Birth is a miracle, a rite of passage, a natural part of life. But birth is also big business.Compelled to explore the subject after the delivery of her first child, actress Ricki Lake recruits filmmaker Abby Epstein to question the way American women have babies.The film interlaces intimate birth stories with surprising historical, political and scientific insights and shocking statistics about the current maternity care system. When director Epstein discovers she is pregnant during the making of the film, the journey becomes even more personal.Should most births be viewed as a natural life process, or should every delivery be treated as a potentially catastrophic medical emergency?

A Gold : Bi Xuefeng

The GDC exhibition and competition is probaly the most important graphic design event in China, and Shenzhen is regarded by many (including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London) as China’s graphic design capital. The competition first took place in 1992, and was followed by exhibitions in 1996, 2003, 2005 and 2007. The results of the 2005 exhibition were donated to the Museum fuer Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, Germany, and shown there in an exhibition in 2006. The latest exhibition, organized by the Shenzhen Graphic Design Association SGDA, opened on December 4, 2007 in Shenzhen, and was juried by Michael Rock, David Ellis, Norito Shinmura, Tommy Li and Chen Shaohua, who awarded the prizes below in the categories Category A: Posters on the theme “Caracteres sportives” Category D1: Cultural posters Category D2: Commercial posters Han Zhanning’s blog (in chinese) gives a good overview of GDC 7.

A Silver : Chang Dong

Chang Dong

Chang Dong

Chang Dong

A Silver : Ke Quan

Ke Quan

Ke Quan

Ke Quan

A Silver : Ruan Hongjie

A Bronze : Liu Yongqing

Liu Yongqing

Liu Yongqing

A Bronze : Ni Xueyun

A Bronze : Yang Zhen

Yang Zhen

D1 Silver : Chen Yongji

Chen Yongji

D1 Silver : Wu Yong

D1 Silver : Pan Qin

Pan Qin

Pan Qin

Pan Qin

Pan Qin

D1 Bronze : Eric Chan, “Gough Street poster”

Eric Chan, “Gough Street poster”

D1 Bronze : ?

D1 Bronze : He Jianping

D1 Bronze : Hei Yiyang

Hei Yiyang

Hei Yiyang

Hei Yiyang

D1 Bronze : ?

?

?

?

D1 Bronze : ?

D2 Silver : ?

D2 Bronze : ?

D2 Silver : ?

?

?

?

D2 Bronze : Li Jong & Long Gang

Li Jiong & Long Gang

Li Jiong & Long Gang

Li Jiong & Long Gang

http://www.posterpage.ch/winners/shen_07/shen_07.htm

Art Space Tokyo acts as your 272 page personal guide and interpreter, connecting you with the neighborhoods and figures behind some of the most inspiring art spaces in this colossal city.

http://artspacetokyo.com
http://craigmod.com/print/artspacetokyo/

The Core of Things

For too long, the act of printing something in and of itself has been placed on too high a pedestal. The true value of an object lies in what it says, not its mere existence. And in the case of a book, that value is intrinsically connected with content.

Let’s divide content into two broad groups.

• Content without well-defined form (Formless Content ^{(Fig. 1)})
• Content with well-defined form (Definite Content ^{(Fig. 2)})

Formless Content can be reflowed into different formats and not lose any intrinsic meaning. It’s content divorced from layout. Most novels and works of non-fiction are Formless.

When Danielle Steele sits at her computer, she doesn’t think much about how the text will look printed. She thinks about the story as a waterfall of text, as something that can be poured into any container. (Actually, she probably just thinks awkward and sexy things, but awkward and sexy things without regard for final form.)

Content with form — Definite Content — is almost totally the opposite of Formless Content. Most texts composed with images, charts, graphs or poetry fall under this umbrella. It may be reflowable, but depending on how it’s reflowed, inherent meaning and quality of the text may shift.

http://craigmod.com/journal/ipad_and_books/

Lives in Brooklyn, NYC.
Graduated from the School of Visual Arts
Is currently working at Wolff Olins
Previously worked at MTV.

Friend and fellow Art Director in W+K Shanghai. I miss this guy.

Ingenious : )

http://www.madisonboom.com/article.asp?id=6231

http://www.bankrungame.com/

iPhone app for creating your own Buro Destruct designs!

http://www.burodestruct.net/bdd/

Green Dam Girl was the Chinese netizens’ Moe anthropomorphic response to the release of the Chinese government-developed content control software Green Dam Youth Escort (绿坝·花季护航; Lǜbà·Huājì Hùháng). Under a directive from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) that took effect on July 1, 2009, all computers in mainland China were required to have the software pre-installed.

