Hasta La Ideas

Dezeen Music Project: discoloured images from children’s science journals have been collaged together by videographer Ewan Jones Morris to create this music video for London band Fanfarlo’s Cell Song (+ movie).

Fanfarlo approached Ewan Jones Morris to create the video for their latest album after seeing his previous work, and offered him the choice of which song to create the visuals.

“They were exploring a lot of sci-fi concepts with their new album,” Jones Morris told Dezeen. “I chose Cell Song as much for the subject as anything else and the story of the video grew from that.”

Imagery zooms in and out, showing sections of life forms from microscopic detail, through cellular and tissue levels up to a more familiar, human scale.

During the video, figures and objects transform into strange creatures and the singers’ faces pop-up in bubbles and on screens of vintage TVs.

The director created the animation from images of children’s science magazines from the 1960s.

“I collect a few different ‘knowledge’ magazines aimed at children, most of them printed in the 1960s – back when kids were into science, cross sections of fungus or who invented the sewing machine,” Jones Morris told Dezeen.

“There’s never a shortage of cell diagrams in biology text books,” he added.

“I used to spend hours looking through these kinds of books as a kid, and I always imagined something beyond what was actually happening in the pictures, made connections between completely different images,” said Jones Morris. “That’s what I’m recreating, that process of collaging with my brain as I scanned through those books.”

The visuals were assembled in Photoshop and each frame – 12 per second – was printed out onto paper using an “unreliable” inkjet machine.

“I try and avoid more complicated software because I want to keep everything 2D and a bit wonky,” said Jones Morris.

He tampered with the ink cartridges so the print becomes uneven, then each page was photographed slightly crumpled or wet to distort the pictures.

Cell Song features on Fanfarlo’s album Let’s Go Extinct released in February 2014.

The post Ewan Jones Morris’ animation for Cell Song
by Fanfarlo explores biological structures appeared first on Dezeen.

This system of illustrated characters and animations was developed to help people learn to read Chinese, and is one of the 76 projects nominated for Designs of the Year 2014 (+ slideshow).

Taiwan-born entrepreneur ShaoLan first began developing the Chineasy characters as a way to teach her own English-speaking children to read traditional Mandarin Chinese, by creating a visual connection to the words.

Having struggled to find a straightforward way to negotiate the huge number and complexity of Chinese characters, she teamed up with graphic artist Noma Bar to develop a system of shapes representing some of the most commonly occurring symbols, which can be combined to create more complex phrases.

“I created a methodology that breaks down thousands of Chinese characters into a few hundred base building blocks,” explained ShaoLan. “When these building blocks are combined, they form compounds that can in turn be combined to create phrases. Through this method learners can quickly build a large vocabulary of characters with very little effort.”

As well as providing users with a memorable way to understand the characters, Chineasy aims to offer those living in the West an insight into Chinese culture in a visual format.

“It is educational, social, cultural, and I hope, inspirational,” said ShaoLan. “I am demonstrating the beauty of this deep and ancient culture with a modern interpretation through sleek modern design.”

The entrepreneur spent her evenings selecting and sketching suitable characters to form the building blocks of the Chineasy system, which she then modelled on her computer and refined to create contemporary graphic representations that could easily be understood by Westerners.

Having presented the initial idea at a conference organised by innovation forum TED that was published online in May 2013, the interest she received encouraged ShaoLan to begin working on a book and launch a Chineasy website and Facebook page.

A campaign launched on crowdfunding site Kickstarter exceeded its goal of £75000, eventually achieving £197626 of backing that was used to publish the first Chineasy books.

The books are now being published by Thames & Hudson and an ebook and app have also been developed to illustrate how to write and correct stroke order through simple animations and give tips on pronunciation.

Chineasy was nominated in the Graphics category of the Design Museum’s shortlist for Designs of the Year and features in an exhibition at the museum until 25 August.

Here’s a project description from ShaoLan:

Chineasy

Chineasy’s aim is to bridge the gap between the East and the West. I want to give the west a real understanding of China and an appreciation of Chinese culture through their own eyes rather than layers of packaging and manipulation.

