the designers republic
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- johnnnnyh0
is the problem more that it's different stuff displayed the same - in the case of TDR or any other distinct house style, as kelpie said, the style never changes and is never different for any particular clients needs.
I'm not quite clear about what you mean Court in that it opens a door for us can you ellaborate on your point?
- Court0
I sorta think the way times are in america, where your myspace makes you someone, it opens a bunch of doors for us (just everyone) to do all that. Take all that prior knowledge and apply it to every situation we come across. Flash myspaces, facebook apps, integration and desktop apps with full html gives one of us the opportunity to make the next big thing for everyone.
- kelpie0
surely that fade away is inevitable if you're one of those designers/graphic artists who gets acclaim for a style that everyone jumps on and throws plaudits at but never changes and never is any different for any particular client's or projects needs?
- Court0
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- elektromuzak0
i bought joshua davis' book Flash to the Core last year off half.com and it still cost me $100! it's an old book but like johnnnyh said, he gives away a lot of flash source code in that book. also, his biography is really interesting.
- johnnnnyh0
Global fame was about being in the right place at the right time and making a difference in a number of ways, like with Dreamless, the giving away of source code, pioneering techniques with flash 3/4 actionscript, having tats. Not being too far up himself.
He wrote some amazing piece about where he'd come from - skateboards and drug addiction - was really moving at the time.
- johnnnnyh0
He's been known to be here too. Although I've never quite forgiven him for shutting down dreamless which was by far the best forum I've ever been on.
- Court0
And if you dont play street fighter your wack anyway
- johnnnnyh0
No, you're right - his day was way back 1998, 1999, 2000 and before. Very influencial in flash terms, really using the tool to create in a very pure way. He also did commercial work with Kioken. He was a giver to. He gave away source code etc. which meant that everyone could keep up with his style and emulate it.
What he's doing with the vectors (I think) is using programming and flash to create designs. He's worth investigating for his approach. There are video interviews of him which are really good and funny.
- elektromuzak0
joshua davis was one of the first designers/developers that really pushed flash to the limits back in his hayday. i remember seeing the badboy records site and the praystation stuff in middle school and thought it was so cool.
- but if you can name the model and color of the car he was driving then, i'll respect youCourt
- That makes more sense to me than his actual work. A pioneer is hard to spot after the event.Spookytim
- a pinto?elektromuzak
- you blew itCourt
- Camaro. Black. 78.Spookytim
- you got 1 of the 3 right, the flick i saw had pstation stuff in it i think. a HBCourt
- Spookytim0
The whole Joshua Davis thing passed me by. I think his day on top must have been in the last five years when I didn't look at any design at all becuase I'd never herd of him until I arrived on QBN in Jan/Feb. He's held in really high esteem but to be honest when I look, I just see "tourettian vector yanking" and am not impressed. I get that he wrote a program to auto-generate those things, and well done for that, but really, once you've seen them... you've seen them.
Or am I thinking of the wrong person...?
*googles
- johnnnnyh0
Yes, it's moved on from the early days but I agree that he's still producing lots of variations on a similar (but nevertheless interesting) theme. I think that happens more in art. I've seen a lot of Van Gogh's versions of sunflowers which he did before "the" one - at least I hope they were done before and not after! That would be tragic.
- elektromuzak0
Joshua Davis seems to be pretty derivative with his work too. He definitely created a very signature style to his designs, but i'd still like to see his work evolve a bit more.
- johnnnnyh0
Spookytim - I agree. I find design moves on so rapidly, more so than say music, so you see one style - and you like it, then that's it, it can't be copied, it can be reset, but each time you see it you know where it's come from. Like when the Guardian did the thing with their logo, and everyone was doing two colours/two fonts with typography.
If it was music you'd get a whole set of bands and you'd appreciate each one, but in design I feel it always goes back to the first person who does it.
I remember the MTV flash website which Digit(?) did and it was like wow, you can do that on the web - But I didn't want to see more of the same thing, although I did want to "feel the same" about any site I saw, as in "Wow" - which rarely happens.
Another one was Joshua Davies Barney's site - which you saw everywhere once it was clear how he'd done it.
I guess you need to keep one step ahead of the game, and not locked into your style, but keep ditching it and re-inventing yourself. Then again Cartier Bresson did pretty much the same style of images all his life and it didn't matter.
Anyway, what do I know?
I dread the angst and the bleakness, am glad it doesn't disturb me since I have no talent to lose.
- elektromuzak0
why not has some interesting portfolio work, but their branding + identity work is crappy in my opinion
- their motion work is shite!broxybluenose
- in fact, i'd say most of their stuff isn't very impressive.elektromuzak
- Look again. They are quietly doing some great stuff, honest. no, honestly. no? oh.Spookytim
- Spookytim0
I think one of the hardest things to accept is that you have your day and then, like the ocean, you roll back below. That's not to say you can't have your day again, but being on top once before doesn't qualify you to be on top again. You have to sink back below, and either wait for your style to be appreciated all over again by a new audience so you get ressurected as a grand-daddy of a genre trend, or you have to worj hard and hope that you come up with something new and exctiing one day that puts you back on top. I think this is true for all of us who actually give a fuck about our work, not just the celebrated heroes.
I personally am going through a lot of mithering bollocks trying to invent a new style and approach right now.
To some extent I think WhyNot Associates have done really weel to quietly age into a good quality set up. I would have written them off completely after the 90's.... after all, their first time on top consisted of little more than infantile Freehand pen tool scribbling and tourettian type hacking, but look at them now... they do really beautiful understated and effortlessly stylish looking work.
(I'm not dissing the old Ynots stuff BTW, at the time it was awesome, but in retrospect its quite primitive).
I reckon a lot of these design heroes must go through terrible angst and bleak-as-fuck turmoil as they watch themselves slipping from their perches at the top. It must be awful. But, you can only be the next new fresh exciting original thing until everyone has consumed it, then its the mainstream, then its some other young rapscallion's turn to present a fresh style of work. Someone who you probably employed from college three years previously.
- elektromuzak0
you're right, tDR works with a developer called Kleber... check out http://www.kleber.net/. Klever developed tDR's site and bleep.com which is a site that sells mp3 electronica. I visit bleep.com often and buy tracks here and there. Not sure if bleep is associated with tDR though, but I know they designed the interface.
- johnnnnyh0
"basically invented the industry as we know it today" - I really don't think that's quite true. I think they were important, but at the time there were loads of others who were equally if not more important like Attik, AKQA, Digit, Razorfish, Deepend, Tomato - that was a defining moment in the digital design industry.
I always saw TDR slightly out of that - more like Tomato I guess. I think it was still revolutionary, but in context, they weren't inventing the industry.
Do others see TDR as mainly a graphic(al) agency rather than digital (if I may draw the two as distinct)? They did do some interesting retro-styled digital work as I remember. I thought their website was built by someone else anyway.
- broxybluenose0
look, lets all agree.
They were good once......now their not so good?- Agreed - They were ahead of the times once - influential - but now...?Ranger
- Dancer0
"a studio that basically invented the industry as we know it today"
Quite a bold statement...
I ain't one to knock 'em, not my kind of work but I can certainly see why they were and still are respected.
I tend to think that tDR's work dynamics have changed since M Place, M Pyke and BOB have left to do their own thing.
I bit they are still producing great work just not so public and maybe in Japan or summit.
Neville Brody is still doing his thing without shouting about it.