Together with Talenthouse he called graphic designers to design the official ‘R’ logo to be be used on his merchandise for the duration of 2011.

My first intention was to design a 3D logo but some obstacles got in the way and I decided to make things simple.

For a better experience, please be sure to wear your red/cyan 3D glasses and hit play.

Rusko logo - 3D application

Rusko logo - yellow version

Rusko logo - negative version

We decided to publish our web designs altogether, independently if they are online or not. There is no need to care about this anymore.

So here they are (in no particular order):

Ken Heyman

Website project for New York based photographer Ken Heyman. We loved designing this project for Mr. Heyman together with the logo.

Unfortunately this website didn’t make it online yet.

Modal Acústica

Website for Marcelo Godoy, an acoustic engineer based in São Paulo, Brazil, featuring CMS, accordion menu, photogallery with lightbox and integration with ISSUU.

Visit: modalacustica.com.br

Paraty

Website designed for Paraty’s Secretariat of Tourism. Featuring two navigation menus (“Poetic” on top; “Institutional” on the left), integration with Flickr, Google Maps and Google Calendar. You gotta visit this city, it really stopped in the 16th century.

Although finely designed and prototyped, this website never made it online.

Tigran Sisson

Website designed for Tigran Sisson, a Brazilian literature and also Portuguese language teacher, text producer, reviser and linguistic consultant. We also designed logo and business card.

Visit: tigransisson.com

Work Out Eventos

Website for an event production office based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, featuring CMS, integration with Flickr on casting and portfolio pages. This project is still being implemented.

Visit: workouteventos.com.br (incomplete version with no CMS)

TC URBES

Website designed for a consulting firm specialized in production of plans and projects in mobility issues.

Although designed and prototyped, this layout never made it online. The client decide to cease the project and design another version based on our layout. How unfortunate.

Devik Handels

Website project for a Germany/Russia-based office. The company deals with importing equipment and spare parts to Russia.

This website was never prototyped.

When you tug at a single little thing in nature, you find it attached to the rest of the world. – John Muir

Movie poster submitted to Talenthouse’ competition to promote “Connected”, the new documentary by award-winning filmmaker Tiffany Shlain.

The rose, in my personal beliefs, has a special meaning. The search for wisdom, elevated knowledge and enlightenment; the unfolding consciousness.

The Name of the Rose was a project that began once again with a competition, this time on the Venus febriculosa website. I tried my best to deliver my submission until the deadline but a few obstacles got in my way and I didn’t make it. Determined to finish what was once started, I kept on going.

The Name of the Rose in literature and film

Umberto Eco’s novel takes place in the year of 1327, considered the beginning of the Renaissance period. Eco uses real contexts of that time to develop his “murder mistery”, having as main characters William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk trying to solve a series of crimes on a monastery in Northern Italy, where there is a sinister connection between the library and the deaths, although the monks believe the deaths represent the last days of mankind foresaw in the Book of Revelations.

I shamelessly admit my being a big fan of the book and film. The film is a 1986 German-French-Italian production, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. Sean Connery is William of Baskerville and the teenager Christian Slater is Adso of Melk.

However, it is the art direction, signed by Dante Ferreti, that is the most beautiful thing of the motion picture. The meticulous approach in characterize the Middle Ages is mind-boggling. Many of the interiors were shot at Eberbach Abbey, in Germany (the Abbey’s official website offers a nice 360° virtual tour). The exterior and some of the interiors of the monastery seen in the film were constructed as a detailed replica following Dante’s specific instructions.

Musical inspiration

Gregorian Chants inspired me this time again, as they did on CVLPATVS poster. I began searching for chants under the public domain license and found four beautiful pieces. My friend Luiz Pereira identified them for me. Without a doubt, “Kýrie, eléison” was the most inspiring one for this art; a beautiful vocal harmony. Sadly, I don’t know the artist.

The images

The rose, in my personal beliefs, has a special meaning. The search for wisdom, elevated knowledge and enlightenment; the unfolding consciousness.

What I needed to concretize my idea was to find a descent image of a book. One that could represent the 14th century with dignity. I would not take a stopgap.

In a morning during the project I woke up remembering the World Digital Library and, more precisely, the Codex Gigas (we even wrote about it in a previous article).

The Codex is the Bible, written in Latin. It’s called Gigas because of its enormous size: 89 cm tall by 49 cm wide, weighing approximately 75 Kg. Being kept by the National Library of Sweden it permanently stays in a climate controlled store room and is not on display for the general public.

So I got in contact with the Library’s Legal Department Jurist Frida Petersson. She was truly helpful and granted me permission to use the image, making it possible for me to finish this episode of the saga initiated in february.

