What the two settings and their corresponding designs say to a contemporary viewer, however, is mostly based on what we associate with the two styles.   Early 60′s suburban style that referenced even earlier American style, probably always seemed conservative and comfortable.  Somewhere along the line, however, the spirit of mid-century design, and what that style represented, became tangled with sophistication – so much so that its industrial roots and intended easy accessibility are no longer part of the story.

This half-hour Chevrolet / General Motors sponsored “infomercial” (the Jam Handy Organization, 1958) is a great little overview of the range of American industrial design from the late 1950s.  Watching it makes you wonder what exactly happened to the exuberance, optimism and trust in design that was so universally shared that a major American manufacturer would sponsor the short Technicolor film and play it in movie theaters across the country.

So, unplug your Ericofon, pull up a Tulip Chair, dim the Rotoflex Pendant Lamp and enjoy the design.  Then, to jolt yourself back to 2012, watch this Chrysler Superbowl commercial to see how far we…  haven’t come – and how much we need our mojo back.

Men and women who design, you know what you need to do.

Read more about the film here.

© Markus Horak, 2012

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Over the last 20+ years, companies like Adobe, Autodesk, Avid and Maxon have helped redefine the realm of possibility for video producers and motion designers – with After Effects, Photoshop, Cinema 4D and Media Composer, among many others, being relied on for even the simplest project undertakings.  They’ve helped make our jobs easier – and, without them at our disposal, much of what we do now would be technically impossible or financially impractical (which is the same as DOA).

A question to consider, however, is if this same software – this seemingly bottomless resource of ever-evolving apps that we depend so heavily on to produce our projects – is also squelching our creativity and ability to innovate.  To put it another way, does using software make us better at what we do by enabling us to more fully leverage our creative skills – or, does it allow us to easily generate viable but unoriginal solutions?

Does it matter?

The answer to the first question lies somewhere in between – a genius idea, brilliantly executed, is what we aim for – but, more often, a practical solution, professionally executed, is where we land.  And, the easier it is to achieve “professional” results, the less important it is to develop ideation skills – the less important it is to be creative – the less obvious it is when software is doing the real work.

Yes, it does matter.  It matters from an educational perspective, making it more important than ever to focus on ideas over software and technical skills.  It matters from a branding perspective, in that copying and recycling of older ideas is easier than ever – making techniques and visual styles less proprietary.  It matters from a technical perspective when the popular developers have no desire or financial incentive to generate new products that could negatively affect their sales or compete with their current products.

And it matters from a creative perspective – because, eventually, designers may be little more than highly trained recyclers.  The tools that once blew us away by making video look like film, or pixels like paint strokes, are now the only “paint” and the closest thing to film that some designers have ever used.

According to Alvy Ray Smith in an overview for Microsoft Corporation in 1997, digital paint systems can be traced back as far as 1969.  Since that time, developers have invented a myriad of ways to mimic, and improve on, traditional art, craft and design and production skills.   Originally, their progress was judged by the software’s ability to do just that.  Now, however, the effectiveness of a particular release of software is assessed on its ability to elaborate on those earlier introduced functions – the more nuanced, the better.  Big and innovative ideas have been replaced by an endless rollout of updates, and the complexity of design software continues to compound.

3D concepts - worked out sans-computer. Software can make illustrating complex shapes less time consuming, but the results are rarely as interesting to look at.

In the not-so-long-ago early-ish days of motion design as we know it, software was proprietary and inseparably tied to clunky and expensive hardware.  Getting an upgrade meant purchasing the latest model, like a car in a showroom, provided you had the five or six-figure budget necessary to do so.  A handful of companies in New York and Los Angeles ruled the roost and the majority of their work came from the networks or cable companies whose offices were a delivery-convenient block or two away.

Innovation and change came to the industry quickly.  Within a few years, vector graphics, non-linear editing, digital compositing, desktop design & animation software and the web changed the way we did everything.  Every couple of years, in fact, something came along that caused a sea change, overturning the industry and forever altering the playing field.

Innovation hasn’t stopped, of course, and new products and tools are released, seemingly every day.  Software continues to evolve and new technologies pop up year after year.  What has changed is the way these tools are applied, and by whom.  In the last twenty years, the most prominent development in design software has been in its shift away from overall accessibility.  Rather than enabling artists and designers to broaden their range of capability with minimal effort, the focus has been placed on ever more specialized and idiosyncratic tasks, requiring advanced training for increasingly technical (read less creative) users.

