But before that... congrats on winning that Oscar, good lad Leo. We stand woefully amidst the uncertainty of what will happen to the memes after last night's event.
Now, on to our regular program!
Our favorite find this week was definitely the beautiful work Collider, Sydney's Interbrand and Studio Laurenz Brunner collaborated on for the Sydney Opera House’s new identity. The project features an incredible art direction that encompasses complex motion work in the form of moving sculptures, and a lovely new 3d version of LL Circular; both inspired by Jørn Utzon’s (the architect who designed the Opera House) forms and methods.
For an in-depth review, sweet videos and other applications, check out this post at Brand New.
Pavel (Designer): The comprehensive motion system is out of this world and linking it to Utzon’s architecture style works perfectly. As much as I love the connection between the visuals and 3-dimensional type, I fear the font can turn out pretty badly in the wrong hands. In some cases, the sculptural fill inside the typeface looks like some kind of unclear noise, especially from farther distances. Besides this application, I’m in love.
Juan (Designer): It's incredible and almost multidisciplinary. By taking cues from the actual (and very iconic) physical shape of the House itself as a basic design element, these guys successfully managed to integrate architecture, animation/motion and typography in a very delightful and memorable way. And don't get me started on the shadow play in the animations. I love this so much, and am not sure I'll see anything this beautiful in the field in a while. It really is out of this world.
Marian (Designer): Conveying such an iconic, cultural, architectural, social and world-wide known monument needs more than just another brand refresh. What I see from all the applications of the new design language is that all these angles have been considered. The design speaks not just with its appearance but it decomposes into small fragments of emotions that I feel when I see the opera house. Whether it’s the font, the visual story behind the shapes, or the approach to print―it’s modern, respectful to the core values of the place and embraces the complete experience of an individual who goes to see a play there. It's very hard to comment on a design that's far bigger than me.
Tomas (Motion Designer): I'm really looking forward to the times when every major rebrand will be as precisely handcrafted as this one. The guys from Interbrand did such a good job respecting and taking the ideas behind Utzon’s concept to the next level. It just works. From the new typeface through simple transitions connecting visuals and live footage to the whole motion system made by Collider... which I saw approximately 15 times. In private.
OTHER DESIGN-RELEVANT NEWS
Introducing Operator
Hoefler & Co. just made command-line editing more beautiful than ever. Yeah, we know, it's also way easier to read... and the flexibility of customization is great... but really, just look at it!
Filip (Designer): Operator is not just a beautiful monospace typeface, but also a really intelligently designed one, considering all the features and possibilities available; and this is one of the reasons why I think H & Co are on top of the type design game. Part of me wants to be a developer now!
Vladimir (Front-end Developer): It's a bit pricey but totally worth it. Some IDEs allow you to customize which parts will be rendered as italics, which parts look like handwriting and so on to create great visual contrasts (parameters, tags, comments... etc.). That's quite handy!
Maggie (Illustrator):
New logo and identity for The Met
Wolff Olins helmed the rebranding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and again, featuring the guys from Brand New, delivers a very in-depth, thought-provoking analysis on it.
Juan (Designer): I really enjoyed Kingsley's analysis on the logo/brand... more so than the logo itself. It looks WEIRD, disjointed when compared to the rest of the brand (even if the logo looks anything but disjointed) and the general aesthetic of it is not what comes to mind whenever I think of such an institution. I honestly don't really know what it's trying to communicate. The red though... the red I like very much.
Maggie (Illustrator): The skewed serif on the ‘E’ just feels wrong. Like nails-on-a-chalkboard-level wrong.
LOLColors
A new curated color palette inspiration website, now in the form of tears... of joy. Hopefully.
Marian (Designer): So designer tears? It would be really cool if the hex code was copied to the clipboard after clicking the tears.
Maggie (Illustrator): I like it! ...Oh! Mackenzie made it! He's cool! He's my friend!
SO, WE WENT ON THE INTERNET AND FOUND...
Meng To's angled mockups for Sketch - Good lad Meng To has been championing the Sketch cause since the very beginning and now has brought us 140 angled mockups of different devices.
Macbook Selfie Stick - A must have. Why wouldn't you own this?
The Iceberg - You know That Thing you thought no one ever thought about? Well someone probably thought about it, and posted their thoughts here!
