‘photos every day’
this is a spot by tbwa/chiat/day for apple, called ‘photos every day’. the craft is fantastic, and there’s some subtle, unusual attention to detail in it.
let’s take a look at the sound mix. here’s a waveform of the spot:
and now here’s the waveform of a conventionally mixed spot — this is that ‘old spice’ commercial everyone flipped out for a couple years ago. it might as well be any ad you see on tv today.
huge difference. there’s incredible restraint in the amount of compression applied to the music in ‘photos every day’. (from wikipedia, compression “reduces the volume of loud sounds or amplifies quiet sounds by narrowing or “compressing” an audio signal’s dynamic range”.) my point here is that if you caught this on tv, it would be substantially ‘quieter’ sounding than other ads around it.
the other interesting thing about the mix is that the iPhone shutter click sound is substantially undermixed. it comes across as incidental, and unobtrusive. the ambiences are the real star here, and the sound editor wasn’t even afraid to drop them out entirely for effect (see snowy skyscraper, 0:23).
other observations:
• there’s a real nice match-cut at 0:06 of the guy jumping off his skateboard into the shot of the jogger running.
• 0:25, the iPhone bobs up and down at a concert, and halfway through, the shot itself starts bobbing with the phone, keeping the screen stationary in the frame.
• overall, there’s a very careful variety of perspective, scale, and involvement. are we peering over someone’s shoulder? watching from across the street? ostensibly taking the picture, ourselves?
• i could have done without the voiceover at the end.
Typeverything.com - Apollo 11 Cover From The US Space Program.
Coralie Bickford-Smith
A Series WomanAs an in-house designer of Penguin Books, Coralie Bickford-Smith creates incredible designs for popular book series that have attracted worldwide attention. Working with sumptuous materials and Victorian binding, she has infused classic book covers with modern inspiration. Her works—introduced in Gestalten’s Fully Booked: Ink on Paper—recall the golden age of bookmakers’ craft. In our Gestalten.tv interview, Coralie Bickford-Smith talks about the process of book design and the significant role of research, how she got struck by the book of love at a very early age, and why the best in book design is yet to come.More videos by Gestalten.tv: vimeo.com/gestalten
Simplifying Big Brand’s. Designer Ewan Yap‘s latest artwork was inspired by the ‘Big Brand Theory’. The idea behind it, is that you can take any big brand logo and crop it down to its minimalist form, while still resulting in an image with enhanced aesthetic that the public will still recognize. via enpundit
Today is Blue Monday, officially the most depressing day of the year, booo hisss. Instead of being down in the dumps, I recommend that you make this Monday blue for a different reason and enjoy the second (and my personal favourite so far) of our recipe videos in collaboration with makememakeme and spindle productions.
These buns are a touch more complicated to make than the Dutch Oven bread that I posted last week, as the dough is richer, and it involves a little more work, but they are sooo worth the extra effort!
Blueberry and dark chocolate buns:
For the dough:
- 2 tsps dried yeast
- 100ml full fat (blue-top) milk
- 100ml double cream – mixed together with the milk
- 125g butter
- 3 egg yolks
- 450g strong white flour
- 3 tablespoons caster sugar
For the filling:
- 150ml blueberry jam
- 50g grated dark chocolate – at least 70% cocoa solids (the good stuff)
- 75g butter
Start off by heating milk and cream with butter in a pan, until you have a yellowy melted liquid. Set it aside until it cools slightly, you can test that it’s ready by popping a finger in – when you can’t really feel any difference in temperature it’s ready. Any hotter and you risk killing your yeast.
Measure your yeast into a large bowl and pour over the warm milky mix and leave to bubble. You should start to see it bubble after a few minutes, and see a pretty gross grey sludge appear! That’s your yeast waking up!
Mix in the sugar, some of the flour and egg yolks and stir well to combine. Add the rest of the flour to your bowl and bring it together, working it into slightly sticky dough. Cover it with clingfilm and leave it at room temperature for a couple of hours to prove. You can tell when it will be ready, as it will have doubled in size.
Take the dough out of the bowl and on a well-floured surface use a rolling pin to stretch it out, as if you were making pastry. Spread thickly with butter, followed by blueberry jam and then sprinkle liberally with grated dark chocolate. Roll up the dough into a sausage and cut into 4 or 5cm chunks and place each into a muffin case on a baking tray. Cover the buns with a clean tea towel and leave to prove again until puffy and doubled in size. Pre-heat your oven to 225 degrees centigrade and leave to warm up whilst the buns are proving.
Bake the buns for about 10 minutes, turning halfway through to make sure that they brown evenly. Try to wait until they are cool to tuck in, as molten jam doesn’t half burn the hell out of your mouth! You can’t say that I havent warned you!
Note: If you want to make these buns even more decadent, once they are cool you can brush them with a little melted butter and sprinkle sugar over the top – but you didn’t hear it from me! Enjoy!
Another lovely video for Mountain Bakery
(via bobobviously)
I posted a little while back that I was doing some exciting video projects with the lovely MakeMeMakeMe team, and finally I’m able to share the first project, which is for a delicious No-Knead Dutch Oven Bread. It’s such a simple recipe, and it takes no time at all to bung everything in a bowl and leave overnight. In the morning, turn it out onto a worktop, heat up a lidded casserole pot in the oven and then bake your fresh bread. Couldn’t be easier!
No-Knead Dutch Oven Bread Recipe:
¼ teaspoon of dried yeast
350ml tepid warm water (so that when you dip your finger in, you can’t really feel any change in temperature)
400g strong white flour
1 ½ teaspoons of salt
The night before you want to bake, start off by combining the yeast with the warm water. You should start to see little bubbles appear at the edges and the water should turn milky, this means that the yeast is waking up nicely.
In another bowl, mix the salt and flour together well and then add to the water and yeast mixture. Turn it with a spatula until everything is mixed, it will look wet and shaggy, but that’s fine, cover with cling film and leave at room temperature overnight. The dough will enlarge to at least twice it’s size as it proves – so make sure it is in a large bowl and has room to grow.
In the morning take some flour and generously coat your work surface. Scrape your dough out of the bowl – be careful with it, as you don’t want to manhandle it too much at this point, as you may knock out some of the air that’s developed inside it during proving, which will give you a nice holey texture when baked. Put your casserole pot in the oven, and preheat to 250 degrees centigrade, fold the dough over on itself once and cover with a tea towel whilst you’re waiting.
Once your oven is up to temperature, carefully take out your casserole pot, scoop up your dough and put it in. With a lid on, return the dish to the oven for about 40 minutes. You may (as I usually do) want to take the lid off the pot about 10 minutes prior to taking the loaf out, so that the crust is all crispy on top.
Et voila! Yummy homemade bread for breakfast or brunch, with hardly any effort at all!
A lovely video for Mountain Bakery on how to make Dutch oven bread. Can’t wait to try it out.
How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer
Debbie Millman
“If I get up every day with the optimism that I have the capacity for growth, then that’s success for me.”
Legendary graphic designer Paula Scher on why creativity works like a slot machine:
Got my hands on this daring book of illustrations by Riikka Sormunen, published by Nobrow Press.
Inspired by legendary artists such as Klimt and Kandinsky, Sormunen has created a series of breathtaking scenes depicting moments of reflection. Her characters wear clothes fashioned by her favourite designers, including Jonathan Saunders and Dries van Noten. Full of intricate patterns, these illustrations draw you in to the world of the moody characters.
Now I need to decide whether to take the pages out and hang them on my wall or keep it on my bookshelf…. maybe I should buy another.
