Khoi Vinh's Blog, page 108

Sign Painters: The Movie

Sometimes a unique subject becomes the inspiration for two different movies within a short time frame, e.g., “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact.” This phenomenon is known as twin films, and it’s usually something that happens among rival Hollywood studios. But apparently independent film is susceptible to it as well. A few weeks ago I posted about…

Neonsigns.hk

This well-designed extensive online exhibition gives Hong Kong’s distinctive neon signs their due. It features a wealth of background on the form, including a crowdsourced catalog of over 2,300 photos of neon signs, a map of neon signs documented throughout Hong Kong and Kowloon, a gallery of the area’s famous neon signs that have been…

Natsumi Hayashi Levitates

Japanese photographer Natsumi Hayashi takes photographs of herself “levitating.” Apparently, she simply leaps in place, and through a combination of graceful posing and expert calibration of her camera’s aperture and shutter speed, achieves a very convincing, thoroughly charming effect. She posts new shots on an ongoing basis at yowyowacamera.com. Via Spoon & Tamago. +

Toddler and Puppy

This is not design- or technology-related, but what the heck. Jessica Shyba takes photos of her toddler and their adopted rescue puppy napping together; she posts them to her Instagram account. Have a wonderful Tuesday. +

The Hunt for El Chapo

In the 5 May issue of The New Yorker, Patrick Radden Keefe delivered this extensive account of the lengthy pursuit and eventual capture of notorious Mexican drug cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known by his nickname “El Chapo” or “shorty.” The full 9,700-word article is incredibly gripping and full of so many thriller-esque details that it’s…

Type Designer Matthew Carter at TED

I missed this last month: living legend Matthew Carter is apparently the first type designer to deliver a talk at TED. The reaction from the audience was polite but hardly rapturous, which many in the design community have taken as a reminder of how obscure our professional passions really are. It’s a reasonable reaction; Carter…

2014 Logo Trends Report

LogoLounge is a database of over 200,000 logos, amassed with the intention of creating “a more efficient way to find reference material for logos.” It’s exactly the kind of laudable idea that the Internet makes possible — in the analog age, even knowing what logos were out there was an impossibility. But the fact that a…

Remembering Jim Henson

Jim Henson passed away twenty-four years ago today. I’m embarrassed to admit that I have no distinct memory of hearing the news when it happened. To be frank, at the time, I could hardly have been bothered. I was a freshman at college, and had long outgrown the Muppets and all of Henson’s other creations.…

The New York Times Innovation Report

Buzzfeed got a hold of a 96-page report on the state of innovation at The New York Times, prepared by a select group of the company’s staffers and intended for internal distribution only. It’s a refreshingly frank analysis of the organization’s increasingly difficult challenges, which, for my money, are best summarized in this passage from…

Fed Up

Stephanie Soechtig’s feature documentary “Fed Up” asserts that “Everything we’ve been told about food and exercise for the past 30 years is dead wrong.” It targets sugar as the leading cause of today’s panoply of diet-related diseases afflicting Americans, and talks to a number of experts as well as several people who suffer from obesity.…