Red Pepper Flakes. A blog by Imelda Suriato

Photography & The Digital Age

When iPad arrived and all these apps started popping up, I was really not getting all the hype. It’s just an enlarged iTouch. Right? Then I saw The Guardian‘s iPad app, Eyewitness, and I was blown away by how crisply and smoothly presented the images are. The application brought the message to the medium perfectly and the result is breathtaking: The touchable images are so right there in front of you, they litterally take your breath away.

This little moment brought to mind what the photographer and director Michael Grecco wrote in his blog about “The Crazy Industry” that is photography:

I don’t think we’ve even begun to see the visual changes ahead. I think photography will become this hybrid thing on peoples devices that will incorporate the beauty of the still images in composition, content and feel, but then it will additionally be able to move, inform, and help you act.

With the shrinking of the print world, there will be interesting changes on the way work is presented for photographers and artists alike. Like putting up an online portfolio to showcase your work, magazines are also converting to the digital form.

Michael pointed out Issuu.com, a digital publishing platform that can turn your print publication into its digital version that works on the web or even on the iPad by a simple upload. It’s a great way to simplify the presentation layer while creating a database of work by others that allow photographers to see what’s out there and basically “gives me a perspective, not only on myself, but on our society and where we’re heading visually.”

There are other digital publications out there that provides stunning and inspiring photography. Take Victor by Hasselblad and Visura Magazine, beautiful photo glossies.

For dailies, here are my favorites:

• The Big Picture (Boston.com/The Boston Globe)
• Plog Photo Blog (Denver Post)
• Photo Journal (The Wall Street Journal)

Dramatic, touching, heart-breaking, uplifting… These images should inspire more than just photographers, but also creative minds to find new ways to experience them.

p.s.: I didn’t include National Geographic because it’s just so obvious, no?

Lovely Surprise

Received a lovely surprise today from Michael Ash Partners: Two lovely signed prints, a deep blue-on-blue flower from Tokyo-born Kenji Aoki’s Color Collection and a leaping body from Singaporean Cheng Joo.

Beautiful pieces I cannot wait to frame white-on-white. They’re going to look gorgeous somewhere in my place. Thanks, Michael!

QR Codes + Graffiti > Commerce

Everybody is talking about Calvin Klein’s “Get It Uncensored” QR Code billboard in SoHo. So what. It’s been around in Japan for ages (well, maybe not ages, but since the 90′s). Invented by Denso-Wave in 1994,  it’s now pretty much on every printable/projectable surface.

The US market is finally catching on and we started seeing commercial uses such as the Calvin Klein billboard or the Nordstrom storefront, or as tourism tool being utilized by European cities like Bordeaux, France, with its Digital City Project or Senigallia on Italy’s Adriatic coast with its QRCity. And yeah, it’s the next biggest thing and its cool. But it has to be more than commerce or tourism.

Then came the Berlin-based urban artist Sweza. Since graffiti are always removed by either the local authorities or property owners, he decided to photograph the graffiti to preserve it and after the graffiti was removed, he placed a QR code in the exact location, which shows you the original. It’s QR code acting as graffiti, but cleaner. Very clever.

Taking that a step further, Digit, a London-based interactive communications agency, is QR-Coding graffiti and making it a talking point. Called I Could Do That, the project basically stems from how everyone always has an opinion about different urban art. A QR code is placed next to each graffiti/art piece which brings you to a site where you can post your comment or read other people’s. So now the graffiti becomes an invitation to a dialogue, creating a reciprocity of some sort.

See samples of comments on Vhils piece above.

For me, it allows the city dwellers/walkers to have a kinship with the concrete you walk on and the walls you pass through. It is “if this walls could talk” times ten. And I like that.

End notes: Thanks to 2d code for being such a resource for all things QR code. What’s the future? I see on-the-spot public voting (from policies to ideas) and online-offline dialogue (think conferences or soapbox orations a la Hyde Park) to QR code as bouncers (yup, you’re not on the list, buddy!). It’s going to be a lot of fun.

If you have any interesting ideas on QR code application, let me know.

The Geometry of Pasta

The Geometry of Pasta is not just a recipe book from critically acclaimed chef, Jacob Kenedy. It is a stunning book of over 100 recipes designed in black-and-white that reveals the science, history and philosophy behind spectacular pasta dishes from all over Italy.

