Vism.ag & Creative Maps Blog

Self Portraits

I love this representation of self 'Map of an Englishman' by Grayson Perry. Very intricate and in depth, I think I posted something called BrainLand in a previous post ages ago but this is detailed.

'His Map of An Englishman (2004) is a mock-Tudor etch of an imaginary island, not coincidentally resembling a brain, surrounded by Psychopath, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, Delirium and other unpleasantness at sea; divided into counties with alluring names such as Tender, Bitch, Romance, Cliché and Guru – Normal and Easy are pretty small areas, and Fear is a large, scary forest in the east.' http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/02/08/ They also remind me of these that I saw. How curious again, seen at strange maps, he released a book. Well worth a look.

found: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/363-ego-cartography-the-island-of-philippe-gonzalvez/

found: http://www.serialmapper.com/archive/2009/03/22/facemap.html

Grayson Perry to give classical music prizes keynote speech (guardian.co.uk)
Grayson Perry's toilet tips (guardian.co.uk)

Published on 2010/07/04 7:25 pm.
Filed under: abstract, self, strange Tags: Bipolar Disorder, brain, Disorders, English people, Grayson Perry, Health, Mental Health, Mood

Bizarre Infographic

In UK and on BBC three there is a program called bizarre ER, I saw these great informative little infographic animations with a soupson of humour & blood.

Published on 2009/07/15 1:04 am.
Filed under: animation, blood, graphic, humour, information, narrative, simple, strange

Self Mapping

mileage - annual report - Nicholas Feltron’s

music - annual report - Nicholas Feltron

reading habits - annual report 07 - nicholas feltron

Visualise yourself, what would you display to an audience? how intimate would you make it? Well even though he has been doing them from 2005 I have just discovered them by Nicholas Feltron. With very minimal styles but nice clean, clear, infographics and bold numbers encased in this swiss style grid system to keep some structure and rigidity to his diverse information of his life.

I am curious how he records all this data to be absolutely accurate, it must be some focsed, disciplined time keeping and number crunching.

Why? When quizzed, Felton’s admits that ‘it satisfies a real curiosity that I have about my habits. Why is it a popular document? If there are numer ous people out there who think it is fascinating and don’t even know me… imagine how fascinating I find it’. At first your reaction is ‘Oh please….’ but soon you are scouring the pages to see which was the most visited restaurant, his most-drunk beer: a sort of typographic Truman Show, authored by Truman himself.

It is intersting how the CR blog author describes it as a sort of typographic Truman Show.

http://feltron.com/

there are previous versions there.

found here: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/me-myself-and-i/

Published on 2009/01/16 3:22 pm.
Filed under: brockmann, clean, complex, data, design, geographic, how to, map, mobile, seeing, self, strange, swiss, visual maps, visualisation

Animated Audi

I saw this on the tv recently, usually forget to search for the ad to blog it or i forget who the ad was for to actually search it.

But i found it at creative reviews blog. CR's first twee spot of ‘09: the new Audi Q5 ad featuring Woody Guthrie’s Car Song

Twee, acoustic, folksy music accompanies practically every second ad on TV at the moment. We first noticed the trend back in mid 2007 – a list of sappy offenders compiled here – but when, we ask, will it end? Joining CR's discussion: Dan Stevens, a director at music PR and management company, Darling Department; Parv Thind, sound designer at Wave; and Peter Raeburn, founder and creative director of music production company, Soundtree.

It is great the hand drawn animated style, check out Blank Canvas & Communication Animation

Great making the card posses the ability to reflect.

Looked good. there is a new one by nokia i just saw today. will search for that, think it was E17 model... or something.

spotted here: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/change-the-record/

Published on 2009/01/08 8:24 pm.
Filed under: 3d, abstract, aesthetic, animation, clean, creative, graphic, incongruous, sketch, spatial, strange, visual thinking

Blank Canvas

Reminds me of the artists christo & jean claude wrapping the arch way in italy and other places. The commercial is called 'Blank Canvas' and questions what would be possible if all design ideas could start from a blank piece of canvas. Great changing of our perspectives and making us re-see the world which a good designer/artist learns to do.