Sharing stories recently with another early adopter, of sorts, the conversation evolved to a guessing game of technological advancements on the horizon.  It reminded me of something my fellow design students and I used to do (back in the day), which was to toss around ideas for products we guessed would be introduced to the market forthwith.  In the spirit of those pre-real-world brainstorms, I would like to take a stab at the innovations I think will be necessary to revolutionize design the way computers and software once did.

Drum roll please…  First, hardware that incorporates the full range of hand motion and accurately reflects a variety of physical tools used for creating marks, textures, patterns and 3D shapes.  As long as we continue retrofitting essentially the same keyboard, mouse and tablet with software that references itself as a measure of advancement, we will be stuck in a never-ending loop of increasingly technically enhanced repetition.

Next, concept check.  Like spell check and grammar check, concept check could scan the web and media databases to help designers and producers (and clients) identify pattern similarities, overlapping imagery and outright plagiarism.

And third, software with a completely visual and verbal interface to remove any technical barriers that might limit its full range of potential users.   Think of it as SIRI meets HAL 9000 - combined with hardware that functions as intuitively as a hammer or a ball of clay, this type of user experience would help creativity to, once again, replace technology in the driver’s seat.

In other words, we need better tools so that we can focus more on ideas and solutions and less… on our tools.

© Markus Horak, 2012

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“Spectacularly creative” people in many fields are often introverted, independent, individualistic AND not joiners by nature, says Cain.  So, they can’t work or learn in groups, can’t collaborate productively, shouldn’t be a part of a team and must work in privacy and without distraction.  Working in offices with shared space, being asked to contribute to discussions or attend meetings, she writes, will lead to their suffering from higher blood pressure, stress, the flu and exhaustion.

Oh, and if they’re interrupted while they work, they make 50 percent more mistakes and take twice as long to finish!

Ms. Cain, according to the article, has a forthcoming book on “the power of introverts” and much of her article cites research collected for the book and excerpts from biographies to back up her premise.

Of the many comments posted, as well as with the numerous retweets, links and reposts to sites like LinkedIn that crossed my path as the article made the social rounds, the consensus was in overwhelming agreement with Cain.

“Totally agree,” was one that caught my eye immediately, mainly because a former boss and Creative Director posted it.  Others shared stories of pointless meetings, unproductive brainstorms, decisions made by “bean counters,” inept management and the general suffering and soul-sucking terribleness that apparently pervades their workplaces – because they have to work with others.

To the Editor:

Susan Cain makes one valid point in that creative people often prefer to work in solitude.  Being a “creative person” myself, and having worked for many years alongside other designers, writers, programmers, directors, editors, animators and fine artists, I concur that we “creatives” aren’t always the most social lot.

Cain uses quotes like “without great solitude, no serious work is possible,” by Picasso, and takes advice from Apple founder Steve Wozniak to “work alone… not on a committee.  Not on a team.”  She even hauls in loner hall-of-famers like Moses, Jesus and Buddha to show that great thinking is a solitary process.

The problem is that she then makes a giant leap to conclude that teamwork, collaboration, classroom education and brainstorming are essentially useless – even bad for business.   Creative high achievers are not joiners or “group thinkers,” she suggests – they function at a higher level and shouldn’t be held back by the tedium of workplace interaction.

That Cain is charmed by a romantic idea of the quiet genius, working without constrictions like schedules, meetings, budgets… and reality is obvious.  What’s not so obvious is whether she has any insight to offer companies that employ or wish to employ and retain innovative employees.

A good starting point might be for her to recognize that all work environments can be adjusted to improve productivity and nurture innovation – however, focusing solely on the needs of “creative employees” isn’t the way to do it.  Companies are teams, and teams have schedulers and “bean counters,” in addition to creatives.  And, not all “creatives” are created equal, for that matter.

Collaboration is about problem solving together – not creativity-killing groupthink – and being able to see problems from all perspectives is essential to solving them.

Markus Horak, 2012

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Design for the elderly – or, “design for my future self,” to put it in a way that may seem more relevant to some – is a topic that I have been interested in for many years and have written previously about in this blog.  It’s also a topic that doesn’t seem to get nearly the amount of attention that it deserves.

Click here to check out the site, preview the book – and see a completely fresh take on what “retirement living” can mean (provided that the funds are available).  The project has rekindled my interest in this area of design and introduced me to a new term, “aging in place.”  It’s poetic and simple, but says so much about how I, and I’m sure many others, would like to experience their later life… however far that may be down the road.

