Something Beautiful and Useful

Hand Rendered Good, Digital Bad

2008-05-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

Matt Aberline, Creative Guy:

On a recent trip overseas, I had an interesting meeting with the Head of Design (HoD) of an international theatre school. I wanted to discuss digital illustration for costume designers, but the HoD, who was charming and direct, said they didn’t encourage their students to use computers for anything much more than email and word processing. They didn’t like the aesthetic. While I admired their belief in the values they were trying to transfer to their students, I did wonder: What is the digital aesthetic?

The revolution that digital technology has caused in other design industries is old news. But sometimes it seems costume design missed the digital boat, leaving designers at the dock comforting themselves with the mantra: hand rendered good, digital bad. So what happened? Why the distrust?

I think one of the best things about costume design is the incredible level of hand crafting. I find it a perfect antidote to an increasingly automated and mechanised world, and derive a lot of pleasure in embellishing my garments with details that can only be done by hand. The feeling of poring over a dress dummy sewing on beading or labouring over a set of complex flat patterns is very clear to me. The “touch of the artist’s hand” is a crucial part of those processes. When you link these hand-processes to the slow evolution of technology within costume design (ie: the silhouette and construction techniques in men’s tailoring), it is no wonder most costume designers are skeptical of new processes where the touch of the artist’s hand is not apparent. I’ve started wanting to clarify in my own mind, is there such a thing as the digital artist’s hand?

To do this, I’ve had to take a sideways step and listen to music. Perhaps it is a clichéd response, but most of my older friends “don’t get” contemporary electro music like Bjork, M.I.A or even Massive Attack. The music simply isn’t to their taste because they find it cold, machined and “a computer did it”. When I listen, I hear the creative decision making process, the warmth, humour and cleverness in how the music and sound has been manipulated. I love turning Bjork’s speaker distorting electro base lines up to full because it says something to me about our relationship to technology, what we think is beautiful and moving, and how our culture has evolved. Although the tools have changed, it is apparent there is someone behind the computer (hand) crafting bold creative choices. I think the same is for design and illustration.

If we put notions of taste aside, I wonder if the HoD was actually seeing work done digitally, or whether the response was simply a sweeping “no” because it allowed them to not actually understand or see the work, because there are so many aesthetics that incorporate digital technology in some stage of their process. I realise now how lucky I was in my education to have teachers that fully supported digital knowledge. Because of this, I think I have greater choice as a design communicator. I have more tools to chose from to communicate my ideas.

So what’s my personal digital aesthetic? Well, I don't draw all my ideas on computer. Each thing I design has its own creative journey which just as often includes carefully executed photo realistic illustrations as it does an inky scribble done on a serviette while on a train. The cool thing is I have greater power to find the right medium to develop, present and share my ideas. So if nothing else, my aesthetic is based on a high level of choice in how I communicate, the power to manipulate context and meaning within my illustrations, and the ability to create micro environments in which I tell the story of my designs... regardless of whether it is hand rendered or digital.

Something Old Something New

2008-05-18T19:09:00.000-07:00

I love starting my week reading http://postsecret.blogspot.com/ as I sip my first cup of tea on Monday. Postsecret is based on a very simple idea started by Frank Warren who invited people from around the world to create a piece of postcard-size art that represents a secret.

Postsecret is infinitely inspiring to me (and it seems millions of others) because it puts our humanity on display without the convenient camouflages of job, role, age and pretention. And the vulnerability that comes through the secrets allow us to see that people are really not that different from one another.

Officially 145 million people have visited the Postsecret blog. Please join in the Postsecret community today.

I will share any inspiring DIY projects under the label Playtime Projects

Here's a quick tutorial on how to make a pattern on www.designspongeonline.com from guest blogger Julia http://www.juliarothman.com/who is an illustrator/pattern designer. Julia's work is sweet, fresh and whimsical. She inspires me to look at simple everyday object and see the potential for art in them. Her patterns are like mini wonderland I would love to have a romp in.

Have a wonderful and inspiration fill week! xx

A New Canvas!

2008-05-15T02:54:00.001-07:00

Thank you for having me!
I am so excited to contribute, play and share my inspiration journeys.