Learning to Look: A Handbook for the Visual Arts (Phoenix Books)(visual thinking), good book by joshua c taylor.

The all new Ford Kuga, which may just make it State side in a few years, combines Ford's new kinetic design with all-wheel-drive and on-and-off-road capability. How well Europe will receive this new CUV will be known when the Kuga goes on sale in June.

The commercial was directed by Danish director Nicolai Fuglsig, who also directed guinness domino ad which was a great triumph for their brand I think returning them back to their surreal, quirky, mexican-look brilliance started by amv bbdo with Snail Racing (bet on black) by directed by frank budgen, Swimmer by directed by jonathon glazer & of course Surfers by j glazer (who also did dreamer with those great squirrels).

Now Guinness made you visually think.

Anyhow veared off from Nicolai's great wrapped blank canvas ad, the music is by French singer Camille.

Brilliant

from here: http://visualthinkmap.ning.com/video/video/show?id=2168552:Video:2345

more info: http://www.worldcarfans.com/9080522.004/ford-kuga-commercial-makes-cl-debut

Published on 2008/10/07 9:48 pm.
Filed under: abstract, creative, landscapes, looking, perception, perspectives, seeing, spatial, strange, visualisation, white space

Mastification Visualisation

The trident gum ads caused quite a bit of controversy with their creative, pastel coloured surreal ads surrounded around mastification.

mas·ti·cate Audio Help /?mæst??ke?t/
Spelled Pronunciation[mas-ti-keyt]

to chew
to reduce to a pulp by crushing or kneading, as rubber

Trident imaginatively concieve this idea of the mastification lobe in the brain. 'The mastication lobe is the largest member of the lobe family and is the part of the brain responsible for receiving and processing chewing pleasure. When a human man or woman chews, the taste and texture receptors on the upper tongue send trillions of tiny pleasure signals direct to the mastication lobe via an intricate network of neural pathways.'

View the video here (scroll to THE MASTICATION LOBE EXPLAINED)http://www.tridentgum.co.uk/EN/Trident2008/about/movieshtml.htm

It is quirky and uses these crisp pastel colours and graph paper visual along with the tagline 'mastication for the nation' which is where it had problems with ASA (advertising standards authority) here in the UK and subsequently had to stop their campaign, only after it had already been seen in abundance by the public.

Great thinking, mastificate yourself.

Dictionary.com [Origin: 1640–50; mastic, -ate1]

Published on 2008/07/17 7:18 pm.
Filed under: abstract, animation, brain, clean, colour, graphic, language, looking, mastificate, mind, pastel, research, seeing, strange, surreal

Watch the Evolution Design

Tom Gauld visualised time a little differently challenging our perceptions in his drawings, doodle style thinking, watch design visual for United Arrows called EVOLUTION.

Rather than using numbers normally depiciting time he takes his solid black characters to depict time as a sequence in evolution as opposed to a sequence in numbers paradigm.

Another great alternative perspective to time (see Dynamic Time Visualisation) that still functions through the placing of the images, it merely making the familiar strange creating a conflict in form (doodles rather than numbers) that needs to be interpreted.

There are many great quirky illustrations by Tom Gauld charting his fantastic imagination who is featured in The Picture Book: Contemporary Illustration & Pictures and Words: New Comic Art and Narrative Illustration.

Source: http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.cabanonpress.com/images/tomsbits/watch.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cabanonpress.com/tomsshed/8.2.watch.htm&h=434&w=402&sz=37&hl=en&start=1&sig2=jgEeYSpw3VoosVMsW7QO9A&um=1&tbnid=rHPWzGlc3AvO6M:&tbnh=126&tbnw=117&ei=HDVISInoNYuw6wPt7ujwBA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgauld%2Bevolution%2Bwatch%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den

Published on 2008/06/05 6:47 pm.
Filed under: abstract, clean, composition, creative, designs, doodle, drawing, familiar, form, function, illustration, information, innovative, interpret, strange, time, visual thinking, visualisation, white space, wordless

Visually Identifying Zombies

The Common Craft Show is a series of short explanatory videos by Lee and Sachi LeFever. Our goal is to fight complexity with simple tools and plain language. We call our format "paperworks" and publish a new video about once a month.