The Software

The Green Dam Youth Escort software is designed to mainly filter pornography, however it has been found to filter political terms as well. After spending 41.7 million yuan ($6.1 million) on the project, the MIIT announced on May 19 that manufacturers are required to ship computers with the software “in order to build a green, healthy, and harmonious online environment, and to avoid the effects on and the poisoning of our youth’s minds by harmful information on the internet”.

Defects

The software itself has many defects. To filter pornographic images, it analyzes skin-colored regions of the picture. However the software could not filter red or dark skinned nude pictures, but was able to censor pictures of Garfield. It also introduced a security hole that internet hackers can easily exploit to steal personal information. The program itself can also be easily hacked; the master password of the MD5 checksum is in a simple text file with a .dll extension slapped on the end.

Public Response

The public responded negatively. Over 70% of users in online polls voted they have absolutely no interest in using Green Dam Youth Escort, and many said they think it will not stop minors from browsing inappropriate websites.

Green Dam Girl (绿坝娘)

One of the responses by Chinese internet users was to satirically create an Moe anthropomorphic version of the Green Dam Youth Escort software. While there are several derivatives to the character’s design, they all contain common elements: She is usually dressed in green, wearing a river crab hat and an armband with the words “discipline” on it, and carrying a rabbit (Green Dam mascot, a paint can and paintbrush to paint over explicit content.

The Green Dam Girl was very popular among Chinese netizens, later evolving into more fan art and a song. Some depict her with the OS-tans, usually sexually harrassing them.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/green-dam-girl-%E7%BB%BF%E5%9D%9D%E5%A8%98

The massively discussed “Green Dam – Youth Escort” Censorship Software is the hottest topic on Chinese Internet during this week.

Spoofing is a very classical Chinese Internet culture. Netizen absolutely won’t let the disgusting Green Dam off. Thus, the “Green Dam Bitch” has been created by netizens.

The “alpaca” in the pictures refers to the “Grass Mud Horse“, a very popular dirty pun on China Internet.

The “crab” logo in the pictures refers to “harmonize”, a term directly derived from President Hu Jintao’s regular exhortations for Chinese citizens to create a harmonious society. In spoken Chinese, “river crab” sounds very much like “harmony”, which in China’s cyberspace has become a synonym for censorship.

via http://www.chinasmack.com/more/green-dam-girl-chinese-netizens-art-ridicule/

“I loved the way you wore that sexy grey-blue background on your transparent PNG.”

http://ie6funeral.com/

Mouse pointer track after few hours of working on computer. Black circles are pointer stops (not clicks). Made with java applet. You can take it here: dl.dropbox.com/u/684632/mousepath.exe.zi p (PC) dl.dropbox.com/u/684632/mousepath.jar (Mac). Run it and leave in background. “S” – save image. “R” – restart. “D” – ignore dots recording.

via Motherboard

This is definitely a cool piece of art, a Mandarin song called “ABCD Said” by PixieTea. The music in this video was created from various music applications for the iPhone 3GS! Really creative of this girl to have come up with this idea and a great music video for the song showing how it was all done.

By Jessica Helfand
Filled to overflowing with the cryptic residue of my addled mind, my sketchbooks accompany me wherever I go: they’re my mobile studio. At turns wildly chaotic and compulsively neat, they’re densely packed with questions, yet vexingly devoid of answers. If there is a palpable representation of lunacy, this may well be it —though a more forgiving description might be that they’re eclectic, which is to say they’re all over the place. In sum, they are honest, if random, representations of the way I think. What they lack is consistency.

http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=12718

Spider-Man may be able to spin a web of any size, but how far can his secret identity, Peter Parker, stretch a dollar? The wall-crawling Marvel Comics hero will have to depend on his thrifty sense as much as his Spidey-sense in the months to come as a new story sees him become the latest addition to the nation’s ranks of unemployed. On Monday, Marvel said that in a plot line that begins in issue No. 623 of Amazing Spider-Man, Peter Parker — who has lately given up his gig at The Daily Bugle to become the official photographer of the mayor of New York — will lose that job and, potentially, his career as he becomes blacklisted throughout the city.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/spider-mans-new-nemesis-unemployment/

Recently, a TV repairman was fixing my TV. I pointed out that the TV screen was also really unclear and asked why. He ran his finger across the screen, swiping away a thick layer of Beijing dirt and dust to reveal sharp images and colors beneath. “It’s just really dirty,” he said. FMCL

http://www.fmychinalife.com/

every-every are London based designer Yota Sampasneethumrong and illustrator Jirayu Koo-Armornpatana. We work across a variety of media as a team or as individual, creating anything from graphic design to illustration, from web to print, from moving image to branding, both commissioned and self-initiated.

We are passionate about details and take inspiration from everything in life.

