“Toshiba’s new ‘timesculpture’ advert takes The Matrix’s Bullet Time film technique one bizarrely cool step forward by animating within the freeze-frame. It was filmed with 200 Gigashot camcorders arranged on a special rig, recording a mahoosive 20 terabytes of data from which the ad was composed. Check it out—it’s like a weird moving Bullet-Time ballet, and then check out the making of clip to learn how it was made.”

“Design State is a weblog about government web design and its attendant subtopics: accessibility, usability, and web standards. In addition to these nuts and bolts, Design State will also focus on higher level issues and project challenges that affect government and public-sector web design.”

“These are early storyboards from Star Wars, from before the Falcon was changed to its current design. I took them from Hyperspace’s Insider supplement, which means there’s more to be had in Insider. I’ll try and pick them up and see what this is about… To my knowledge, the majority of these storyboards were done by Joe Johnston.”

“Paul Boag’s presentation on how to Educate Clients to say Yes was fantastic and my personal highlight of today’s conference. Paul had a superbe stage presence, engaging slides, and most of all, his message was clear and valuable.

So, how do we get clients to say yes? It’s all in our way how we connect and interact. Paul kept stressing that the designer’s relationship with clients is fundamentally flawed. We have to face it that a big part of our job is to work,”

“The International System Of TYpographic Picture Education was developed by the Viennese social scientist and philosopher Otto Neurath (1882-1945) as a method for visual statistics. Gerd Arntz was the designer tasked with making Isotype’s pictograms and visual signs. Eventually, Arntz designed around 4000 such signs, which symbolized keydata from industry, demographics, politics and economy.”

“It’s been a good while since I announced we’re working on the redesign of Drupal.org. Two months, a couple of presentations, and seven iterations of the prototype later, a glimmer is at the end of the tunnel.

On thing is for sure, in this instance, Design by Community works.

I said, when we embarked on the process of designing this site, that Design by Community is the only way we could approach it. Since those initial thoughts, Leisa and I have continued to push a process that many thought would fall flat on its face. I’m not sure if this would be specific to the Drupal community, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. This process is working, and really well.”

“The 1927 edition of Studio Handbook by Samuel Welo is 233 pages of beautiful type and timeless design advice. Only this book comes with a twist – every page was hand-lettered by Welo.”

“Why go so big on type? There’s a short answer and a long answer.”

“Dead Celebrities are always a fascinating subject to many, and this celebrity art created using actual fonts deserves praise. These four posters of Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, Marlon Brando and James Dean in some of their most famous poses is nothing short of spectacular. They provide another tribute to the dead actors (and actress) in a way we do not pass by often. Besides small facial drawings, the entire figure of these celebrities is created using actual fonts.”

“Some people are bothered by pictures on the wall hanging slightly crooked. Others may not even be aware that something may be amiss. If you are somebody who is into woodworking or construction, its good to be one of the people who notice when things are crooked. But I suspect the ability to notice that things might be just a little off square, off centre, or not quite straight, varies greatly. I thought it would be fun for people to try to test their abilities to see if things are straight or crooked in a little game.” (Thanks kottke.org!)

“Here’s one thing that’s making me angry at the moment. In fact there are several things making me angry at the moment: McCain’s supporters; the greed that lead us into these financial end-times… and by comparison this particular matter is trivial. But at least it’s easier to solve than the others.

This particular annoyance is the graphs of share prices in the press and on TV. It is standard practice to start the y-axis at a number much higher than zero, in order to magnify the ups and downs of the market. Here’s one from today’s Guardian, showing the FTSE 100 over the course of Friday…”

The subprime mortgage crisis XPLANEd: The United States economy is suffering one of the worst financial crises in history, due to seriously flawed subprime mortgage lending practices over the past eight years. The repercussions have already been severe and continue to unravel. American people are fearful and unsure of what the future holds. How did we get to this point? Clearly understand the roles that borrowers, mortgage lenders, banks, financial institutions and asset backed securities played in creating this financial meltdown of historic proportion.

This four minute animated movie takes viewers through the process starting in 2000 and ending in current day. It details the role that home buyers, mortgage lenders, banks, financial institutions and ultimately asset backed securities played in this financial mess.

You may remember this from the old days. After a two-year hiatus, Grant is back with splorps’ available domain name of the week:

Welcome to your source for hand-picked, inspiring, and occasionally useful interweb addresses. The only criteria for a domain name to be featured is that it be available for registration according to the public whois database at the time of posting.

“Excentro is a simple but advanced tool that can create guilloche designs like backgrounds, borders or rosettes.

The guilloches are vintage design elements that were frequently used for anti-counterfeiting security purposes on banknotes, passports, checks and certificates during the past two hundred years. As the times changed and digital copy and printing technologies perfected, guilloches no longer presented sufficient security measures that could prevent forging and counterfeiting of valuable papers. Today the main part of security technology lies in the special paper or tricky inks the designs are printed upon or with.” (Thanks Chris Glass!)

“Helvetica is a classic. Helvetica is played out. Each of these statements is true to an extent. The world’s most recognizable typeface will soon star in a new film that documents both its omnipresence and its timelessness.

There are many reasons why Helvetica is so widespread. The most obvious being that a few weights have been bundled with the Mac OS for years. It is arguably the most respectable of the “default” fonts. But it’s also used because it’s a safe, neutral choice. For many purposes, typography is more about content than style. Fans of Beatrice Warde will tell you that typographers should communicate without distraction. Helvetica, with its simple, unadorned forms, is the perfect crystal goblet. Even its ubiquity contributes to its neutrality — letters so common they become invisible.

But invisibility isn’t always appropriate, particularly in advertising or branding where individuality is key. Here we recommend our favorite fonts from the grotesque genre that offer something different from Helvetica (or Arial) — whether it’s style, warmth, or extra features like small caps, figure alternates, and additional widths.” (Thanks On Paper Wings!)