California State Flag Designed By William L. Todd

The California State flag doesn’t immediately come to mind when thinking of design. The colors and iconography of content and form beautifully capture the spirit of California, not only when it was made but what it has become today. The design and meaning has endured and avoided slippage throughout the years and continues to be a proud symbol of the Golden State.

The flag’s content is apparent form first look. The California Golden Bear faces the left of the frame towards the star in the upper left corner and has its stride advancing on the left. This brings an asymmetrical balance which emphasizes the left, or the west where California is in the United States. The red star is accented in the mouth of the bear and on the bottom border of the flag. The official color red for the flag is pantone 200 but is better known as “Old Glory Red”. This use of a patriotically named color symbolizes the strength for which the California population stands for and rebelled upon and the message it wishes to speak. The bear literally is roaring “Old Glory” from his mouth, an analogy of free speech and so much more. The red and green dominate visually as complementary colors and can be interpreted as to say something about California once being a Mexican territory since the Mexican flag and the California flag share the same colors. The bear symbolizes strength and rebellion and the single star symbolizes California’s independence from not only Mexico but its independent state of mind from the rest of the stars on the American Flag.

When the flag was first created and flown in Sonoma, it was created from a scrap piece of cotton and the red used was said to come from blackberries and the bear drawn with linseed oil. This is the epitome of sustainability. Nothing new was created or wasted for the conception and production of the flag. In fact, from what was wasted something new was created.

The safe bold lettering and sturdy rectilinear star and strip of red give a sense of tradition and security while the bear centered at the flag with the infinite white background suggests an expansive unknown that the bear wanders through en passant. The horizon line the bear stands on dissipates and leaves the viewer and the bear alone in this void, but the guiding star of “Old Glory” will always be present. The bear sits atop an equilateral triangle that begins at the bottom with the red strip and transitions from the text to the ground and around the bear up the vertical axis. The bear’s head even helps slope one side of the geometrical frame of the images.

Flags are wonderful designs to interpret because they represent so much of the past while continuing to encompass the present and the future. Color, shape, order and message all come together to create a unique experience. Content and form are strictly scrutinized and have so many ways of being misinterpreted that the limitations and demands of creating a flag is the same as the strenuous restraints and demands placed upon all modern designers. That is to say there is a message and experience they are selling in their design. They have limited resources and restrictions on materials and other parameters to adhere to when approaching a design. They have to marry content to form in a unification of meaning and understanding all while not forgetting their audience and their investors. Design process does not vary, only its context.

"Sustainable Innovation" By Designer Nathan Shedroff

Nathan Shedroff is a former industrial designer for Daimler-Chrysler that has embarked on a mission to bring sustainability to the forefront of all designers’, businessmen’s and engineers’ minds. His lecture series, “Sustainable Innovation”, is a new way of looking at the truth about sustainability and ways in which it can be realistically achieved and get away from the hype and trendiness of “going green”.

Nathan’s minimalist and sustainable ideals can be seen from the first slide. The slides are streamlined, clean, intuitive and to the point, very much like his presentation and lecture. His message resonates with crisp images that are simple and direct, like good design should be. The messages of the slides, as well as his words, are carefully chosen and crafted with inflection, annunciation and emphasis to engage the audience and be readily understood, a very important part of good design.

He takes a new approach to the integration of sustainability into the global business infrastructure in the form of the financial, social and ecological. His notion of sustainability being the future of design and sustainable design being the future of business seems almost too logical to be ignored. It is the unification of a sustainable financial world, sustainable social world and sustainable ecological world that creates a sustainable world in which the three can thrive as one. If one is out of balance, then so go the other two. It is the harmony of the three that makes for a sustainable future, a better designed future.

Nathan is quick to point out that “there’s no such thing as sustainable design, (only) more sustainable design.” This is particularly true of our consumer driven world.

He had many strong and interesting points that seemed too logical to be ignored. His concise presentation along with his articulate message made for an entertaining and informative hour that should be kept in the mind of all designers when facing challenges and/or constraints. The content of his lecture is something that will be reproduced in the coming years as sustainability becomes ever more crucial to society. The form of his lecture is a model of minimalism that can be seen as part of this vision of a better designed, more sustainable tomorrow.

