>>>intermezzo<<<

I’ll be back in a while.

The Leffe Pouring Ritual

Leffe should always be served at 5°C in its unique chalice glass to preserve the beer’s full aroma and create the perfect creamy head.

• Clean and thoroughly rinse the glass with cold water to remove any impurities. Allow the glass to cool.
• Leffe glassware should always be washed by hand since the slightest trace of grease will affect the head and taste of the beer.
• Check whether the glass is clean. If necessary, dry the glass using a synthetic chamois leather. To serve Leffe perfectly, it is essential that the glass is prepared in this way.
• Pour the beer into the glass at an 45° angle without the bottle neck touching the foam or the glass. Allow the beer to pour slowly into the glass.
• Gradually straighten the glass while pouring and lower the glass a little, paying special attention to the head. Leave about a fifth in the bottle.
• The creamy head should be about two inches thick when the pouring is complete. Getting the perfect head protects the Leffe flavour and aroma during drinking.
• Finally, apply the drip catcher and serve the glass and then the bottle on the Leffe coasters, taking particular care that the stained- glass window logo on the glass and the bottle is facing the consumer to achieve a perfect and elegant serving.

Perry Como – Magic Moments

A story of design and re-branding

I wanted to write about this project last year after first reading about it on one of my favorite blogs out there (i.e. Scott Hansen’s ISO50). The winter vacation, the Romanian-dishes overload then the post-holiday idleness have contributed to my lack of inspiration – therefore putting a halt to my daily routine. OK, enough with the excuses; down to business.

What we have here is a student’s class assignment to reinvigorate a brand that is “dead, dying or defunct”. His take on a dying brand was a new approach in promoting Playboy magazine by coming up with a total re-branding and re-calibration of its content. What’s interesting to follow is the whole process behind the brainstorming and above all on the selection of this particular brand – which, I agree – most of us, men out there do not actually find it dead at all. But let’s jump to the more detailed, interesting aspects of a designer’s work.

Especially nowadays most of the printed publications suffer from a severe loss of interest from a reader’s perspective and most important, with all the dynamics of the current Web 2.0 movement many of the players out there in the publishing space are losing market share in favor of the online material. So, how do you trigger the readers’ interest and keep them engaged with your content? – here’s one of the major challenges.

Alex, our student here goes on talking a bit about Playboy’s history and how it became nowadays a rather ‘trashy’ magazine, lost among all the ‘MAXIMs’ out there and losing its sophisticated standards the old readers got accustomed with. Something has to be done, so our guy here goes on with his rather drastic approach  in bringing back Playboy’s classiness which, as I followed the steps turned out to be quite a treat.

Their given assignment was to “inject new life into the chosen brand – to reposition it in a way that would save its reputation and provide it with new and continued success“. In doing so, a thorough research had to be made – so reading some facts on brand’s history, plotting out the audience profiles, mapping important dates, brand evolution, practically a deep-dive into the world of the chosen brand. The process would then continue with the brainstorming activity, where the brand’s new “soul” would be revived.

First things first: the content. Back in the ’60s Playboy surprised the public with its libertine attitude towards nudity, promoting it pretty much straight-forward. It was a bold approach at that time and non the less successful. But what was once considered a trend-setter is now just ‘standard operating procedure‘ for most of the magazines out there. So how about a Playboy without nudity? Could it be once again on top with exciting editorial content?

La piece de resistence in this project was the logo. As aknowledged, the first part of the semester was spent drawing sketches, holding brainstorming sessions, presenting concepts to their teacher until the brain ran dry on creativity and the milestone was approaching. Still no logo after a semester. What was the problem? Well, as every designer knows coming up with a logo is no easy task; the centerpiece of every brand identity is its logo; people recognize a brand/company, whatever after first seeing their corporate identity. And in order to make it eye-catchy one has to come up with a simple yet effective idea.

The first concept involved a ‘nerdy bunny’. Imagine a bunny with nerdy glasses and you get the picture. The idea was quickly dismissed until another one came into action: the Bunny was consumed by a superior species. A five hour delay at the airport helped this idea to blossom:

Family and friends came into action and the general consensus was that the bunny’s abrupt end is a bit too violent. The colleagues in the class were satisfied with the idea of the bunny consumed by another animal but still, its cuteness being axed by a rapacious fox was not so appealing. How ’bout getting rid of the goddam bunny and keep something symbolic, like it’s bow tie for instance?

