The Shadow Ballet: Dancers & Drones

Wired: 

DRONES WILL CHANGE how we ship goods! They’ll revolutionize search and rescue! We hear about these futures all the time. It’s less often that we’re asked to consider how autonomous flying machines might be used for more poetic ends. But, as with any technology, drones can be just as invigorating for art as they are for commerce. “Shadow” is the just the latest example.

Timothy Young: Books Matter

Timothy Young writing in Design Observer, gives ten good reasons the book is important:  

7. A book is an object fixed in time. 
A book can tell us about its status in history. If we look through first editions of Moby Dick or Leaves of Grass, we find that they give away information not only about when they were created, but also about the worlds in which they were created, by way of advertisements, bindings, the quality of their paper, and watermarks on that paper. Such components are often not captured by scanning or are flattened out to make them of negligible use. In Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold—his saga about how libraries microfilmed runs of newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s and then discarded them—one of his chief complaints was that the filmers skipped advertising supplements and cartoons: things that had been deemed unimportant. 
 

"Old/New" - Narrated by Patton Oswalt

Old/New is the story of Drew McHugh, a man whose penchant for the new -- new devices, new fashion, new friends -- is challenged when he discovers the rustic appeal of old-fashioned things. He quickly becomes obsessed with the reclaimed and well-worn - plummeting face-first down the rabbit hole of novelty and nostalgia.

A fantastic short film that serves as a promo reel for Red Giant. 

Red Giant, Seth Worley and Aharon Rabinowitz take you behind the scenes of Old/New below:

What is a good brand?

The School of Life's The Book of Life looks at the most substantial things in life: your relationships, your income, your career, your anxieties. Under the theme of capitalism they explore what is a good brand: 

Essentially a brand is a constellation of qualities, it is a personality in the material realm. It presents a vision of life in a hugely condensed manner via physical objects and services. The bad associations around brand spring from the way that often this vision of life is a little fake, exaggerated or plain daft.
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But a brand doesn’t only symbolise a set of ideas. It makes these ideas reproducible and universal. Brands allow particular qualities to multiply across the world.
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Brands invite the recognition that great things are not usually (actually, practically never) done by individuals acting in heroic isolation. At some point every good idea, every important insight should go through the process of becoming a brand. Because this just means that it should widen its power in the world. And it means other people can join in. The world is in great need of better brands.

This reminds me of a recent post on advertising & the great and wicked troubles of our day. 

Neil Gaiman presents lifetime achievement award to Ursula K. Le Guin at 2014 National Book Awards

For more than forty years, Le Guin has defied conventions of narrative, language, character, and genre, as well as transcended the boundaries between fantasy and realism, to forge new paths for literary fiction. Among the nation’s most revered writers of science fiction and fantasy, Le Guin’s fully imagined worlds challenge readers to consider profound philosophical and existential questions about gender, race, the environment, and society. Her boldly experimental and critically acclaimed novels, short stories, and children’s books, written in elegant prose, are popular with millions of readers around the world.

In recognition of her transformative impact on American literature, Ursula K. Le Guin is the 2014 recipient of the Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She is the Foundation’s twenty-seventh award recipient.