I was doing my daily dose of design blog browse. Today my starting point is http://design-milk.com/.

From Design-Milk, I made my discovery of the day: www.fwis.com which I am so excited to be sharing. Fwis is a design consultancy in the US. Fwis has worked with big names like Corbis, Barneys NY etc. The part I like best is all they seem to just 'play'.

Check out the section labels on the site navigation bar at the top - "we didn't get paid", "we argued about it", "clients didnt get it"... Browsing through their archive of work, I felt literally as if i am having a 'creative conversation' where 'they' would point out something and 'say' "the client didnt get this" or "this one.. so cool cos even my mom got it".

Fwis inspired me to keep playing, creating, putting it out there. Creating not only because we are paid to do, but creating because a thought, an idea yearns to come into being.

It reminded me that creating's purpose should be creating. Sometimes it is about commercial value and return at the end. And mostly it is just about creating because it is fun and so satisfying.

Flickr

2008-05-15T02:24:00.001-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Costume Spotlight: black faux leather snakeskin vinyl hot pants

2008-05-15T01:29:00.000-07:00

This is one of the spunky costume images from the Mardi Gras collection. It's called the black faux leather snakeskin vinyl hot pants (with a studded belt). Google seems to be better able to find things on Web 2.0 sites than on our home-made website, so I am going to feature one or two images from the collection on the blog each week. Once I have the Flickr account loaded with pics, I'll be linking them from there.

Blogger in Residence

2008-05-15T01:20:00.000-07:00

Eva has joined the Beautiful and Useful blog so that she can share some of the links and ideas she sifts through in her daily quest for inspiration. Welcome!

Conversations: In the pipeline

2008-05-09T22:58:00.001-07:00

The next two designers I want to interview are Meenakshi Chandiramani, a graphic designer with a passion for good fonts, and Brian McGee, an illustrator who works for all kinds of big people. I've been emailing Brian, which is a lot more difficult than talking. I'll go and talk to Min this afternoon.

So far in my potential podcast collection I have:
Matt Aberline - Costume designer
Eva - Advertising Project Manager
Meenakshi - Graphic designer (business cards, websites, brochures)
Brian McGee - Professional illustrator - still a maybe

Updates will follow!

Conversations: Talking to Eva

2008-05-09T22:04:00.001-07:00

Conversations for relationship, possibility and opportunity!

This week, Tanya's part of the project is to talk to designers. Firstly, to see what they think about applications of the image bank. Secondly, to invite them to become part of the community of designers we are creating by making a podcast (video, sound and stills) about their personal design process. The easiest thing for me is to talk to people in Hong Kong, but I'm also starting email conversations with people in other countries.

This morning I booked a one hour conversation with Eva Ng, a creative designer who works as a Strategic Planner for BBDO - the advertising industry. It turned into a two and a half hour conversation with a lot of emailing of links. She uses resources like Getty and a cheaper one called istockphoto for personal design projects when she wants to buy an image with rights.

Resources for designer how-tos (Ms Eva also makes strange little sock creatures for animal charities in her spare time) include www.Blip.tv and Etsy.com. Apart from taking about our resource, we had a ripping good conversation about creativity in all our various projects. I told her about Anna Gleeson's book-binding-for-artists business, and that sent us off in another direction. i talked about my projects. At the moment I am creating two diary series of the area I live in, Aberdeen. One called 'crimes of my neighbours: diary of a complaint' and the other called 'crayonographs: diary of an illiterate', as well as a blog to document the creative protest of a group of residents in Sham Shui Po whose district is being redeveloped and who will lose their 50 year old community. So we shared all that stuff, which all has nothing to do with the costume image collection, but a lot to do with how inspiring and USEFUL it is to be in touch with people who are really up to stuff with their creative projects. It's fabulous, and it's the life-blood of Beautiful and Useful.

Some other things we discussed: Threadbanger, how to think, the from Mao to Now exhibition.

Eva has taken on starting to look at her design process and how she manages her ideas for work. She'll take notes and snapshots and then we'll get together and turn it into a podcast later this month.

What next?

