I know I’m not the only one who yet to adopt an eReader. I accept the fact that there are more and more cool devices out there for reading, from Kindle to Nook to Sony Reader to the latest, Kobo. Then there’s a host of social reading platforms, from the Washington Post Social Reader (a free Facebook application that offers a new way to read news — with your friends) to The Guardian‘s Facebook app (which by Dec 2011 was installed by more than 4 million users and drove up daily page impressions by almost 1 million). Google even joined in the fun with Google Currents.

What drives this latest craze? Is it because people like book clubs so much? Let’s define “social reading” first (or L.A. Times more appropriately asked “What the heck is ‘social reading’?”):

Look ahead: The presents have been opened, wrapping thrown away, and for a few quiet hours you’ve been curled up reading the new Steve Jobs biography, a gift from your dad. You find a surprising detail and call to your significant other, “Honey, did you know …?” but because he is busy making dinner, the idea fizzles away as you turn the page.

Or maybe when you get to that passage, with the swipe of a finger you highlight it and email it to your dad, adding a thanks for his gift. Or you click to add your thoughts to a chorus of readers who found that same passage interesting; or you check to see if there’s a link to a video clip; or you find an annotation from the author; or you post it to Twitter or Facebook or Google+, where others can comment on it too.

That’s called “social reading,” and it’s coming to an e-reading app or device near you.¹

It’s not hard to believe that people want to share what they have read with other people and receive feedback about their thoughts and ideas. Technology is the great enabler for social reading, and the natural place for this activity to cultivate.² I get it when it comes to news such as the case with Washington Post, The Telegraph and NY Times’ Recommendations. It’s discussion on current events, policies and the market. And it’s “happening right now.” But I guess there’s a need to opine on everything, even when it comes to chick lits, just like in a traditional book club.

Let’s take a look at one of the latest “club”: Copia, which bills itself as a Social Network for Book Lovers. It’s a social media and content delivery platform that brings together content, community and commerce to create an environment where users collaborate, socialize and buy content. Copia is accessible across a broad array of digital devices and platforms including Mac, PC, Android, notebooks, netbooks, iPads, slates, smart phones and eReaders.

With a tagline of “Reading reimagined for the iPad™” Copia wants book lovers to love it (because every book lover apparently has an iPad. Well, except me). It combines everything you love about the iPad with the most advanced social reading experience. Essentially, apps are increasingly being developed to enable users to electronically share thoughts.

Putting my reservations aside, Copia seems to offer lots of nice doodads like featured/most active groups, creation of notes, combining e-commerce & social. In addition to syncing your spot in a book, taking notes and highlighting excerpts, Copia lets you connect with other users. You can view notes that friends have made in the margins of a book, or join Copia Groups (essentially e-book clubs) and share recommendations. Copia has many of its own social networking features, but it also can connect with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.³

I like to note that there are some bright and useful elements in these eReaders & social reading platforms, especially from Kobo and Copia, for UI designers and app developers to consider in a community /application design. It’s definitely a lot more user-friendly if used for eBooks but nice UI for the iPad & Desktop Reader.

Before I end this thought, I’m adding self-publishing factor into the mix. There are many out there as well but I like BookBaby, which throws open the doors to the electronic publishing and distribution world for independent authors, offering affordable short-run book printing with the highest pay-out rate for eBook distribution in the industry.

Now that makes it real interesting: BookBaby not only publishes for Kindle, Nook, Kobo and Copia (and distributed by the latest two partners), authors can also create custom-printed version of your book, with your own design! Bookbaby Print utilizes the latest layout and bindery technology, along with the highest quality paper, bindery stock and printing processes to produce books that are guaranteed to delight authors and their readers. Yes, don’t throw this baby out with the bath water!

So does this mean “gone are the days of “selfish,” private reading: reading alone in the bathtub, alone under the covers, alone on the couch, alone in the park, etc.”⁴? It’s still hard for me to swallow that idea, that reading doesn’t have to be a solitary activity. I really like my analog paper.

p.s. A look at using social reading for education. It’s in the form of collective reading that characterizes early reading instruction, where reading begins as a social experience. Now that’s something I can stand behind!

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¹L.A. Times: What the heck is ‘social reading’?

