Tag: movies

#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.

#34 Kettles & Mittens

Chaz DeSimone 5 Comments

Amper­Art #34 is the sec­ond line of lyrics that contains “and” in the song My Favorite Things from the 1960 musi­cal and the 1965 film, The Sound of Music:
 

Rain­drops on ros­es & whiskers on kittens
Bright cop­per ket­tles & warm woolen mittens
Brown paper pack­ages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

Cream col­ored ponies & crisp apple streudels
Door­bells & sleigh bells & schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things

Girls in white dress­es with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Sil­ver white win­ters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I’m feel­ing sad
I sim­ply remem­ber my favorite things
& then I don’t feel so bad

 

This is a col­lec­tion of four edi­tions, each fea­tur­ing a line from the song that includes the word “and” which of course we replace with our favorite charac­ter, the ampersand.

Each edi­tion in this series will be released a week apart. You must sub­scribe to receive high-​resolution pdf files so you can cre­ate beau­ti­ful prints (11×17 or 8.5×11 inch­es). Sub­scrip­tions are free & you will receive your print down­loads by email. You’ll find sug­ges­tions on print­ing and fram­ing here.

Con­cept & design notes:

In research­ing the style to use for this art­work I found one of the orig­i­nal movie posters, sam­pled the col­ors from which I chose a lim­it­ed palette (I did not use blue as that would be your per­fect mat in a nice frame), select­ed the appro­pri­ate type­styles & hand-​drew the amper­sand, styl­iz­ing it to resem­ble the main title in the poster.

Pink & yel­low kettles?

Have you ever seen a shiny new pen­ny in the sun­shine? It alter­nates between a gold­en yel­low and a bril­liant pink. Togeth­er, or when not direct­ly reflect­ing the sun­shine, it’s a bright cop­per. That’s why this edi­tion sug­gests cop­per through pink and yellow. 
 
If that does­n’t make sense, let’s just say the left­over mit­tens right after Black Fri­day were yel­low with pink pol­ka dots.

The amper­sand not only con­nects rain­drops and kit­tens and ket­tles and ponies and door­knobs, it also links the last two lines of the song, which appear on all four lay­outs at very top and very bottom.

To fur­ther research this piece, I real­ly enjoyed watch­ing the movie! If you ever need a joy­ful lift & a lit­tle humor, this is the movie to see. It’s won­der­ful & timeless.

If you love the amper­sand sub­scribe to Amper­Art here to receive future Amper­Art edi­tions. They’re always fun & fab­u­lous & free. Sub­scribers also receive spe­cial bonus­es.

#33 Raindrops & Whiskers

Chaz DeSimone 6 Comments

 

This is the first of four pieces in the My Favorite Things col­lec­tion, inspired by the song from the 1960 musi­cal and 1965 movie The Sound of Music. Only the lyric phras­es con­tain­ing “and” were turned into Amper­Art designs. I’m glad “whiskers on kit­tens” was one of them. I love cats & kit­tens. I don’t like ros­es as much as car­na­tions, but “rain­drops on car­na­tions” prob­a­bly would not have won an Emmy.

Each edi­tion in this series will be released a week apart. You must sub­scribe to receive high-​resolution pdf files so you can cre­ate beau­ti­ful prints (11x17 or 8.5x11 inch­es). Sub­scrip­tions are free & you will receive your print down­loads by email. You’ll find sug­ges­tions on print­ing and fram­ing here.

In research­ing the style to use for this art­work I found one of the orig­i­nal movie posters, sam­pled the col­ors from which I chose a lim­it­ed palette (I did not use blue as that would be your per­fect mat in a nice frame), select­ed the appro­pri­ate type­styles & hand-​drew the amper­sand, styl­iz­ing it to resem­ble the main title in the poster:

The amper­sand not only con­nects rain­drops and kit­tens and ket­tles and ponies and door­knobs, it also links the last two lines of the song, which appear on all four lay­outs at very top and very bottom.

To fur­ther research this piece, I real­ly enjoyed watch­ing the movie! If you ever need a joy­ful lift & a lit­tle humor, this is the movie to see. It’s won­der­ful & timeless.

If you love the amper­sand sub­scribe to Amper­Art here to receive future Amper­Art edi­tions. They’re always fun & fab­u­lous & free. Sub­scribers also receive spe­cial bonus­es.