Is there a way to make the fox look a bit friendlier too? Some vintage photos of animals helped render the idea and eventually the sad little bunny was replaced by his bow tie, all-in-all being subtle enough that no one was getting upset for having lost the cute little rodent.

As the project was advancing, the logo didn’t seemed serious enough so other drafts were sketched in the attempt of outlining the idea of chic, progress, change and elegance. I’ll leave the artist speak a bit: “As brand extensions were to be a major part of our book, I worried this logo would look kind of odd on an airplane (for example) that billed itself as sophisticated and classy. At this point, we were almost at mission critical stage — where a logo overhaul was just about out of the question due to the remaining amount of work required. Luckily, and thanks to the encouragement of my teacher, I had a massive amount of sketches backlogged to look through. I found the two below that I thought might provide a nice hybrid direction — keeping all of the concepts (fox, bow tie), while simultaneously injecting a bit more style into the overall look and feel.“

At this advanced stage where the coronation of success is getting closer the image gets refined times and again until we’re 98% satisfied with our work. The remaining percentage is the normal amount of uncertainty ensuring our eventual success. One must never be too cocky. And after few more brush strokes here’s the final result:

The final mark is a variation of the original “bunny” symbol. As mentioned, the animal depicted is a fox and you are to deduce that he has “consumed” the old logo and left only the distinctive bow tie hanging from his mouth. This changing of the guard represents the evolution of the brand — not only visually, from a cute and cuddly bunny to a sly and cunning fox — but also in terms of perspective, in that the new animal is more sophisticated and better suited to represent the new priorities of the magazine.

Of course, as humor has always played a role in Playboy’s history, the bow tie hanging from the fox’s mouth conjures this tongue-in-cheek (or tie in mouth) mentality — as well as paying homage to the original iconic symbol. Most importantly, the fox stands proudly; having bested the bunny and established himself as the new symbol for the brand. This confidence and swagger is something that will be pervasive throughout all aspects of the brand.

Now that the visual concept has been outlined, the remaining work is to redefine the magazine’s content – emphasizing the need for more lifestyle, literary content aimed for the intellectual gentleman. A radical approach with a clear goal in mind: letting aside the current trashiness and all the nudity and making way for a stylized magazine still guided by its original tag-line: a way to live your life.

In the 2nd part of this post I’ll bring up the actual printed book and how the product is supposed to look after taking  this brand new concept upfront. All I can say is that if only such great ideas would find their way through the amount of editorial garbage advertised by so many magazines out there, we would definitely find ourselves surrounded by a much healthier mass-media with a higher care for quality vs. quantity & immediate profit. But this is a long debate…

Pictures and comments in italic taken from ISO50 blog. Credit to Alex.

Sunday night selection

This Sunday’s night selection is ‘Running Wild’ under a ‘Blue Moon’ and finishes off by putting the audience to a good-night sleep – or at least in a comforting mood… Tune the presets, light up a candle, pour some wine and let your minds get carried away…

Frank Sinatra – Blue Moon

Tindersticks – Running Wild (instrumental version)

Circling around

Ever since I got my hands onto Four Tet’s latest album (i.e. There Is Love In You) one could easily spot a little circular ditch on my hard disk, on the portion hosting one of his tunes. Simply put, the melody is on repeat at least couple of times a day. What can you do? The last 2 minutes of this song create a sort of ethereal sound, with that voice sample jumping in and transforming everything into a dream-like tune.