Wonderful visual thinking accompanied by narrative. Zombies in plain english show the subtle humour of the plain english videos. there are ones for Blogs in plain english, RSS, Wikis, Social Networking, Online Photo Sharing. Brilliant.

Published on 2008/05/11 11:19 am.
Filed under: abstract, animation, communication, graphic, how to, illustration, knowledge, language, meaning, narrative, seeing, simple, sketch, strange, visual thinking, visualisation, white space, words

Dynamic Time Visualisation

Julien Bayle.net talks about visual design and more. He works on social network visualizations, generative art and data visualizations.

He has had some of his social network visualisations published on visual complexity.com.

His dynamic clock to visualise time is simple and innovative. Rather than just static numbers around a circle and handles, he uses space (area) in circles to represent the amount of time elapsed in seconds (dark blue), minutes (white) & hours (light blue).

A great alternative perspective to time rather than the usual. Certainly making the familiar strange through a conflict that needs to be interpreted.

http://www.julienbayle.net/complexity/visualization/clock/

Published on 2008/04/29 9:04 pm.
Filed under: clean, conflict, contrast, creative, dynamic, function, image, incongruous, innovative, interpret, seeing, simple, spatial, strange, subvert, time, visualisation

Medieval Mind Trip - BBC4

Agency: RKCR/Y&R
Creative Director: Damon Collins
Creative: Jules Chalkley; Nick Simons
Director: James Price
Production: Strange Beast
Producer: Kayt Hall
Music: Tam Nightingale, Nightingale Music

This wonderful visual charting the mind of a medieval citizen was created over five weeks with a team of six animators working out of Transistor Studios, the spot delves deep into the facts and fictions of medieval life through a series of intricately detailed shots exploring the images, ideas and iconography of the period. From science and religion to plague and pestilence. The spot brings to life a mind-bending taster of what's to come in the forthcoming BBC4 Medieval Season.

Damon Collins' first project as executive creative director at RKCR/Y&R since leaving Mother at the end of 2007. This his first project at RK he recalls with a grin. "They're a brilliant client (BBC), though challenging when it comes to timings. [...] eight weeks from initial brief to air date."

Collins and his crew started brainstorming ways to convey medieval life stylishly and succinctly. "The idea of the trip came from the fact that stuff people believed in, the things they did and even the colour of the world back then are almost impossible for our minds to contemplate today," Collins explains. "It was a different, bonkers, but very beautiful world, hence the comparison with watching the season being like a drug trip." This bonkers world that might contain images of people with wolves heads similar to characters that Andrew Rae might have drawn featured in Basics Illustration: Thinking Visually by Mark Wigan.

With Strange Beast director James Price at the helm of the animation on the spot. "When Damon mentioned they where re-recording Purple Haze with Medieval instruments I knew this was going to be really a really unique project, so it really gave me the impetus to push the design and just go wild with it," recalls Price.

With the idea of reworking Jimmy Hendrix' Purple Haze it was arranged and recorded by Pascal Bideau and Tam Nightingale who have a penchant for period instruments . The musicians who took part in the project are: Jon Banks (tef), Sharon Lindo (rebec, viol), Keith McGowan (hurdy gurdy, shawm, rackett, curtle), Emma Murphy (recorders).

See the complete article source here:

http://www.shots.net/news_detail.asp?id=4121

Published on 2008/04/19 5:04 pm.
Filed under: animation, beast, brainstorm, drug trip, hendrix, iconography, ideas, medieval, mind, purple haze, strange