Nice to meet you.

http://www.every-every.com/

http://clusterfuckadvertising.com/

On the fourth Monday of every month, select ADC Young Guns winners present their work at the Apple Store in SoHo. February’s speaker: Stewart Smith.

Stewart Smith is the founder and principal of Stewdio, a consultancy that approaches art and software through the lens of graphic design. Stewdio has created collaborative works with renowned firms including Diller Scofidio+Renfro, O-R-G, Warning Office, and Death by Cyan. Stewart earned his MFA from Yale University and teaches Visualizing Data at NYU in the Interactive Telecommunications Program. He is also a research scholar at Columbia University.
Stewart is part of the ADC Young Guns 7 class of winners, honored in 2009.

Monday, February 22, 2010
6:30 - 8 PM
Apple Store SoHo
103 Prince Street, NYC

Free, no reservation required.

http://stewdio.org/apple/
http://www.adcyoungguns.org/events/#32

(Best of CL)

From an Old Woman to a Young Woman

Date: 2009-09-01, 1:22PM PDT

1. You are not a victim. No matter what happens to you, don’t take the pussy route and blame the world for your misfortune. If you were sexually assaulted, verbally abused, etc and lived to tell about it; take your pain and help those who need it. Writing emo poetry isn’t going to solve anything.

2. Invest in your education first, your looks second. Anyone can pay a plastic surgeon to look hot, but not everyone can read a book and do simple math.

3. No matter what you call it, having a ‘man to take you shopping’ is glorified prostitution. He wants you for your body, you want him for his wallet. Cut the crap and call it what it is.

4. Do not seek confidence in other people. Magazines, celebrities and most pop influences are there to make you feel like you’re nothing. Don’t buy into it. Those celebrities need your money to look fabulous. Invest in yourself, not hype.

5. Stop fueling gossip mongers [Perez Hilton, TMZ.]. They have nothing to talk about and if you follow them for long, neither will you.

6. Be modest; why have all your goods unwrapped and leave nothing for the imagination?

7. Know the difference between fucking and love. There is a major difference and if you don’t know it, pick up a book or ask someone who does.

8. Do not have children just because you’re lonely or insecure. Your child will end up hating you for it and you won’t get the emotional blanket you hoped you’d get.

9. Get a job. Seriously. Just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean that you are excused from work. Find a trade, get a job. If you are a house wife, be a good one. If you are a career woman, put your heart into what you do.

10. A respectable companion is rarely at a ‘bar’ or da club’. These places are meat markets and will only set you up for a douchebag or a wimp. If you go, refer to rule 7.

11. Learn to cook. Cooking is a dying skill that needs not be. You’d be surprise how much weight you lose and how you can get a decent companion if you know more than picking up a phone and calling for dinner.

12. Get off your phone. If it’s not your best friend, your job or your family, your cackling is not important and the rest of the world does not want to hear it. Listen more. Talk less.

13. Stop putting so much of your money into things [purses, shoes, make up] and start putting it into a savings account, a 401k or an IRA. Those shoes are not going to vest when you turn 65.

14. Stop using men to get you stuff. Have some self respect and buy your own drinks, meals and entertainment. A date will respect you more if you show them you are not helpless.

15. Perfume and baby powder does not make up for good hygiene. Shower, do your laundry, clean your place. Body odor is not excusable for either genders.

16. If you are a Lesbian, respect yourself and stop trying to find acceptance in the world. 9/10 they will not accept you. Tell them ‘fuck you’ and be your own woman.

17. If you are a Lesbian, you are not anymore special or important than anyone else. You love other women and you have that right, but do not flex your preference thinking it makes you unique. Your mind and experiences make you unique, either gay or straight.

18. Buy clothes that fit. Be tasteful with your clothing be you big or small.

19. Don’t eat for comfort, vomit to make yourself beautiful, and starve yourself to feel loved. Exercise, be sensible with your food choices, don’t deprive yourself but never eat too much. The quickest way to a size 30, and to the grave, is past your teeth.

20. If they say the love you, ask them to earn your heart through good deeds, genuine kindness and respect.

21. Romance is not dead; but if you’re not willing to give it, don’t expect it in return.

22. Stop being a bitch to other women and other people. If you are not happy, go get therapy. No one deserves to be berated because you don’t have the guts to berate yourself.

23. Do something new every day. Pole dance to learn about your sensuality, paint to express your creativity, write a blog to express your soul. Evolve and never stop learning.

24. Look in the mirror everyday and smile at what you see.

25. Stay safe. Learn to defend yourself against one or multiple attackers. Jackals do not attack if they see a big stick. If all else fails, run. There is no shame in running if it keeps you safe.

26. Love yourself. Always. When you love yourself to the fullest, the world will open with opportunities

http://typewar.com/