Four Tet – Circling (alb. There Is Love In You)

photo: Sina Demiral

Wilderness, solitude and bushcraft

Pe banner zice ca… ptiu! English! What was I saying… Yes – the art of bushcraft; cracking branches and eating roots for 25 years… Kidding Although Ray Mears and his adventures (I’m talking about the ones broadcasted) date back in the ’90s, I didn’t become acquainted with him until fairly recently (may it be 3 or 4 years). In the last 4, 5 months or so watching an episode from his ‘bushcraft’ series has been the best sleeping pill. The mild tone in his voice, combined with the beauty of the landscapes pictured in some of the episodes is sheer pleasure for the eye/years.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to put into practice anything I’ve learned from the series (for instance how to cook a salmon in the wilderness or set up a trap to catch squirrels) but seeing someone doing this and passionately sharing his knowledge on the art of bushcraft is enough to satisfy my quench for adventure (especially now, with this darn weather). My only hope (and ultimately – goal) is to travel sometime to some of the places he’s been to and enjoy the nature in its purest form (Norway and Canada would make some great traveling destinations).

In his latest series – “BBC Ray Mears Northern Wilderness” (2009), the Brit takes us all the way up to Canada onto the footsteps of the early fur-traders, traces back their survival skills, learns the ways of the Inuit and follows up the paths of the early Northern explorers through tundra and the Rockies. Not your usual Ray Mears with his ‘Extreme Survival’ or ‘Wild Food’ series, but a rather laid-back narration of some of the world’s greatest explorers and their endeavors. I’m up for one more episode!

PS. For all those nature lovers out there, don’t miss out his useful book: Ray Mears Essential Bushcraft. I got mine from Amazon.de for 7 EUR (used but looks brand-new). A dictionary is needed to have all those plant-names translated from English.

Davos 2010 visualized

The Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland took place from January 27th to 31st. To examine some of the most important topics in advance the WEF website hosts the interactive application Risks Interconnection Map 2010. The RIM 2010 is a network visualization weighting the most important global risks and their connections.

The risks are grouped in Economics, Geopolitics, Environment, Society and Technology (no focus on the Environment though; why bother.). The interaction model is very limited and reduced to selecting risks and viewing more details about the selected interconnections. All-in-all, a nice animation.

It seems like this year the event was kept under a very secure setup, so secure that even the infos leaked by the media were far from substantial. No greenpeace-brick-throwers, no protests whatsoever, (almost) no media coverage. The most silent forum in the last decade…

source: DataVisualization

moody lil’ sucker

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it before but anyway, I’m doing it now: I’m a sucker for moody and dreamy photography and sounds; I find that coming up with this type of imagery takes a great deal of talent; finding the appropriate lighting, exposing the best subject – these aspects don’t come up easily. The same admiration goes towards the dreamy/atmospheric music composers. That’s why I like Tycho or The Album Leaf; not to mention Boards of Canada. And I just came across a new band from Denmark called Syntaks who’s music can be described as ‘densely layered ambient pop’ with a touch of ’90s shoegaze. Highly recommended! Their Mistral Moon EP can be downloaded for free from here.

The Sopranos

99.99% of the reviews on this series have been overwhelmingly positive: “a true family drama”, “one of the best – if not the best television series ever created”, etc., etc… I have recently finished watching the entire series (6 seasons) which – I must say – by the end of the 4th I was getting already bored with it but I said “what the heck, watching it until now… I must as well end the goddam series.” – which I did. And I’m glad I did. -

I will not dwell into an in-depth analysis of the plot but rather stick to what impressed/annoyed me with David Chase’s depiction of life within a certain American-Italian subculture (right, the Mafia). Actually debating upon the ‘annoying’ aspect would only take me one minute: at some point I found the series lingering too much and bringing uninteresting plots into action. Should it had ended with the 5th season, it would have satisfied my appetite for Mob-related entertainment. But even so, with 6 series and 86 episodes (HD, baby!) my review is positive.

I must say – at some point I became frustrated with the sheer amount of hypocrisy portrayed by the series; at the end of the day we’re supposed to sympathize with at least one of the characters from a play/a movie, whatsoever, but in The Sopranos you cannot help from getting aggravated when witnessing Tony beating the crap out of a character/killing him and then talking about morality, family values and honor with his shrink. “I mean, what is it that we do here? It’s all about bringing money home and putting food on the plate.”, Tony dixi. Simple and straight-forward attitude,  isn’t it?

The show features numerous funny and entertaining parts too (and I’m not talking here only about the dances from Bada Bing – the strip club). The one character who definitely stands out from the cast is – “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri, the guy with the ‘white hair thingies‘. A fountain of punchlines, a highly paranoid man and somehow with a belief for the supernatural, as witnessed in the following short video I’ve cut from an episode.