During the summer season, the parking lots are full, and no-vacancy signs buzz on and off along the strip.

In Maine, however, the beach season is short and traffic is all but gone by late September.  Pools are drained,  plastic furniture is stored away, shuffleboards and bocce courts are covered and knickknack shops and pancake houses close for the winter.

Maybe it’s the extreme contrast between high and low season, but the effect is palpably melancholic, eerily quiet and, in my opinion, the best time to spend a day exploring.  I took these pictures in October – wandering around, peeking into shop windows, imagining histories and completely enjoying the off off… off season-ness of it.

Nothing says summer’s over in quite the same way – and there’s not a more compelling reason to drive along the coast in the fall than the fact that no one else seems to want to be there at that time… except me.

See you next year.

© Markus Horak, 2011

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All businesses evolve.  Trends pass, technology eases some tasks and complicates others, economies shrink and grow, and new markets emerge – while others disappear.

Businesses adapt accordingly, or they fade away.

"video" clothing & holographic projections - future marketing and media design challenges?

Over the past 20 years, I’ve had the right-place, right-time advantage of being at the center of some of the most iconic brand transformations, product introductions and technology shifts in the media and entertainment industry.  Working for a series of innovative branding and design firms put me in a front row seat, then on stage, and eventually in the conductor’s chair for cable channel launches, identity overhauls and high-profile commercial campaigns. I’ve been on board for countless equipment and software “firsts,” and navigated through waves of techniques, methodologies and theories before they were scrapped, replaced and then scrapped again.

Change has been, and will always be, at the heart of this industry.

Media and entertainment design, packaging and promotion are, on a very basic level, window dressing.  A big part of what we do is to take our product (channels, shows, news, events, movies, music, etc.) and display it in ways that catch the attention of passers-by on the busy, worldwide, multi-platform sidewalk.

From a strategic perspective, that dressing is also the visual representation of market insight, research and forward thinking that comes together in one big, dimensional and tangible brand message for the viewer.

The broadcast media industry, of course, is changing again.  Companies are now contemplating the best way to negotiate with consumers whom, thanks to the internet and social networks, refuse to accept their news and entertainment served up in traditional formats or on set schedules.  While the basic structure of movies, television shows and video hasn’t changed substantially, the way they’re watched has.

This latest digital / cultural / behavioral / distribution upheaval is still playing out.  And, as traditional media companies cobble together and solidify their responses to it, a new crop of competitors is free to wade into the mix with tailored-from-scratch solutions that nimbly straddle both old and new.  And, viewers continue to do whatever works best for them.

Before Facebook, Google and YouTube, et al, web-based businesses mostly competed for hits with gimmicky graphics and print & broadcast advertising – acting like traditional media companies, only with online distribution.  It took the “dot com” bubble to burst, and a little ingenuity to happen, before the real potential – the social connectivity – of the web could emerge and take hold.  Now that the web has stepped out of the shadow of its older siblings, traditional media companies are scrambling to evolve their businesses to deal with the competition.

Digital-vs-traditional content and its distribution, packaging, promotion and market share woes are only the beginning of the story.  As much as the internet has morphed into the business, entertainment and communications juggernaut that it is today, it’s still just an awkward teenager with plenty of growing to do.

Further, we’ve barely begun to see what advances new hardware might usher in.  Who says, for example, that developers of consumer products must remain confined to the limits of rectangular film or video aspect ratios just because that’s what works best for television or the printed page?

Which brings us back to change and adaptation.

On a recent episode of The Office, the paper and office supply company Dunder Mifflin introduced its latest offering, the Sabre Pyramid, a tablet to end all tablets.  Weighing in at a substantial three pounds, this triangular titan also comes with sexy accessories, including a battery pack and memory booster to supplement the device’s “50L” capacity.

It’s a wonderfully snarky jab at the keystone cop response by every other non-iPad tablet manufacturer in the market right now (the jury is still out on Kindle’s Fire).  A comparison, though, could be made to much of traditional media’s response to the challenges brought on by digital platforms and an entirely new consumer paradigm.  We’ve watched the music industry flail for years, printed newspapers and magazines near extinction and even highly successful “new” companies bumble ridiculously with their digital strategies – can you say Netflix?

Apple’s iPad and i-everything success comes from being willing to go in completely new directions, then, from lining up great products behind impeccable design and marketing.  Easily enough said – and, based on the examples above alone, not so easily done.