^2,4Tame The Web: Allison Mennella – What is “Social Reading” and why should Libraries care?

³Switched: Copia, A Social E-Reading App, Quietly Launches 

 
Opening at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs on Friday is the retrospective ‘Goudemalion’ of the work of Jean-Paul Coude, a defining 80′s artist, art director, photographerand image maker. The exhibition examines the work through the lens of the Pygmalion myth — a humorous nod to his most important muse, lover and the mother of his son, Grace Jones, to whom he is, as he laughingly puts it, her ‘Pygmalion.’¹

Goude didn’t like studying; in his own words he “was bad at it.” Luckily he was good at drawing. He began his career in the 1960s as an illustrator for the department store Printemps in Paris. he began his career in the 1960s as an illustrator. In 1964 he became the Artistic Director for Esquire in New York and 10 years later, he joined New York Magazine. It was there that he first met and photographed Jones and became instrumental in honing her public image, exaggerating her androgyny and producing many striking work, including the famous photograph of her impossibly twisted pose used on the cover of her 1985 album, Island Life.

 
First published in New York Magazine in 1978, this image is in fact a montage of several photographs spliced together. In the days before Photoshop, this was Goude’s trademark: Using scissors to chop up photographs and then reassemble them, elongating limbs and exaggerating lines and curves. He called this technique ‘French Correction’² — which is mostly concerned with glorifying and revealing the body, by exaggerating and subliming it. He redesigns the bodies of his models, photographing then transforming them.³

Aside from creating several well-known campaigns for brands such as Perrier, Citroën and Chanel, Goude is also a filmmaker; his film ‘Heartbeat’ traces his eclectic influences and highlights his diverse portfolio which has led to some describing him as a ‘polymath’. What is apparent from the film is that Goude was and is heavily influenced by black American culture and French colonialism — a result of having grown up in a predominantly black neighborhood in France. “I was an illustrator who used to illustrate other people’s fantasy. I naturally became an “image maker,” he says.

Designed by Goude himself, the retrospective is a giant installation retracing his 40 year career. The show is organized into different sections: One a chronological journey from his early days to his most recent work, another recreating the most celebrated moments of his career — special areas dedicated to his most influential projects: Les Galeries Lafayette, cut-up slides, neon furniture, Chanel, and his muses, from Toukie Smith to Grace Jones to Karen, his last muse and current wife.³

 
According to Amelie Gastaut, co-curator of the exhibition:

For Jean-Paul Goude, as for those of us who curated the show, there’s not much difference between Applied Art, commercial arts and Fine Arts. Behind each of these lies an artist and his singular and original universe. When the advertising world solicited his work in 1982, he had started his artistic career for about 20 years, and he’s still a major element of today’s French artistic scene.⁵

A highlight of this season’s cultural programme, surprisingly, it will be the first ever retrospective of the work of the now-iconic Goude on the French advertising and fashion scenes. And the perfect opportunity for viewers to gain an understanding of his unique world view.

 
Visit jeanpaulgoude.com

Goudemalion opens today and runs through March 18, 2012. More info (in French only): Les Arts Décoratifs — Goudemalion. Jean-Paul Goude une rétrospective

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^1,2Wallpaper: Goudemalion: Jean-Paul Goude retrospective, Paris

^3,5Elle: Jean-Paul Goude Paris Exhibition

⁴Art Photo Expo: Jean-Paul Goude

Photo credit: Jean-Paul Goode^®

Using 350,000 of the colorful stickies in the U-shaped foyer of Melissa’s flagship store in São Paulo, the Post-its act as “pixels” in the video, with become these impressively trippy images of prancing elephants, balloons lifting folks aloft and pulsating heart-flowers. It’s part of the brand’s “Power of Love” campaign, which was appropriate because it took 25 animators five months to create and I bet they loved every moment of it.

On top of the animation, the company got passers-by to jot down messages on 30,000 Post-its, and it has since gone viral online. There are some environmental types who are concern about the ultimate fate of all those notes, but I don’t see why you can’t totally recycle those notes by passing it to the next person. It’s the power of love, man.

Make sure you watch the making of it.