Apart from these funny moments, the overall script was based around the aforementioned theme (i.e. hypocrisy) and the drama generated by a mob-related life-style. The reality of the show strikes in key moments when you actually want to smack one of the characters for being so cocky (“cunty” would have been more closely-related to the script’s verbiage). So, eventually one cannot help asking himself ‘what was it that I found so appealing about this show’? Do I enjoy watching a long-nailed, lip-tapered housewife who’s only concern is to cook varieties of pasta for her family and treat herself with opulence? How can I stand seeing a young girl growing up and steadily becoming an advocate for immigrant’s rights after witnessing her boss-father of Italian heritage being arrested several times by the feds, hence enraging her in the fight against the ‘oppressed’ and enrolling for the law-school? Should we sympathize with a ‘waste-management consultant’ disposing of human ‘garbage’ in order to live in a clean courtyard? Am I being too serious here?

This is the immediate response after watching any of the 86 episodes – and by sticking to this point one could easily dismiss the whole action. After all, it was not just about killing, beating, cursing and so forth, but about characters. A show in which the acting prevailed, a show in which everyone involved was an unforgettable, one-of-a-kind figure, a show with intense action (and the next-to-last episode when the two families go to war is a piece of art in this direction), unpredictable moments and memorable quotes. To say that I highly recommend this would be an understatement. Hat’s off!

Social media has moved to the kitchen

For those who believe there’s a little Jamie Oliver inside them, this is the place to be: Culinary Culture. A social networking site and recipe database for true foodies. Go on, sign-up and share your knowledge!

Is it a phone? Is it a TV? A photo frame?

I don’t know, Stevie, but it seems to me like you’re losing your awesomeness on stage… Come on – you call netbooks slow and advertise the new ultra-mega-revolutionary-iPad with its 1GHz processor being a worthy replacement for the aforementioned device? Pfff… Even cell-phones will be much faster than this overweight iPhone.

Personally I find HP’s Slate or the forthcoming Asus Tablet having much more potential than the iPad (not to mention its name, which for the English-speaking folks might trigger some other thoughts, close-related to women’s iPeriod).

Right now almost everyone of us is supposed to own already some of these devices: a mobile phone, an mp3 player, a laptop. So if someone can tell me where I could fit an iPad and for what purpose, I would gladly take his advice and reconsider my thoughts. Until then… I’d rather spend my money on upgrading my mp3 player (by getting a Zune HD or a Sony mp3 player X-series) or my smart-phone (the Sony-Ericsson Xperia X10 looks appealing) or better – stick to what I already have and be silent

upcoming beats

This year’s debut was fruitful from a musical standpoint. Some of my favorite bands have released their albums, others have sneak-previewed their works and all I can say is that I’m quite satisfied with the quality of the recordings. Hot Chip, Four Tet, Caribou, Monolake - to name a few, they all had something good to offer. I’m still waiting for Plaid and The Album Leaf to satisfy my quench for delicate and carefully crafted sounds.

Here are some selections from their new works:

Four Tet -Angel Echoes (alb. There Is Love In You)

Caribou – Odessa

Hot Chip – Thieves In The Night (alb. One Life Stand)

fl-u!

In response to those countries no longer keeping their part of the bargain, Novartis – the Swiss pharma giant producing one of the vaccines against the H1N1 flu, has recently stated that “[...] next time when there will be a pandemic – and there will be one – governments who have been reliable partners will be treated in a preferential manner“. Here’s the situation, in short: there are some countries who, in the light of the recent pandemic gaining terrain, have asked the pharma companies to increase the supply of vaccines but now that the cure status has leveled up, the governments are no longer willing to spend any more money on medicine. So now, big-boss Novartis takes action.

“Next time when there will be a pandemic – and there will be one – [...]“. Now… there’s cynicism and there’s a bit of threat in the Swiss’ verbiage that I’m not quite comfortable with.. I hope that EU’s white collars will take some action.

later update: the EU did take action against the havoc surrounding the flu and the vaccines; Wolfgang Wodarg, president of the Health Commission inside the EU goes into detail (the interview is in French) on the inquiry regarding the panic spread by the big pharma companies. Oh, and – as a side note – Germany was one of the countries who has cut off the agreement with Novartis. The follow-up on this case is interesting.

