I love everything about this from the unique and eco-friendly underground design to the beautiful, natural materials — all with a modern aesthetic.

Tons more pictures here.

I, too, grew up drawing and everyone always expected me to be an artist. I drew constantly as a kid, right up through high school where my ability was known enough that my teachers didn’t mind if I drew in class—I always managed to follow the lesson anyway. (I’ve always thought it was some kind of hyper creative state that allowed me to stay fully on-task in the class while drawing).

Drawing was my thing. It started with copying Garfield characters out of books (I still really admire the line work in Jon Davis’ comics). By middle school, I was drawing my own original comics for the school newspaper (typically written by my best friend, Josh Glider). Finally, in high school I took all the art electives they would let me and got a bit more commercial, drawing mascots for the school and some of the on-campus clubs. I still have some of the t-shirts.

Drawing was the way that an average athlete and above-average nerd gained a little corner of popularity both with kids and adults. It certainly was an easy way to make friends and impress people. But I was always annoyed by the people that insisted that they could not draw, dismissing what I could do as some naturally born talent. Did they not realize that I could draw because I worked my ass off at it? Did they not know I drew ALL THE TIME? Perhaps, not as elequently as Siracusa I realized that there was more to it. I wasn’t blessed with some kind of superhuman hand-eye coordination or the subtlety of gesture to shade carefully. No, what I was given was a very critical eye and a yearn for realism.

As John described, I, too, saw some of this manifest with my toys and interactions with adults. Toys were never realistic enough. I hated that my toy Millennium Falcon was so squat and dumpy compared to the lean and elegant model in the movies. Why did all of my action figures stand as if at attention instead of in an action pose? Why was the illustration of the Transformer on the package so dynamic and the toy so dull? Didn’t anyone else notice this stuff?

I had the same problem with adults growing up. They always seemed so imprecise and got things wrong that really mattered. Like mixing up Star Wars and Star Trek (or Star Track, ugh). They couldn’t remember what night the TV show was on, or what day the new movie came out, or that character’s name on that show. I since realize that adults probably had a lot more on their minds than I did as a child, but it still annoys me even when I slip up now.

No, Siracusa nailed it. The thing that I struggled with (continue to struggle with), the real ability I was blessed with, the thing that made me an artist (ok, designer) is a critical eye. Not that this doesn’t come without it’s drawbacks. I love this passage, in particular:

The drawbacks are obvious. Knowing what’s wrong with something (or thinking that you do, which, for the purposes of this discussion, should be considered the same thing) does a fat lot of good if you lack the skills to correct it. And thinking that you know what’s wrong with everything requires significant impulse control if you want to avoid pissing off everyone you meet.

But much worse than that, it means that everything you ever create appears to you as an accumulation of defeats. “Here’s where I gave up trying to get that part right and moved on to the next part.” Because at every turn, it’s apparent to you exactly how poorly executed your work-in-progress is, and how far short it will inevitably fall when completed. But surrender you must, at each step of the process, because the alternative is to never complete anything—or to never start at all.

This is why it is hard to be satisfied with my work—there is always a flaw. And knowing what is wrong with everything certainly has made personal and professional relationships challenging at times. But it has probably had an even greater effect on my work, so for that I am thankful.

So what’s the point of writing about this? I’m not sure. It might just be to give John Siracusa a high-five and a “right-on”. It is pretty rare and cool to read something that you can identify with so deeply. Oh, and it also appears that I share one more trait with John: verbosity.

If you are an internet person in the Oklahoma City area, Refresh is a great way to meet and get to know people that do what we do around here—and there are more of us than you might think!

Update

For those of you interested, the audio podcast version of the evening has been posted at RefreshOKC.org.

Similarly, with non-viewable attachments (such as the ZIP archives in my example) GMail offers a “Download all attachments” link. This packages all of the files into a single ZIP archive and downloads them all at once. What is more, GMail manages to intelligently name the new ZIP file based on its contents. Really smart!

The product was created by HP as an answer to Walmart’s design challenge, challenge which asked electronics manufacturers to produce a product that would reduce environmental impact. HP’s solution won the top prize in reducing 97% of the typical waste from laptop packaging. It really is a shame that more products don’t ship in similar “packages”. How many things, especially electronics, do we buy and then buy a bag, cover, or other protection for? I’d love to see this trickle into other products. When did we become a nation that needs everything we buy to hermetically sealed?