Take a closer look at www.nathan.com.

"Objectified" By Filmmaker Gary Hustwit

Gary Hustwit presents an intimate look into the world of designers and their thought processes in the documentary film Objectified. The film is a refreshing look at what goes into design and the direction in which it is and/or should be heading.

This refreshing look from a documentary and film perspective transfers into the way the film itself is shot and presented. The film has a simplistic, almost minimalist feeling. The interviews with designers are personal and within their creative settings, giving the audience a better feel for the designers and how they see the world. The film's simplicity is echoed in designer Dieter Rams’ quote from the film, “Good design is as little design as possible.”

The film evokes a curiosity for form and function as it shows design thinking, process, concept and production. Jonathan Ive describes this curiosity as constant design or “looking at everything around us and wondering why it is like that and not different.” This is what the film did best in my opinion. The film constantly looks at manufacturing and designers designing in an effort to find out why design happens like this and what these designs mean to the people who create them but most importantly who uses them. There is an equilibrium of content and form in which the audience is seeing visually what is been articulated psychologically and verbally. When we hear designer Chris Bangle talk about how the designs we choose to use represent ourselves to the outside world, like avatars, you can’t help but notice more his stylishly designed glasses that compliment his equally stylish BMW which he no doubtably had a hand in designing. Objects aren't just something designed by people used by people. They represent the people who create them, but more importantly the people who employ them.

The film also places an emphasis on mass production which is what design has become about. Sustainability is a big buzz word which designer Karim Rashid puts more eloquently by posing “why does anything have to be built to be permanent?” This means that designs need to be more recyclable and reusable. The planned obsolescence of today’s mass production design is going to harm design in the end, whether it be the ever dwindling resources or the impersonalization of product and audience due to their briefly planned time together.

Like designer David Kelley’s assertion of “design is something that gets better with use”, so does this film. The more you watch it and try to extract from it, the more it unveils and intrigues. The film is a challenge to all current and future designers to get back to what it is to truly design, to give meaning to the human experience of us and our objects, to give our objects meaning and appreciate their inherent use and value and not disregard them just because they are considered old or no longer fashionable. Design is not just associated with the object anymore, but the entire experience, need and emotion elicited from the object's audience. All of this needs to be carefully designed and considered by today's designer. The film is its own object that thoroughly projects this point in its form as defined by its content. It is, in every sense of the definitions conveyed by the film, a well designed film.

“Every object, intentional or not, speaks to who put it there”

- Gary Hustwit

Enjoy the trailer for Objectified (now available on DVD) from YouTube.

Jordan V Laser Rare Air Hoodie Designed By Jordan Brand

The Jordan V (5) Laser Rare Air Hoodie by Jordan Brand is a wearable piece of design art with intricately proportioned and colored elements. The print pattern is that of all the numbered Air Jordan models to the date that the garment was finalized.

The all-over pattern of the shoes creates a camouflage of images that blurs the line between figure and ground. This is further accentuated by the color scheme. The five colors that comprise the design (grey, cream, olive green, orange and brown) all harmonize subtly and aren’t truly analogous colors but all reside on the same side of the color wheel or are mixed to create eachother as a secondary or tertiary color. These low intensity tones blend well and compliment eachother well. Even though the colors seem lighter and darker in comparison, they are all the same value. This creates continuity of light when transitioning from color to color. The eyes take in the whole pattern and color and then moves on to the individual shoes and finally to the color juxtapositions that define the shapes that creates each shoe. This is also aided by the dull, subtractive quality of the monotone value. This makes for a subdued experience that further embraces the camouflage concept of the color rhythm and pattern.

The darker green, brown and orange dominate the cream on the exterior of the garment, but the interior is all cream which balances out the piece as a whole. The different proportions of the shoes along with the strategic blocking of certain colors that advance and recede creating depth and give the hoodie a heavier feel and look. It are touches like that which show attention to color theory and the equilibrium of color and design. The soft value enables a gentle evaluation of the complex design and actually aides in the definition of shapes as opposed to a simple black and white outlining. This pattern has been adapted in various color schemes by Jordan Brand and will sure to be played with more and more as certain color schemes become familiar and new applications demand different experiences, emotions and meanings.