Faking it right

Some may call it A manual on how to become a world-class ignorant, and they wouldn’t be too far from the truth. However, in between the above-showcased covers lie a little more than 100 pages filled with good humor and some good piece of advice on how to overcome embarrassing moments, which sums up into a relaxing 2h reading.

I’ve first stumbled upon this book by doing some research on type interfaces and calligraphy and so Jessica Hische’s website popped into my eyes. (btw, she’s the book’s cover designer) The title itself does trigger some attention so I began my scouting; it seemed promising – I was really looking for a JK Jerome-sque-kind-of-writing after stuffing myself with only white-papers and year’s end reports so the 9,99 EUR turned out to be a worthy investment.

For those in dire need of impressing the audience with their general knowledge this little book does the trick. Information is being delivered in small takes so that your brain-cells can cope with the amount of information and not get disoriented after few doses of carefully selected words of wisdom. You can choose from various topics: Drinking, Eating, Making it out with men, Making it out with women, Hip-Hop, Movies, Books, Travel, Architecture, Horticulture, Getting in shape, Yoga, Tennis, Computers, Psychiatry/Psychology and my all-time-favorite – Astrology. We’ll get to that part later.

For starters, here are some useful pieces of advice on how to deal with ‘Scotch’: “[...]For years, drinking Scotch whisky neat, i.e. without anything in it, was the only way. Researchers at the Drinkological Institute at Leaphroigh-upon-Nutting have, however, recently debunked that old wives’ tale. Current wisdom has it that a splash of ice water (or add an ice cube or two and wait) releases some yummy chemicals and brings out whatever it is that’s supposed to be brought out, flavor-wise.

Unblended Scotches (aka Single Malt) still reign supreme; stick with the Highland or Islay regions. The Highland Scotches are sweeter and more honeyed, and the Islay Scotch is more peaty and smoky. The Macallan is the Highland Scotch to order -  the eighteen-year-old is glorious, but the twenty-five-year-old is better, though unfortunately the latter is almost beyond financial reach. If, however you’re looking for peat and smoke – and who isn’t? – Lagavulin is the Scotch for you. Though there’s still nothing wrong with the snob-appealing, dense, malty scotches such as Laphroaig, Glenlivet, and Glenfiddich, you can one-up your tablemates who have ordered one of them with the epic pretension that comes with a little bit of knowledge. Those folks think they’ve got taste, but a simple “Lagavulin, one ice cube,” from you will put an end to the question of who’s schooling whom.”

From a personal experience I would add here the Suntory Yamazaki (12 Year Aged Single Malt Whisky), my favorite (until now) – Japanese stuff.

And now that we’ve already established ourselves as real booze-connaisseurs let’s move onwards to cooking. Here are some pieces of bluffs and attitude to make you sound like a mini Jamie Oliver:

- When you are served your salad with a fancy dressing, announce your preference for the ‘perfect vinaigrette’ , which only you and a few restaurants in the south of France know how to make. It consists of (you are graciously willing to share the secret) extra-virgin Spanish (not Italian, as everyone else thinks) olive oil, expensive vinegar (if Balsamic, a thirty-dollar-a-bottle brand) [...] and a dab of Dijon or other French mustard. Period.

– Say something like “Coriander is the most misunderstood of spices’

– Praise small, underdecorated Chinese restaurants that are cheap

– Undercook all vegetables

– Only want Mexican of Indian food occasionally. The former “dead-ens the palate”; the latter “is never prepared properly in this country – they simply can’t seem to get the right spices here.”

And when it comes to eastern-asian treats – especially sushi, there’s something that needs to be taken into account. Sushi – you’re either with the sushi lovers and liked, or you’re against them – like me, and looked down upon. Sushi consumption plays a pivotal role in modern-day society. What was once considered an eccentric and foreign quirk is now considered a hip and necessary affectation. [...] In order to fake that you like sushi and appear as if you consume aquatic vertebrates other than frozen fish sticks and their invertebrate and unidentifiable tater tot counterparts, you must first learn a few tidbits of information that you can drop during the dining experience.

