Objectified

The Red News 02 went out last night. If you want to get all of the behind the scenes juicy details, you can still sign-up in in the right hand column. Here are some thoughts on the movie: Objectified by Gary Hustwit.

This past weekend I Netflixed a movie called Objectified. It’s a documentary by Gary Hustwit, who also directed Helvetica (the documentary about a typeface). The movie explores how manufactured objects that surround us such as cars, phones and chairs influence our daily lives. Objectified features top industrial designers discussing their creative processes. Here’s the clip of Jonathan Ive, Senior VP of Industrial Design at Apple. It was the teaser that turned on to the movie.

You get a glimpse of the feel of the movie from this clip. It’s beautifully shot, but if you’re not into the design, and specifically the process of designing products, I can’t fully endorse it for you. But for a creative/designer/photographer it was quite inspiring.  Here are some still shots from the film.

You can’t miss this quiz on the PBS site to see which Objectified object you are. I’m a Coke bottle. Let us know which object you are in the comments.
Find out which object you are…

Objectified site
Helvetica site

Day Trippin’ in Laguna with [ b ] schoolers

I am lucky enough to hang, every once in awhile, with a group from the [ b ] school (an online community of professional photographers). Every other month they get together and shoot somewhere in SoCal. It’s a chance to make images with no agenda… no client to impress… no pressure to capture an all important moment. It is inspiring to say the least. It’s become a good excuse for me meet some new photographers, and to hang with old friends like Joe Photo (he’s in the first photo). Pssst… I think he’s actually a rock star posing as a photographer.

Here are some images for your enjoyment. Perhaps they’ll inspire you to get out of your comfort zone and stretch a creative muscle or two.

Now this next pair of images is totally interesting… it may look like a normal parking meter. But, it actually exists to raise money for the homeless and help curb (pun intended) panhandling. The modified meter isn’t even adjacent to a parking spot. What a great idea! I love seeing unique and creative solutions to common problems. Read more at Change4homeless.com

U2′s 360 Tour

We had an incredible concert experience last night at the U2 show. They performed at the world-famous Rose Bowl in front of 96,000 people, and shared the stage with the Black Eyed Peas as the opening act. The Peas had a special guest appearance from Slash to play Sweet Child o’Mine with Fergie, our wives loved that one! Enjoy some of our photos to start your Monday morning off with a little bit of inspiration.

Any U2 fans out there? Anyone catch the YouTube live broadcast of the show? How was it?

I can’t lie, we had amazing seats within the inner circle. Here’s a great shot of Bono and Larry (on bongo) during “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight.”

The retractable mechanical screen was an engineering marvel, shown here to provide some scale. Bono is on the bridge in the lower left of the photo (left photo). U2′s opening sequence with Larry on the drums, being dwarfed by the space ship apparatus (right photo).

Two tribute shots of the Edge, who happens to be one of the cooler men on the planet…

Here’s the stage as the stadium was filling up. Quite a site to behold.

And a parting shot of Slash and the Fergie for any and all BEP’s fans out there.

Fold Your Own Paper Plane

We’ve had several requests for the top secret recipe we used for our paper airplane contest, in our first installment of “What’s in WIRED, 01.” The instructions were right there in the September issue, but for those without access to a WIRED, we’ve included them here. In an effort to keep the masses happy, and to give you an excuse to make a paper airplane today, we’ve reproduced the folding instructions below.

Go ahead, make a plane, and have your co-worker/spouse/kid/mom/boss record your hang time. If your flight is atmospheric, then post your time to the comments.

Reddoor’s best effort: 5.0 seconds
World Record: 27.9 seconds

Oh, and if you need a soundtrack for today’s festivities, may I recommend: Paper Planes – MIA

Good Luck!

Yas Hotel

A little Friday morning inspiration for those architecture lovers out there.

I only have a couple of TV shows that I record, but one is called “Build It Bigger” on the Discovery Channel. It showcases the largest and most extravagant construction projects around the world. The other day I caught an episode detailing the 36-billion dollar Yas Marina Expansion in Abu Dhabi. If you don’t know Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The UAE is only the size of Maine, but they happen to be to have 10% of the world’s oil reserves. You do the math. With all that oil comes, you guessed it, money, crazy architecture, yachts, other opulent things normal people know nothing about. The Yas Marina expansion intends to put the city on par with Dubai (also of the UAE) as a destination for the world’s extremely rich and famous. The opening of the Yas Hotel intentionally coincides with the Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in November 2009. Oh, by the way the race track runs right through the hotel!

The Yas Hotel is a 500-room ultra luxury resort and has one of the most elaborate exteriors you’ve ever seen. A Grid-Shell structure veils the hotel in 5,800 pivoting diamond-shaped panels that produce stunning optical effects and make this building a gem in the middle eastern desert. Extravagant architectural monuments, like this one make me want to visit Abu Dhabi, or Dubai.

Hani Rashid, one of the Yas Hotel Architects, describes the building’s design and its architecture best:

“a perfect union and harmonious interplay between elegance and spectacle. The search here was inspired by what one could call the ‘art’ and poetics of motor racing, specifically Formula 1, coupled with the making of a place that celebrates Abu Dhabi as a cultural and technological tour de force.”

See more amazing architecture at: asymptote-architecture.com

See the Yas Hotel site here: yashotel.tigglobal.com

What’s in WIRED, 01

In honor of our 3rd birthday we want to introduce a new segment that we’ll write about every so often: “What’s in WIRED” For those of you with subscriptions, thank you for your patience, those without subscriptions, enjoy!

If you’re not familiar with WIRED magazine, you ought to check it out. It’s one of our only magazine subscriptions, and a superb one at that. You may say “WIRED is for nerds,” maybe so, but there’s so much goodness (music, tech, great design, info-graphics, product reviews, fluorescent covers, humor, etc .) in it, and come to think of it, maybe we’re a bit nerdier than we think.

Today, as a little celebration, several of us tried to match the paper airplane hang time of World Record holder Takuo Toda. Here’s the rules:

• Paper plane must be made with official Reddoor letterhead.
• Must be folded as closely to the prescribed folding in the “Fly Me to the Moon” article, Sep. 2009.
• Two timed throws to record your longest  hang time. Practice throws are allowed.
• Longest hang time wins

Nathan’s “RDX3″ recored a flight of 2.5 seconds
Tim’s “The Destroyer” logged a nice 4.1 second flight
Erik’s “RD-03″ edged out the other pilots with a 5.0 second flight.

By the way, we didn’t get anywhere close to Toda’s world record flight of 27.9 seconds. Toda claims that he’s had a 35-second flight in practice. He also dreams of flying a plane to earth from outer space. OK, now WIRED sounds really geeky.

Tim’s “Destroyer” met it’s fateful doom in the water hazard. RIP

One last shot of the trophy plane from this morning’s air show. This photo was just recently de-classified because it reveals the highly complex nose architecture.

Scanwiches

Here’s some tasty inspiration for all of the foodies out there. Enjoy these sandwiches from a cool site we stumbled across in WIRED Magazine earlier this year (June 2009). Scanwiches.com literally has hi-resolution scans of sandwich cross-sections from deli’s all around New York City. We’ve included some of our favorites based on looks alone. If you make an incredible sandwich, and want to scan it, and send it to us ([email protected]), we’ll be sure to give you some sandwich props.

Bon Appetit.