The Nike Zoom LeBron IV "Fruity Pebbles" By Designer Ken Link

The Nike Zoom LeBron IV (4) is one of the most innovative shoes in LeBron’s signature series but the “Fruity Pebbles” edition is the most colorful and eye-catching shoe that has yet to be released for LeBron or nearly any other player for that matter.

The concept of the colorway is simple: Fruity Pebbles cereal. The execution and delivery and the reason it resonates with its audience is much more complex. Under normal circumstances, a rainbow colorway is off limits when it comes to masculine apparel, but the LeBron IV “Fruity Pebbles” transcends this stereotype and in my eyes is a display of the light spectrum. The smooth pearl white of the shoe symbolizes pure white light and as it passes through the shoe, it is broken up into the pure colors (red, yellow, blue) and secondary colors (green, orange, purple) of the color wheel on the sole. The colors aren’t truly pure however due to their translucent properties, but this translucency almost adds to the vibrancy of the colors by letting more light penetrate and therefore reflect. The colors are also laid out as they are diametrically opposed on the color wheel to bring a sense on consonance to the otherwise opposed colors. The complementary colors of green and red meet in the center, then blue and orange, and purple and yellow complement eachother and respectively reverberate out corresponding to one another symmetrically from the horizontal axis of the sole to bring balance. The larger portions of the cool blue and purple are further balanced by a dash of bright orange in the blue panel and the warm yellow heel is cooled down by some light blue which further accentuates the complementary colors.

The spectrum colors take on a higher-value tint on the midsole of the shoe which meshes better with the predominately white upper. This higher value can be an attempt to use local color as we are most familiar with cereal soaked in milk which lightens its color and appears to “bleach” it.

The biomorphic all-over pattern of the “pebbles” becomes warmer despite their higher value due to the increase of red and orange. At points the red and orange become an optical mixture of red-orange when juxtaposed to create an analogous color scheme with the yellow that vibrates against its complements of blue, green and purple.

The LeBron IV “Fruity Pebbles” is an intriguing shoe, not only from a shoe enthusiast standpoint, but of a psychological and artistic standpoint as well. Is it a representation of milk and cereal? Is it an analogy of a child’s hunger for sugary cereal to LeBron’s hunger for a championship? Or is it just something cool Nike did for LeBron because he loves Fruity Pebbles? All are acceptable answers and all are evoked by the experience and inspiration for the highly coveted colorway.

Take a closer look at all the colorways at nikelebron.net.

"Starry Night" Designed By Artist Vincent Van Gogh

“Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh is one of the premiere images of impressionist art and is part of the permanent collection at the MoMA in New York City. The piece is a vision of color that makes a seamless transition from canvas to audience.

The darkness of the night seems to dominate the image and the indigo tonality of the piece sets a somber tone which echoes the cool feeling of night. The color carries an emotional charge and darkens the peripheral vision of the viewer to make the piece that much more enthralling. The bright hues of the varying yellows, oranges and whites of the stars serve a as complements to the varying hues of blue that compose the night. The simultaneous contrast of the brightly lit orange and yellow moon makes it shine that much brighter against the night sky which in turn recedes into further darkness from this contrast.

The value of the night sky gives it its wispy texture and the tinting and shading of the blue gives the appearance of a cool light blue wind sweeping through the quietness of the night sky. The curvilinear swirl of wind has settled near the vertical axis becoming one of the focal points of the painting. The other focal points lie on either side of the cool blue swirl of wind in the form of the emblazoned moon and the dark, nearly black tree rising from the bottom left. The three create a bilateral asymmetry proportionately, but in respect to their colors they all balance eachother out and achieve equilibrium. The imposing size of the tree in the foreground is a dark mass that is balance by the brightness of the moon. The warm moon isn’t overpowered by the dark tree and vice versa. The swirling high-value wind is neutral between the two and the juxtaposition of the three provides a gradient that the eye can transition through as it explores the painting. The dark tree brings the eye to the town nestled in the valley and the church steeple brings it back up to the winds that flow in its legato rhythm to the moon and the stars and back into the secondary coloring of the hill line that harmonizes with the rest of the piece.