Javascript and AJAX-style effects are everywhere on the web, but thanks to a new batch of easy-to-use libraries, sophisticated animation effects can be used by designers with no programming or Flash needed. Tailored to the accomplished designer with limited programming skills, this session intends to practically show how to tap into the power of “write less, do more” Javascript libraries. This is a practical, how-to session that will benefit a wide-range of designers.

It’s something I’ve wanted to present for awhile now. Many designers have jumped into XHTML and CSS but think that they need to be a “programmer” to use JavaScript. Many of these libraries are very accessible and even geared toward designers who lack programming skills. The session will focus on showing designers how easy it is to incorporate sophisticated visual effects into their website designs.

I’ve not previously attended Tulsa TechFest but I’m looking forward to the event. Hope to see some of you there.

Just spotted ShoeGuru, an online shoe store that has one of the nicest interfaces I have seen for shopping online. The site features a beautiful, subtle backdrop for really nice images of the products. The list view has only the essential information: the image of the shoe, the price, and the name of the model. The display isn’t burdened with categories, item numbers, reviews, ratings, “digg this”, and all of the other things that typically compete for your shopping attention.

The individual product detail page is even better showing a large photo of the shoe. The description, pricing and cart tools fade into the background, though still readable, making the shoe image really stand out.

Sure, this solution might not work for a company with significantly more or diverse products. But it is a great solution for what it is and a compelling offering of a great looking line of shoes.

As I wrote previously, ESPN page 2 writer, Paul Lukas, recently proposed a contest to design the uniforms for Oklahoma City’s yet unnamed NBA basketball franchise. I immedially whipped up a concept based on a little spoof piece I had done a few days earlier. The results were posted to ESPN.com today along with a nice mention of my entry. You can see it and the full list here in Lukas’s column:

Meet the Oklahoma City uni finalists

I have two kids under 11 years old, so it is a given that I see more than my fair share of movies geared toward children. And really, as a designer there is a lot to enjoy in many of these films even for adults—especially if you love design, art or animation. What is more, there has been a sort of mini-Renaissance in this genre of kids movies. Many of these movies come from books such as the Harry Potter films, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Bridge to Terabithia. They have a lot in common thematically (modern fantasy), feature tween-age protagonists, and share a similar visual aesthetic. And they also happen to be pretty entertaining.

When I was a kid there were tons of great movies in a similar vein such as Flight of the Navigator, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and The Neverending Story to name a few. These were imaginative stories not driven by pre-existing material or toy sales that really inspired me as a child. The newer movies seem to be a spiritual continuation of this greatness, albeit with much improved special effects.

With that said, it came as no surprise to me that The Spiderwick Chronicles was another enjoyable romp through a childhood fantasy. What did comes as a surprise was a bit of creature design that really blew me away. The scene featuring the fairy sprites was just a few seconds of the film but I wished it had lasted much longer. Sprites in the movie were depicted as small creatures that moved much like insects but were anatomically like plants such that they could easily remain unseen in a bed of flowers. They were colorful, imaginative, and sort of floated lithely on the air. Despite this they were designed in such a way as to feel very plausible (at least as plausible as fairies can feel) in a design that naturally follows the rules of our world, if only with a small injection of magic—far more believable than the other creatures in the film (though they were largely charming). I loved that this part of the movie was completely under-developed, in fact the sprites did not speak at all. They were left mysterious and with the audience wanting more.

Still, it was the design that really got my attention. As designers we are often asked to design as system or within a system. Even the most simple of visual communication interacts with a system of visual cues that recall language or other bits of many means of communication. So it is exciting to see this in other forms of design and creativity. I always have admired excellent design of life forms that either align with life on Earth or completely made-up worlds. I think Jim Hensen’s worlds such as in Labyrinth or The Dark Crystal are great examples. In fact, most of Hensen’s work shares a base aesthetic. But I’m equally turned-off when it is done poorly. For example, the bad guys in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films were very unappealing to me. They were, for the most, part too slimy, too detailed, and lacking any of the appealing design that nature provides. Even the ugliest creatures on earth have a sense of proportion and elegance that the LoTR crew never captured. Maybe that was the point of the design—that they appeared to be alien to nature— but that disagrees with the source material, and me. I like even my bad guys to be beautiful, like the demon character in Legend (pictured, though this is a much later action figure version. I could not find a decent still from the movie); still one of my favorites.

If you’ve missed Spiderwick or any of the movies mentioned, here they all come highly-recommended, at least from me. And there are more. What are your favorite movies in this vein?