Intel has come up again with a beautiful short film in their Visual Life series. This time is about the iconic designer Michael Wolff, co-founder of Wolff Olins, one of the best British designers ever and one of the fathers of brand identity design.

I have three muscles, without which I couldn’t do my work. The first is curiosity. (You can call it inquisitiveness, you can call it questioning.) The second muscle [is] the muscle of appreciation. It’s not questioning so much as it is noticing… how joyful things can be, how colorful things can be, what already exists as an inspiration. The muscle of curiosity and the muscle of appreciation enable the muscle of imagination.

Everybody knows that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. What few people realize it is only through the parts that the whole gets delivered. I see seeing as a muscular exercise, like I see curiosity. It’s a kind of being open, really: If you walk around with a head full of preoccupation, you’re not going to notice anything in your visual life.

A brand is really a way of remembering what something is like for future reference — something you value, something you feel attracted to. The job of a brand identity, how you package all of that — the purpose, the vision, what it does, what it brings — how you make that so that people can take it and receive it and value it and treasure it and choose it, that’s the whole process of branding. That’s what it is.”

— Michael Wolff

The film is beautifully shot, with a perfect pace & score, all adding even more value to Michael Wolff’s wise words. As one would imagine, his house is a designer’s playground, with Pantone mugs and other treats, like this beautiful tea kettle, that I wish I knew where to get:

Also, gotta love Wolff’s hilarious description of the classic Cooper Black typeface, affectionately calling it  “cow dong”. And last but not least, I love how he talks about cooking as related to creativity — “you never cook the same meal twice”. But enough with the spoilers, here it is:

—

Read more:
— “The Three Muscles of Creativity” by Maria Popova on the TBD Blog;
— “Michael Wolff on Creativity” by David Airey;
Thanks TheInspiration.com for the first tip.

Ed Rondthaler on English spelling from Bob Smartner on Vimeo.

/via Anton Mircea (Facecrook‘s father)
—

And while we’re at it, here are quite a few spelling poems, playing on the absurdity of the English language — The English Spelling Society: Spelling poems.

United Snakes from United Visual Artists on Vimeo.

Can’t wait for the new Massive Attack album. Hopefully, they won’t postpone it again.

(via itsnicethat)

Typophile Film Festival 5 Opening Titles from Brent Barson on Vimeo.

Few things can compare with the pleasure of freeriding through the snow powder, down the slopes of the mountain, through woods and alpine plains alike. I only hope that I’ll still be able to ski — meaning, we’ll still have enough snow — in Romania ten or twenty years from now.

Happy holidays everyone, snowy or sunny, just as you like it :)

You can view a larger image, along with others on my flickr. Two videos with my brother and I freeriding are also online on youtube, here and here :)

Later edit:
Well, it seems ‘freeriding’ is a snowboarding term, so the better thing to use would be backcountry skiing :)

Intriguing? Well, if you’ve never thought of applying game theory—wiki—to movies, here’s a treat:

I think that the final scene in this Clint Eastwood movie is the most outstanding example of game theory. Three men in a triangle — each with a gun, a rock at the center of the three. It is up to each man to evaluate his situation. All are excellent shots. Who do they shoot?

Clint has supposedly put a message on a rock that holds the key to everything, but do the other two trust Clint to have actually written the correct answer? As the other two evaluate the situation, they realize they can’t trust Clint to have written the answer on the rock — therefore they can’t shoot Clint who likely still has the answer. That means the other two can only shoot each other, but only one will likely hit before the other.

What they don’t know is that Clint has given one an unloaded gun… Clint can ignore this one. The one Clint has to worry about with the loaded gun will try to kill the one with the unloaded gun. Neither will fire at Clint. Clint will fire at the one with the loaded gun. As the camera passes from one face to the other the audience is meant to figure out what each would do.

The guy with the loaded gun shoots at the guy with the unloaded gun — Clint shoots the guy with the loaded gun. Game over. As with the hangings in the movie, he has dangled Duco out as bait while Clint takes the money.

The game is decided before it starts.

Clint sets up a situation where each evaluates their possible moves, but in reality, Clint has already won the game. Its a brilliant example of people making the best decisions based on the information available to them…and somebody manipulating the information available to them.

Phil Mellinger, 2002

Sounds like Asimov‘s Hari Seldon has just used his psychohistory to find out if somebody’s gonna be a lucky punk :) Too bad scripts this good are so rare.

(via typographer)

(via September Industry)

(thanks Arpi for the tip)

Too bad I have to wait till february to see it in Bucharest :(

Sweeney Todd Trailer – Watch the top videos of the week here