Suddenly, there’s no preciousness in people’s presentations. Just poetry.

I attended PKNY #6 last night. It was a great social affair, more akin to a bar night with a band than a typical speaking engagement. The Pecha Kucha method is simple and clean; get to the point quickly and efficiently, because your presentation ends in 6:40.

It was a different experience, especially considering the venue. No fluorescent lights, nobody sitting in a staid conference hall. This was Le Poisson Rouge, which is one of the Village’s most well known chic rock venues. I expected to see hipster kids partying a monday night away, (which there were some) but instead was greeted by intellectuals, creatives, geeks and artists. The audience really ran the gamut, from businessy branding strategy types, to goofy hipster girls who know some art scene people in the audience.

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Aurumania, a Scandnavian bicycle company, took track bike to a whole new level and created a Gold Bike Crystal Edition that every visible surface are plated with 24-carat gold and decorated with more than 600 Swarovski cystals. The price for this intense fixed gear bike is over $108,000 and will delivered to you personally anywhere in the world via white glove service. Impressive, impressive… I wonder what it feels like to do wheelie on this bike. Sometimes, bike can cost more than your car.

We’re all in love with the sound of our own voices. C’mon, lets break out the honesty here; all curation is merely subjective opinion.  It’s what primordially in the world of commercialism determines the fashion catwalks, billboard advertising, and music sales.  Posed with the realisation that all artists need structure to produce order, the Klein Dytham studio started a new underground night in the depths of Roppongi, Tokyo - Pecha Kucha.  Pronounced “peh-chak-cha” from a Japanese term for the sound of conversation (”chit-chat”), it urges precisely that.

Laden with only the obstacle of time, designers are invited to discuss their work with 20 images (each shown for 20 seconds only) and given 6 minutes and 40 seconds of Andy Warholism till the next speaker is up.  Rather than sucking up to the guy who turns out to be the banker in the room, individuals can find exactly who they want to wax lyrical with.

It’s happened in 180 cities since 2003.  The first one of this year in NYC is now but days away.

When your car doesn’t work for you anymore the phone’s there to get it fixed; you can install a new engine or paint it red and show off some cream leather upholstery.  It’s a fallacy of our time that new starts in our career can’t get a facelift in the same way.  Gone are the days of our parents generation where you’re educated as a doctor, and by god you better be poking needles into sick kiddies till the day you die.

The creative industry can be a stubborn juggernaut that demands consistency, otherwise you’re spat out as fast as those  dirty dollar bills when you’re just trying to buy a metrocard like real quick.  Whatever a purist’s critique on the slash/slash culture of this cut and paste epoch, the creative industries remain the most welcoming and liberal minded homebase for disillusioned workers starving for a shift in gear and highway route to ’somewhere that feels better than this’.

SheSays, a monthly, networking event joins forces for some big wigs who’ve gone from B to Z but still doing just fine.

The speakers:

Vivian Rosenthal - Tronic Studio
Tina Glengary - Big Spaceship
Julie Zukof - Anomaly
Geetika Agrawal - Sr. Interaction Designer - RGA

Letters best read
When printed in blue
The fleurons are pretty
And so are you!

Arial’s dead
No matter the hue,
Mrs Eaves still rocks on,
And I dig you too.

Oh you’re so sweet,
Like a strawberry lollipop,
I’m your Illustrator,
And you’re my Photoshop.

Via For The Love of Type

Kunio Kato from Robot is a director/illustrator from Japan who recently won the Academy Award for best short film, La Maison en Pettis Cubes. He has very delicate stlye of illustration and most of his animation does not include dialogue. Just like his speech at the Oscars, his animation is very sweet. You can view entire La Maison en Pettis Cubes on YouTube by clicking part1 & part2.

Interactive group Arc90 has developed what many grandparents and content purists have been dreaming of: Readability.

Readability, is a bookmarklet that when installed in your browser, allows you to transform any page into clean readable type. All uncessary elements are stripped away in favor of simple message transmission. It’s been causing a storm in the design community.

Interestingly enough, good web designers that have been preaching semantic design, and proper web standards (Like many of us here at Seed) won’t have problems. Pages properly built and styled with standard tags (h1, h2, P, UL, OL, Blockquote… etc.) Will render perfectly with the proper higherarchy and emphasis that was given to the original content.

The typography philosophy and styling used on readability is beautiful and elegant. All content is presented in a single column, in large type. The experience reading a blogpost is akin to reading a novel. All links function as normal, but are stripped of nonessential style. Images are present as well, but inherit default positioning (usually flush left, with the type wrapping around.) Like said, like reading a novel. There are three other styles (one cheeky style being terminal, for the web nerds), but all are very similar in clean content presentation.

Personally, I find this bookmarklet to be a refreshing and interesting experiment in content delivery. I can’t imagine using it too frequently, only because of the additional click thats invovled. And as far as worry about presentation, if your site is built properly and at least moderately adheres to W3C standards, you shouldn’t have any problems.

If your site breaks with Readability, perhaps its time to start getting semantic.

http://www.vimeo.com/3302330

Sebastian Lange from My Name Was God has created a very impressive motion piece called Fickermood. Amazing typographic treatment. I love how his animation is responding back to the music.

A stones throw from our HQ is home to SPIN, a new ping pong social club opening this month; a land where fanatics of the underground sport can sweat out their talent in an aesthetic more common to high end corporate gyms.  They’ve thrown in a shop, bar, private room sponsored by Fred Perry, lounge and a heap of pros to teach and challenge you to play.

They need a new logo!  The winning SPIN New York logo designer will receive $1000, plus a ping pong play date with Susan Sarandon (she looooves ping pong)!