Google recently teamed up with various artists, painters, cartoonists, dancers, designers, and other creators for a unique Artist in Residence program. Each artist was given the chance to work with Tilt Brush – a new virtual reality tool that let’s you draw and create in 3D space. The Google team worked closely with each artist to further develop the tool and ultimately better understand the potential of this new form of art creation. Step into your imagination
When the question of what will define 2017 comes up, the response most often includes words like “Trump” and “populism” and “division” and “anger.” “Green” — not so much. Yet if you believe the team at the Pantone Color Institute, which calls itself the “global color authority,” green will be everywhere in 2017. Not just any old green, of course: Pantone 15-0343, colloquially known as greenery, which is to say a “yellow-green shade that evokes the first days of spring.” Green with envy.
I shoot my own videos, take my own photos, write my own books, and design apps. Here are the creativity apps I used the most in 2016 to do all that and why. Creativity in your hands.
Art Peck, the CEO of Gap Inc., has had enough of creative directors. Gap eliminated the position in early 2015 and has been pushing instead for a decentralized design process where different teams create the designs for Gap and the brands it owns. This loosely organized, data-driven approach has benefited some of Gap’s biggest rivals, including Zara, but so far, it doesn’t seem to be working for Gap. After seeing the seventh straight quarter of falling sales, it’s now time to face the deeper issue. Not so black and white.
Andrew Dent, vice president of library and materials research at Material ConneXion, is like a sommelier. Presiding over the world's largest library of materials, his job is to listen to the requirements of his clients and come up with an innovative material that suits their needs. His level of obsession in this field is such that he makes Apple's Jonathan Ive, a fellow Brit, seem like he's never done his homework. Here, he identifies a handful of the cutting-edge materials that he thinks will be important to designers over the next few years. Flexible batteries, velcro metal, conductive inks, oh my.
Now, as television is trending toward ’80s-era creations like Stranger Things, The Americans, Halt and Catch Fire, and The Goldbergs, decorators are finding it increasingly difficult to fill their sets with gadgets that won’t cause nitpicking fans to froth at the mouth. It’s a very first-world Hollywood problem, but a fascinating one. One man's trash is TV's gold.
Think of the dusty pinks and faded blues in ads for popular products like the underwear brand Thinx, or the makeup company Glossier. Soft gradients have seeped into trendy web design. Then, earlier this year, Pantone broke with tradition to name not one but two shades for its color of the year. Rose Quartz and Serenity, apparently selected to speak to a more gender-fluid world, also served to solidify the trending pastel palette. If pastels weren't dominating consumer products before, they definitely are now. So why are all these pale tones coming on so strong? To predict the future of color, look back at the past.
If you've ever hankered for a T-shirt collection featuring classic, awful stock photos—like Happy senior couple piggybacking at the beach, or Firm handshake between business associates—then you're in luck. Try some Adobe Stock Apparel on for size. The idea was to emphasize how far the new images are from the old—by creating "a limited-edition clothing line giving a salute to the most infamous stock images creatives love to hate." Laughing woman eating healthy vegetable salad.
There is no company in the world that can design and engineer a smartphone the way Apple does. Therein lies the strange contradiction at the heart of Apple’s chief design officer Jonathan Ive’s accomplishments—seven generations of iPhone, and dozens more iPads, iMacs, MacBooks, and the Apple Watch. But in the age of the smartphone, there is very little industrial design left for us to get excited about. The smartphone itself is rapidly approaching its platonic form: A single, monolithic sheet of glass that simply delivers all the content you want, whenever you want it. If it's invisible, is it still a design?
GIFs are the Esperanto of our Internet culture, a semi-nonsensical, visual language that acts as a stand-in for everything from random thoughts and reactions to intricate art and instructions. GIFs live on our websites, blogs, emails, Slacks and messages and are as celebrated today as it was a decade ago. Like a Hallmark sentiment, when people care enough to send a message, they care enough to send the very best or most appropriate GIF. The gif that keeps on giving.
