Cover creation from Peter Belanger on Vimeo.

 
This great video shows how much work goes in the creation of the cover of a MacWorld Magazine, to start from the planning of the first shot to the positioning of every single pixel, showing us that really nothing is left to chance.

Time lapse is so compressed that half a day goes in 30 seconds!

This video has been uploaded on Vimeo by Peter Belanger.
You can visit his Vimeo page to read his article about it and the technical details about the cameras and lenses he used.

Enjoy!

As many of you probably know, Type Directors Club defines itself “an international organization for all people who are devoted to excellence in typography, both in print and on screen”.
This year edition of TDC2, its Typeface Awards had 165 participants from 26 countries resulting in 18 winning entries representing 8 countries.

The jury was chaired by Fiona Ross, lecturer at University of Reading, and Associate Designer to Tiro Typeworks , included Ken Barber (House Industries); Jonathan Hoefler (Hoefler & Frere-Jones); Richard Kegler (P22 Type Foundry), and Gabriel Martinez Meave (Kimera Type Foundry, Mexico ).

All winners have been awarded with the Certificate of Typographic Excellence in Type Design.

All winning entries will be published in Typography 30: The Annual of the Type Directors Club available at the end of 2009 (free to all members of TDC).
While you’re waiting, you can enjoy a copy of Typography 29 (with last year’s winners, and a lot, lot more), which I highly recommend.

It is possible that my couple of reader will think that I am a soft drink addicted now (if so I Would never tell, LOL), but surely I couldn’t let this news unnoticed.

Coca-Cola launched about a month ago a limited edition design for the Coca-Cola Light bottle. And a very coool and eye-catching one, I have to say.

Bottles have been styled by Natalye Rykiel, daughter of the talented end eclectic French stylist Sonia Rykiel, ex model, actually art director of the family griffe.

Rykiel’s creations mark the 20th anniversary of Coke Light and the 40th year of her mother’s fashion house.

Lovely colored Diet Coke bottles are customized according the typical style of Nathalie Rykiel, the same way some time ago was done by Roberto Cavalli and Patricia Field.
Cavalli embellished 300,000 bottles with three of his typical animal prints.

Patricia Field edition (the designer became famous because she was the costumer of “Sex and the City”) had four color designs, that aimed to represent some aspects of a woman life: Career (gold), Love (pink), Passion, and, naturally, Fashion (the light blue bottle).

Nathalie Rykiel collectors bottles are sold at Monoprix and Grand Epicerie de Paris for 1,25 Euros (about 1,60 USD) but in EBAY there already is collector war, and there are some sold for 15 Euros and more!

Visit official Coke website presentation of the design HERE.

Some time ago UnderConsideration introduced the new design of the Tropicana packaging, a brand of the Pepsi Company.
The new bottle showed a cold, anonymous big picture of a glass of orange juice with plain sans serif typography.
Article ended the commentary with “I really want to believe that the screw-cap will not be an orange-colored boobie as in the rendering above”.
I couldn’t agree more.
That half-orange shaped cap was not only ugly but probably difficult to use too. (The one above is the initial rendering, at the end of the post the two real bottle compared)

YES.
I’ve said “was”.

New packaging arouse hell in all designers communities, and after a brief test period Tropicana has decided to return to its old packaging.

Let’s face the truth, with redesign it lost his identity: it was not
anymore the fresh fruit bursting with juice that made us all eager to drink.It became a plain product in a glass. Like anyone else.
There’s more.
Maybe this loss of quality in packaging was even perceived as a loss of quality in the product itself in the usual consumer too?
It may be.

Am I unfair?
I mean…I’ve always liked clean and sleek designs and this design is not bad in itself. Really.
Problem is that those that made the redesign forgot that this brand
has his history and his (strong) personality, and in their eagerness
to reach kids, moms, dads, grandpas and all in between cleaned up
and cut too much and in the end made it just…floppy.

So…what’s next now?
Will we see an update of the rejected design, an update of the old
one, a completely new one or we’ll keep on see the old beloved one
for years to come?

Last time Air France updated its logo was about 25 years ago, back in 1975, but a lot happened since that logo revision and the company has managed to become one of the largest and most recognized airlines in the world.

The previously French government-owned company was transformed into a private corporation called Groupe Air France. On May 5, 2004, Air France merged with KLM and officially became Air France-KLM. This merger created the largest airline in the world in terms of operating revenues, and third-largest in passenger kilometers.

After so much growth it was a time to renew the brand identity to reflect Air France global direction.

Air France hired BrandImage to execute the redesign.
Curiously, one of the main steps of the redesign has been the union of the two word of the brand name into one (a bit of confusion or the start of a long run strategy?).
It has to be said that typography and colors are very beautiful, they produce a more sophisticated aesthetic and really worth the upgrade.
The old stripes are gone (useless), and in their substitution there is a new simpler ribbon-like icon.

When in 1933 Air France was formed, it was a group of airlines that associated together to form the initial company.
At that time, as their primary insignia, was chosen the logo of one of those companies, the Air Orient sea-horse logo, which official name became the “hippocampe aile”.
As part of the updated brand identity, the hippocampe aile was transformed into a wireframe and will likely be used as a backdrop behind the new logo.

Watch this video that introduces the redesign of the brand from AirFrance itself:

Air France Re-Branded – New Logo Identity on Video.ca

I really wonder if out there there are some of us that never had the frustration of a rejected work.
Lucky few guys!

For the rest of us Matt Gustavsen and Justin Hastings created Project Never competition.

It may be true that a lot of design concept gets rejected for (probably) a good reason, but many times worthy ideas are condemned to oblivion just because: “Ehh…this is good, but this is not what we had in mind” or : “we’re not going in that direction”.