Via Adweek

I love Sharpies. I always have one with me. They can be fine or fat markers or anything in between; I’ve used them to doodle in class since I can remember, and I can always rely on my red fine point to mark up anything (yes, the dreaded “Imelda is marking up the printouts again”). And I have the ink-stained fingers to proof it.

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Sharpie’s latest campaign, Start with Sharpie, draws on “Self-Expression,” and it reminds me of all the things I love to do growing up: Writing, drawing, tic tac toe, crosswords, “permanent” tattoos (yea, you had one of those). It taps into the idea that Sharpie gets you to express yourself, be creative and make anything you want. With nearly two-million incredible Facebook fans, what’s better than using their avid fans?

They recruited three of their Sharpie Squad members: Cheeming Boey (you may say “Jimmy who?” but get ready to be blown away), Erica Domesek (DIY Expert) & Mark Rivard (skateboard artist).

Cheeming Boey

Cheeming Boey is the “coffee cup artist” who drew intricate, finely-detailed drawings on those 4-cent Styrofoam cups with a Sharpie. Styrofoam gets a bad rap because it’s cheap, disposable and it never degrades. A landfill nightmare. But Cheeming has turned it into something you gape at.

“About the only time it makes the news is when some city bans its use – as more than 20 California cities have done. Or when some art auction sells a foam cup with a dead ladybug in it for $29,900 – as happened in 2001. All of which makes the simple, 4-cent cup the epitome of pop art. It’s at once kitschy and unhip and dismissed by all. Yet it can be a demanding medium to master. It’s curved. It smudges. You can’t redo mistakes. And every drawing must re-connect to its start.”

Cheeming’s work has been displayed in galleries nationwide. In his ad, Cheeming demonstrates how a Sharpie Pen and a simple Styrofoam cup can be combined to create something truly inspiring.

Note that not even bananas are safe from his wandering Sharpies. In this picture, “mistake” cups are used for drinking.

Erica Domesek

A DIY expert, author and creator of P.S.- I Made This, Erica’s creations are inspired by some of the biggest names in fashion. She has been featured in top entertainment and fashion media, and both her website and her book feature several Sharpie DIY projects. In her Sharpie ad, Erica breathes new life into a standard-issue pencil case using new Stained by Sharpie^® fabric markers to create a chic purse.

The good news is you can make too—just follow the steps listed in the D.I.Y. with Domesek blog post!

Mark Rivard

Mark is a super-talented skateboard artist who has figured out how to manipulate Sharpie markers like a paintbrush to create some amazing skateboard art, complete with the kind of nuanced brush strokes and shading that makes a Sharpie blog editor proud. Using skateboards as his canvas, Mark’s designs have appeared in sports commercials and viewed in galleries worldwide. Mark demonstrates how he uses Sharpie Mini markers to create coveted custom boards.

In addition, the print campaigns will include QR codes where you can unlock exclusive content and videos of each Sharpie project.

The campaign supposedly aimed at teenagers, with new website to boot (not too crazy about it). However, I don’t feel that it alienates older age groups (heck, I’m in that way older age group), so one fat check mark for you, Sharpie!

To read all about it, go to blog.sharpie.com

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Images courtesy of Sharpie

Would you let people take a picture of you after you just finished your jog, out of breath, sweaty and disheveled? French photographer Sacha Goldberger asked random joggers to do exactly that and here’s the results.

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Sacha Goldberger loves coming up with interesting projects (check out his fantastic “Mamika” series, featuring his 91-year-old Hungarian grandmother Frederika as a superhero). So last summer, he decided to start another interesting project. He created an outdoor studio at Bois de Boulogne, a park near Paris that’s 2 1/2 times the size of New York’s Central Park, where he stopped joggers and asked them for a favor: Would they sprint for him and then pose right after for his camera?

Surprisingly, many obliged. Out of breath, sweaty, disheveled, these joggers let him snap away. He then asked these same people to come into his professional studio exactly one week later and using the same light, he took their pictures again in the same pose they had before.

As you can see, the difference is remarkable. The before and after comparison showed such visible signs of fatigue on the subjects’ faces after the sprint.

This is what Goldberger wants to show with the series:

“I wanted to show the difference between our natural and brute side versus how we represent ourselves to society. The difference was very surprising.”