When united, the objectivity of scientific reasoning and mystical consciousness unfold the mysteries of the universe in the eyes of conscious beings.

For modern science as for ancient mysticism, everything in the Universe is energy and from it comes all that is seen and what cannot be seen, everything that can be felt and thought.

Energy is never lost but conserved throughout eternity.

From these personal questionings, I created these posters series.

He kindly asked me to grant him permission to use my image earthWeight, part of the 4+1 Elements project, in the artwork he was about to design. He told me the sad story behind the song and that the image perfectly translated the emotions he was trying to convey with his music.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt I promptly granted him permission.

While we were exchanging messages about image copyright and attributions (a tedious process!) I came to know he was working on new songs for his EP named falling.

Designing album covers was something I was thinking about for quite a time because since 2008 I’ve been working almost exclusively with music-inspired digital art. Analogically, it would be fair enough to give my first step into this new and unexplored territory. And in this subject I sure have an idol.

I have a deep passion for the English design and art studio Hipgnosis, which consisted primarily of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell. From 1968 to 1983, from Pink Floyd to Led Zeppelin, they did it all. Since my first Floyd vinyl record, bought when I was eleven, going through my entire collection, which was carefully built during my teenage years, Hipgnosis art have always been present. I recently received their book For The Love of Vinyl as a gift from my brother and I am still exploring every square inch of its pages.

Despite the fact that the falling EP was an experimental non-commercial project, I saw that this situation brought a great opportunity for me to design my first album cover. I offered Adam my visual art services and he immediately accepted it.

Then he sent his songs and lyrics for me to get inspired and build the project concept. It was not difficult. Adam’s music is touching, full of emotional appeal and beautiful melodies which left no space for uncertainty. The inspiration showed up almost instantly.

And it was with much satisfaction that in less than one month I finished the artwork. He loved the result.

The outcome of this story was a very nice virtual friendship.

Booklet front cover

Booklet last cover

Opened booklet - outside view

Opened booklet - inside view

Disc label

Tray - inside view

Tray - outside view

• Designs that the client disapproves but we love.
• Design projects that culminates with the end of the client’s business.
• Designs that can’t find the client to approve them.
• Designs that aren’t understood by the client.
• Designs that were build upon a many-times-modified briefing and end up being inefficient.

The Mediterra project was a mixture of some of the possibilities above.

This logo project was commissioned by the same client of the frappé art project. It started out in July 2009 and was presented in August. Once again, the talented Juliana Morozowski took part in our team.

The client disapproved the artwork and the project was closed. The reasons for the disapproval are still to be fully understood.

However, because we loved the result we decided to publish it as it was presented to the client, without any modifications or refinements.

Mediterra logo

Mediterra symbol

Mediterra symbol

Mediterra logo application in one color

Mediterra logo application in one color

Logo application in a colored background

Logo application in a colored background

She told me she was more than intrigued when she spotted my work in the Hugo Create Challenge book (page 28), and asked me whether I would be open to the idea of being interviewed.

Damned me if I didn’t say yes!

So, on the 4th of June the article was published, both on print and digital magazines. And there we are among the six interviewed artists.

We couldn’t be happier :^)

To promote their focus on great tasting coffe made with Brazilian beans, Tine joined the Norwegian agency Dist Creative, and made a call on Behance to brazilian artists to submit their artworks. The chosen ones would be exhibited in adshels all over Norway, print-ads in magazines, prominent norwegian blogs and also on IsKaffe Facebook page.

I got really excited when I read the message; I turned to Bárbara and she said: “We could do something poetic“. That was sufficient.

I was supposed to come up with something quickly, one week time. The idea came and should be transformed into something concrete as soon as possible.

Right on the beginning I thought of Candido Portinari. Searching the web I found his famous painting “Café”.

The challenge, sounding strange as it might, was how we should represent Brazil in this project. The subject was leading us far away from the common Brazil stereotype, that is, as if Brazil is exclusively Rio de Janeiro: beaches, sun, samba, Cristo Redentor statue, Bossa Nova etc. Thinking of coffee, the States of São Paulo and Minas Gerais came in my mind. We don’t know these two States deeply, let alone their coffee plantations. We are good coffee drinkers, as any Brazilian, and that’s it.

It’s useless to say discouragement fell upon me like a plague. With an idea in mind and one week to do it. I paused.

I woke up a couple of days later with all that stuff hammering non-stop in my brain. Portinari’s painting didn’t rang any of the bells I need to hear.

