Web design blog wellmedicated has uncovered some great Polish film posters.
These conceptual masterpieces put the original American posters to shame every time; they are truly beautiful works of art. Trimming this list down to a mere 50 posters that I absolutely love was surprisingly difficult.
I find it difficult to choose stand-out candidates from this list: they’re all spectacular.
Jason then pointed me towards this great collection of Russian movie posters. Equally as fascinating they remind me of fairy tale illustrations. I’m enjoying trying to guess what film each poster represents (highlights include The Matrix, War of the Worlds, and Lord of the Rings).
I think I could easily spend an entire day watching well directed TV commercials. This compilation of the top 10 commercials by movie directors, however, saves me some wasted time and gets straight to the point.
Back in 2001, a genius pen-chewing BMW marketing exec stumbled on a belter of an idea – fling bundles of money at high-class filmmakers in exchange for short films based on their automobiles. Directors of the series ‘The Hire’ ranged from the classy (Ang Lee, Wong Kar-Wai) to the not-so classy (Guy Ritchie) but by far the most entertaining episode was Tony Scott’s ten-minute tease, which saw Clive Owen’s ‘Driver’ race Gary Oldman’s devil for the prize of James Brown’s eternal soul. Hell, just watch it, it’s awesome.
via Kottke
These North Korean Propaganda Posters are fascinating. I’ve always loved the design of propaganda posters and this book compiles a great selection from DPRK.
Let’s extensively raise goats in all families!
via Kottke
The company who produce the animation for Grand Theft Auto, Image Metrics, claim to have create photo-realistic animations that break through the ‘uncanny valley‘ barrier. The Times is a believer, giving us a sample video and stating that IM’s lifelike animation heralds a new era for computer games.
“Ninety per cent of the work is convincing people that the eyes are real, [...] the subtlety of the timing of eye movements is a big one. People also have a natural asymmetry - for instance, in the muscles in the side of their face. Those types of imperfections aren’t that significant but they are what makes people look real.”
Previous methods for animating faces have involved putting dots on a face and observing the way the dots move, but Image Metrics analyses facial movements at the level of individual pixels in a video, meaning that the subtlest variations - such as the way the skin creases around the eyes, can be tracked.
Primarily meant as an article on how to communicate design decisions to clients, Smashing Magazine also gives us some tips on good website design:
- Pretty doesn’t mean effective: statistics are your friend
- Every design should have a measurable goal
- Your site should have one clear path
- Remember the Swiss army knife
- Provide performance metrics
Conclusion: Your clients aren’t designers, so don’t treat them like it; give them the information they want.