Hasta La Ideas

Project H’s Design Revolution Roadshow is now underway, launched yesterday afternoon at a kick-off party at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Above, Emily Pilloton shows us around the traveling exhibit, housed in an 1972 Airstream Trailer, and calls out a few of her favorite objects from the collection. For a full itinerary and tour dates, check here.

Party pics coming soon.

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Finished just before the holidays, Lemonade is a short film about the optimistic side of creative unemployment, explored through interviews with “16 advertising professionals who lost their jobs and found their calling.” After being laid off, they used their free time to become documentary filmmakers, coffee roasters and even transgendered.

This optimistic production is just starting to make its way around the country in sporadic, intimate screenings. There happens to be one coming up in Boston on January 14th at The Masssachusetts College of Art and Design, sponsored by the AIGA. To see it in your town, you can request one or buy the DVD.

The film was created by Please Feed The Animals, a blog for “the recently unemployed advertising professional,” who happily remind us that “it’s not a pink slip, it’s a blank page.”

Lemonade The Movie
January 14th, 6:30pm
Massachussetts College of Art and Design
$5 Members/$10 Non-members

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I guess it seems obvious that Jim Henson was into experimental films, but I was totally surprised by Timepiece, his surrealist film from the mid-60s. Somewhere between Modern Times and Koyaanasqatsi, the film includes “an examination of workplace drudgery, a prolonged dinner sequence (intended as a spoof of a scene from the film Tom Jones), and a nightclub visit satirizing the striptease (including a dancing roast chicken and a marionette skeleton),” all in reference to the recurring motif of the passage of time. My favorite part is two minutes and thirty seconds in, where office stamps deliver unexpected messages.

Watch it above or read more about it here.

Thanks, Thom!

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John Rory Fraser’s 16mm black and white film, We Continue in the Old Style, visits Paul’s Hat Works in the Richmond district of San Francisco.

Paul’s is a 90-year-old men’s hatter, now under the ownership of four young women. The film explores their position as women at the heart of a traditionally male-dominated business, as well as their dedication to quality, handmade goods.

Thanks Gabriel!

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Core-fave Nicolas Roope, the CEO of both Poke London (a leading interactive design firm) and Hulger (an innovative product design company) is featured on the new series of design interviews put together by Andy Polaine and the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

In this talk with COFA Online, Nik discusses how his traditional training in sculpture has become integrated with his creative approach to design problems. He explains how to approach the development of ideas for projects, and the necessity of understanding the details and essence of the core concept to enable an idea come to life.

More talks from COFA here, including Eva Rucki & Sebastian Noel of Troika, Mark Hauenstein from All of Us, and Brendan Dawes of Magnetic North, with many more to come.

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