A good starting point, however, for media companies and their marketing teams, would be to embrace the potential of future technologies and focus less on how to control the havoc they may wreak on existing business models and strategies.

Recycling and reacting solely to what the other companies are doing will always be an outdated plan.

© Markus Horak, 2011

You may also be interested in the following posts:

> Designing For An Alternate Reality – All Aboard The Transmedia Train

> Six Tips for Hitting a Design Brainstorm Bull’s-Eye

> The Skinny on Briefs – How to Write Creative Direction for Designers

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Cathedral Woods on Monhegan island, Maine, is a naturally spiritual place.  Densely packed with soaring pines, it covers a lush and wild stretch of the island and remains cool and serenely quiet throughout the day.

For decades, children have built small “houses” out of twigs, bark and fallen leaves that are intended to shelter the forest’s alleged sprite and fairy populations.  The houses are creatively tucked into nooks, woven into low hanging branches, shored up alongside protruding roots and even hidden in stumps and behind rocks.

It’s a swell tradition, but one that also has its detractors – namely those that object to the aspiring architects’ urge to build newer, flashier and more blinged-out abodes.  The fairy housing boom has unfortunately seen its share of unscrupulous contractors who disregard local zoning rules (translation, they leave litter behind, build new rather than renovate, and often kill living plants for their creations… just like in the real world).

While photographing these structures this summer, I thought about how they must reflect the homes and neighborhoods of the kids who built them.  Pine cone paved driveways divide adjoining tracts along the main path, and countless other small details give them all a touch of individuality without ever straying too far from the norm.  It’s a mini-suburb – of a big forest – on a tiny island.

© Markus Horak, 2011

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This brief story is about trust in information.  Trust in what we know and what we think we know.  Trust that we are prepared.  And, trust that what we learn is correct, sound and adequate.

I have always been fascinated and somewhat entertained by instructional drawings – the more dire the situation depicted, the more interested I tend to be.  Despite the potentially lifesaving information they provide, safety guides, like airplane seat cards and “conspicuously posted” Heimlich maneuver posters, primarily catch my attention for a single reason – they’re morbidly humorous.

In an effort to boil intricate details or complex choreography down to a series of easily comprehensible steps, instructional illustrators often unintentionally over-simplify their drawings.  The results are either dreamy or cartoonish, and fail to convey the severity of the situation or task at hand.

From my perspective, this seems especially true of vintage or foreign instructional illustrations for which new wisdom or methodology has replaced outdated techniques – or, where printed instructions in other languages add to, rather than alleviate, any lingering confusion.

A number of years ago, I happened to be at an outdoor antiques market picking through a pile of mostly terrible drawings and watercolors, when I came across a small stack of black and white gouache paintings with markings that suggest they were intended for print.  I was immediately captivated by what seemed to be a very contemporary series of stylized and minimalist depictions of hand-to-hand battle.  Each drawing was titled in pencil with a name like “Stop a Body Kick” or “Disarm Opponent With Gun.”

“Block Attack (Dagger or Club)” stood out in particular for its subject’s surreal lack of emotion and zombie-like movement.  In it, an unenthusiastic Theodore Roosevelt lookalike with dagger in hand, shuffles toward an unarmed man.  Obviously, the quick-thinking would-be-victim has been trained in self-defense as evidenced by his ability to halt the attacker with a single outstretched arm.  We can only imagine the accompanying text, which likely assured trainees that this was a perfectly sound approach to dealing with lumbering knife wielders.

There’s no way to know what manual or guidebook the series was intended for, so I’ll assume it was military training, based on the identical tailored uniforms the two men are wearing.  There’s also no way to know if the men who learned from these illustrations ever had to fend off attackers or if they were adequately prepared when it happened.

Perhaps just feeling confident in their preparedness was preparation enough.

This painting is my inspiration for the seventh in a series of curious anonymous stories.

© Markus Horak, 2011

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Learning to see the full spectrum of color – and understanding how individual shades combine to create new tones and hues – are two of the most basic skills a designer or artist will ever learn.

Beginning with the universally experienced elementary school tempera paint mistake – commonly known as icky brown – we all gradually improve and expand on our mixing skills.  Some of us even master that purple we were going for in the first place.

Being more than a few years beyond those early lessons, I’ve learned a thing or two about color – and continue to do so however and whenever I can.  I’ve written about traveling with an eye for color, even traveling specifically to seek out new colors.  I pay attention to color use from past decades and am much more aware of how they can change from season to season and at different times of day.  I am very interested in how colors affect mood, habit, appetite and even memory – and I’m fascinated by how culture plays into our understanding of, and relationship to them.

