This is one day’s observations from Himawari-8, a Japanese weather satellite, animated in a loop. It shows the western Pacific, Australia, and parts of Asia, Antarctica, and Alaska as they looked on one day in mid-2015. It covers 24 hours in 12 seconds – a time lapse factor of 7,200×.
To see this spectacular video in super-high resolution, go to: Glittering Blue
Learn more at: About Glittering Blue
The Gashlycrumb Tinies is a quaintly morbid alphabet book written by Edward Gorey in 1963. The book recounts the unsettling deaths of 26 children, each representing a letter of the alphabet, in rhyming dactylic couplets.
Source: The Gashlycrumb Tinies: Alphabet Book for the Morbid – disinformation
In this video projection mapping project, a miniature chef turns your plate into a projected grill. Bon appétit!
By Antoon Verbeeck and Filip Sterckx. Contact us if you would like to have this projection or a customized version of this project at your event: skullmapping@gmail.com
www.skullmapping.com / www.facebook.com/skullmapping
Source: Le Petit Chef – YouTube
Design is constantly evolving and in recent years has been very influenced by the imagery and style of yesteryear. This isn’t going away any time soon, in fact many design experts agree that while we are going to see the continuation of retro “designspiration” from the vintage ’50s, ’60s and ’70s to progress to the more colourful ’80s and ’90s.
After much discussion in our own marketing and design department, here are the current trends we’ve noted to watch.
Good graphic design doesn’t happen by mistake, and neither does clever font marriage. Use this guide to font pairing to create your own beautiful designs.
you are water
I’m water
we’re all water in different containers
that’s why it’s so easy to meet
someday we’ll evaporate together
but even after the water’s gone
we’ll probably point out to the containers
and say, “that’s me there, that one.”
we’re container minders
– Yoko Ono, 1967
Dr. Masaru Emoto’s Water Experiment reminds me of Yoko Ono’s “We’re all Water,” except this adds a fascinating metaphysical element. If words, music, and environment can alter water in such profound ways, imagine how we are all affected, considering humans are 60% water.
Through the 1990’s, Dr. Masaru Emoto performed a series of experiments observing the physical effect of words, prayers, music and environment on the crystalline structure of water. Emoto hired photographers to take pictures of water after being exposed to the different variables and subsequently frozen so that they would form crystalline structures. The results were nothing short of remarkable.
Read more here: http://highexistence.com/water-experiment/
Dr. Emoto’s site: http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/water-crystal.html
Below is a documentary on Dr. Emoto’s work:
This is fantastic. Artist Dan Savage has partnered with Wondersauce and over 100 filmmakers to create streaming yule log-inspired short films. Here’s a taste:
Check out all 52 Yule Logs at watchyulelog.com (scroll down to get to the videos).
They’ve really thought this through: once you select a video, you can choose to loop it, or just let the site serve up one video after another.
Read more at Cool Hunting.
Worldbuilding is an essential part of any work of fiction. But especially for science fiction or fantasy, it’s the lifeblood of storytelling. But when worldbuilding fails, it can wreck your whole story, and leave your characters feeling pointless. Here are seven deadly sins of worldbuilding.
1. Not thinking about basic infrastructure. How do they eat? What do they eat? Who takes away the garbage? Who deals with their bodily wastes? How do they get around? What do the majority of people do to survive? You’re not just constructing a society, you’re creating an economy. People don’t oppress each other for fun — usually, systems of hierarchy and oppression have an economic component to them. Maybe you need a lot of peasants to grow labor-intensive crops, or maybe you need lots of cannon fodder in your space war. Maybe your only source of protein is a weird fungus that needs to be tended by specially trained people. Maybe everybody’s eating algae. In any case, there’s nothing worse than a fictional world where there are elaborate social structures, which seem completely separated from the realities of food, shelter and clothing.
Continues at: 7 Deadly Sins of Worldbuilding
If nothing tickles your tastebuds, don’t be fooled into ordering apps.
