Ray Ban

I like the intro to the Ray-Ban website. Really colourful and fun, plus it goes with their new colection of colour-rimmed sunglasses. A cute touch was the "feed the chameleon" once you enter the site. really random, i cant imagine where they got the idea from.

http://www.ray-ban.com/UK/

Bahrain National Museum

After not having visited the place since i was a kid, I decided to go back to the Bahrain museum this summer hoping to get a few useful references for my dissertation or independent project. i ended up going around the whole museum, looking at the different displays.

The museum is the largest and one of the oldest museums in the country. It has a collection of Bahrain's ancient archeological artifacts, and covers 6000 years of Bahrain's history. It has three halls displaying archaeology and the ancient civilization of the country, and two other halls show the culture and lifestyle of Bahrain's recent pre-industrial past. This part i enjoyed the most. It had displays representing many different and important part of the old culture of Bahrain. Its perfect for tourists (not that there are many) to understand the countries past and its heritage and culture. It'd also be good reference for coming generations, who would have probably not known about these aspects of their heritage (not that i think many of them would come to the museum).

There is also a collection of old Quranic manuscripts, notes on astronomy and historical documents at the Documents and Manuscripts Hall. Finally, a section for current artists to display their works, but i didn't like the exhibition so much at the time that i went.

Brand Associates

A website i love bye a graphic design company in Bahrain. I love how it goes off the page and then zooms back into the section you want. It's not easy to follow any you mite need a bit more patience then you want to have for a site, but it shows that the company has got the creativity and skills.

http://www.brandassociates.org/welcome.html

Eat Pray Love

Another book I read over the summer, this one however wasn't as great as the others. Don't get me wrong, I can't deny the book's success. It's a good book and I do think i gained something from it. It just wasn't one of those i couldn't put down, or couldn't wait to get back to reading. I thought it was a little slow, and didn't have a strong climax, or maybe it did but happend towards the end.

The story is a memoir about the author who goes through a journey of self discovery after a messy divorce followed by depression. She spends a year traveling through 3 countries; she eats and enjoys life in Italy, then India where she tries to find her spirituality, and finnaly Indonesia where she falls in love.

I did like the book, and im glad i read it. i just didn't love it. i didn't keep me on my toes, as they say. I do like the cover design though. It's really sweet and simple. Maybe a little obvious.. but i don't mind so much. Not only is the typography choice relevant, but the style and simplicity of it. It also reminded me of our typography/phobias project.

Blackberry vs. iphone

The two phones have become the most popular ones at the moment and are competing really strongly. The response by apple is great, even the sounds and music is really effective. Although i think the iphone is a much cooler phone, the blackberry seems to be winning the battle in terms of sales, all due to the blackberry messenger which allows you to messege, send pictures and voice-clips to other blackberry owners for free.

Kafka on the Shore

I'm still half way through reading this book, but unfortunately the deadline for this blog is soon and i just had to post it. The reason is that it might be one of the strangest books i've ever come across. it's japanese written in 2002 and was translated into english in 2005. unlike other translated books i've read, the language doesn't seem to have lost its quality through the translation. obviously i don't know how it was in japanese, but i was surprised to see the strong style of writing and language. it actually won some sort of translation award.

The story so far goes like this:

There are two different plots, the narrative runs back and forth between the two, every other chapter is about 1 of them. All the odd chapters are about 15 year old Kafka's story as he runs away from his father's house. After a series of adventures, he lives and works at a private library. There he spends most of his days reading.

The even chapters tell Nakata's story, who is an unintelligent old man who speaks to cats, and is because of this, earns money by finding peoples lost pet cats. Then, the case of one particular lost cat puts him on a path that ultimately takes him far away from his home, ending up on the road for the first time in his life. I think his and Kafka's stories are going to meet soon.

It's a great book so far, weird and so full of surprises. Because of the 2 different stories on every other chapter, you can't put it down. i love the creativity of the plot line and style, as well as the fantasy in it,

Louboutins

Christian Louboutin is a footwear designer. Since 1992, his designs have incorporated the shiny, red-lacquered soles that have become his signature. I'll admit it's very "girly" of me to be posting this on my blog in my Design category, but to me Louboutin shoes is one of the greatest pieces of art in the fashion world today. It's so interesting that just the addition of 1 colour, changed the whole look of the shoe. Apparently Louboutin's goal is to “make a woman look sexy, beautiful, to make her legs look as long as he can”. To be honest i don't think I've ever seen sexier shoes than his. The history behind the red soles is that while Christian was working on a prototype of his design in Paris, he loved the color of red nail polish someone was using near him. He quietly put this color on his shoe and ..just with that.. he created fashion history. At some point he thought to use different colors on all his designs, but when he saw how the red looked he knew that it was it. By just adding the 1 colour on the bottom of his shoes, he turned them from any other designer footwear to icon pieces that can be spotted from a mile away. I also really like his logo. it completely suits the whole brand identity, its so classy and french, and i think its timeless. i dont think a logo like that would go out of style, for designer shoes.
I went on the website, and like many other designer brands' sites, it was really cool and properly developed to be completely relevant to the brand image. I love how the image of the shoes walks up to whatever you clicked. the sound effects for that and for the intro of the site makes it more interesting. Some parts of it are quite wacky and weird, but still very relevant.

http://www.christianlouboutin.com/