A new study, conducted by Columbia University, recently caught my attention.  Researchers concluded that, since the advent of search engines, we have reorganized how we handle memory storage.  Our brains increasingly rely on the internet, much the same way we depend on the memories of friends and family, to hold onto facts and details that are important to us.  We simply choose to forget things we are confident we can dig up again online.

There was a time, not too long ago, when a trip to a public library’s image collection marked the beginning of almost any job requiring a visual reference.  You’d pop in, riffle through hundreds or thousands of printed photos and mounted pages clipped from magazines.  If you were lucky, you’d stumble upon something close to what you had in mind – sometimes even exactly what you wanted.

Now, of course, a simple web search brings up hundreds or even thousands of the exact images you were looking for.  Need a photo showing which way a Thonet chair is bent or how many wrinkles a Shar Pei has?  You’ll find it many times over.

Thinking about this in terms of color reference, it’s safe to assume that most designers now use the web as their primary resource.  Hop online, search for French farmhouse, 1950′s office, or tropical rainforest, for example, and voilà… instant palette.

I would argue, however, that, like flavors, colors need to be experienced in order to be understood.  Seeing a Mediterranean blue actually in the Mediterranean, with the sky, light and surroundings in balance – as opposed to, say, seeing that same garish blue in Milwaukee – is a bit like comparing summer tomatoes to winter tomatoes.  If you’ve never experienced a freshly picked Beefsteak or heirloom in August, you might think a January version is a perfect substitute.

With this in mind, I keep a camera at close reach and take countless shots that I can refer to, or draw from on future projects.  Taking my own photos allows me to remember exactly what the color was about and why it caught my eye in the first place.

I’m happy to not have to remember visual details of design elements or to have to leave my desk to find them – for that, I have Google to thank.  But, until the web can store mood, experience and context, I’ll keep my own color references.

Below is a small sample of shots I’ve taken in various places over the past year, arranged by color – hot pinks, not-so-icky warm earth tones, and cool blues.

© Markus Horak, 2011

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INCORPORATING FOUND TEXTURES AND PATTERNS INTO MOTION GRAPHIC PROJECTS – ADDING DEPTH AND PERSONALITY IN THE PROCESS.

For years now, and probably since I started working as a graphics and motion designer, I have been drawn to unusual textures and patterns.  Specifically, I have become a connoisseur of the types of vintage and antique surfaces that can’t be realistically duplicated by even the most sophisticated software.

It seems to me that the more advanced computer programs become at generating slick, reflective and transparent surfaces, and the easier and more affordable these programs become, the less variety we see in design across television and the web.

Textured and patterned surfaces take time and skill to collect, coordinate and present in pleasing arrangements – and it’s simply far easier to create “hi-tech” and polished looking graphics than it is to work in a more tactile direction.

I’m not suggesting that all designs should incorporate complex found textures and patterns, but it would be refreshing to see them implemented more frequently in network branding, commercials and show titles.

Truly memorable graphics are always those that enhance and reinforce the mood and content of what they promote, and do so in a fresh and novel way.  If impeccably lit, transparent and shiny surfaces, choreographed splashes of liquids, highly polished and flaming parts of mystery machinery, or fly-throughs of glowing letters in deep space accomplish this, then I’m in favor of their use (sort of).  If not, I’d prefer to see something more original – something that shows at least a modicum of creative stretch on the part of the design team.

Recently, a few articles, blog posts and web sites have popped up that are dedicated to the “new” trend of “tactile design.”  Apparently, a group of designers has become so disenchanted with the “soulless” and “cold” look of contemporary digital techniques and graphics, that they have started a rebellion of sorts.

The interesting twist this time around is that the newly invigorated movement toward “tactile design” seems to primarily be coming from young designers that have never known design without software.  They presumably have taken the most current 2D / 3D design and animation software for a spin and discovered its many limitations.  Instead of pushing the software to go further, they’ve stepped away from their desks or out of their studios and are now extolling the virtues of… found design.

Hallelujah.

In this spirit of tactile design, I’ve included frames below from a recently completed project that incorporated a mix of over 100 found textures and patterns.  Plaids, herringbones, denims and faded florals were mixed with tea stained, scribbled and age-vignetted papers to create the final animation.

You can read more about the project and watch the final piece here.

© Markus Horak, 2011

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