So, off to a good shower, as I usually do after waking up, I called my idea to a good talk: “What else comes when I think Brazil/coffee/poetic/Portinari?”. Thoughts run as fast as a slot machine and stops in:

Heitor Villa-Lobos!

Now what? A Brazilian classical composer almost unknown to Brazilians. So, why Villa-Lobos?

Finishing the shower I rushed to the living room directly to our LP collection and found the Villa-Lobos record. Leafing through the booklet I found the Portinari’s “Café” painting on the back cover. Well, that’s a good sign. My heart even bumped.

But I didn’t feel like hearing the record. I read the booklet with more attention and later went to the internet to research his life. I found his official website in Canada. Yes, the Villa-Lobos official website is Canadian, created and managed by the dedicated Dean Frey, Director of Red Deer Public Library. More than complete and organized it has all things about the composer. Dean Frey goes way further making available The Villa-Lobos Magazine (since 2001!), the Tumbling Villa-Lobos and a Twitter profile dedicated to the composer.

Still no bell ringing. Searching deep within my memory I remembered two songs I kept in mind, somewhere in time. I only knew they were famous. Vaguely reminding the melody and, for the sake of good results, I didn’t know their names. Making things even worse: Villa-Lobos wrote, throughout his life, more than 1,000 compositions, an inexact number as there is no official catalogue of his compositions. I deeply sighed.

The search on Youtube turned out to be a fortunate one. As I began typing “Heitor Villa……” “Bachianas Brasileiras” returned as a suggestion. On the list, a video with an old beautiful front picture caught my attention. It was the “Bachiana Brasileira No. 5 Aria (Cantilena)”, performed by the Brazilian opera soprano Bidú Sayão.

This is it! Now the bell truly rang. What a melody! What an interpretation! I found the song which was going to inspire me throughout the project.

Hands on work starting with the hunt for pictures on every image bank I could possibly remember of. Fortunately I found all the pictures I needed; all beautiful and poetically correct; looks like they were part of the song.

But the visual composition wasn’t complete; not in the way I was doing it. The pictures sequence, the abrupt interruption between them, the missing IsKaffe logo. I didn’t know what could be possibly wrong. Once again I heard the suite sang by Bidú and looked at the layout with the four pictures. It seemed to be in the right way although there was still something important missing. The cycle was not finished yet.

Here I was, sitting on the discouragement limbo once again.

Going back a few steps, what was the other Villa-Lobos song that I vaguely remembered? Its name was something like “Trenzinho do Caipira” (Peasant’s Little Train). Searched the web and found it. I decided to listen to it while looking at my poster design.

Yes!!! It was the “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 2 – Toccata: O Trenzinho do Caipira (The Peasant’s Little Train)”.

And on that exact moment the project’s whole cycle came clear into my mind. The pictures sequence, beginning, middle and end, the connections between them and the IsKaffe logo with its pattern. I was telling a story:

Coffee from Brazil – The Harvest & The Journey

Part I – The Harvest. Everyday like a blessing.
Part II – The Journey. To the destiny like a beautiful symphony.

I sent an email to my friend Tatiana Fernandes, living in Norway since 2005, asking her to translate the story from Portuguese to Norwegian:

Kaffe fra Brasil – Innhøstningen & Reisen

Del I – Innhøstningen. Hver dag, som en velsignelse.
Del II – Reisen. Til destinasjonen, som en vakker symfoni.

And here’s the 231 X 340 mm poster:

Bárbara completed the project designing this gorgeous presentation:

Before: Hemingway

After: Futurosity modified

We went through the whole year filling our heads with ideas for a new website which resulted in a completely new layout from scratch featuring all the content we wanted. With MAMP’s local helping hand we achieved everything we wanted as far as the layout is concerned. But we didn’t even got close to the functionalities we desired due to our complete lack of PHP knowledge.

A few months after the upload of the modified Futurosity, Chris Spooner wrote and article where he gathered 50 inspiring examples of minimalism in web design. And there it was, our website.

Us on Chris Spooner Line25

With all the incoming traffic generated by the article and the fact that new projects keep coming from clients, the last thing we did was taking care of ourselves; the website wasn’t in need of such radical change.

Coming 2010 we realized that the website was still good to our needs, in a general sense. Splitting the rock in two sounded better: instead of a radical change in one big chunk, we would do it in two steps.

On the first step we’d only adjust the layout so it’d stay closer to the color palette developed for the Studio’s visual identity. A few simple functionalities and a cleaner face would be all for now.

The Studio's color palette

On the second step we would add a navigation menu with the pages: studio, portfolio, blog and contact and all the functionalities needed. We are getting closer to a moment when it’s important to show who we are and what we do in more details. If this piece of rock needs to be split it certainly will.

