Objectified: A Documentary Film

I came across this new film today, Objectified, and I can’t wait for it’s release. Unfortunatly there aren’t any clips out yet, but the synopsis captivated me. Read below.

“Objectified is a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the people who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability. It’s about our relationship to mass-produced objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

Through vérité footage and in-depth conversations, the film documents the creative processes of some of the world’s most influential designers, and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?”

- from the film’s blog, http://www.objectifiedfilm.com.

Book Review – Web Standards Creativity

I picked up this book (Web Standards Creativity) at the library recently while doing some research on CSS. (Honestly, I picked it because it was full color and didn’t follow the standard, dry, b&w, instructional book look) It has some great tips for using web standards in creative ways from a bunch of different designers. My favorite chapter was “Taming a Wild CMS with CSS, Flash, and JavaScript”. The site design was for the band Lifehouse, which has been redesigned since the book came out. The design in the book is far more dynamic and interesting than the current site, in my opinion. There’s a great tutorial on how to create vertical text using image replacement. Also, there’s a tut that explains how to use sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) to create imaged text (so you can use a specific font) that can be updated easily via the CMS. Sounds like a technique I’d like to try eventually, though it seems time consuming to set up. All-in-all, a great book for mid-level to advanced designers/developers. Check it out!