It is evident that people are hungry to learn about China. People are keen to be able to communicate with the 1.3 billion people. Tet there is not much out there to enable them to do so. Whilst the entire Chinese population is learning English, the west is struggling to comprehend this complex economy and society with their own eyes and judgment. Knowing their language is the key towards true understanding.

Chineasy will become the first step for anyone in the world who wants to understand China, Chinese culture and its language. It is educational, social, cultural and inspirational. I am demonstrating the beauty of this deep and broad culture through a modern interpretation using sleek and simple design.

Chineasy’s goal is to allow people to learn to read Chinese easily by recognising characters through simple illustrations. The magical power of the Chineasy method is that by learning one small set of building blocks, students can build many new words, characters, and phrases.

The post Chineasy illustrated characters designed
to make learning Chinese easy appeared first on Dezeen.

This short movie by Danish animator Thallis Vestergaard traces the history of the bicycle from its invention in the eighteenth century up to the present day (+ movie).

Produced by Visual Artwork, a studio based in Denmark, Evolution of the Bicycle is a brief look at the different variations the two-wheeler has gone through in its 200-year history. It highlights how the design of the bike changed through the innovations and whims of different inventors.

The sequence starts in 1790 with the Velocifere by Frenchman Comte Mede de Sivrac. His invention featured two wheels, a piece of wood and a horse saddle, and is said to be the first instance of a bicycle, but had no steering.

Sivrac’s creation was improved upon by English inventor Denis Johnson, whose Dandy Horse, unveiled in 1818, attached a steering bar, increased the size of the wheels and made the bike lighter than Sivrac’s.

In 1839, Kirkpatrick MacMillan, a Scottish blacksmith inspired by steam locomotives, created the world’s first pedal powered rear-wheel driven bicycle.

Then in 1869, Frenchman Eugene Meyer created the Penny-Farthing, whose name was a reference to the oversized front wheel and disproportionately small rear one. He is also credited as the inventor of the wire-spoke tension wheel which is still used today.

Designers continued to play with the idea of different sized wheels, including G.W. Pressey’s American Star bicycle. This version swapped the large front and small wheel round, making it easier to steer.

It wasn’t until 1885 that the public first saw what would become the standard shape for a bike. J.K. Starley’s Rover Safety Bicycle featured two identically sized wheels, a saddle perched between them, and peddles attached to a crank, which drove a chain to turn the back wheel.

The design was refined by C.D. Rice before the development of the racing handle bars and simple saddle attachment we know today, which feature in the final evolution of the animated bike before it cycles away.

The post Watch the design evolution of the bicycle
in a one-minute animation appeared first on Dezeen.

Listed among the most influential young Chinese artists, Shanghai-born Lu Yang (who graduated from the prestigious China Academy of Art’s New Media Department) creates work that explores themes of death, disease, genetics and biomechanics. Behind her daring…

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Dezeen Music Project: artist Isobel Knowles used cut-out paper shapes to create the animated underwater scenes of dancing swimmers and fish in this music video for Australian singer Sally Seltmann’s single Catch Of The Day.

Knowles used stop-motion animation to give movement to the paper shapes, shooting each element separately and building up the synchronised compositions digitally.

“The animations are shot frame by frame using a camera and a light box,” Knowles told Dezeen. “I shot most of the elements separately and then composited them, changed colours and added effects digitally, layering up each scene from small parts.”

Without a brief from Seltmann, Knowles was free to create her own interpretation of the track, which is the second single taken from the singer’s forthcoming album Hey Daydreamer.

“The music is quite rich sonically, but still quite simple and pop,” Knowles said. “I wanted to reflect this richness and playfulness with the visuals.”

“The cascading harps at the beginning of the song just instantly made me think of underwater scenes from movies and cartoons, so I followed my initial reactions.”

The post Paper fish dance to the beat in Isobel Knowles’
music video for singer Sally Seltmann appeared first on Dezeen.