So, we finished the first step and here’s what we did:

Colors

Subtle changes were made to the colors to reflect the palette.

Before: gray

After: colors

Focus on the content

The sidebars dropped to the footer, leaving the articles a breathing space and avoiding reading distractions.

Before: all content at once

After: A clearer reading

Complementary info

We noticed that lots of articles had some kinds of information that were necessary but complementary and that they occured repeatedly. Further categorization and listing resulted in:

• Inspiration
• Credits
• Acknowledgment
• More
• Soundtrack

All of them should be in an auxiliary bar at the beginning of the article. But how it should be done? We opted for using WordPress custom fields. Calling my brother to help with the PHP was a natural consequence.

Before: complementary info at the end of the article

After: auxiliary bar

Filters redesign

We redesigned the resulting pages of category, author, tags and search filters to make them join the website visual unity.

Before: the theme's native category filter

After: joining the website's visual unity

Rethinking of the “not found” pages

Giving a few starting points to the users who can’t found what they are looking for was a indispensable.

Before: frustration

After: possible starting points

Internal links

Links that point to our own pages could be potentially broken in case the website directory or simply the post slug are changed. We ran to Digging Into WordPress for a valuable help.

Digging Into WordPress: valuable help

Real theme translation

This time we decided to decently translate the theme using Poedit. Enough of shortcuts.

Website performance

This was the worst part of all, ever. After installing and shooting the Firefox extensions Page Speed, from Google Code, and YSlow, from Yahoo! Developer, we discovered the naked truth: website performance was a complete disaster: browser and proxy cache, compression, cookies, DNS lookups, inefficient CSS, image optimization and scaling, CSS and JavaScript ordering… in short, a total shame.

Addressing one item at a time together with the Page Speed and the YSlow users guides and with a little help from the web hosting company we could reach substantially better performance results, getting, in some pages, 98 items OK out of 100 total.

Before: a disastrous performance

After: a much better one

Conclusion

At this very moment the only thing left is fine tuning the CSS for older browsers so that everyone can have a consistent experience when browsing this website.

Then people would ask: “When will it all end?”

Never. Designers website and portfolio are never finished.

On november 2007 I looked at the sky from the balcony and saw a strange composition of clouds. Immediately came Black Sabbath’s “Hole In The Sky” into my mind:

~Hole in the sky
Gateway to Heaven
Window in time
Through it I fly~

The song is pretty heavy, but the strophe is beautiful; always caught my very attention.

I ran for the camera, shot it and, naturally, named the picture “Hole In the Sky”.

On december 2009, in a moment of silence and introspection, I decided to work on this picture to make it look like the gateway I had in mind. I wanted to give it my personal and intuitive impression, which greatly diverge from what my physical eyes can see.

So it became this:

January 2010, short after I uploaded the picture to Flickr I received the comment:

The comment on Flickr

Of course I went to see what was the whole point because “The In-Between”, as far as I know, is the intermediary place where people live after they die. Exactly what I wanted to say with my “gateway to Heaven” picture.

I joined the Flickr group and I saw that it was about a photographic experience in development by Paramount Pictures to promote Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones”! Yes, the very Peter from “Lord Of The Rings”!, a movie that I love.

The movie would be an adaptation of Alice Sebold best-selling novel “The Lovely Bones” which tells the story of a teenage girl who, after being murdered, watches from heaven as her family and friends go on with their lives, while she herself comes to terms with her own death.

Book & Film covers

Well, at that very time I became very excited but I didn’t understand very well how my image would be used. I read that the official website would be featuring breath-taking images from the In-Between. However upon closer inspection, each one would be in fact a user-generated ‘photo-mosaic’, made up of thousands of individual photos uploaded by people from all over the world, to show the memories they would hope to find in their own personal In-Between.

It fell into oblivion.

Now, march 2010, it suddenly came back into my mind and I decided to see what happened to my picture (if something indeed happened).

Fact, it happened. The movie was released in january 15, the website is there, with four gorgeous images showing the In-Between and there it is, my picture!

The splash page

The In-Between

The In-Between mosaic

Hole In The Sky

"Hole In The Sky" postcard

I stopped by to admire the pictures with that wonderful background music and it touched me. I enjoyed seeing my picture taking part of this project. I believe they chose it because it communicated exactly what I wanted: a gateway to my Heaven, my personal In-Between.

I want to have a beautiful experience when my time comes.

Then in 2008, a few design competitions popped up and with some encouragement, I submitted my work. That experience was fulfilling, so I decided to submit as much as I could to as many competitions I knew existed. Gratefully, later that year our work “City Sounds – The Original Score” was awarded and “4+1 Elements” was published in the international section of the “Oddinary” exhibition’s book. The paths were opened.