“Starry Night” is a revelation of serenity thanks to its cool and calm color scheme and naturally flowing lines. Only the brush of Van Gogh could create such a masterpiece and it will continue to awe and inspire all who take the time to understand the eccentricities of the painting and the artist.

"Harm" Designed By Artist Alex Pardee

“Harm” the rabbit is a three dimensional creation of one of the creatures spawned from the pen of the gifted artist Alex Pardee.

The plush itself is composed of mainly the same material, cotton. The cotton takes on completely different textures due to the treatment of the fabric and in turn present completely different visual experiences. The blue half of the plush is a smooth, velvety blue that not only looks soft to the eye, but is soft to the touch. This smooth, calming blue is contrasted by the rough appearance of the sickening green that visually has the properties of a rough brillo pad but in reality is just as soft as the smooth blue side. The matted green locks play with the light creating contrasting values resulting in a deeper and fuller appearance than its smooth blue counterpart which is mostly monotone from its flat texture.

The smooth blue represents a calm, resigned depression while the rougher green conveys anxiety and illness. Both create a tension that appears literally as ripped seams exploding with stuffing. The turmoil of the conflicting surface has brought forth the underpinnings of what lies beneath. The white stuffing is a transition between the contrasting textures and lies in between in respects to its own texture and creates a progression from one to the other.

The visual texture tricks the eye into perceiving the tactile experience as such when in fact it may be different. The illusion is one of the mind created by the artist's manipulation of the elements and isn’t realized until physically experienced. The subtle changes in texture drastically change how we interpret the colors and fabric and enable the creation to have emotion and a feeling of its own before it is ever picked up.

"Log Cabin Quilt" From The Sandra McPherson Collection

This is another quilt from the exhibit “African-American Quilts”, courtesy of the collections of Sandra McPherson and Avis C. Robinson, at The Nelson Art Gallery at Hart Hall on the University of California Davis campus.

The “Log Cabin Quilt” reminds me of a log cabin. The concentric squares that radiate from the focal point convey a feeling of structure and security. The four focal points’ proximity to eachother creates one focal point and they also resemble a window, further adding to the log cabin comparison of the quilt. The simple pattern of the concentric squares carries from these four focal points until they become the focal point of a square and the pattern repeats on a larger scale. Each smaller square is constructed of different materials which each have its own color and texture which gives each square its own personality, like separate rooms in a cabin that unify to make it one home.

The two most outer vertical and horizontal lines on the right side of the quilt run off the quilt and give the sense that the squares continue outside the perimeter of the quilt and encapsulate the viewer within its safe, straight, sensible lines. The alternating rhythm of the black and white lines that compose the concentric squares contrast with the focal point of mixed color squares which can represent the dichotomy of the social times in which it was constructed.

The value contrast of the black and white squares also contribute to an illusion of depth in that the concentric squares seem to get deeper as they get smaller even though it is a flat, two-dimensional piece. It draws the eyes further into the center to see more of the four inner squares which unify to create one focal point. These squares draw the eye further to what may actually be the intended focal point, a small red square situated at the very center of the quilt, but is to small in scale to the rest of the patterns to catch the eye right away.

Line and pattern come together to create a “safety” blanket not only in design but the psychological sense of sane and predictable rhythm through line and pattern.

"Piano Keys" From The Avis C. Robinson Collection

The quilt pictured is from the exhibit “African-American Quilts”, courtesy of the collections of Sandra McPherson and Avis C. Robinson, at The Nelson Art Gallery at Hart Hall on the University of California Davis campus.

This quilt in particular stood out amongst the rest due to its vivid and asymmetrical coloring. Upon taking in the whole, it appears as a smooth flat surface of vertically arranged color. This rhythm of vertical strips of cloth creates a paneling effect that visually smoothes out the tactile texture of the wrinkly cloth. Only upon closer inspection of the parts that assemble the whole can the real texture of the cloth and the properties of the different dyes in the cotton be seen.

