Chupa Chups brand

Nowdays everyone is writing about Salvador Dalí, as a branding genius and his famous logotype of Chupa Chups lollipops. Simple, recognizable, placed in the right spot of the candy wrapper and designed by the master back in 1969.

Since that time the logotype developed slightly, but the main shapes still remain the same.

Impression of Impressionism

Recently I have started to read a book by John Rewald Historyof Impressionism (1946), which became the reason to write this post. 

Impressionism is an art movement which was formed in 19^th century by a group of Paris-based artist, who were trying to change established by that time standards and techniques of painting.

 

In mid 1800s French art was ruled by Académie des Beaux-Arts. The Académie was a preserver of traditional standards of paintings, so historical, religious subjects and portraits were valued. Even the landscapes were not popular.  The paintings had to be drawn with details and accurate lines, so one could examine them closely.  According to that standards, Académie had an annual art show called Salon de Paris, where the artists could win prizes and gain a prestige.  Thus, there were mainly being presented the works of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alexandre Cabanel. 

Alexandre Cabanel - Albayde

Jean-Léon Gérôme -  Pollice Verso 

Other young artist( like Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne and others) were always rejected.

In 1863 was organized Salon des Refusés, where were presented all the refused works. It drew a lot of attention and attracted more visitors than the regular Salon.

Édouard Manet - Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe 

 Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Les Fiancés

After that in 1874, a group of artists(Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley) called the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs (Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers) organized an exhibition in Paris, where participated approximately thirty artists.

Bright  colors, new unusual technique were shocking for eyes accustomed to the more sober colors of Academic painting. The exhibition was criticized. The critical response was mixed, but  Monet and Cézanne received the harshest attacks.

Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise(Impression, soleil levant) (Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris) gave the Impressionist movement its name when the critic Louis Leroy accused it of being a sketch or "impression," not a finished painting.

Claude Monet - Impression, soleil levant

Impression—I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it ... and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.

The term "Impressionists" quickly gained favor with the public. Even though they were a diverse group in style and temperament, unified primarily by their spirit of independence and rebellion, Impressionism was a movement of enduring consequence, as this breakthrough of modernity made a way for later avant-garde art in Europe.

Honesty - WHITE

Definitely color of honesty is WHITE. This is when a person looks into your eyes and without any word you can read on his face what he wants to say.. "I love you, I'm wrong, I'm afraid" or "You are an idiot, I was disgusted, it's awful, your new dress makes you fat, I’m just not in a mood..."
How easily we could live if everyone says what he thinks, or at least if people could read each other’s minds. Then everything had to be white. You won’t expect that anything is happening behind your back, you won’t afraid to be misunderstood. Maybe that’s why color of heaven is chosen white.

WHITE: without patterns, bumps and shadows.

Black

"I've been 40 years discovering that the queen of all colors was black." -- Pierre-Auguste Renoir



In Wikipedia is written that Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light. Although black is sometimes described as an "achromatic", or hueless, color, in practice it can be considered a color, as in expressions like "black cat" or "black paint".

It is strange that black is so appealed to us. It is associated with death and evil, but at the same time with religion, fashion, sexuality, power, strength and intelligence. It stands for completely opposite ideas like: sin and holiness, wealth and poverty, good and bad.

The colour attracts us so much in everyday life. Basic things that surround us..black sky, black hair, black eyes(it is so fascinating to see black eyes . Especially when they are “burning” with an idea).


I guess it's really the "queen of all colours" , the mix of all that attracts the most.

Explorer of the world

Do you know how to be an explorer of the world?
Check you out!

Meissen porcelain

Meissen porcelain is the first and for a half a century the best porcelain in Europe. Founded in 1710 as the Royal Saxon Porcelain Manufacture by Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, at Meissen, near Dresden. It set a very high standard even in China.

The latest initials on the products were AR (Augustus Rex, the monogram of the King), K.P.M. (Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur), M.P.M. (Meissener Porzellan-Manufaktur), and K.P.F. ("Königliche Porzellan-Fabrik), but then in 1725 were replaced with crossed swords . Variations in the "crossed swords" logotype allow approximate dating of the wares.

In 2010 the manufacture will celebrate its 300th anniversary.

Good technique

The worst thing when you’re on your own, a self-taught person is that you have to improve your creativeness and technique simultaneously, and you need much time to make progress in your job.
When you’re going to an interview there is a question about your future, like "what you would like to be after 10 years". Recently I was thinking about the question, and I've got an answer. I’d like to have a great technique in representing my surrounding world.Because otherwise it's like you have an idea,but don't know how to say it.

There are 3 images that I've found at deviantart.com and understood that this is exactly what I need.

A photo

Vector image

3D image

Sony Bravia

With or without color

The people with Albinism have little or no pigment in their eyes, skin, or hair. They have inherited altered genes that do not make the usual amounts of a pigment called melanin, which is responsible for the color. The principal gene which results in Albinism prevents the body from making the usual amounts of this pigment.

It is not a disease, infection and cannot be transmitted through contact, the thing is more complicated.

“The genes for Albinism are located on “autosomal” chromosomes. Autosomes are the chromosomes that contain genes for our general body characteristics, contrasted to the sex chromosomes. We normally have two copies of these chromosomes and the genes on them – one inherited from our father, the other inherited from our mother. Neither of these gene copies is functional in people with Albinism. However, Albinism is a “recessive trait”, so even if only one of the two copies of the Albinism gene is functional, a person can make pigment, but will carry the albinism trait. Both parents must carry a defective albinism gene to have a child with Albinism. When both parents carry the defective gene (and neither parent has albinism) there is a one in four chance at each pregnancy that the baby will be born with Albinism. This type of inheritance is called “autosomal recessive” inheritance.”