It’s designed by award-winning designer, publisher and Creative Partner at Here Design, Caz Hildebrand, who is also responsible for other sumptuous cookbooks by Nigella Lawson and the Hairy Bikers.

The book presents a striking fusion of design and food:  “The book tells you everything you need to know about cooking and eating pasta like an Italian.” The punchy graphic design paired with simple recipes is cheeky, yet efficient. It’s gastronomic pop art, and I want a giant print of the cover as wallpaper in my kitchen!

Visit The Geometry of Pasta for more.

Jay Maldonado for Zoo York: Locals Only

Zoo York has teamed up with NY photographer and skater Jay Maldonado.  The L.E.S native (he grew up in La Guardia housing projects on Clinton St.) captured beautiful images of a day in the life of New Yorkers for the Locals Only board series.

The stark B&W portraits captured the grit and texture of NYC street corners. He admits when he goes out shooting, he’s looking to capture some sort of moment so he can get across the right feeling. And when you go through his work, he’s spot on.

On shooting with NYC as a backdrop, Jay couldn’t ask for more:

There are so many different things to shoot, so many different people, buildings. Not every corner is alike and not to mention the great landscape as your back drop. I couldn’t ask for anything better as a backdrop.

I totally agree. Read Zoo York’s interview with Jay.

For more on Jay, visit jaymaldonado.com.

Roots x Douglas Coupland

The RootxDouglasCoupland clothing line, a collaboration between Douglas Coupland (the author of the bestseller Generation X) and Roots (the Canadian clothing company), finally unveiled in stores yesterday.

I heard about this collaboration through the grapevine a.k.a Twitter and I straightaway thought, oh no, what’s a literary doing with a clothing brand? But then I remembered that he’s also an artist, screenplay writer and producer. His ability to capture our techno-pop-culture extends to his art, where he explores and corrupts dimensions of pop culture and pop art. Andy Warhol’s his favorite study.

The collaboration with Roots features not just clothing, but art installations, sculpture, custom designed art and retail spaces. The RootxDouglasCoupland website is projects Coupland’s aesthetic very strongly –TV test pattern, pixilated objects and punch-card dots to name a few. The warping mouse-over effect that is suspiciously very Yugo Nakamura (remember his Wonderwall?).

To be honest, the pieces are fantastic. Look at these Test Pattern Armwarmers! That’s going into my closet.

When interviewed by Steven Heller, Coupland explained that his Roots clothing line as more of an art/design experiment, part of his exploring new ways of perceiving “being Canadian.” A friend suggested he collaborated with Roots as part of that exploration and he thought “it was a good idea, and wonderfully free of cynicism.”

Coupland also loves Penguin (the Canadian publishing house, not the bird) for their cutting edge worthiness and dutiful minimalism. He’s speaking about the covers and he’s not just saying. For Penguin’s 75^th Anniversary in March, he created Speaking of The Past, celebrating the publishing house with invitation for fans to design their own Penguin covers as well as showcasing the various original templates used from 1935-1963.

His devotion to their simplistic design lines was strongly expressed in this little autobiographical paragraph:

Last month I installed new bookshelves in a room in my house. They’re black, and my painter offered the unsolicited opinion that they might look depressing when completed. I knew he was wrong because, at the very least, the paperback shelf couldn’t help but have a cheerful orange zing a zing that comes from the Penguin spine, the most wonderfully insidious default interior design statement in our culture. Even crack dens glow with Penguins on the shelf.

That, in my opinion, is lovely. What a statement of devotion.

You have to admit, Douglas Coupland is one hell of a creative and productive human being. How inspiring.

Get BP’ed!

As part of my disgust over the atrocious environmental disaster courtesy of BP, I’m sharing this virtual oil spill so you can now have the same disregard by Oil-Spilling any website. See how my website get brutalized with gushing underwater oil.

Go Instant Oil Spill your site now. Brought to you by the folks at A Cleaner Future.

Augmented Shadow

Instead of making virtual objects come to life atop a flat surface, designer Joon Moon’s Augmented Shadow brings another dimension to AR, using tangible objects to produce artificial shadows on a tabletop display. The cubes create a shadow world of small houses with creatures living inside and moving around seeking out the light.

It is indeed the flipside to table top augmented reality. Kudos!

Via Design Boom.

Dry-Erase Paint for your wall

Don’t tell me you never thought of using a marker to doodle on a wall or just wonder how you can get a giant dry-erase board for your office. Well, that’s basically the idea behind IdeaPaint‘s dry-erase paint.

I like it! Plus, the website is pretty cool with ideas for your home, work or school. Browse through the gallery and blog for inspiration.

So….ccer Crazy!

World Cup 2010 is feverishly descending allover the web. Checkout PUMAcity coming to South Street Seaport — June 11 to July 11. Then we have Louis Vuitton Journeys with soccer’s legendary greats: Pelé, Maradona and Zidane.

The microsite allows you to post connect via Facebook and see your profile photo being signed by Pele or Maradone. (It is kinda odd, though. Shouldn’t they be signing their photographs instead of yours?) You also get to watch them play foosball and post your “shouts” by country.

Umbro is doing their thing with all their football prowess, showcasing their World Champion collections, supported by interesting blog posts, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter presence.

And to get close and personal, rough-housing with other World Cup fans, go check out PlayBeautiful, a pop-up match-viewing hub in NYC starting from June 11. It could pop-up anywhere: bars, restaurants, soccer fields… But on June 20, it’ll set up a brick-and-mortar shop at OpenHouse Gallery on Mulberry St (NoLIta). Go reserve your spot!

Meanwhile, Squeaky is working on some World Cup flavor on our own so stay tuned!

Making sweet real web fonts

The days of HTML built-in fonts are now over. Well, sort of.

Typekit, a product of Small Batch Inc. (who is now not so small anymore after their first round of VC funding), is offering beautiful, real fonts for use on the web. This means headline or title graphics don’t have to be created and there really is no need for sIFR anymore.

The best part: The subscription-based service offers Open Type fonts from some of the world’s best type foundries to be used gloriously on the web.

The fee is very minimal, but if you’re a super-starving designer, you can start with their free trial package.

Then comes Google Font API and Directory. No worries, Google isn’t trying to bully Typekit. Both companies openly collaborated to get Typekit Font Events into the open source project WebFont Loader. To boot, Google’s web fonts can be accessed from Typekit so if you’re using both services, there won’t be any compatibility issue.

So it looks like Typekit and Google Fonts are making sweet, sweet real web fonts together. The best part, of course, is the fact that designers will now be able to explore web font usage without having to worry about production, search engine-friendliness, Mac vs. PC font fibs, and the need to buy every single font you want to use for comps.

Yes, I’ve been there, knee-deep in “beg, borrow, steal” font territory. Can you smell the freedom now?

Heatherwick’s Fuzzy UK Pavilion

Thomas Heatherwick‘s fuzzy UK Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010 blurs the architectural lines quite literally. Called Seed Cathedral, the see-through building is just fantastic. The 40-year-old Heatherwick thought of everything in awe-inspiring details, from the moving fiber optic-like strands to the embedded plant seed storage at the tip of each .

I can’t help but be a fan after walking up the trippy, sweeping staircase at the SoHo’s Longchamp store, appropriately named La Maison Unique. Just look at his portfolio from the Harvey Nichols installation in 1997 to Longchamp’s Zip Bag to the caterpillar-like Rolling Bridge.

You have to see it to believe his scope of imagination. It’s simply Wow.

Wallpaper* cover design competition

Wallpaper* Magazine is asking you to design their August cover. Just buy a copy of the August issue online and you will gain access to the special cover application, where you scale, rotate, color and assemble the wide selection of images, graphics and patterns any way you like to create your masterpiece.

Better hurry. The deadline is June 8 so start designing now!

Popaganda by Ron English

A quick peek of Ron English’”Wellington Court Mural Project” in Queens, NY. Check out more of his culture jamming projects here.

Super Sexy CPR

Fortnight Lingerie is definitely pushing something with their Super Sexy CPR video. Digital Buzz Blog said that as far as the technique (CPR, that is), it’s spot on. Within 5 days, it was viewed over 1 million times on Vimeo and I’m sure it’s not because of the accuracy.

The Super Sexy CPR site itself doesn’t really do much outside of asking you to signup for updates & goodies. But wait! Super Sexy Abdominal Thrusts is coming in June!