How true. That’s why I prefer photo shoots in the morning hours. Trust me, it’s not the lighting. You just look better because the day hasn’t worn you out yet. So seriously, don’t let people take your pictures after you ran around the block unless you have a team of stylist & makeup artist to take that “yikes” out of your face.

I know Goldberger will continue finding  interesting ideas and formulating them into more interesting projects. Don’t forget to check out his “Mamika” series:

Grandma’s adorable, isn’t she? BTW, because of this photo series, grandma’s gone viral!

See more of Sacha’s Goldberger’s work & projects, visit sachabada.com

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Via My Modern Met. Photo credit: Sacha Goldberger

An on-going series by Ben Long, The Great Travelling Art Exhibition is not your typical scrawled words (very often adolescent obscenity) etched into the dirt built-up from exhaust emission. The elaborate drawings on the rear shutters of long-haul trucks are eye-opening.

The temporal quality of the project is also its draw, as he explained:

“Lasting a finite period, though sometimes as long as six months, it is precisely this impermanence and vulnerability that give the drawings their point of interest and contemporary relevance.”

It’s a genius stroke against something as mundane as a dirty truck, elevating it into a piece of traveling art. It turns the freight vehicle as a moving canvas beyond the confines of the traditional gallery space.

See more of The Great Travelling Art Exhibition, visit www.benlong.co.uk

You can with “Find the Future: The Game“—a pioneering, augmented reality experience created especially for New York Public Library’s Centennial by famed game designer Jane McGonigal, with Natron Baxter and Playmatics.

The interactive game combines real-world missions with virtual clues and online collaboration, and is “designed to empower people to find their own futures by bringing them face-to-face with the writings and objects of people who made an extraordinary difference,” says McGonigal.

All 500 participants, locked overnight in the Library, explored the building’s 70 miles of stacks, and, using laptops and smartphones, following clues inspired by 100 works from the amazing collections of NYPL, to such treasures as the Library’s copy of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson’s hand. After finding each object, each player wrote a short personal essay inspired by his/her quest. Winning the game meant writing a collaborative book based on these personal stories about the future, and this volume will be added to the Library’s collections.

Yes, it sounds nerdy. Yes, it’s like A Night at the Museum but for bookworms with inch-thick glasses. Douglas MacKrell, one of the participants, made this video that really captures the movement and energy of what it was like to spend 10 hours locked in the Library and on a quest with 500 people.

I think it’s dope. (Yes, I was one of those bookworm nerds with glasses perching on the library all day long. I ♥ books!)

During Milan Design Week, Moleskine unveiled its Travelling collection: Versatile bags and cases with various add-ons that can be tacked on to the insides of your bag or detached so you can easily transfer it to another bag. And just like its notebooks, everything carries the brand’s signature look, from the simple design, black color and rounded corners, to the elastic closure and the “In case of loss” label inside.

What really caught my attention is the cool video, with its hyper stop motion illustrating the conception of the collection. Done by Rogier Wieland, the video offers “a close view into the new Moleskine bags and their design process. Freehand technical drawings, sketches and photographs all morph and merge together into each other.”¹

It portrays how Moleskine adventure continues beyond paper, which during the Milan Design Week seems to really transcend its traditional medium with Scriba , an installation by Giulio Iacchetti , and the Magic Box interactive demo from Zetalab.com to celebrate its new Writing, Travelling and Reading collection.

Taking a look at all these new installations and products, one must admit that Moleskine as a brand knows how to expand, extend, crossover between analog and digital without forgetting its core. Moleskine® is a brand that encompasses a family of nomadic objects dedicated to our mobile identity: flexible and brilliantly simple tools for use both in everyday and extraordinary circumstances, ultimately becoming an integral part of our personality.²

And in true Moleskine fashion of “oh, we have a notebook for that,” the Moleskine Passions collection was created in 2010—a series of notebooks dedicated to the passions of life, from Recipes, Wine, Travel, Books, Film and Music, to Wellness, Gardening, Baby, and yes, even Dog and Cat.

I encourage you to explore Moleskine’s videos, including the Moleskine Passion series (they make me want to buy them all!), because they are imaginative, passionate, creative and fun. And it sends a clear message:

Moleskine is no longer the notebook from the days of yore, used by artists and thinkers such as Van Gogh, Picasso and Hemingway over the past two century. These notebooks have become a symbol of latter-day nomadism, and with these recent crossover interactive efforts, Moleskine ensures it is intimately tied to the digital world.