Source: The Secret Psychology Of Restaurant Menus
Citation: Aaron Allen & Associates
http://aaronallen.com/
http://aaronallen.com/blog/the-psychology-of-menu-design
I’ve been trying to track down this track for years.
“My name is Yon Yonson,
I come from Wisconsin.
I work in a lumber mill there.
When I walk down the street,
The people I meet.
Say: What’s your name?
And I say:
My name is Yon Yonson,
I come from Wisconsin.
I work in a lumber mill there…”by Kurt Vonnegut
Rich or poor, luxury is only luxury when it stands out from our usual experience. Otherwise it is just ordinary. There is nothing unusual about a global brand. There is no element of surprise. There is only, at best, delivering what is expected.
Here’s a great article on the state of luxury in today’s global market.
When I was a kid, I was “Peter Perfect.” I stayed out of trouble and followed all the rules. I was even valedictorian of my high school class. So when it was time for college, I did what kids like me are supposed to do. I got into a good school—Northwestern University—and pursued a career in finance.
By senior year I was graduating with a degree in economics and it was time to start interviewing with banks and consulting firms. There I was, in my little interview suit, meeting other guys in their little suits. After a few rounds, I started to feel a sickening pain in the pit of my stomach.
I hated this!
I didn’t like these people. I did not belong in their world. After all these years of doing what I was supposed to do, I began to realize that I had made a colossal mistake.
But what now? It was time for some major soul searching. I started to review my life in detail, trying to find anything that I had been passionate about. Maybe I could figure out what I was supposed to be doing—all the while fearing that I was going to have to start over.
As I went through my past, things started to jump out. Playing piano, painting, drawing, reading about architecture and designing my own homes—everything I loved was creative!
I then had a revelation: If I was going to be happy in this life, I needed to be in a creative world.
During college I had a part-time job working in the men’s department at I. Magnin, a high-end specialty store. Soon after my big revelation, my department was invited to a fashion show by my all-time favorite designers, Marithé and François Girbaud. I was in love with their brand. The clothes were amazing: modern, edgy, architectural. During slow hours at the store I used to try on the latest collections, and would even turn the clothes inside out to understand how they were made.
I jumped at the chance to go to the fashion show. It was at the Limelight nightclub in downtown Chicago, so I put on my club clothes (it was the 80s, so I think parachute pants and an officer’s hat were involved) and headed out. I ended up being the only one from my store to show, but as I was hanging out by myself I met this guy named Ron Smith. He turned out to be the head of marketing for Girbaud! We hit if off immediately, and I soon learned that they had a job opening in New York. Ron said I should interview for it, so I flew myself to New York, had the interview, and then waited. Days turned into weeks, until I finally got a call.
They had gone with someone else.
It was devastating. I was so depressed that at one point I seriously thought about driving my car into Lake Michigan. Fortunately, I got over it and enrolled in some design courses at Chicago’s version of FIT to at least try to pursue this new dream. I wasn’t making any real progress though and after a year with no job prospects, I ended up, in desperation, taking a job with a tuxedo shop in a strip mall in Skokie. That’s when everything changed.
On my second day at the tux shop, the store manager from I. Magnin walked in. He was getting fitted for a tux for a wedding.
“Kevin!” he said with surprise. “Did you know that Girbaud is trying to reach you?” I had no idea, but I tracked down Ron Smith as soon as I could. Ron told me that they were opening a new division and wanted to talk with me about a job. And they were going to be in Chicago the very next day!
The following morning I met with Ron and his colleagues, had a fantastic interview, and got the job! A few short weeks later, I was in New York, working for my favorite designers, wearing clothes that I loved, and most importantly, I now had a mentor in Ron Smith who taught me all he knew about design and marketing, essentially launching my creative career.
There’s a big lesson in this story, and it’s best summed up by Joseph Campbell, who said:
Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.
The above is a transcript of my first Toastmasters speech:
Competent Communicators Speech #1: The Icebreaker.
SEC Roughriders Toastmasters Club 1876
District 46, Toastmasters International
13 August 2015
~ Kevin King
Mind map for the Speech:
