Luminato

Hey Guys, this is something I stubbled upon and I thought I would share it with you.

Luminato (International Festival of Arts + Creativity) is a federally registered charitable organization dedicated to celebrating the creative spirit by showcasing excellence in the arts and partnerships with new artists.

Now in its fourth year, Luminato is an annual ten-day celebration of the arts where Toronto's stages, streets, and public spaces are infused with theatre, dance, classical and contemporary music, film, literature, visual arts, and design. This year it’s in June.

Luminato embraces three key programming principles: collaboration, accessibility, and diversity.

Luminato embraces artistic collaboration - creating unforgettable moments by bringing together artists from different cultures and genres. The festival encourages local, national, and international artists to discover unprecedented creative expressions through unexpected partnerships

Luminato's hallmarks include free widely accessible events, and "accidental encounters with art." Festival-goers are invited to participate, explore, and celebrate their own creative spirit.

Luminato embraces and celebrates Toronto's cultural diversity, and recognizes that creativity flourishes when cultures join together in a spirit of tolerance and respect.

Luminato is proud to partner with selected schools and specialty programs in underserved communities and neighbourhoods - offering students from grades K-12 experiential workshops, artist in- the-school visits, presentations and discussions. These programs are designed to encourage interactive participation and meaningful engagement with the Festival programming and themes, while providing enrichment and connections to the classroom curriculum. More information will be coming soon. For more information, contact: education@luminato.com

To attend any of these Luminato events just go to the website and click on attending Luminato.

Promotional Website for The Bak Up Plan

This website design is simply brilliant!!! The site is designed like a street from the movie and when you move the cursor past the stores, the lights flicker on and off, and as you move the cursor the dog from the movie walks. Now that's cool.

The design is incredibly clever each store on the street is a sub page. For example the art gallery is a sub page of the pictures from the movie.

I think It's amazing how real the Stores look! it's a 3D image of the book store window that catches everyone's attention. The attention to detail on the moped and the paintings inside the art gallery, the posters on the book store window all make it look very authentic.

The navigation of The site is incredibly efficient and user friendly.

The site is visually pleasing and I'm very impressed with the balance between the animated elements and real photographs of the site. I'm looking forward to making my own site and I hope it's half as good as this.

The Back Up Plan

I recently watched The Back Up Plan and the while the movie it self was a great, the beginning really caught my attention. The beginning is animated and it's really cool! While the beginning credits role, the animation begins. I don't want to spoil the story, but in the movie Zoe really badly wants to have a baby. So In the animation everywhere she looks she relates it to baby stuff. She sees a couple drinking wine and it shows her looks at them drinking baby bottles it's so cool. The cabs on the street turn into big yellow ducks, the subways starts t look like a chu chu train every thing around her turns babyafied including the city streets.

Karim Rashid

What an inspiration, this is what I want to do in the future! I want to create an impact as large as Karim !

Karim Rashid is one of the most productive , designers of his generation. Over 3000 designs in production, over 300 awards and working in over 35 countries attest to Karim's legend of design. His award winning designs include democratic objects such as the ubiquitous Garbo waste can and Oh Chair for Umbra, interiors such as the Morimoto restaurant, Philadelphia and Semiramis hotel, Athens and exhibitions for Deutsche Bank and Audi. Karim has collaborated with clients to create democratic design for Method and Dirt Devil, furniture for Artemide and Magis, brand identity for Citibank and Hyundai, high tech products for LaCie and Samsung, and luxury goods for Veuve Clicquot and Swarovski, to name a few. Karim's work is featured in 20 permanent collections and he exhibits art in galleries world wide. Karim is a perennial winner of the Red Dot award, Chicago Athenaeum Good Design award, I.D. Magazine Annual Design Review, IDSA Industrial Design Excellence award.

He holds honorary doctorates from the Ontario college of Art & Design and Corcoran College of Art & Design. Karim is a frequent guest lecturer at universities and conferences globally disseminating the importance of design in everyday life. Karim's has been featured in magazine and books including Time, Financial Times, NY Times, Esquire, GQ and countless more. In 2009 Rizzoli released Karim's latest monograph KarimSpace, featuring 36 of Karim's interior architecture designs. Other books include Karim's guide to living, 'Design Your Self' (Harper Collins, 2006), 'Digipop', a digital exploration of computer graphics (Taschen, 2005), compact portfolio published by Chronicle Books (2004), as well as two monographs titled 'Evolution' (Universe, 2004) and 'I Want to Change the World' (Rizzoli, 2001). In his spare time Karim's pluralism flirts with DJing, art and fashion and is determined to creatively touch every aspect of our physical landscape

I found his designs very inspiring, bold & beautiful. Check them out!

Back in the Day ...

My Mom, cousin and I were talking about how animations have become so advanced and technical now and how simple but cool they were back in the day and I think we talked about this in art class but anyways. My cousin was telling me all about this and I thought I would Google it, because in todays world we rely on our technology and have forgotten about the good old days!

The praxinoscope was an animation device, the successor to the zoetrope. The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned.

Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope offered.

How it works:

A band of pictures is placed inside a shallow outer cylinder, so that each picture is reflected by the inner set of mirrors. The number of mirrors is equal to the number of pictures, and the images of the pictures are viewed in the mirrors. When the outer cylinder rotates, the quick succession of reflected pictures gives the illusion of a moving picture.

What became of it:

Using this principle, Reynaud found a way to project the series of pictures onto a screen. He called this the "Theatre Optique." A standard praxinoscope, like the one above, can only accomodate a second or two of animation because of the limited number of pictures it contains. Reynaud's "Theatre Optique" used a long roll of paper to increase the number of pictures, and was therefore able to create a much longer show for an audience.

So here's a thought stop and smell the flowers !

Website Cirtique The DO's and Don'ts

Ever go on a website and just get thrown off by how busy the page is ? Have you ever just left a web page because of it's annoying flashy advertisements or flashy/loud colour scheme? All this bugged me, but I never knew why? When I learned the 10 Principles of Effective Web Design, I began to understand. There are some key elements that make a website appealing and unappealing for the user. Through this critique I will explain a few key factors that make a website successful and unsuccessful.

A good example of a website design that isn't very visually pleasing is msn.com, Although there is a good use of negative space and white space, there are way too many buttons and lists. (it's a little to much to take in all at once) The advertising is in the smack dab middle of the page, this attracts the attention away from the side news feed. If it's your first time on the site it can be a little confusing. At the top left hand corner there is a MSN logo, and beside it is a search box. On the right side there are three large icons for: hotmail, messenger and my msn and above that a bunch of options for your search. Everyone knows the msn logo because it's very popular, but if I didn't know what msn was, I don't think I would stick around much longer. Below that there are like a zillion options: autos, entertainment etc, for the latest news. Directly underneath that on the left is a list of the top stories and in the center there is a a large advertisement with these large letters popping out! It's extremely overwhelming and frustrating to navigate around the site. It's hard for the brain to understand and process, which area of the site you want to visit. It's difficult to remain patient because of the complicated layout of the site, the worst part is that all the information advertisements and the search engine are all crammed together. Once you vistit the site several times it tends to get a little less confusing.

Now here is an example of a site that is slightly more effective and visually pleasing

Ken Gangbar Studios

This website is great example of an effective use of the principals of web design. As soon as you arrive it's self-explanatory. The most brilliant thing about this site is that is has been designed in a Z pattern with the most important content in the top right and left corners and in the bottom left corner.(this makes it easy for the visitor to quickly scan for what they are looking for) Upon entering the site, On the left hand corner the logo appears in a clear white font, on the right hand side there are three simple categories: about, client list and content, In the center is a large image of a piece of art work by the artist, on the bottom left, to side of the image is a brief description of the art work, on the very bottom on the site there are three categories once again (if you move your mouse to the bottom of the screen a gallery appears). The site has used the space very well. I like the format it's easy to scan through the site. It's completely user friendly, the information is easy to access, the font is clear and easy to read and I like the way the background is black and the font is white, the two colours contrast well together and it looks smart and professional.

I hope that this will help you, when you are designing a website for your self, or even when you are designing a blog, or an advertisement or even something else, you can take into consideration the Do's and Don'ts of web design.

Art Deco Artist - Arthur Radebaugh

So I had to do ALOT of research before I started my self portrait assignment and this something I came across during my research..

Illustrator, Arthur Radebaugh's (1906-1974), ultra futuristic depictions of vehicles in the 1930s are well respected in the genre, however, there is actually very little known about the artist himself.

His vision of the future was heavily influenced by the Art Deco movement - check out his use of vivid colours, geometric patterns, sweeping curves and streamlined design - it's classic Art Deco Style.

He described his works as "halfway between science fiction and designs for modern living."

He could easily be considered a 'concept car' designer by today's automobile design standards.

I love his sense of aesthetic - his depictions are incredibly moody, a bit dark and apocalyptic, but juxtaposed with a more promising, hopeful sense of the future.

And I especially love the sleek, sexy lines, so indicative of the Art Deco style.

Spring Fashions

As I mentined in my last post, spring has already arrived, not that I'm complaining... Oneof the reasons is spring is like a breath of fresh warmair after winter, not only is it bright and full of life outside, it shows this in the spring fashions. The city of Toronto has come to life this spring, with bright colours. This season has bold and bright purples, vivid lilacs, parrot greens and deep turquoises, all of which can be found on silks, chiffon's and shiny

satins. The clothes look rich and vibrant, even the accessories are bright. Reds, pinks, blues, greens and purple off course! The print designs on the clothes are derived from nature this spring, peacock feathers, leapord prints and flowy graphic tees and loose comfortable shirts with pockets.

Nothing says spring like something floral and floaty

. From printed blouses to graphic tees.

A.P.C Madras Grape Print Sleeveless Top

Lauren Moshi Gun Rose Pocket Tunic

I'm loving the bold handbags this season! They're a great accessory and a fun way to add a punch of colour to your outfit !

By Devi Kroell

By Valentino

By Marc Jacobs

Hope this helps you kick start your spring season shopping!