Before & After: Jogging Series

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

Moleskine World: Notebooks & Beyond

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^®

Cinemagraph: Fashionable animated .gif

We can call it the rebirth of animated .gif because it’s never been so fashionable. Yes, kids. These are not your mother’s animated .gifs. These are animated .gifs with stiletto heels that make your head turn.

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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

Designer Highlight: Moritz Stefaner

The Data Visualization Series is where you’ll find information graphic and data visualization projects, trends, people, stories and perspectives that inspire me.

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I first encountered Moritz Stefaner‘s talent through his Map Your Moves project, a visual exploration of where New Yorkers moved in the last decade. I was impressed with the simplicity of the interface and the clarity of the data presentation. That’s when I put his name in my hippocampus for future—and admittedly, frequent—recall.

Stefaner is a designer on the crossroads of data visualization, information aesthetics and user interface design. He calls himself an information visualizer and his  interests are in information aesthetics, interactive visualization, and how the web transforms our understanding of information. With a background in Cognitive Science and Interface Design, you only need to take a look at his work and you’ll understand why the fields captivated him, and how by weaving them together, he can create amazingly intuitive avenues for interactions between data and us.

Wisps of vibrant colors mark data points or connections that invites you to interact with them and makes you a participant instead of just an observer. In Map Your Moves, you have the ability to draw back the curtain and take a peek at why people relocate into or out of New York City. The result feels like a cross section of hidden lives—and offers the pleasure of voyeurism without the guilt.

Revisit project, a real–time visualization of tweets around a specific topic,  lets you search for subjects and users. Results then appear on a timeline and user icons are stacked vertically where those with the most mentions lie at the center and are larger. It has a hypnotic fluidity that makes you want to create your own Twitter wall projection or screen for ambiance. What he wanted to achieve is an interface that “provides a sense of the temporal dynamics in the twitter stream, and emphasizes the conversational threads established by retweets and @replies.”¹

Stefaner’s latest data visualization project featured by Fast Company’s Co.Design is Notabilia, which shows the debates behind some of the most controversial Wikipedia entries.² In his visualization of deletion discussions on Wikipedia, interesting squiggly lines curl across the middle of the page (unanimous), some go scraggly but slowly shot straight up the page (controversial) or the in between s-shaped trajectory (swinging).

What strikes me most in Stefaner’s take on data visualization is his level of abstraction. His work beautifully balances analytical and aesthetic aspects in mapping abstract and complex phenomena, which adds a layer of seductiveness that invites interaction. His data visualization turns visitors into participants.

Looking at his interfaces, data don’t just sit pretty; it moves, weaves, dances and commands you to come play. And that is definitely much appreciated in the land of sitting-pretty infographic.

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¹ Moritz Stefaner: Revisit

² Fast Company’s Co.Design: Infographic of the Day: The Fiery Debates to Delete a Wikipedia Entry

Conan in Kinetic Typography

We all know goodbye speeches can be inspiring (I have Lou Gehrig‘s as an epitome of goodbye speeches). Grace, strength, humor, honesty…you can glean into someone’s soul through these final words.

Jacob Gilbreath, a graphic design student at Oklahoma State University, took to Conan O’Brian’s last monologue on his short-lived The Tonight Show run and created this beautifully done, three-dimensional kinetic typographic landscape.

Inspired by Lou Dorfsman’s Gastrotypographicalassemblage, Jacob created a literal wall from over 60 individual typographic layouts with various eclectic type design. He combined vintage-style typography and modern 3D letter forms to contrast between old and new, emphasize time and create a sturdy and timeless object which is the perfect metaphor for Conan.

To me, this is just one fun motion typographic journey with twists and turns that makes you smile and glad that you get stuff like this out of undergraduate school projects. Bravo, Jacob!