There are a lot of attitudes towards albino people in different cultures of the world. On Fiji Islands they are usually very respectful and high-ranking people, on the contrary in Africa their life is very complicated.
There is a belief in South Africa, that after death albinos are disappearing, like dissolving in the air.

All my life this phenomenon was associated with purity, transparency and tenderness. When I was a child I thought that these people were angels. Now, when I see their photos I think that maybe there is something there, and only the nature knows the answer.

Seam carving

Seam carving is an image resizing algorithm developed by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir. This algorithm alters the size of an image by intelligently removing pixels from (or adding pixels to) the image that carry little importance.
The algorithm determines the least noticeable paths from one side of an image to another, called seams, and cuts the image along those seams. These paths are not straight, but follow the contours of the content in the image. This is why the technique is also called Content Aware Image Resizing.
The importance of a pixel is generally measured by its contrast compared with its neighbor pixels. Additionally, it's possible to define areas of high importance in which pixels may not be deleted, and conversely, areas of zero importance which should be removed first.
With this technique, it's now possible to reduce or enlarge pictures and still retain the details.
Adobe has integrated this technology as an image transformation option in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Beauty around us

There is a building out of my office window. It has ugly façade, but has nice red roof. Usually it becomes pink in the sunlight and wine red after 7 p.m. There is a high tree behind the building as well. The top branches are bold and resemble human hands that want to reach the sky. The bottom branches are covered with small green leaves. The sky is very blue (R: 183 G: 216 B: 249) today with only one small ship-shaped cloud.

Most of the people can notice only the ugly building and usually keep the windows closed. I’m wondering, why don’t they notice the beauty around them?

Perfect

Yesterday I passed the color test on www.xrite.com
And it said: “You have perfect color vision!”
It took 14 minutes and I didn’t make any mistakes. .it was nice... maybe I was underestimating myself too much.


I don’t want to write about personal things… but…it’s so related to the topic…on September 21 I became an aunt of little Ruben. Yesterday I saw his photos and he was definitely perfect!

Children of Picasso

My mood controllers of the day are Claude and Paloma Picasso. More exactly, it is their photo by Richard Avedon (1966).
She has calm and innocent face, he has strong hand of his father. They both have wonderful lips and a profound wisdom in their eyes.

She has become a famous fashion designer, started her own company and brand, produced her own perfume and a line of evening wear, designed jewelry for Tiffany & Co.
He has become a great photographer, worked for "Conde Nast", the publisher of "Vogue", and other magazines.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Claude et Paloma dessinant.
Pablo Picasso (1950) Paloma and Claude, Children of Picasso.

Every day there is an exhibition of Picasso somewhere in the world.

Banksy

Today I’ve discovered Banksy, well-known pseudo-anonymous British graffiti artist. I like the way he represents his point of view on different topics like politics, culture,society and others.





http://www.banksy.co.uk/

Static vs Dinamic

"A new, modern approach to visual brand identification. This is the world's first dynamic logo!"




See the details about new brand of Troika Dialog(largest private investment bank in the CIS):

http://troika.ru/eng/Our_New_Brand/index.wbp

My first icons

These are my first icons that I made in Adobe Photoshop. Before that I was using Illustrator for that purposes…but then I decided to try Photoshop as well.

Confession

I’m in web design about a year, but as I haven’t any art background, it’s very hard for me to make an icon or to draw something. I can imagine it in my mind...Just close my eyes and see the way it should be, but when I started to make it my imagination doesn’t work. So I have to open different icon stocks to see how other people did it. I have to confess that before starting to work I’m still searching for images and trying to find different techniques and sometimes even copy them. It’s very ashamed for me to confess such things, but I think this is the only way to learn.
Recently I was making icons for a bank which they didn’t approve. The waves on each icon represent part of their logo.

LHC

Today everyone is talking about LHC. And I’m excited about that as well.
Large Hadron Collider is the largest particle accelerator in the world. Today it’s going to be switched on and it‘ll be the first attempt to circulate a beam in it.
The main purpose of the experiment is to explore the theory of Big Bang(the standard model of particle physics) by colliding two beams of protons, which will generate temperatures more than 100 000 times hotter than the heat of sun and the detectors will observe the collision. This 27km-long scientific instrument will definitely change our conception of the Universe and its origin.
It’s said that there is a chance that this collider could produce “mini” black holes that could damage the Earth. There are a lot of "anti-LHC" materials in the internet(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzugu39pKM&feature=related), even a movie was shoot(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1vKisefsuI), and I think nobody has a 100% assurance of success, but there is a big percent that after a while new theories will appear in physics text-books.

See live webcast: http://webcast.cern.ch/

abeautifulrevolution.com

http://www.abeautifulrevolution.com/blog/

Making autumn illustration

What do we imagine when we think about autumn?
I've decided to write down all my feelings, emotions and associations…and here is my list:

1. Leaves of green, yellow, red colors
2. Flocks of birds fling to the southern parts
3. Wind
4. Rain
5. Umbrellas
6. Acorns and strobiles
7. Rustling leaves
8. Empty benches
9. Running people