Category: Functional

#66 Plain & Simple

Chaz DeSimone Leave a comment

Click image to view full-​size or download hi-​rez file for gallery-​quality printing and framing. (But why would you want to hang this boring thing on your wall?) This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download. Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

Every­thing about this release is plain & sim­ple. Just like it says.

Not even the usu­al long-​winded arti­cle. A thought­ful ges­ture for those of you who skip read­ing the sto­ry but feel guilty afterwards.

There’s no “chaz sez” col­umn, either.  And you know how much I love stand­ing on my soap­box. (I would expound on the virtues of pro­fes­sion­al, world-​class design — in plain & sim­ple terms, of course.)

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#55 Returns & Exchanges

Chaz DeSimone Leave a comment

AmperArt-55-Returns-Exchanges

Click to view full-​size or download hi-​rez image for gallery-​quality printing and framing. 
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

The day after Christ­mas must be as dread­ed to retail­ers as the day after Thanks­giv­ing is wel­come — you know, Black Fri­day, the biggest shop­ping day of the year.

Used to be, before online shop­ping & big box stores, all the depart­ment stores from Sears & Pen­neys (as it used to be called), to Saks & Nord­stroms, had a spe­cial win­dow or room all its own (with a classy, dis­creet sign) that han­dled returns, exchanges & com­plaints. Next to that was the gift wrap­ping ser­vice & lay­away department.

Remem­ber the smell of fresh pop­corn & can­dy when enter­ing your neigh­bor­hood Sears?

Today a cou­ple stores still offer a com­fort­able set­ting for such returns & exchanges (no can­dy or pop­corn, though), but the big box & deep dis­count chains most­ly just have a return counter (with a tacky “Line Starts Here” arrow hang­ing from the ceil­ing) and a  trail of cus­tomers (all “dressed up” in the lat­est Big Box fash­ion) that extends out the door.

So Decem­ber’s Amper­Art #55, Returns & Exchanges, repeats the trip to the same brick-&-mortar store (or the online equiv­a­lent) that Novem­ber’s Amper­Art #54 por­trayed: Stop & Shop (in case you missed it, get tram­pled here). Read More

#38 Form & Function

Chaz DeSimone 3 Comments

Form fol­lows func­tion, form meets func­tion, form & func­tion. It’s all about effi­cien­cy, sim­plic­i­ty & aesthetics.

Lamps that dou­ble as sculp­ture, sculp­ture that you can sit on, even a cool graph­ic that’s real­ly a cal­en­dar. Prob­a­bly the most ubiq­ui­tous exam­ple of form & func­tion is the wrist­watch. The rarest could be the 3 that dou­bles as an amper­sand (sort of) in the lat­est Amper­Art edition.

Form & func­tion is every­where: our cloth­ing, a build­ing (although some are so ugly they are mere­ly func­tion­al, & some are so poor­ly built they don’t real­ly function).

Anoth­er exam­ple of form & func­tion is a beau­ti­ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed serv­ing of food. How about some writ­ing instru­ments? And of course my favorite, my Mick­ey Mouse cof­fee mug. Fun to look at & very functional.

chaz sez:
Movie Night

Recent­ly I dis­cov­ered the IMDb, or Inter­net Movie Data­base. It lists the top 250 movies by pop­u­lar­i­ty accord­ing to the gen­er­al pub­lic, and it is con­stant­ly fluc­tu­at­ing, espe­cial­ly re-​ranking the new­er flicks quite frequently.
I have trad­ed in my habit of read­ing sev­er­al (actu­al­ly, too many) chap­ters of sus­pense and mys­tery nov­els every night that I’m not push­ing pix­els, for watch­ing every movie on the 250 list.
So far I have been tru­ly delight­ed with oldies like Char­lie Chap­lin’s “On the Town,” Lau­rel & Hardy in “Babes in Toy­land” as well as the lat­er Dis­ney ver­sion star­ring “Anette.” I’ve enjoyed “The Sound of Music,” “A Street­car Named Desire,” and “Har­vey” – a real delight. Also saw for the first time “The God­fa­ther” – sur­pris­ing­ly, since I’m Sicil­ian. Pazien­za!
But the most allur­ing and cap­ti­vat­ing movie I saw from this list – or from my entire life on this plan­et – is “The Foun­tain­head” from 1948. It express­es exact­ly how I feel about design where every sur­face, angle, col­or and detail must have a damn good rea­son to be there. The movie is about not giv­ing into soci­ety, not giv­ing up your prin­ci­ples, liv­ing your dream in the face of ridicule and even con­dem­na­tion – just because one artist is too bril­liant for the mass­es. The movie also fea­tures mid-​century mod­ern archi­tec­ture, my absolute favorite (aside from futur­is­tic archi­tec­ture – but back then it was futuristic).

Per­haps you’ve guessed that movie inspired my “Form & Func­tion” Amper­Art piece.