Very frustrating.
Although this could be the obvious end of a poorly defined Design Brief (always be aware and take care of this point!) it is also true that sometimes it happens that customers don’t have any idea at all of what they want and we end up that we have to throw away our work and restart again.

Here it comes Project Never, which aims to give to all discarded designs all the fame they deserves.

Let’s summarize:

• award is open to all print and and web design concepts developed between January 1, 2007 and December 1, 2008;
• to all countries (but obviously they have to be presented in english);
• deadline is 1st december 2008;
• winner will be announced on 1st march 2009.

All rules and details are available on the website of the competition, the only fee is the willingness to be slapped in the face once again. ^__^

PROJECT NEVER
Rejection never felt this good.

After last year successful guerrilla street campaign, Orbit is coming back.
New advertising poster has a beautiful vintage style (of those I love) and features a group of cannibals while preparing a couple of (human) pyres for their forthcoming snack.
In the foreground, a packet of Orbit whit the headline “After any meal”.

How daring! Humorous, engaging, and most of all so beautifully illustrated.
Ad was made by Agency Mark BBDO under the direction of creatives Leon Sverdlin and Martin Charvát. Brilliant copywriting was and idea of Pavel Sobek, art direction of: Daniel Kurz and (let me tell it again) wonderful illustrator was: Lucie Štamfestová.

Regarding last year campaign I just mentioned, if you don’t know it yet, faces were painted around street irregularities, with attached a simple note: “Dirty Mouth? ORBIT.COM”.
Very Impressive!

Campaign was planned by agency Energy BBDO Chicago, under the creative direction of Marty Orzio, art direction of Frank Dattalo, copywriting by Mike Roe. The artist that painted faces was Karen Tisel and the Christian Petersen-Clausen. Producer: Liz Miller-Gershfeld.

It took almost three years and three designers to develope it, but now is here and it has a whole website on its own.

Front page of website immediately announce: “The most influential sans serif of the digital revoulution now has a serif companion: Introducing FF Meta Serif“.

All through the 90′s designer Erik Spiekermann had tried to create a complementary face for his successful FF META. Many times happened that he was asked what could be the best serif match for it and he realized that he just had to create it.

He finally asked collaboration to designers Christian Schwartz and Kris Sowersby.

Development of the new font started both from the original META for the body (which, in its uniqueness, is heavier in the center stroke, while the two end strokes are lighter) and from Antiqua face to take inspiration for serifs.

In website there is the whole thread of eMails exchanged between three designers during the period of creation to present the story of the font, which shows the great love they have for their profession and the great care for details they had all the time.

We can buy both font in various combination of packages, and if we use FF META SERIF in our designs we can also submit our work to be featured (if selected) in the gallery and enter the competition to get a FONTBOOK.

David Butler, who now is vice-president for design, joined Coca-Cola almost five years ago, receiving what he calls “the Post-it Note mandate: We need to do more with design. Go figure it out.” He then had soon written up a 30-page manifesto setting out a design strategy for the company.

Here it is how new Coca-Cola design course started.
With new approach, instead of developing new concept that probably would have never seen light, the design team had to concentrate on problems and issues that could be fixed by design.

‘How can we make the can feel colder, longer?‘
It has been from this starting concept that the new aluminum bottle and the new generation of coolers are born.

Aluminum is more modern, less expensive to produce, it has a re-sealable cap, and yes, it gives to customers the perception of being more cold. In addiction, it is manufactured using recycled material and is itself recyclable.
Coca-Cola aims, too, to reinforce brand installing new designed coolers into stores. And for those stores that don’t want to invest in a new one, a set of panels has been created to attach to old cooler to give it the look of the new model.

There are few brands in world as famous as Coca-Cola.
However in last decade it really seemed struggling with competitors, everyone fighting to add the more sparks and ribbons and bubbles and splashes and so on to their designs.

Coca-Cola classic brand redesign decided to invert this [messy, in my opinion] tendency and get back to basics.
The redesign of the logo removes all the unnecessary stuff and leaves a clean logotype over a red background.
This update brought Coke’s home the Cannes Lions Design Grand Prix. Good job!

This is the LESS IS MORE I love.

Do you know what IStockPhoto.com is? Noo?

Don’t be afraid, I’m here to tell you about it.
First of all it is probably the largest and growing royalty free stock photography website, secondly, it is a HUGE community of creatives where you can:

• exchange your knowledge with your peers;
• enroll in exciting “battle cage” where community judge the most talented illustrator;
• sell your photography/ illustration/ flash creation;
• download your FREE hires photo of the week;
• download your FREE (really HIGH quality) vector image of the month;
• take part in contests;
• find a lot of articles with fabulous tutorials;
• show your designs to community;
• a lot more! You only have to subscribe to check by yourself!

As I said in subject line, there are a lot of news at IStockPhoto’s.
Let’s see some:

• IStockPhoto is about to launch a new backend search engine that will result in faster searches;
• IstockPhoto is offering to subscribers a special code (all subscribers!) that will allow them to save 50% off Photoshop Live Conference or Creative Suite Live taking place August 25-27 in Melbourne, Australia. Too good!
• Rob Sylvan, site Director, is launching his first book Photoshop Lightroom 2 For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)) (roll over link to see a preview). Being a Photographer himself he wants others photographers to have the same ease with this software, in 318 pages he will teach you everything about the program, from installing to how modules work together.
• Last but not least, IStockPhoto has a referral program that pays $10 for each new subscriber you send to the community as soon he makes his first purchase. The great news here is that from September 1-30, there will be double reward: $20!

Still here reading? Go to IStockPhoto and watch yourself, you’ll thank me!
(Yes, it was a referral link, but it will do you no harm, I promise)