As I said, I never thought of displaying my work. I’m one of those guys who would rather be sitting on a chair, getting fat, drinking coffee, listening to music and getting inspired; all the while searching for themes to work on, looking for competitions with challenging subjects, working the design of our Studio’s clients and, mainly, trying to work out my problems in life, that are the main subjects of my work. I’m too “planning” and Bárbara’s too “executing”, and that’s the source of our harmony at work.

But it happened on January 23; our first exhibition.

Being followed on twitter by Festa Shout, Bárbara happened to read that it was the “last chance to send your proposal to exhibit your work……. etc.” or something to that effect. Following the link, we visited the website and saw that the event would include other 24 artists at the Bhering Chocolate’s old facility, in Santo Cristo, Rio de Janeiro.

That gave a hell of a boost to Bárbara, being a mountain goat under the Capricorn sign; she only stops when she reaches the top of the mountain, or accomplishes her goal. She flung herself into the task of writing my release and selecting which artwork would be shown. In short, she was my curator and I spent the whole week calling her that. Behind all my fears I managed to keep my sense of humor intact. She made it my task to decide the order of presentation, the exhibition’s name and its personality.

I wasn’t sure about which name to use, as the whole visual concept would follow it: “Musak” (as featured on the release) or “Born of a Broken Man”. I kept the second, one of my artwork’s title.

Then came the torture: to set everything up in less than a week with a local holiday in the middle, Saint Sebastian. The event would happen on Saturday; they called us on Monday morning.

Bárbara quickly came up with an idea, a version of the one she kept feeding for quite a time. On Tuesday we went to visit the location. We chose a “Saw” style room.

But after returning home we realized that our design wouldn’t fit, time was running out and costs were pretty high. We had to cut corners to get straight to the point, otherwise bye bye event.

In the end, I loved the experience. We met friends, family and unknown people just like we would for a cup of coffee at home. Everything ran smoothly during the day and the event staff made us feel at home throughout the entire experience.

As part of the event, there were a couple of questions to be answered for each object I keep. They worked as a revival for me, making me feel the moment again. As the years rolled by I naturally stopped thinking where did they come from or why I kept them. Now everything is back again.

Yes, it’s been more than year since I submitted my photographs to the exhibition and now, looking at them, I decided to give them a new life, adding four more to the pool and designing this booklet:

Just for sentimental reasons.

With ideas still flowing we decided to have our new business cards in letterpress printing, an ancient and beautiful printing process that have been fascinating us lately.

A couple of international print shops caught our attention: Studio OnFire and Sweet Olive Press. It’s definitely worth checking out their printing portfolio.

Studio On Fire letterpress workspace - Minneapolis / MN.

Poster designed and printed by Studio on Fire.

Business card printed by Sweet Olive Press.

Here in Brazil this process is inexpressive mainly due to lack of demand and also because the steel of machines and types are melted and sold.

Searching the internet, Christian met the Corrupiola guys, Leila and Aleph. They found an abandoned letterpress machine and are restoring it, in an effort to keep the process alive.

Corrupiola's letterpress machine.

Because their machine isn’t working yet they gave us the Oficina Tipográfica São Paulo contact. We didn’t know their work. Besides printing services they publish their own editorial material and offer interesting courses. We are glad to know that a letterpress workspace still exists in Brazil.

Oficina Tipográfica São Paulo

More about Oficina Tipográfica São Paulo on Flickr.

At that time we were recently baptized Sisson Studio (a long story…) with awful projects and short incomes. However, the good side was that I was full throttle with my digital art projects since march, submitting them to competitions all over the planet and meantime starting a very nice friendship with other designers over the internet. Additionally I signed up for a Facebook account and met some wonderful people there, including a person that became our first international client.

Two extremely complicated website projects were giving us some migraine crisis and we were about to have another one coming from our Russian friend/client from Facebook. We were not satisfied at all with that situation and decided to change our gravitational fields.

We stated: “— Web projects are coming, including one for Russia and this situation is intolerable!”. We were then on the search for someone to work with us.

I contacted an old friend, Guilherme Soares. He presented me to Oliver Barnes. We’re working together since then.

What we would never expect was that Ken’s project was waiting for us in the hands of Oliver and his partner, Fito. Ken needed a new website and a simple signature to his name; a logo. Fact is they sent us Ken’s old website link: kenheyman.com.

Do you take it? Hell yes!

We were speechless and also feeling privileged of working with such an artist. We progressively fell in love with the project as we were gathering more information about who was Ken Heyman and his work. It was love at first sight.

There is nothing we can tell about Ken’s work that someone hasn’t told before. We’re far from being art critics but we certainly feel that shiver down the spine when something touches us. It’s the power of art, latent even in the shape of (apparently simple) photographies.

Ken captured intimate moments of people, whether they were famous or anonymous. Captured happy and painful moments. With his heart on the camera.

The weight of responsibility were upon us like plague. Bullshit! We freed ourselves from it in order to feel what must be done using intuition and inspiration. Capturing the simplicity and emotion of Ken’s click was essential.

During the hunting for ideas, one image flashed before our eyes:

Yes, it was Herb Lubalin’s Avant Garde. Simple, elegant, emotive, charming, vintage font. Perfect for what we needed. And this is it, Ken Heyman’s logo/signature was ready, just as simples as he asked to be:

Next step was designing the website and we wanted it to be charming and elegant and we think we got there. Soon, Ken’s new website at kenheyman.com.

A special thanks to Oliver and Fito for the opportunity.

Here is the zipped file for a delightful experience.

Also, be sure to check out the HAL Project, specially the screensaver on the “Downloads” link.

I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophical content…I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does…You’re free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film. – Stanley Kubrick. 1968.

My sister, who’s gonna get married next week, asked me if I could design an invite for the special event. I did it with much love and the result came out so nice that our printing/paper supplyer Fine Papers, asked our authorization to exhibit it in their showroom, in São Paulo.

All material was printed using screen-printing on a beautiful Esse’s Latte Texture paper from Fine Papers.

0. We are on the road to find out.
1. … Beginning.
2. … Diverging.
3. … Divided.
4. … Lost.
5. … Fighting.
6. … Found out.

You read the line every time
Ask me about crime in my mind
Ask me why another road song
Funny but I bet you never left home

On a good day, I know it ain’t every day
We can part the sea
And on a bad day, I know it ain’t every day
Glory beyond our reach

Fourteen seconds until sunrise
Tired but wiser for the time
Lightning 30 miles away
Three thousand more in two days”

–

-

This is how we feel, tired but wiser.

The Fundação Biblioteca Nacional (Brazilian National Library) contributed with technical assistance supplying content to the web library. The institution President, Muniz Sodré, presents the project in this video (in portuguese).

Manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, prints and photographs were digitized and are available at the digital library. There are cultural treasures like the often considered the first great novel in world literature, “The Tale of Genji”, a 11th-century Japanese Literature novel.

Pages from the novel “The Tale of Genji” by Murasaki Shikibu. Illustrations by Shunshō Yamamoto.

Also a large 13th-century manuscript called “Codex Gigas”, the “Devil’s Bible”, from Bohemia, one of the historical Czech lands.

"Codex Gigas", the "Devil's Bible" manuscript detail.

I just visited it and loved it. Researching is simple, the archives are well organized and the professional digitalization job allows the visitors to see the material in great details. Worth visiting.

In short, we don’t reinvent the wheel. This means that we don’t develop things from scratch when there is something more full-blown and (much) better developed out there on the web that can be integrated into the websites we develop. Exemplifying, why should we create a photo managing application like Flickr when Flickr already exists? No reason.

So, because we are redesigning our website we decided to have a dose of our own medicine, installing Smart Look in this website. Smart Look is a free service offered by Issuu which automatically replaces all the documents on your website with nice designed publications.

This is how it works: go to issuu.com and sign up for a free account. Then go to issu.com/smartlook and write down your domain where it’s written “Select your domain”. Click on “Get code” and you will have a piece of code ready to be copied and insert it right before the </body> tag, which in our case was in the “footer.php” file. The next step is uploading the document you want to be featured in your website. Can be a .pdf, .doc or a .ppt.

Usually these files would be a link for download but who said your users want to download files instead of just reading them? Imagine a 20MB .pdf file being downloaded when they just wanted to read it! I’m a suspect because i’ve abandoned a few websites just because of that.

Well, back to the Smart Look, after you placed the code snippet where i told, uploaded the file and put the link on the page, click on it. This click will trigger an upload of the same file to your Issuu account. After the conclusion of this 2nd upload, your document will be ready to be viewed in a charming way.

But if the user should want to download it? On the top left corner there is a link to download. That’s it. Even more, the user can share it via email, print it or go full screen. The publisher not only gets a happy user, but more visibility because of the sidebar showcasing all documents uploaded.

The only concern was if Google Analytics would stop working properly due to space conflict. So far, everything’s OK.

We took advantage of this tool to improve the frappé art Visual Identity Guidelines visualization, and to publish our Digital Art 2008 Portfolio. It includes all artwork we submitted to graphic design contests all over the world, including our awarded “City Sounds – The Original Score” and the published “4+1 Elements“.

In my opinion, the only inconvenient is the doubled upload, one to the server, other to Issuu, and the last one being triggered after a click on the file. A bit annoying. But Smart Look’s still on beta and there will be lots of improvement coming. I do hope so.

frappé art is a logo project for a Russian client opening her own business on the Greek national drink: the frappé. For this particular project we set up a nice collaboration with Juliana Morozowski, talented illustrator from Santa Catarina. Following our main concepts, Juliana came with a modern, charming and creamy frappé glass illustration. It was up to us building the logotype and the final logo composition, plus all the studies that surrounded this visual identity project. We wanted something young, creamy and tasteful and we all got quite satisfied with the results.

The cultural shock was main challenge in this project; frappé is for Greece as beer is for “cariocas”, but even this analogy almost got us crazy. We spent weeks searching for and looking at pictures of frappé, frappé parties, coffee shops, Greek beaches and landscapes; researching websites and Facebook groups about frappé and reading what people wrote about this magical drink. Got into infinite discussions with the client about the ideas and concepts and, still, dove on the task of drinking frappé. Delicious.

The biggest challenge was not to fall on the trap of using blue. This hue saturates Greece and everything related to it, including the frappé. The client made herself very clear on this subject.

Finished the project, what is left, besides the client’s friendship and the satisfaction in seeing the job done, is THE WILL to go to Greece and drink the frappé!

What a project!

We also did a special Visual Identity Guidelines for the frappé art!

A 12 x 40 cm poster submitted to “Ten Images for Ithaca – Annual poster design competition“, Greece, 2009.

What do I see when I stand in front of a mirror?

One of the best things that happened in the fogged month of March was that our awarded work “City Sounds” is now featuring on the Hugo Gallery at the deviantART!! There are wonderful layouts on the same gallery and it is such a pleasure to be among such gifted designers.

This layout was greatly inspired by Bernard Herrmann‘s delicious soundtrack for the Martin Scorcese‘s master piece “Taxi Driver” and was submitted to HUGO Create Graphic Design Competition last year.

"City Sounds" poster on HUGO Gallery website.

It’s been almost 5 months since we screamed to be free from Hemingway WordPress theme. Nothing against this theme I must say. But we needed new web clothes and the time has come.

We chose Futurosity Aperio this time; very flexible theme build upon Sandbox, from plaintext.org. Tweaking the design here and there, little by little we are getting what we wanted like we planned. Nothing is set in stone and feedbacks will be highly valuable at any time.

Pretty soon, following a 3-month hiatus, we will post some new projects we’ve been working on since last year.

Peace to all.

The partners had an idea of presenting their clients with a decorative wall sticker that could be printed by their company.

They came to know our work in the “Morar Mais Por Menos 2008″, an interior design fair. They liked our wall stickers and called us to do this project for them.

The project began very raw as they had no initial idea which was good because we could work on it with much freedom! They just wanted a small wall sticker (something like 20×20 cm) so that one could apply it very easily.

The starting point was the sticker itself. We thought it had to be a drawing that would please both men and women.

Working inside a “Nature” theme sounded a good place to begin. Then we had the idea of a Bonsai tree that fit like a glove because the Bonsai cultivation began when men wanted to bring, into their homes, the forests essence and the trees longevity.

So, the Bonsai tree served as the base for the whole project design. We started out by drawing the sticker.

Bonsai tree

The wall stickers

After the client’s prototype approval, they asked us to assemble 100 gifts so that every detail would be carefully approached and the final result would come up beautifully finished.

We couldn’t take on this large task on by ourselves so a few days before Christmas we called our mothers to help us in the gift assemblage and they were more than happy to help. They loved it and so did we; we had a wonderful day together.

For lunch we had tagliarini with sea food (with lots of onion) that Christian prepared and that, as usual, was delicious!

Our lunch: sea food, tagliarini, onions

The afternoon proceeded very calm and happy. We assembled 100 gifts taking care of every detail.

Banana tree fiber paper

Papers and stickers

1mm waxed rope

Stickers rolled with banana tree fiber paper and waxed rope

Empty boxes

Dehydrated moss

Boxes containing dehydrated moss and the rolled stickers

Box covers and tags

100 finished gifts

It was a very cool job, hand-made, with family, with much love.

We used some uncoated papers we already got at home, most of them pretty old and useless for client’s projects. Cool isn’t it?

Now try to guess which one is Barbara’s and which one is mine.

