Daredevil Studios

Willa made her first painting the other day, and I think it’s just stunning. I’m so excited for her to start painting and drawing, and our magnetic wall should be filled with her masterpieces in no time.

Also, I saw one of my old bosses the other day, and he told me about a business he’s started with his wife, called Artimus Art. They preserve your child’s art in a hardcover book and an online gallery. They send you out a box, you gather all the artwork and send it back to them, and they scan each piece and produce a great looking hardcover book. I think it’s a fantastic idea that could, and should, really take off. We’ll be building our collection of Willa originals for a little bit before we’re ready to order a book, but someday!

Image from Artimus Art Web Gallery

Okay, so maybe a better idea is to just post cool things as I find them, rather than trying to gather a bunch a week at a time, and then most likely neglect to actually post them. So scratch that weekly column idea, and here a couple of cool things I’ve found recently:

Little People - A tiny street art project by Slinkachu

I’ve seen somewhat similar shots before of miniatures, but they’re usually contained within their own, somewhat more constructed environment, where these often use the surrounding environment more or less as is. Very nice.

The Eyeballing Game

This is a good time. I just got a score of 3.88.

Well the title says it all. I do intend to post this every week, but we’ll see. I’m going to try to keep this at least relatively design related, but will not hesitate if something is just too cool to ignore. I think I also probably won’t rank the items, so in no particular order, here are the coolest for this (now last) week:

1. The tallest Lego Tower

Just plain cool.

2. That Lovely Glow Effect tutorial on dooce.com
I consider myself to be pretty darn proficient at Photoshop, but I feel like there’s always something new to learn. Sometimes it’s something brand new, sometimes it’s just a much more efficient way to do something I already knew how to do, and sometimes it’s just a technique it never really occurred to me to try. Falling under that last category is this trick playing with a duplicate layer, gaussian blur, and transparency. Heather Armstrong describes a really simple technique to get photos to look “fuzzy or warm and mashed potato-y”. I gave the technique a quick try myself with a photo of Willa from our apple picking trip last weekend. I’ll definitely use this technique again in the future. Here’s a before and after:

beforeafter

3. I became a Print Design Affiliate on shineboxprint.com
It remains to be seen whether or not this will actually turn out to be one of the coolest things I did this week, but it can’t hurt. I could get a project or two from it, and I think they’ve got some really cool looking products. I first read about shinebox on uncrate. It’s listed as ‘The Buyer’s Guide for Men,’ but I would definitely encourage women to check it out too. There’s some cool stuff on there.

4. The E Ink Esquire Magazine cover
I had seen a video of this a few weeks back and was totally intrigued. I hadn’t really looked into how it worked, but this week I saw a video of it all taken apart, which is pretty cool to see. I still want to see it in person. It is cool without a doubt, but it does seem pretty wasteful/unnecessary. What’s going to happen to all that stuff? I can’t really imagine this sort of thing becoming commonplace in these green-conscious times.

Supermarket chain Stop & Shop recently unveiled a new logo. Overall, I’d have to say that I like the new one. The old logo was very recognizable and really well established in the Northeast, so one could question the wisdom of such a dramatic departure. It seems that an updated version of the old logo could have worked and could have shown that they are evolving while keeping the brand recognition.

One possible criticism of the new logo is that it makes no reference at all to the name of the store, where the previous logo had made a very obvious reference. But the old logo never made any reference to what you’re actually stopping and shopping for, i.e. groceries. It’s as if they’ve just switched the emphasis. Perhaps the name itself is recognizable enough that it makes more sense to call attention to their products rather than a literal translation of the name. The bowl/slices of fruit, etc. icons might not be recognizable enough on their own, but in conjunction with the very recognizable store name, I think it works.

Visually speaking, I feel like the new logo works in several areas. The colors are fresh and natural, and the shape of the icons is fairly organic. My guess is this is at least somewhat to compete for the organic/health food shoppers.

Overall, I like the logo, I think it works, but I do think they probably could have done a bit better. I’ll give it a 7.5 out of 10. What about you?