2008-03-13T13:41:00.001-07:00

Hey Gang, Matt here... Gosh but how time flies... Since the last entry, designed both Zirkus and the 30th Anniversary Mardi Gras Parade and Party, worked in Hong Kong designing several productions, visited London and New Zealand to meet with project collaborators and now I'm just thrilled to spend the next few months in front of the computer.

(You can check out how I designed Mardi Gras, including designing for Olivia Newton John and Cyndi Lauper, at my design blog Aberline Sketchbook. Lots of cool videos.)

Tanya, or Ms "Development", is coming from Hong Kong for a short period to oversee our image capture process, install the wikipedia, finish off our high school Oliver Web Quest, sort out our podcasts and the list goes on... It is going to be a really cool time which obviously involves the long awaited redesign of the web site. It seems we have a million ideas just sketched in and now we need to pull them all together. Below are some drafts of what we want the site to look like.

Obviously it will be far more interactive with heaps of resources for people to access. I wanted to keep that "story book" illustrative feel we established in the Beta site. I like the idea of almost no words, just pictures. We need to mix it up a bit though. My agenda as a designer is to illustrate my designs as realistically as possible, when that really is only a fraction of what you can do with our resources. The photo realistic style puts people off sometimes cause they think it looks too complex and maybe not a style they'd want to try. Most of the images on the website are there because they were created for a real design job. So I've got to include a range of styles...

I'll add that to my list of things to do...

In the next few weeks, users will be able to download image kits which means we'll be officially open for business! Hey - I'd love some other people's work on the site. Let me know if you're up for having your illustrations ruthlessly exploited and I'll swing you a kit to two to work with.

On with the relentless pursuit of beauty.

Matt

2007-07-05T17:47:00.000-07:00

This month: Drafting the Scheherazade illustration project, and creating a Toy for Aberline.net.

Scheherazade Update:
And while that's not really a Form Finding Function topic, I thought the evolution of some of the illustrations for Scheherazade are kind of cool, and they involve components from Aberline.net.

For Scheherazade, I started making the images by doing some photography that I could base the finished image on. I know this sounds like a infomercial sell, but even I was surprised how the work improved when I started using components from Aberline.net.

You'll see how for the first 4 drafts, my ideas were locked into place, but with the help of these new resources my last draft took a radical departure into a much more free form. Also, it was great working with an image knowing that I had at least 10 other views of that object to work with - rather than trying to make just one image fit a variety of forms.

You can look at the Scheherazade project in more depth here: http://mattaberline.blogspot.com/

Or look at Aberline.net here:
http://aberline.net

Toy:
We just completed a major shoot where we improved all our image collection factors and decreased the image editing time from about 7 minutes an image, to about 2 minutes in most cases. I can't tell you how cool that is - normally editing my standard 60 images a day would take all day but now I can knock it over in the space of a few morning coffees.

This shoot also included the photography for our new toy, above. My good friend, and otherwise very useful man Matteo, agreed to pose for our new dress-em-up game and we've finished the graphic components for this. It's a bit camp I know... Here's the looks you can get:

This new toy will be different from the one we've currently got at Aberline.net under "fun", in that all the image layering can be done online as opposed to downloading the Ishell mini program we have now. Should be online in the next month or two... stay tuned!

Can we do a blog quiz?

2007-05-22T04:57:00.000-07:00

We are trying out some ways of communicating and being interactive. This is one of Tanya's ideas... Still working on the beauty part. Possibly it's useful.

**I am removing the link for the quiz as it's suddenly been targetted by spammers! - Tanya, 3 Oct 2007**

l, tan.

Please Unlock The Doors...

2007-05-02T19:21:00.000-07:00

Hate to say it but image editing sucks.

My chinese star sign is an Ox - which means I'm supposed to be good at hard slog work - but the relentless boringness of it seems to have done me in... So edit-Matt is taking a few days off editing and doing something much more creative instead - revamping our websites. I'm putting some concepts together then sending them to Tanya in Hong Kong to make work. I was thinking something fun, but elegant (or just clean), and definitely "work in progress"...