– Omega-3s fatty acids (rampant in sushi) may ward off Alzheimer’s disease – this will make you look both entertaining and interesting, also showing that you read newspapers

– don’t joke about how this stuff would be fine if they just cooked it a little

etc…

After drinking and eating it’s time for a little bit of flirting, then moving the experience in other places, bringing other topics into discussions, digressing, talking about music, movies, latest gossip, fashion trends, computers (there’s a funny take on Mac vs. PC) and if these topics have failed in getting you to know your counterpart better, then there’s always another option to rely on – and that’s Astrology. That’s right.

“Never mind about what moon is in whose house. Leave that to the hard-core and the faintly loony – the people with charts. What you want to do here is either dismiss the whole thing (i.e. When asked what your sign is, answer, “The best”) or make a bit of sense, if humanly possible. Here are the proper clichés, sign by sign:

Aquarius - Creative and modern-thinking. Often mistaken for not too bright. Does not learn from experience

Pisces - Emotionally powerful, if a bit paranoid. Makes up for a lack of real bravery by being a bully. Has no pets.

Aries - Outdoorsy and independent. Walks away rather than has a decent discussion.

Taurus - Great stick-with-it-ness. Often wealthy later in life, usually through crooked means.

Gemini - Intelligent, if schizophrenic. Neither aspect or personality admirable. Fast at making deals, fast at losing friends.

Cancer - A good listener, easy to take advantage of. Wildly emotional, barely able to function in adult environment.

Leo - Stubborn and forceful. Seems to listen but doesn’t really care. Makes a good cop.

Virgo - Weighs facts carefully. often resulting in complete inaction. Obsessively clean and hard to be with because of it.

Libra - Sensitive to music, art, and literature. Happy completely alone, making everyone grateful for it.

Scorpio - One-way sensitivity. Easily hurt, but unconscious of others’ feelings. Makes excellent file-clerk.

Sagittarius - Loves to gamble, often loses. Sees the bright side of everything, however senseless.

Capricorn - Tends to be private and as a result, learns little. Is best as a child.

If all else fails, when pushed by a pentagram-dangling obsessive, just say “I don’t believe in astrology. I realize that’s very Leo of me, but what can I say?”

Happy reading

Sunday night selection

A delicate new tune from the British electro-band “Hot Chip”. Their latest LP – One life stand definitely worth checking out.

Alley Cats

photography by Cosmin Gogu

I heard it through the grapevine

Few more days to go until Apple’s event in January where the so-called iTablet/iSlate/iZac (from Isaac Newton – yeah! I’ve read that too) or whatever the !@$# they want to call it will surface. What’s interesting to follow these days is the rumor mill behind it which amplifies the hype accompaning every product launch in Coupertino.

I was reading an article on the Wall Street Journal where all the info regarding the latest launch is surrounded by an aura of enigma, just like in politics where “a person knows something which he heard from someone when talking to a closed relationship whos affiliation with the company is very close”, and so forth… Here are some examples:

“[...]In developing the device, Apple focused on the role the gadget could play in homes and in classrooms, say people familiar with the situation.”

“[...]the company has talked with New York Times Co., Condé Nast Publications Inc. and HarperCollins Publishers and its owner News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal, over content for the tablet, say people familiar with the talks.”

“[...]Apple is also working with videogame publisher Electronic Arts Inc. to show off the tablet’s game capabilities, according to one person familiar with the matter.”

“[...]a person familiar with the matter said Apple was in serious discussions with Microsoft Corp. to incorporate its Bing search engine into the iPhone as the default search and map technologies“

So many familiarities here… One more to go:

“[...]One person familiar with the matter said Apple has put significant resources into designing and programming the device so that it is intuitive to share.”

Apart from the article’s amateurism (although it comes from a highly-praised newspaper) – which is obvious after reading the same redundant rumours and non-disclosed details about a product again and again, all I can think of is why are there still so many people left in awe whenever the Apple Marketing machine is feeding them with so much corporate bullshit and have them create needs that most of them are not even in search of?!

Oh, well, I guess it’s simply a matter of masochism that most of us suffer from… What the hell, why not just buy the damn iThinghie and be cool with it after all..