Have brands gotten out of hand? Are they taking over our lives? Is our obsession for them leading to alarming consequences for society? Yes, according to Lucas Conley. And it makes for fun reading. The book is full of engaging stories, ranging from over-the-top spectacles to tales of subtle subterfuge. All of these branding efforts with the intent, as the designer David Butler would say, "to help you sell more stuff." But even after reading this book, has it really influenced my buying decisions? Probably not. Probably because brands speak to that part of us that, perhaps, we don't really consciously control - although we like to think that we do.  It reminds me of what Hubertus Bigend explained in Gibson's Pattern Recognition: 

“The heart is a muscle.  You ‘know’ in your limbic brain.  The seat of instinct.  The mammalian brain.  Deeper, wider, beyond logic.  That is where advertising works, not in the upstart cortex.  What we think of as ‘mind’ is only a sort of jumped-up gland, piggybacking on the reptilian brainstem and the older, mammalian mind, but our culture tricks us into recognizing it as all of consciousness.  The mammalian spreads continent-wide beneath it, mute and muscular, attending its ancient agenda.  And makes us buy things."

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It's been over a year since Stan Winston passed away. Hearing of his death had left me with a sense of loss and surprise. I was unaware that he had been suffering from cancer for many years. The man and his studio produced truly amazing work. Sadly (at least, to me), the studio no longer carries his name but is now known as Legacy Effects. Only time will tell whether or not the company will continue to thrive without its unique founder.

 I have a small collection of special effects books (another interest of mine, for which I find difficult to get good books on. If you know of any, please let me know.) This book is the best one out of all of them. It provides a very comprehensive look at Stan Winston Studio. It has tons of behind-the-scenes photos, lots of in-depth interviews and stories, and an intimate look into Winston himself, including his biography and his personal artwork. I wish there were more books like this, covering the field of special effects. It's a fascinating craft.

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Whenever I travel, I like to visit bookstores and browse their periodicals, hoping to spot something inspiring and new. I picked up issue no. 63 of this magazine while on vacation in Los Angeles. Its name and cover caught my eye. I found the articles thoughtful and interesting, which included interviews with Irma Boom and Ross Lovegrove, and an essay by Ezio Manzini on collaborative services and social innovation. Lots of beautiful photos and tight layouts. It's not cheap ($25/issue) but I think it's worth the price. I'm looking forward to getting the next issue, once it's available.

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The people of Improv Everywhere are awesome. I think the first time I learned about them was from seeing their Human Mirror mission on YouTube. This book documents their past missions (i.e. pranks), including their behind-the-scenes planning and the aftermath from them. The book also has tips from different agents (i.e. pranksters), if you decide to perform any of these missions yourself; a couple include "How to Pose as a Dead Author" and "How to Keep a Straight Face While in Your Underwear." You gotta love these guys.

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I promised Abracadabran that I would mention this book in a future entry; so, here it is. :-)

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"Encounters with the future occur via a series of provocations in artistic endeavour, design interactions and cultural imaginations, which seek to consider the social impact of technology for humanity. The manifestation of these visions, as technological artefacts and social processes, infuses and reconstitutes our minds, bodies and world."

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Back from vacation and happy to be home.

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I don't subscribe to a newspaper, but I've been reading the L.A. Times while staying at my mom's house for holiday. The comics section is my favorite part to read (and a nice relief from the news about abuse, corruption, and other tales of injustice and tragedy from the state of California). Consequently, I came upon Liō for the first time and find that I love it. It's like a cross between Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes" and Gary Larson's "The Far Side". So, while visiting the local Barnes & Noble, I picked up one of Tatulli's collection. While reading its pages, I found myself laughing enough that now I want to grab his other collections, including one that's coming out next month.

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I downloaded Kindle for the iPhone and decided to purchase a book, to take it for a spin. I settled on this one because 1) I remember always enjoying frogdesign's ads on the back covers of my issues of I.D. magazine; and 2) Hartmut Esslinger was one of those designers I would often read about while growing up.
 
I'm still on vacation but have managed to finish a couple of chapters, and I've enjoyed what I've read so far. Esslinger's writing style makes for easy reading, and his inclusion of personal stories help keep the reader emotionally engaged. What I most enjoy is Esslinger's theme of having a design-driven creative strategy, and how the consumate designer should have both design and business chops. The design purist has a place in this world, but such a person can also become an impediment if he or she refuses to acknowledge the realities and constraints of a business that has the moral obligation to produce profit for its investors. This doesn't imply that Design is necessarily the blind and silent servant of Business, but it does acknowledge a mutual dependency between the two. As Walt Disney once said, "We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies."

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Another book that I brought with me, to read while on vacation. . . .
 
I found out about this book in a somewhat roundabout way. I was trying to learn more about the designer Valerie Casey, who founded the Designers Accord and currently leads the Digital Experiences practice at IDEO. This was the book she would choose if she could only have one user experience book on her shelf. I found her choice surprising, since this book is a collection of essays on postmodern culture. Then I realized that Casey has a master's degree in cultural theory (and design) from Yale. Anyway, the essays in this book are quite intellectually stimulating. I especially enjoyed three essays: one by Rosalind Krauss, another by Fredric Jameson, and a third by the great Jean Baudrillard.
 
If you're seriously into cultural studies (serious like McLuhan, Lévi- Strauss, Adorno, etc.), then this book belongs on your bookshelf.

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