The good news is - the image content we're getting at Hero Frock Hire is probably the best we've ever got - and we're managing to standardise the approach which is going to make all the packaging done later a lot easier. But same old story, some of the ones we did first, just aren't as good technically as the ones we're producing later... so I'll have to make that annoying-tough-call about reshooting some things. Also, we've had the lovely Anna Gleeson visiting from New York in the studio as a model, and a mini-film maker before she dashes off to her exciting life in Tokyo. That means heaps of new blouses and garments that require sleeves! She certainly puts the old wooden manniquin to shame.

In addition to this blog, I also have my own blog where I talk about any sort-of external projects and at the moment is the Scheherazade Illustration Project. Basically I'm putting both the illustration resource and my illustration skills through their paces.

So the end of month deadline for the first downloadable has been well and truly missed - but we have:

1. A general idea how to package the files
2. A 3rd party digital asset distributor that can process payments for us
3. Some great images with our best ever technical standard
4. Some footage for a little "making of" film!

Back to the beauty... Matt

Lock the Doors!!!

2007-04-11T20:42:00.000-07:00

Tanya and I have set up a few outrageous goals to make happen by the end of this month and subsequently, I think the best thing is just to be locked in front of the computer for the next two weeks. We're aiming to produce our first DOWNLOADABLE by the end of the month. We're aiming for 1200 images on a particular theme - and in this case: Victorian-Period Female Working Class. The means producing three hundred and somethings images a week, and each one takes at 5 - 10 minutes to produce... The good news is, despite the passing of summer into autumn, it is still warm enough to go swimming at the beach!

The picture shows one of our packaging tests - the new plan is for the user to download all images of each object as opposed to the one by one method.

We're also looking at producing our first offical toy, like the paper doll game on the Use It page - but this time we want to do Farmer Boy goes to Mardi Gras. The idea is to have two distinct looks and I think we'll get that! I created a costume with Matteo Olivi, who assisted me at Mardi Gras many-a-time, and we'll be using that as a base.

Sacré Coeur and the Big Giant Head

2007-03-30T07:42:00.000-07:00

Mr Matthew gave a one hour costume-design lecture-with-questions today at Sacred Heart in Chi Fu (Hong Kong). He did it from his sun room in sunny Bondi. It was a follow up to the two hour costume workshop last week, when kids brought in their costumes and designs and presented ideas and he gave feedback. The earlier one was more fun, authentic and messy as the kids were really invested in their work and their questions. This time everyone was trying to be good for the cameras and it killed the excitement. It's exciting to get a workshop with an outsider when you're in highschool. I'll get the video and put it online.

I've been ignored by one webhost/designer and rejected by a second (he's moving away from small business). I have a meeting with a third on Monday afternoon.

The meeting with Suzanne the accountant was fun. She talks really fast and you have to keep up. She's full of ideas and cross-references and asides. I like it. She's really a part of a community of women in business and I started to realise that if I register a business, I'll be one too. Crazy.

Things we will do this week:

1) A year plan with timeline and maybe a five year plan. [tan & matt]

2) Make a web page to keep brilliant ideas in existence, but out from underfoot. It should have the following categories:
done
urgent
soon
later
maybe someday
[tan]

3) Start on the first 1500 item zip-pack. [matt]

3) And make a list of stuff, knowledge, connections we have and call it 'captial'.
[tan & matt]

That's Bonnie's idea. Bonnie is a fab new friend who works with insigniam and thinks in extended metaphors. Also full of connections, asides and cross-references.

I also have these qualities.

I said it elsewhere, but I am really starting to notice something about women in business. A certain (explosive) flavour. I like it.

bed time for frances

l, tan.

sole, partnership, company, whatamie

2007-03-25T06:39:00.000-07:00

Well Suzanne the accountant is already a rockstar. She sent me a pile of homework (as requested), for example her article on how not to stuff up a small business.

Should it be a small creature that is really us, or an independant company. If we call it aberline, what if Matt wants to sell it in 10 years time. Will he feel weird selling his name and seeing it do things in the world without him? Will he really have to change his name to 'Matthew Photo-Real-costume-resource-database'?

Her powerpoint says if you plan to deal with Americans or work in construction, you better get a limited company for when they sue you.

