface that looks and feels similarly to the way a magazine does in your hands. When you upload a pdf to their site, it automatically detects links and other hotspots linking them to outside pages. What I would really love to see is the ability to present video inside the document as a “lightbox” pop-up or an in-line photos that turn to video when clicked. Issu has been developing an app for the iPad since the end of ’09. It hasn’t been released yet, but I really I’m really excited to see what new feature’s they will include with it.
When you see this, what ideas does it give you? Do you have any tips or tools for creating digital media like this? Share.
FREE MP3 OF THE DAY
Everyone deserves to have their own little secret. For a while now I’ve been debating telling anyone about this but SPINNER.com’s “Free Mp3 of the Day” is a great way to find out about new music. They give away a new song every single day… not too many other places on the web doing that.
The music is pretty varied so I’ll usually visit the page once or twice a week so I have a bunch of songs to scroll through. I’ll usually find at least one track that I really like from an artist I’ve never heard of.
Oh and did I mention there’s an iPhone app, too?
TakePart: Just Christmas in Chicago
My friends at Participant Media’s social-action network TakePart.com recently asked me to write an article for their blog, profiling what Willow Creek is doing this holiday season to meet the needs of those in our Chicago community. This is what I shared…
Note: After I wrote this article, Willow uploaded the entire “God With Us” service to it’s video player. You can watch the program in it’s entirety by visiting willowcreek.org and clicking “Watch Messages.”
VIDEO: Thom Yorke
When former Miracle Legion and Polaris front man Mark Mulcahy’s wife, Michelle, died suddenly in 2008, all-star friends Thom Yorke, Black Francis and more banded together to pull him and his young twin daughters through the earth-shattering tragedy.
The result is the utterly moving tribute album, Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy, out Sept. 29, spearheaded by Yorke’s emotional video for “All for the Best” (embedded above). Read more
