Archive for January, 2010

How designers get influenced by music is an informative article about the combination of music and design. Eleven designers talk about their experiences and views on music among them like Alex Beltechi, Pete Harrison and Rik Ooestenbroek. It is totally worth to check out.

This time I also have some different views on the same topic. I’d love to discuss everything with you guys more, so just leave a comment. My question is:

“How does music inspire you and what music do you listen to, while designing?”

Shadow Chen

website http://www.saltyshadow.com/

I love music second to I love art, sometimes even more, in my opinion music is the most amazing thing people can give to this world, it’s magical, inspirational, sentimental, healing…it’s everything.I always dreamed of being a musician, or a singer performing on the stage, I think it’s the most precious and desirable gift people can have, since I’m not good enough to do that, I transform my feelings while hearing the music to my artworks, hence it become a very special and inspiring process for me.Music can be art , and art can be music.

My favorite genre is rock, new wave, post punk, shoegaze, dreampop, downtempo…there are too many, my top musicians are The Cure ,The Flaming lips, Robin Guthrie…I’m also a chill-out radio fan, love listening to belowzero and anji bee’s chillcast.

Justin Maller

website http://justinmaller.com/

“Music is an integral, interwoven, intangible yet indispensable part of my creative process. I tend to save listening to my favourite albums for times where I need to produce my best creative work – I will often watch movies when drumming out less inspired work, but find that my imagination really fires up when the tunes kick in. I have no set genre or band that I listen to when I create – I just listen to whatever album it is that I have on rotation and see where it takes me. Lately I’ve been listening to The XX, Led Zeppelin and Bloc Party – it’s made for some really wonderful creative sessions.”
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I came across Basilio Silva’s portfolio the other day and was instantly drawn to his super edgy style. His fashion work is a sublime mixture of bright colors and sharp angles that really leaves me wanting more. I found virtually no information about him except that he’s based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Sometimes I wonder if artists remain elusive on purpose just to create this mystery about them and their work. Perhaps elusive isn’t the best word…anonymous maybe? I think I really like not knowing anything about him and leaving the rest up to my imagination. Maybe it’s best to just let the work do the talking. I think that’s the true essence of being an artist–communicating and showing yourself through your work without this obscure necessity of words that we hold so much value on. Visual rather than verbal communication is what it’s all about.

Anyway, I’m being hypocritical right now by rambling on about this so I’m just gonna leave you with this collection of Basilio’s work instead. Check out the rest here and, actually, I’d really like to hear your opinion on this whole elusive-artist thing (for lack of better word). Consider the topic officially open for debate. Tweet your take on it to me – @amlight.

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al b sure

Bergie81

PCR Robot (Multilight Test Maxwell Render) from Bergie81 on Vimeo.

edvo1302

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Celebrity street artist, Banksy, has apparently made a subversive new documentary film. Looks like it’s subversively premiering at Sundance this month. The trailer is intriguing yet vague – the film seems to focus on street art but seems also to promote subversion in all its different forms.

Also of interest:

Banksy book at Amazon

I got one fresh, small project, where I needed small portfolio site for a friend. It got me thinking and lead to research what WordPress can offer to me, with its great CMS platform. I was a little bit surprised, because I got even better results than I expected- theres was a plenty of interesting portfolio, photo gallery themes, where homepage was static, but still you can tie together static with dynamic content and add blog as well. Maybe it’s nothing new or signifunt for most of you, but I wasn’t aware there is possible to get such theme so easily, where of course my friend could manually change it’s content without touching or learning any code knowledge.

It was commercial theme I tested, but since most of people look just for free stuff, I gave it a try and searched for free Portfolio, photo gallery type themes. Maybe results aren’t too bright, but those themes are completely free for using. Don’t worry, if you are searching for more quality and wider sortiment, I will follow up with Commercial Portfolio and Photo Gallery WordPress Theme article in next few days!

1. ViewPort

Viewport, a free WordPress theme created by Paul Bennett is focused around a clean and simple, content based layout. The aim is to grab the user’s attention and draw them straight into the content.

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2. WordPress The Unstandard

View Demo

3. Gallery 1.2

Gallery is a beautiful, free, gallery-style Thematic child theme for WordPress, designed by Christopher Wallace especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. It is extremely flexible and can be used as a starting point for design galleries and portfolios.

View Demo

4. wpFolio – Free CMS / Portfolio WordPress Theme

View Demo
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