Hasta La Ideas

Eager to show your visiting relatives that Matt Mullican mural but can’t remember at which New York City subway station you saw it? Seeking clues to the imminent apocalypse in the Mayan motif-laden ceramic tiles that greet 6 train passengers at 103rd Street? In need of cheering up by the roly-poly crew of Tom Otterness bronzes that frolic beneath 14th Street near 8th Avenue? There’s an app for that. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has teamed with the ace navigators at Meridian to put the 237 works of contemporary art found throughout the New York City Subway, Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, and MTA Bridges and Tunnels in your pocket, provided that said pocket contains a smartphone loaded with this app. The entire collection of MTA-commissioned artwork is organized by subway (or railroad line) and by artist, from Alice Adams to Joe Zucker. In addition to information on the background, inspiration, and significance of each work—and sometimes video and audio clips featuring the artists—Meridian is touting “turn-by-turn” directions, although they won’t be of much use until reliable cell phone service comes to the subway.
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Rare seems the day when the new-branding-to-pick-on-du-jour was designed by one of the world’s most popular and celebrated firms. However, even Pentagram appears not to be safe when it comes to catching the ire the internet and society as a whole seems to have for Microsoft. Just before the weekend, both Pentagram and the software giant unveiled the latest logo update for the new version of its soon-to-be-released Windows operating system. Designed by Pentagram partner and industry legend, Paula Scher, it continues Microsoft’s decades-old trend of slowly moving into more simplicity (some would say despite itself). A blue window, angled on its Y-axis, with type of the same color announcing simply, “Windows 8.” But many critics just weren’t having any of it. Forbes‘ E.D. Kain picked it apart, as did even Armin Vit, who once held a job at Pentagram no less and who said the window looks like “a window in a $400-a-month studio apartment rental with beige carpeting and plastic drapes“. Still, it wasn’t all detractors. PCMag offers up this nice recap of who loved it and who hated it, which provides a nice outline for how this latest war over a new logo has shaped up thus far. And now, of course, it’s up to you to make up your mind. We’ll be eager to hear what you have to think in the comments.

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Here are two things we didn’t know up until just a second ago: 1) that musician and longtime New Yorker, Moby, is now living in Los Angeles (apparently we must’ve missed this NY Times profile on the castle he bought in the Hollywood Hills), and 2) that, as of last week, he’s recently started a new architecture blog, the perhaps over-aptly named Moby Los Angeles Architecture Blog. Thus far, it isn’t the sort of site that you’ll glean a lot of factual information from, not even such info as who the architect was who built the building he’s profiling on that day. Instead, his very well-made photos are accompanied by leisurely thoughts on Los Angeles’ architecture (all residential thus far) and where that building-of-the-day seems to fit within the city. It’s certainly an interesting, somewhat meditative departure from our usual architectural reads, but we’ve already bookmarked it and are already awaiting more. Here’s a bit of the description of his new site from his first post:

a daily (or weekly) collection of some of the random and strange and banal and beautiful architecture i see in l.a. most cities have beautiful architecture. but most cities have beautiful architecture that is prominently displayed and relatively easy to find (think: chrysler building, sacre couer, st peters, sydney opera house, etc). one of the very odd things about l.a is that the most beautiful architecture in l.a is hidden on tiny streets that very few people will ever see. and the architecture in l.a is, generally, of a very domestic and modest scale (probably facilitating it’s strangeness).

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Our favorite video sharing platform reveals a complete redesign

We have always been big supporters of Vimeo and their mission to provide a high quality, creatively focused platform for video sharing. We are super excited to announce that today Vimeo is launching it’s latest iteration with New Vimeo. The new platform entails a complete redesign from top to bottom. The new user interface was built with all new code, has brand-new features and a fantastic new look. The first redesign since 2007, this major overhaul marks Vimeo’s push to grow and reach a larger audience by making it more accessible and adding some great new features.

The basis for New Vimeo revolves are putting the video first. In lieu of the Inbox, when you log in you are now presented with your Feed, a streaming list of videos from all your contact and subscriptions. The feed allows you to watch and interact with those videos in place, including the ability to like, share or comment without having to visit the actual clip page. The feed is super clean and open, it has a very pleasing effect on the eye and incorporates the various buttons and tools in a subtle, intuitive manner.

The language of the site has also changed. Adopting terminology more in line with social networks the site loses subscriptions and instead let’s users “Follow” each other. Anyone you follow will appear in your feed and act in the same manner as subscriptions and contacts did in the previous version. This simplification makes it much easier to manage your network on site and is more digestible for new users coming from other social platforms. The video still remains the focus of the experience, by keeping user interaction simple you can do more without straying from the content.

Content really is king in this new layout. Gone are the tabs upon tabs and long scrolling video lists with options layered one on top of the other. Videos are now presented front and center on clip pages, a drop down bar on the top of the site lets you browse other videos from your feed, more videos from that user or a wide variety of other filtering options. We spoke with Blake Whitman, Vimeo’s VP of Creative Development, who gave a walk through of the new site. The word “granular” came up often and it rings true, Vimeo managed to simplify their layout but the attention to detail and level of consideration that went into the new UI is outstanding.

Over a year in the making New Vimeo has some new add-ons that are sure to gratify their faithful base. One of the most exciting new features is the ability to upload multiple videos simultaneously. To make sure you don’t choke your internet with your line up you can set throttles on your data usage when uploading which, while not earth shattering, is a very useful detail. It’s hard to pinpoint new features considering the metamorphosis everything seems pretty fresh but there is a new search criteria and filter that lets you sort by the license associated with the video. In line with this there is an entire category dedicated to the Creative Commons license in a push to educate users about this form of
copyright and make it easier to track down royalty free content.

Overall the Vimeo team did an excellent job moving the site into it’s next phase. A lot of user feedback was incorporated into the redesign making sure it will satisfy the faithful but it has a fresh enough look to draw in a new crowd. The focus on accessibility and keeping content center stage show a great deal of insight from the team and we are excited to see more new features are they role out. Head to the site to pre-register for New Vimeo, where you can migrate an existing account or sign up as a new user.

Last spring, an out-of-this-world drawing by seven-year-old Matteo Lopez triumphed over 107,000 other entries to win Google’s annual contest to redesign its homepage logo. Now Crayola and the New York Public Library are in on the Doodle 4 Google fun as partners in the contest, which this year challenges K-12 students nationwide to doodle around the theme “If I could travel in time, I’d visit…” (Google headquarters would probably be too on the nose). Pop songstress Katy Perry and author/illustrator Mo Willems (Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!) are among the guest judges, who will evaluate top entries from all 50 states on criteria including artistic merit, creativity, and representation of the theme. So what’s in store for the winner, besides a one-day spotlight on the Google homepage and a swarm of media attention? Google will give the champion doodler a $30,000 college scholarship, a $50,000 technology grant for his or her school, and a trip to New York, among other goodies. And Crayola’s upping the ante with its promise to put the winning artwork on a limited-edition 64-box of crayons. Pass the Burnt Sienna! Get all the details and start feeding your children (or any children, for that matter) “ideas”, because entries are due by March 23.

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