iPhone Orchestra

I have only been to a handful of orchestral performances in my time. Some of them were exhilarating and others were boring; the Boston Pops being the most enjoyable. However, I was consistently impressed at the ability for so many different sounds to assimilate in a coherent manner.

Over the years orchestras have tried to keep up with musical trends and popular interest. Performances have ranged from entire renditions of musical scores from main stream films to Video Game theme songs:

Eminence Orchestra performing songs from the video game Metal Gear Solid

Video Game Orchestra performing at the Berklee Performance Center, Boston

Students from Standford University led by their conductor, Ge Wang have taken it to the next level with their group MoPhO(short for Mobile Phone Orchestra) using, what else, iPhones.

Wired's Erin Biba goes into further detail, "MoPhO plays mostly improvisational pieces using an app that Wang built (and hopes to make public soon). Each player touches a button onscreen to select a tone, then tilts, twists, or shakes the mobile phone to change pitch and timbre..." (full article).

Get Rid of that Annoying DiggBar

Here's a quick way to opt out of the Digg Toolbar appearing in your browser:
1. Go to: http://digg.com/settings
2. Where it says "Show Digg Bar?" select "Never Show DiggBar for external links" from the drop-down menu
3. Click "Save Changes"

Below is a helpful screenshot of the page....

Is Superman faster than a speeding dildo?

Aerodynamics redux...

Suprb Scandanavian Designers

Smaller is often better...especially in the case of garage design studios, and loft creative firms. Supbr fits the bill perfectly and executes their creative influence and technological know-how with ease. For those who are familiar with the term "Too many cooks in the kitchen", being a designer/developer can be, at times, a very stressful endeavor.


Suprb are a Swedish design duo (Andreas Pihlström and Emil Olsson) based out of Stockholm. Their message is clear...they choose who they want to work with. What makes them stand-out among other small creative agencies is their open source style of working: "We see Suprb as a network of people around the globe with no beginning and no end - because it’s constantly changing. We always aim to create workgroups that combine the talents of people within Suprb’s network. This allows us to scale our team according to the size needed for a specific project, and to ensure that only the best people are hand picked to be part of the process, guaranteeing high quality results."

From a design point of view, their own website accurately reflects their style and way of thinking. With a mixture of a blog style posting format and the clean minimalist design we come to expect from the brilliant Nords; there's a very calming reassuring effect that tells the client we mean business without being pretentious.

sidenote: checkout their cool spinning "favicon"
hint: (little square image in browser)

English Premier League Top Scorers 2008/09

Poster by Daniel Elliot (Australia)

I will always be a fan of print art, long after it falls from grace and settles in the shadows of online/digital works.

typo/graphic posters is a fantastic directory of posters from a plethora of very talented designers. The website's simplicty and usability make it such an attractive destination for any designer. Two man Swedish design team Suprb (Andreas Pihlström and Emil Olsson) are the brains behind this wonderful layout, and are the subject of my next post.

With over a 100 different artists to choose from, be sure to set aside plenty of time to peruse the global talent.

The Twitter Ticker

As you may notice I've added a new feature to my blog "BL+G Tweets". This nifty little widget was discovered by a coworker of mine who was dabbling with the idea of having a stock ticker style list of peoples tweets. Our company toyed with this idea during the inauguration and it worked pretty well. People essentially came to our Inauguration 09 web page and could watch as people commented on the days events. We also implemented a similar feature during the Oscars.

A great website that has decided to use this in a more lighthearted fashion is Cursebird.com.

Here's a website that gives you the tools to replicate this on your own site: Monitter.com

The Art of 3-D

Many of us witnessed the unveiling of the 3D Superbowl ad's this year, and some were fortunate to have purchase a SOBE product which came with a pair of 3D glasses. I for one completely missed out, and blame the poor marketing campaign put forth by SOBE of alerting the public on how to obtain said "glasses".

I digress.

Wired online put out a great little 3 minute video where, "Area 2881 artist Carl Pisaturo explains how to make a 3-D camera and viewer". I've actually always been interested in how the effects are achieved, and possibly you are too. Here's the link to the video (I was going to embed, but thought better of it and want to give full credit to Wired).

ENJOY!