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¹Moleskine^® — The Official Channel: Moleskine Bags in Hyper Stop Motion

²Moleskine World: Culture, imagination, memory, travel, personal identity

Photo credit: Moleskine^®

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When I first ran into a cinemagraph and realized it is basically a very refined animated .gif, I was thoroughly impressed. Jamie Beck, a NY-based photographer, and her fiance, Kevin Burg, have been making sweet images using this “cinemagraph” technique on her blog, From Me To You, and getting people to notice them.

By combining still photography and video to finely animate the image, the results are stunning; the still photography seems to unfreeze in front of your eyes. Sometimes the effect is a nice little peek-a-boo that makes you do a double-take and notice.

The Coco Rocha shot reminds me of the head-turning (literally!) Burberry Eyewear, with that little jolt of surprise. The date night shot below reminds me of the DKNY Uncoverthecity.com we created in in 2007, where the New York cityscape became the focus instead of the backdrop and the city came alive with the infusion of ambient animation.

It’s that special little something that makes you really notice. And here’s that word again: Notice. We—designers, photographers, artists—continuously look for ways to make something that people will notice. We use bold splashes of colors, big typography, quiet minimalism, fluid motion, 3-dimensional spatial movements…All to make the audience take notice and stop (to admire, to reflect, to feel what you want them to feel), and maybe stay and come back for more.

What I love about Jamie’s cinemagraph is its simplicity. Jamie describes it as “a traditional still photograph with a moment living within it.”¹

Of course it doesn’t hurt that Jamie’s photography is just stunning. (Yes, Jamie,  you make me wish I have your Hasselblad!) Love that she still uses film; it’s so old-school good, you can visually feel the film grains.

More importantly, the duo realize that not everything can be made into cinemagraphs—just because you find a way to “cinemagraph” it. This is their rule of thumb:

“A cinemagraph always starts with a photograph. As a rule of thumb, we only create a cinemagraph from subject matter that would also make a good still photo.”

Plus, it can take several hours of manual editing² to create each image with a level of sophistication that they have. Just because you can paint a Picasso, doesn’t mean you can paint like Picasso…or something like that. Yes?

The recent resurgence of the animated .gif has made some people notice (see my post “Fun Retro Web” in March 2010 on I’m Not An Artist animated .gif galore) and I’m glad some very talented people have taken it further and in a style better than I’ve ever put much thought into. Hats off to you, animated-gif-agitators!

Who knew you’d ever look at an animated .gif and see the potential, and yet here we are.

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¹Turnstyle News: So Long Animated GIFs, Hello Cinemagraph

²The Atlantic: How Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg Create Their Animated GIFs. There are a few tutorials by others attempting to decode and recreate (see Matt Braga‘s how-to) but none produces the results like hers—Jamie just did a superfine job and at, what I would guess, a really high framerate to give her cinemagraphs that ethereal quality.

Photo credit: Jamie Beck

What happen when an angel fall from the sky? Well, if you’re one of the lucky people happened to be at London’s Victoria Station last week, you’ll be a part of Lynx Excite’s Augmented Reality (AR) play.

Lynx, the deodorant company (AXE in the US), set up a simple branded spot decal on the floor of the train station with the packaging of their latest scent, Lynx Excite, and a simple “look up” messaging. If you were standing on the AR marker spot and look up, you’d see an angel virtually falling down beside you on the overhead video screen. Mind you, knowing Lynx’s sexually-charged campaign, these are not your typical angels (think Victoria’s Secret angels).

Naturally, a fair amount of hopeless groping ensued as men attempted to take hold of the angelic models as they cavorted digitally on the screen.¹ Lynx has the angels to blame for bringing men back to their dogged nature.

Overall, it’s a nice attempt at a crossover between augmented reality and the concept of a virtual woman, and kudos to Lynx for bringing this combination to mainstream fruition.

For more on the campaign, the follow up and social media play, go to The Lynx Effect on YouTube.

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¹ FRUKT Source: Lynx: where angels appear to tread