I'll make an appointment to see her this week. I'll ask if it's a good idea to start with a parnership or a sole thingy and scale up to a company when we need to. When we have some actual capital to protect.

What do you reckon Matt?

Steve from Jump hasn't given me my quote yet. That's annoying.

Talked to Katie and she knows two costume people we should get on board (as beta testers). One is House of Siren Guy who we didn't get around to seeing when Matt was in HK. Another is a guy who's in Bangkok, forgot his name.

Sleepy now. Goodnight!

"What Matt said..."

2007-03-23T04:46:00.000-07:00

Since Matt doesn't believe he can post here, even though his name is listed under 'people who can post here', I'm going to paste in some of his earlier comment as it's full of ideas and ought to be a post of its own,

66
yes a good name is cool but have always totally failed to find one. problem is - it is not just costume designers who will want to use the design tool. I think it will be fashion designers, games designers - really anyone who does digital visualisation of people and fabric - so you'd want a name vague enough to cover a whole bunch of design industries.
...
[more on names]

People are going to want to come to and use the website as it will make their life easier. It helps formualte their design ideas and gives them tools to communicate their ideas in a clearer, more professional way. Also, the industry is still very much in transition - coming to terms with digital technology - and I think many people are still looking for solutions that work for them. The best part about the website is that is designed by working designers - so I it has a intuitive usefulness.

I don't think we need a gimmick as such to get people to keep coming back to the site - I think we just keep creating beautiful work which we update in a public way every few days and the users can download this work for their own refernce material - or to incorporate into their own illustrations. I've always thought it needs to have a very vital, constantly evolving feeling.

Problem is - we need a system that can handle users searching through and downloading many thousand image files. We still have barely just started and we could easily be around 10,000 images. (Although we'd want to cull that down to just really good quality ones but you get the idea.)

Other problem - each object on the database is extremely subjective in how you name it and I'm not sure I want to spend the rest of my life doing keyword entry ie: stripe, striped, stripes, stripey,

I always tried to come up with an OBJECTIVE system but i don't think I've found it yet. The last bit of thinking was a human figure template (a bit like a toilet door person) where the limbs and torso are actually buttons and the user would select which part of the body the garment would objectively cover. For example, if you were looking for kneepads - you would just select the knees - but if you were looking for hot pants you'd just select the bottom part of the torso and the top of the legs... I'm not sure how this would work for garment components (like ruffles and draped fabric) as they don't follow the same rules and I'm not sure how this would work for human models either...

[...]
want to get Katerina Stratos (Moulin Rouge! asst designer) to work with me on my scheherazade book. Though we'd create about 40 test illustrations and then see if we could shop it around and get some interest. Also after mardi gras sitting in front of teh computer editing images sounds like a good time.
[...]
Remember the Irving Penn work of Issey miyake - that fabulous white space with those amazing images? That's really how I want it to feel. That's who I want to be - beautiful inspirational images floating in an empty creative space.

99

aberline beta

2007-03-21T03:37:00.000-07:00

Ok. It's called 'aberline'. Elissa is the winner and gets a banana muffin.

Tanya is calling it 'the aberline project' overall and 'aberline beta' for the R&D stage - now.

aberline beta has a home!

www.aberline.net

Have a look, have a go, leave a comment or a request or a brilliant idea!

l, tan.

Name Storm

2007-03-13T00:23:00.000-07:00

Hello

Give us your ideas for a name. A funky, designy, memorable, pleasurable, loveable name. Could be relevant or not. Put them in comments and I'll stick them in the next entry.
Winner gets a great sense of personal satisfaction.

I like the idea of some costume bit.

stud, eyelet, bone, cuff, plaid, tiara, trim, untrimmd (shakespearean for no frills?)

tan.

Wake up!

2007-03-10T21:10:00.000-08:00

The Sydney Mardi Gras is over for the year and it's time to invent the design elements project.
I think it needs
- a cool name.
- a kitch cultish idea
- some quotes on webhosting
- a blog.

Is it fun to have a blog-based competition or poll or survey?	Yep Nope
What genre(s) of costume do you want to see as a downloadable?
Email Address: