laryn.kragtbakker.com blogs

They Structure How We See

laryn — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:37:08 +0000

"[We] must begin to see our houses, buildings, farms, businesses, energy technologies, transportation, landscapes, and communities in much the same way that we regard classrooms. In fact, they instruct us in more fundamental ways because they structure what we see, how we move, what we eat, our sense of time and space, how we relate to each other, our sense of security, and how we experience the particular places in which we live."

David Orr
The Nature of Design, quoted in "The Daily Asterisk" (Feb. 18, 2010)

Dordt Alumni in Design: Laryn Kragt Bakker

laryn — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:43:54 +0000

I am currently the featured on the Dordt College AIGA blog. See below for an excerpt or read the full article.

Open source software meets street art and paralysis: the EyeWriter

laryn — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:02:11 +0000

I found this to be a fascinating intersection of street art and open source software: "Low-cost, creative technology to enable graffiti writers and artists with paralysis to draw using only their eyes...Free and open source software for commercially available eye tracking devices...And DIY hardware and free software for users with only $50 and a computer."

"Ill-considered" Audi ad mocks people who care, then tries to sell them a car

laryn — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:44:01 +0000

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I have to wonder who Audi is targeting with this ad. Are they really mocking their target demographic and then trying to sell them a car? I suspect they are trying to target the people who haven't yet worked up the energy to ride their bike more often, who realize the environment is important and that they should be doing something about it, but all that they know in terms of alternatives are stereotypes (which Audi plays firmly into as they try to sell more cars, making people who choose other options look uncomfortable, inconvenienced, or dorky). Either way, I agree with @chrisbaskind that the ad is "ill-considered."

I'd love to see a parody of this ad along the following lines (I'm sure someone else could polish this more, but you get the concept):

Scenes: Woman in car in rush hour traffic, obviously frustrated, horns blaring. Man on the side of the road with steam coming out from under the hood. Woman trying to start the car in the morning and it just won't turn over.

Voiceover: Many people assume they can't do anything because of the way things are. Some want to change the way things are.

Scene: Man on bike passing rush hour traffic on the shoulder.

"Special Edition" of the New York Post from the Yes Men

laryn — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:14:33 +0000

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The Yes Men strike again! Today's "special edition" of the New York Post on climate change is a classic, with the headline blaring "WE'RE SCREWED." "It’s Coming! According to a high tech study commissioned by a concerned Mayor Bloomberg and generously funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, climate change caused by human-created greenhouse gases is threatening the health, livelihood, and security of New Yorkers—especially those who take the subway to work."

A hoax with a twist: "Everything in it is factual." You can find the online edition here or view a short video about it below.

UPDATE, NBC New York:

One insider at the Post, noted that the faux-paper was pretty funny, and was in fact being passed out in front of their offices at Sixth Avenue and 48th Street.

The Yes Men were proud of their work, and say they handed out nearly a million copies across the city today.

"This could be, and should be, a real New York Post," said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men. "Climate change is the biggest threat civilization has ever faced, and it should be in the headlines of every paper, every day until we solve the problem."

"Although the 32-page New York Post is a fake, everything in it is 100% true, with all facts carefully checked by a team of editors and climate change experts," the group said in a statement.

Carefully checked facts? Wait, that doesn't sound like the Post at all!

YES MEN press release:

Making your Drupal page Facebook "Share a link" friendly

laryn — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:24:25 +0000

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How to tell Facebook which image and what description to use for the preview when people post your page as a link on their profile

I was about to post a link to my latest portfolio entry on my Facebook wall and I realized it didn't pull in the correct image. I did a quick bit of research and found a solution that took only a few minutes to implement and allows you to spoon-feed Facebook a title, description and image for your page.

The "Basic Tags" section on this page gives you the three lines of code you need:

In my case, I already had a Drupal CCK field containing the image path I wanted to use, as well as a page title and a short description, so all I had to do was add the lines above in the <head> seciton of the page and replace the content with the PHP variables containing the appropriate field information.

Facebook will try to guess which images to include if you don't do this, so you may find it unnecessary if it's guessing correctly. On my site, the images Facebook guessed on a number of pages were the RSS, Twitter, and Facebook icons -- completely unrelated to the content. If you're having similar issues or if you're just a control freak, the code above should help you out.

Banksy v. Bristol Museum

laryn — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:39:01 +0000

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"Banksy vs. Bristol Museum" looks amazing. I heard about the show a while back but just recently came across a video that reminded me about it and showed a bunch of the works (see below). It's a lot of fun just to see the video -- wish I could see the show!

The trailer that is linked from Banksy's site contains this disclaimer: "contains scenes of a childish nature some adults may find disappointing."

Read more about Banksy on his site and on Wikipedia.

Flight patterns (by Charlie McCarthy)

laryn — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 13:27:57 +0000

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Flight patterns of bugs around a street light at night. Charlie McCarthy took 156 shots with a long exposure (4 seconds) and then edited them into a video at 12fps. Add in some cropping/scanning in a few spots and a soundtrack (Telefon Tel Aviv - What's The Use Of Feet If We Haven't Got Legs) and you end up with a pretty cool 43 second video.

Good 50x70 short list (2009)

laryn — Sat, 30 May 2009 16:31:35 +0000

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I'm finally getting around to posting this -- Good 50x70 have announced their short list for 2009. It's always fun to browse through the categories and see what people have come up with.

About Good 50x70:

A group of young creatives wanted to create a non-profit independent initiative to:

promote the value of social communication amongst the global creative community.
provide charities with a database of communication tools they can access for free.
inspire members of the public through graphic design

Pictures in the header are credited below (left to right):

Our Time Is Running Out, Scott Laserow. Climate Change
Cut Here, Handoko Tjung. Healthcare Deprivation
Spring, Lee Bang Won. War on Terror

Great chalk animation (Firekites video)

laryn — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:59:20 +0000

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Here's an interesting low-tech hand-drawn chalk animation involving 6 months of time (beginning to end), and about 1900 frames. Lucinda Schreiber and Yanni Kronenberg have done an amazing job with the music video for Firekites Autumn Story. The trailing clouds of chalk dust from the rubbed out images creates a fitting atmospheric effect, and I'm amazed at the consistency of the chalk outlines. I'm curious if those were traced somehow. Lucinda comments that it "was drawn onto the chalkboards frame by frame, shot with a stills camera and edited together in [Final Cut Pro]."

Via CR Blog and Elbert.