Given the young and fashionable initial concept we came up with a joyful, light and large wall sticker design. Nathalia and her partners applied strass crystals over the stickers, giving the final touch for a nice atmosphere.

Click here to download the original illustrations made by Émile Bayard for the 1862 edition of Les Misérables.

Love it.

Some clients disappear.
Some can’t remember were the job stopped.
Some abandon the ship.
Some decide to print one year after the job’ started.
Some forget that the layout is approved and ask to change it.

We decide for them.
Today we cleaned the shelves.
The old project shelves.
Some of them we published.
Some of them we archived.
Some of them we trashed.

Nature abhors empty spaces.
May new projects come and refresh our dazed heads.
May the Universe bring prosperity to our lives.

Flickr and Behance got new stuff.

Peace!

Sarah France came today telling me that our work was there. Great!!!, Oddinary was a great project.

Amazing and perfect handlettering work i should say. Here is a video of the “New York Mollusk” sign project in action.

Balsamiq Studios LLC is a fresh little software company, managed by Giacomo Guilizzoni. Be sure to check his credentials on LinkedIn and his blog.

Follows a quick-and-dirty-3-minutes-low-budget-tutorial on YouTube:

[youtube]zLysy3IPfFI[/youtube]

Check the top 10 winners on the HUGO Create website.

Here is the piece:

City Sounds - The Original Soundtrack

The 6th graduating class of SIM-RMIT University’s Bachelor of Design, Communication Design (BDCD), hosted the “Oddinary” Exhibition this year. The exhibition also featured a book containing 33 selected Oddinaries from Singapore and a section for the International ones. And there we are! Couldn’t be happier :)

A huge thanks to Lucius Young and the “Oddinary” crew!

The International Oddinaries section on the Oddinary Book

The 4+1 Elements - bottom right corner

Here’s an excerpt taken from Caglas’s website:

Something to hold on to, to keep in mind, to guard and to preserve…

We all have bits and pieces, vague traces and fragments of past moments or events kept in our memory. We all reflect upon our past from time to time, trying to create a mental picture to relive in a moment long gone.

Time is irreversible, we cannot take back time, we cannot experience a moment more than once. Even the most cherished or loathed memories of events decay and become lost to us over time. There seems to be no cure for this forgetting phenomenon but one: keeping things.

As our memories erode, the souvenirs from our past start taking on a new mission; scraps of paper with notes scribbled, ephemera, trinkets, kept objects give us the opportunity to touch, see, feel and even smell the past without having to go back there. The things we keep don’t have to mean much extrinsically, but a great amount of feeling and memory is contained inside. Feelings and memories are the secrets between us and the objects that are kept.

Here are my entries for the exhibition:

A butter can from a Brazilian brand called Aviação, in activity since 1920.

• What do you keep? Vintage objects.
• For how long have you been keeping it? Since 2007.
• Why do you keep it? Because it is old fashioned.

Coke miniature bottles (3 inches tall), limited edition, sold in Brazil in the early ’80.

• What do you keep? Nostalgic objects.
• For how long have you been keeping it? Since 1984.
• Why do you keep it? Because it’s a nostalgic object and I like Coca-Cola.

19th century picture, the Coca-Cola early years.

• What do you keep? Vintage objects.
• For how long have you been keeping it? Came from my parents.
• Why do you keep it? Because it is old fashioned.

A picture of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

• What do you keep? Vintage objects.
• For how long have you been keeping it? Came from my parents.
• Why do you keep it? Because it is old fashioned.

A pin from USSR that a friend gave me when traveling there, short after the Perestroika.

• What do you keep? Things from other countries.
• For how long have you been keeping it? Since 1998.
• Why do you keep it? Because it’s history.

“Adventure World Map” is a poster featuring cartooned representation of famous stories like Robinson Crusoe, Toilers of the Sea, The Three Musketeers, Ben-Hur, Don Quixote, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Around the World in Eighty Days, Robin Hood, One Thousand and One Nights and many others.

• What do you keep? Nostalgic objects.
• For how long have you been keeping it? Since 1986.
• Why do you keep it? Because it’s nostalgic and I like adventure stories.

• It is the museum and gift shop of mid-century illustration;
• It is the 50′s retro graphics archive;
• A candy shop for the vintage-addicted;
• A Pastelogram;
• Cars, wagons, trucks, ads, space and decor.

The full size poster.

The hand-made-type detail.

The competition invites this year all designers to set their imagination free and talk about their dreams, whether these are images and feelings the human mind creates while we sleep or their hopes and wishes. Therefore, the term “dream” can also be used metaphorically, it can be the “starting point” of an idea or be the main theme for the final piece.