idsgn (a design blog)

There’s more to Jim Henson than Kermit the Frog.

Recently I had the opportunity to see Jim Henson’s Fantastic World, a new exhibit at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image. Not surprising, the exhibit is heavily Muppet focused, but it doesn't end there. The exhibit spans Henson’s entire career from early sketches to his pioneering television work.

Among the many classics, one piece really stood out to me: a short film from 1965 titled Time Piece. Produced, written, directed by, and starring Jim Henson himself, the short experimental film was very much a personal side project. Beginning in the spring of 1964, nearly ten years after the introduction of the Muppets, Henson filmed the short through weekend and late nights between commercial projects and Muppet appearances.

With 555 Kubik, Germany’s Urbanscreen explores the question: “How it would be, if a house was dreaming?” 

The conception of this project consistently derives from its underlying architecture - the theoretic conception and visual pattern of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The basic idea of narration was to dissolve and break through the strict architecture of O. M. Ungers ‘Galerie der Gegenwart.’ Resultant permeability of the solid facade uncovers different interpretations of conception, geometry and aesthetics expressed through graphics and movement…

Recent Kingston University design graduates Tom Wrigglesworth and Matt Robinson take 8 ink jet printers and make them come to life in an award-winning student video for Hewlett Packard.

The short film, titled HP Invent, was created in response to a D&AD Student Awards brief set by Hewlett Packard: “Present an idea which promotes HP Workstations ability to bring to life anything the creative mind can conceive.”

An amazing mix of 2D and 3D in a new music video for the band The Dead Pirates, created by McBess and Simon Landrein from The Mill in London.

From McBess' blog:

I present to you WOOD a music video Simon and I did for my band the Dead Pirates, it took us around 4 month of joy and tears of happiness . We had the chance to get some big help from Dr Mushroom , Mooe and Asterokid, and of course from the Mill who produced it.

A t-shirt is also available from this video on Threadless Select

In contrast to yesterday's earth-friendly post about saving paper comes a music video made with tons of paper. "Everytime", the video for the London-based band Oi Va Voi, was painstakingly created by Katarzyna Kijek & Przemysław Adamski using paper shredders (and a lot of creativity). 

The process took exactly one month from the shooting day to the final render. After editing and synchronizing the initial footage in Premiere, every third frame was exported and printed to paper. Each page was shredded and shot three times, blended with adjacent frames in different configurations.

San Francisco-based band Boy In Static have just released a new music video for their song “Toy Baby Grand.” The video was created using Apple's TextEdit with nothing but freely available animated GIFs and some brightly colored type.

idsgn is a new design blog. We look forward to bringing you features on branding, packaging, typography, technology, and everyday things. We welcome submissions, please see the link at the bottom of the page.

Now, let's start this blog off with a dance...