Lumen type

Just stumbled across this curious typographic experiment, and found it quite inspiring. It’s a kind of bokeh type effect Ruslan Khasanov. I’ve featured Ruslan’s work in the past. He’s a ceaseless experimenter, and I love what he’s doing.

This bokeh lumen type is really quite fresh, and I’m not sure how he’s accomplished it. There is a clue in one of the images he provides (see below). A lens and light set up. Does he create each circular shape one at a time, then assemble the full letterforms in post. I think not, because seeing them in motion (see below) all the circles in each letter react to changes together… curious…

You can see the lumen type in motion here:

Spinning Type

Interesting typographic experiments from Jinhwan Kim involving spinning letterforms. What makes these more interesting is that they are not simply animated on the computer, they are shot through a lens, with a light box, which reveals a chromatic aberration of colours beyond the pure black letterforms themselves. You also get that lovely “wagon wheel effect” as the motor accelerates and decelerates. That can be seen best with the full alphabet below.

I think “J” is my favourite!

Ruslan Khasanov’s Liquid Calligraphy

I’m fascinated by the other-worldly “liquid calligraphy” by Ruslan Khasanov. His technique is a bit of a mystery, but I surmise it involves stop motion photography of inky letterforms, on very, very wet paper. The eventual dispersion and disappearance of the inky shapes on the wet paper surface, are captured through stop motion frames (one can detect slight shifts in the placement of the inky subject from frame to frame). The resulting images are then made negatives (I think) giving us these amazing white on black effects.

Long live experimentation!

PS Is it just me, or is the animated gif experiencing a refreshing rebirth as of late?

Dinick & Howells – D&H 3D experiments

Haven’t posted in a little while, and because I haven’t seen anything out there that’s knocked my socks off,  I thought I’d show some of my own stuff – why not!  These are part of an ongoing series of 3D experiments that use the letterforms D&H (my company name) as the starting point (all created in the glorious Cinema 4D).  Hope you enjoy them. Will do a new post with brand new experiments in a few months.

Sit on an “A”. The typographic chairs of Roeland Otten.

Been a little while since my last post (must post more often, must post more often!).  Occasionally I stumble across something so perfect for this blog that it snaps me back into ‘post motivation’ mode. So here it is.

Thanks to the always “on it” lostateminor for the tip. These typographic chairs from Roeland Otten are amazingly realized. At first I doubted they were real, assuming these were 3D renderings,  but they actually ARE real, lacquered wood prototypes. Some of the letters are more ingenious than others (see the “r” and “f), but as a complete set, they are really quite impressive. Otten describes himself as “working with a conceptual approach in different fields of art and design, from graphic design to new media and video, from product design to art in public space and events”.

I want an “r”!

Light type paintings with iPads

Wherever possible, I try not to simply pick up posts for other sources, but thanks CR for the tip about these wonderful, amazing, typographic light paintings, made with iPads moving through space. I just had to include a post about this here.

Dentsu London and design studio Berg conceived these, and though painting with light certainly isn’t a new idea, and has had a bit of a renaissance in the past five years, creating typographic extrusions in space with nothing other than light, is a pretty fantastic and original idea. Just when we thought iPads couldn’t get any cooler, presto. Hats off to Berg and Dentsu for the freshness of your thinking. You can watch how they did it below:

http://player.vimeo.com/video/14958082?portrait=0&color=ffffff

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

Type experiment: Blobs

Working on some (Cinema 4D) 3D tests for a poster I’ll be designing for the Montreal Bach Festival in the weeks ahead (which will look nothing like this !) but will be a white on white, shiny abstract composition of musical bars that morph into writhing vines. Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, if you want to see the dancing type I created last year for the Montreal Bach Festival, here’s the poster and video I created.

Type Experiment: Synthesizer

I recently did some VJing for the first time, with dubstep producers/composers Dusk & Blackdown, and absolutely loved it. The preparation of all the visuals for 22 tracks/90 minutes of music was an absolute killer, and I had motion-graphic-tunnel-vision for over 3 weeks, but loved every moment of it. Being up there on stage performing with some amazing musicians was a treat, and the opportunity to finally cross my two creative loves ‘graphics’ and ‘music’ was a real joy.

During the prep of all the visuals, I stumbled across the amazing plug-in from Noise Industry/FX Factory called Synthesizer, and put it to work on several of the track visuals that needed more intensity (see below). What turned out to be a very interesting effect, was the interaction of Synthesizer with typography. I used this for one of the track’s visuals called “Ridge”, but did further experimentation afterwards, and here are the results! Let me know what you think. You can see a broader set of stills from my VJ work with Dusk & Blackdown here.

Dude, Where’s My Music: Main Titles

From time to time, I feature my own work here on the blog, and thought I’d share a new one with you. I just completed the main titles for the upcoming feature rock-doc, “Dude, Where’s My Music“, directed by Ravi Parsan. Nothing like a little heavy metal to inspire, some serious headbanging typography.
Stay tuned – there a loads more title sequences to be done throughout the whole film.