The vertical lines, which are strips of dyed cotton, create the rhythm of the quilt. The focal point lies slightly to the right of the vertical axis. The red acts as a buffer between the dark and the light and aides in the transition between the two. The red simultaneously reverberates to either side in different hues and “bleeds” down the quilt, drawing the eye all around the piece. The bottom of the quilt is light and airy with varying hues of yellow and other complimentary colors. The quilt seems predominantly yellow, which it is, but it is balanced by the darkness that settles above it in the shades of black and various blues. The asymmetrical vertical coloring is well balanced due to the visual weight garnered by the contrasting colors. The darker colors are heavier and draw the eye more while the yellows are very light and would be overpowered if the colors were equally distributed throughout the quilt. The heavy colors draw the eye to the top where they find the focal point of the medial red that then draws the eyes down the rest of the quilt. A very colorful and emotional journey, psychologically speaking.

The quilt is quite alluring and intriguing. It is a well balanced vision of color and rhythm that is not just a functionally warm quilt, but a visually warm presentation of design and craft.

Jimi Hendrix Poster Designed By Artist Gunther Kieser

Have you ever been experienced…in design? If not, one glance at this poster created by Gunther Kieser for Jimi Hendrix’s 1969 performance in Stuttgart, Germany will. The poster is a lush and brilliantly colored enigmatic masterpiece that is still selling prints to this day.

The scale of Jimi Hendrix is larger than life as his gaze and signature afro fill the piece and become the focal point. From his psychedelically colored face at the center there is a radial balance of vibrantly colored guitar and amp wires plugging into (or out of) his head that appear to jump off the two dimensional surface.

The vivacious curves of the fluid wires provide excellent continuation and give the illusion that the wires continue off the poster and could perhaps plug into your head to create not only a musical but psychological connection with the viewer. The erratic rhythms of the wires would seem unsettling if it were only one, but the repeating effect of all the wires twisting and turning from the thoughts and feelings of Jimi Hendrix’s mind create a unity and let the viewer feel at ease in this chaotic yet serene environment. The wires also serve to frame Jimi Hendrix’s face further emphasizing the focal point.

This image has evaded slippage from its original meaning throughout the years since its creation and will only continue to gain admiration and capture the eye of all who gaze upon its surreal nature. It is a truly original and cerebral piece that has become a classic image of a bygone era. That is the power of design. You have been experienced.

The Air Jordan XI By Designer Tinker Hatfield

The Air Jordan XI (11) is considered the most aesthetically pleasing basketball shoe, or athletic shoe, ever created. The shoe is highly coveted by collectors and sneaker enthusiasts and considered the greatest Air Jordan shoe of all time. The shoe is a unity of elegance and to this day has no equal.

The use of materials blend naturally with the smooth flowing lines of the shoe providing continuation. This enables each material, from the non-traditional nylon mesh and contemporary full grain leather upper, to the classic patent leather encapsulating the foot from toe to heel, to the innovative phylon midsole and clear rubber outsole, and the pioneering carbon fiber shank plate, to cascade into eachother seamlessly. This shoe is where the old shoe of history met the new shoe of the future.

The introduction of the carbon fiber shank plate is what Michael Jordan credits to being able to extend his career. The plate alleviated pressure on his knees and some form of a carbon fiber shank plate has been in every numbered Air Jordan since.

The use of a perennially classic material from men’s formal footwear, patent leather, on a basketball shoe was unheard of and a daring choice and is what has garnered the most attention since it was originally released in 1995.

One of these materials or innovative features showcased alone on a shoe would be novel. But this shoe articulated all of them into one shoe that would forever change how basketball shoes were viewed and how they were designed. The materials create an asymmetrical balance in that each piece could be a focal point in its own right but they all create a tension that balance the shoe and hold it together visually. Any one part of the shoe doesn’t make it special. What makes it special is all of the components coming together in the right places, at the right time, all propelled by the genius of Tinker Hatfield and the ability of Michael Jordan. The inspiration and mystique of the shoe and what it represents and has become is so much more than the physical shoe or any one thing that comprises it.

Tinker Hatfield had introduced style and fashion through innovation to the otherwise utilitarian world of the basketball shoe. It has never been the same since.

"Tinker made them shine.

Mike made them fly.

You made them iconic."
-Message Inside Air Jordan XI Space Jam 2009 Packaging-

Take a closer look with the video by sneakernews.com from YouTube.