art by american actor, shia labeouf
art by serbian criminal, kristijan golubovic
art by american musician and performer, marilin manson
art by former usa president, george w. bush
art by german führer, adolf hitler
art by uk prime minister, winston churchill
art by american actor, sylvester stallone
in jtt partners we are obliged to wear white button down shirts.
in the start i had them ironed or i ironed them.
i had two impressions about ironing:
- wrinkles reappear during wearing very quickly, so ironing has a short term effect;
- ironing, in my view, added no aesthetic value compared to wrinkles;
- ironing takes too much time;
- ironing takes too much space;
- ironing wastes energy.
i decided to not iron my white shirts at all and see how i feel about it.
instead of ironing, i would hang my shirts on hangers so i minimize wrinkles.
eventually i got over the addiction
i have two conclusions:
- wrinkles are artistically beautiful;
- wrinkled shirt gives a message of activity and roughness;
- i stopped worrying about if and how much my clothing is wrinkled;
- i saved almost 2 days of my life per year;
- i save about 5 eur per year on electric bill.
here are some interesting links:
- No Ironing Required: Nick Wooster Says Wrinkled Is In by style.com
- Estimating Appliance and Home Electronic Energy Use by energy.gov
above image is not a photography, but a 3d render.
how will art, film, and photography change with this technology?
as an artist, i focus on the message, mostly textual, and i use technology as a delivery of that message.
technology itself was never the message for me.
but i was part of early internet and digital art movements which enjoyed the benefits of new technologies.
so i still get excited about the possibilities.
i can imagine my kids, or grand kids, making realistic feature movies with a mobile phone within 4 minutes.
since most likely mobile phones will not exist in their time,
mobile phone here is a metaphor for a small portable digital device.
such seemingly unlimited ability to create will be amazingly liberating.
massimo vignelli has passed at age 83.
i had the honor to work with massimo on benetton digital branding project 13 years ago.
massimo was in his early 70s and i was in my early 20s.
we worked together for better part of 6 months.
idea for our unconventional collaboration came from then benetton group cio terry glenn phipps.
benetton digital branding, including design of benetton.com shop,
was maybe one of the most complex projects at that time in italy.
budget was multiple tens of millions of euros.
our goal was to design and standardize entire benetton digital presence.
note that this is before facebook and before google dominance.
project required solutions for complex functionality, integration with third party systems,
and 100s of templates with changeable content.
i am not aware if massimo’s had past experience with digital systems of that or any size and complexity.
however his approach was relaxed, positive, always adding momentum,
never showing even the slightest hint that there is a problem.
i am sure there were big challenges, but i never felt this from him.
although i was in early 20s and he was in early 70s he accepted me as his partner in this project
and treated me as equal.
and in spite of all the tasks we had to deal with, he was dedicated to teaching me through practice,
and learning from me about the culture from which i emerged – digital.
my job now is essentially still design.
i am still learning from experiences with massimo, because i was too young to understand all the lessons.
i believe i will always be learning from him.
thank you massimo.
about massimo
massimo vignelli is seen as designer, but i see him as more:
a positive force in solving problems and making everything better.
he understood what must be done for life to be better and he dedicated himself to that.
i met many people who misunderstood his work.
it is hard to explain my sense of his work to them.
his contribution is much more than visual and product designs.
massimo was a person who was fully dedicated to belief that we have the power
to constantly improve everything.
i am sure he was dedicated to this idea until his last breath.
PS
it is not possible for me to summarize all the lessons in one blog post.
i wish i could, but it would take too much time.
as i write i remember and realize more and more.
i have a need to tell others what i learned.
i hope this blog post further inspires someone.
