Much respect to Steve Jobs and the Infinity Loop. Mahalo. I made this hoping Bono or Al Gore would wear it to the Apple Christmas party. Here’s to hoping.

Aaron Yoshino has patience and lots of it. His observation skills are military grade, his energy is combustible, and his timing is laser like. Put a camera in his hands and you’ll get results – amazing results. Collaborating with Honozooloo (his nom de plume)  for hi2059 made me an instant life long fan of him and his work. In the far future, we’ll look back at life during Honolulu of 2011 and Aaron’s library of images will be our biggest window for sure. For those impatient for such futures, his first solo show starts this week at Hotel Renew. Not to be missed. Check the FLUXHAWAII website for more information.

AARON YOSHINO PHOTOGRAPHY
On Display June 13 – July 14, 2011

A few years ago ASWS was asked to provide design support for the Hawaii International Film Festival, we collaborated with the HIFF team to re-brand and strengthen their identity and collateral. A few years on, it’s great to see HIFF is stronger then ever with a growing attendance of younger viewers and volunteers. This year I got to take in a few movies and overdose on popcorn. Here’s a short list of my highlights from HIFF 30.

• Beth Gibbons (Portishead) voice in the credit track for the Tempest
• Bill Cunningham’s Photo Documentary
• Getting offered a stash of poke by the DP during ‘To Live & Ride in L.A.’. Thanks for the sweet sticker!
• Seeing even more friends names in credits this year
• Hearing the audience react to ‘How wasted are you?’ in ‘This Film is Broken’
• Getting over Star Wars
• Being the only guy to probably break a wine glass at HIFF this year
• Being mistaken for Taika Waititi (Director of Boy)

Good times. Big mahalo to Sarah, Andy, Sean and Chuck at HIFF for the passes.

ASWS drops graphical assistance to the Coffee Talk crew for their new live music night “Coffee Talk Sessions”. Headliner Ernie Cruz Jr. is bringing the Awa fueled live music into Kaimuki on Wednesday nights. Kaimuki is the next Kapahulu, say what?

In their final phase of construction, The Vanguard Lofts required a hand-out for buyers to reference the 36 unit apartments. As a additional piece to the original brochure, a self covering accordion fold brochure was in order. The tour map was designed to allow sales agents quick reference to the unique floor plans while escorting guests through the building or to assist buyers in self-guided tours.

Entering the Flash vs HTML 5 argument is a trip down snoozer lane, but this passage from Hartmut Esslinger’s book ‘A Fine Line’ kind of framed the debate in a new light. Esslinger’s ID company frogdesign helped Apple design the original Macintosh line, he comments on overcoming the challenge of low fidelity dot-matrix printers that were ubiquitous at the time. Apple was focused on designing a computer that could produce high-resolution graphics and needed a printer that could deliver them in a home or office. Esslinger’s aside at the end is a telling piece of history that most people will have long forgotten.

Apple made an under-recognized breakthrough in the 1980s with its advances in desktop publishing. Our goal was to move beyond the horrible graphics of dot-matrix printers, so Apple began by licensing modern typestyles from the German type setting company, Berthold. We then took the Canon’s high-end copy engine and combined it with a Macintosh board, which had the capability to process the high-resolution PostScript graphics of scalable fonts, and added a “soft window” user interface. The printer was an instant success. With it, Apple pioneered an entirely new industry for design software (companies such as Adobe wouldn’t have started without it).

To be fair, Apple did not indirectly create Adobe, as the technology embedded in the printer was in fact Adobe’s first invention – PostScript. Founder John Warnock, a former Xerox PARC employee, created a technology that allowed scalable fonts for high-end main frame printers ($30,000 = high end). A combination of the Apple Laserwriter ($7,000), a copy of Aldus Pagemaker and a Macintosh is what set-off the Desktop Publishing revolution. Esslinger’s passage hints at the lucrative future for the publishing industry that we benefit from today, but their solution for protection against poor-quality graphics is the clue to Apple’s current strategy for the web. In the 1980s, Apple built a computer (the Macintosh) the industry did not understand or need, only until all the pieces were in place did the value of the Macintosh computer ascend. Apple’s foresight to use PostScript within the printer and OS allowed Adobe to be part of that revolution. Today, Apple is still trying to protect itself from poor-quality graphics, ironically from Flash, an Adobe acquisition from Macromedia. If you replace the Macintosh of the 80s with the iPad, you’ll see a pattern that Apple again needs to build the proper ecosystem for the device to exist within. Flash is a capable tool, but to Apple’s standards, it provides them with enough reason to break rank with the Industry – again. The iPad and iPhone is Apple’s new Macintosh and unfortunately for Adobe, Flash is the clunky dot-matrix printer of the 21st century. Oh the drama, nap time.

I gave up TV a few years ago for the greener pastures of the Internet, so far its been a life changing experience. I’m no longer running home to watch my favorite shows or channel surfing to fall asleep. By giving-up the idea of ‘current’ in my normal diet of procedural dramas and late night punditry, the internet is a bottomless well of on-demand content. But, once and awhile I get to sit in front of a real TV signal, live people and all. Of the few times that’s happened, I realized how obvious it was that you’re really watching commercials with story interruptions. I also noticed major trends in thematic programming (vampires, sci-fi, 80s TV) and commercials, but one thing stood out in particular.

Maybe by chance, but I had watched a group of unrelated commercials all using one prop in particular – the robotic arm. From cell phones, credit cards and bicycles to TVs, cars and deodorant. The robotic appendage had replaced the hand model and the SAG actor all together. Of all the products depending on such robotic presentation, only the automobile seemed the appropriate salesman. Robots have been a fascination on TV since the first black and white programs, but just the robotic armature is something new. What could a robotic arm possibly communicate better then a doe-eyed model? When did we decide that an animated robotic arm was an appropriate prop for soap?

Could this be a trend spawned by male techno-lust and Bjork? Or could this be a sign of things to come. In an increasingly technical world, have consumers outgrown the need for human representation in exchange for robotic mannequins? Ironically, I hope we don’t forget that our appetite for such electronics are not assembled by mechanical hands, but Chinese ones.

Below are a few videos as evidence of our fascination with the robotic arm. Special note goes out to the Chevy Malibu for replacing human parents with the efficient metal variety. I’ve also included a commercial using robotic legs, for shoes obviously, and at the bottom is a reminder of how car commercials use to be made.

Non-profit organizations constantly depend on the generosity of public, private or government sources. Practical and economical solutions are always a priority for groups tasked with the long-term goal of changing public habits or opinion. The Coalition for a Tobacco-Free Hawaii  is no stranger to such challenges. ASWS was asked to design their annual report, a major collateral piece for the Coalition, which was attractive and budget friendly. Our main challenge was to maximize cost effective materials and a reduced color palette to achieve our goals. The message of health and wellness was reflected in the use of bold and tonal colors inspired by the Coalition logo.

TheHI gets a flashy new flyer. Look out for a collaborative series of infographics courtesy of ASWS and HI2059.

Anyone who works in a creative industry will often be challenged with the need to ‘invent’ things to prove their creative chops. Like a magician on stage, a creative will strive to produce results that will stun and amaze an audience. The act of performance as a self-imposed job description is a fairly common feeling, mainly generated by the ratio of working creatives in today’s industries; and the need to define your worth among them. As history reminds us, the inventors club is a small elite group of people while the common folk must live in the scrapbooking rank-and-file. As an artist, subjectivity plays a large role in the ability to determine value in a body of work; just the act of doing something can be considered ‘inventing’. But for designers, the role of solution provider creates a definable agenda with predictable outcomes, making the status of inventor increasingly unlikely.

What drives the need to perform for a client, boss or audience? The answers may live in the definition of creativity and invention and how society perceives them. The act of creativity is the application of imagination or originality, often generating favorable results. Invention is act of creating or designing something that has not existed before. While the act of making something from nothing is fairly straightforward, creativity has a much more nuanced purpose. The application of imagination or originality is the process of how ideas (hopefully good ones) are implemented; more specifically, anyone’s ideas. The designer/artist has the option of being a conduit for the creative ideas that came before, while inventors are tasked with specific goal of providing new. Through society’s lens, achieving progress or greatness against adversity is how we choose our role models and heroes. From an entertaining on-screen performance to a last-minute game winning touchdown, the satisfaction of experiencing something most of us will rarely achieve is extremely exhilarating. In comparison, the application of a creative idea that’s not your own may generally be perceived as just ‘using good judgment’, hardly the stuff of champions (some notable exceptions, taste-makers Martha Stewart and Terence Conran have generated successful careers by highlighting other peoples good ideas).

So why does the idea of invention often distract rather than assist creative thinkers? As a general test of ability, performance is society’s way of measuring accomplishment, weather in school, on the field or in the workplace. But, for a creative, the act of applying a series of small ideas can be harder to recognize in comparison to a few large ones. The confusion occurs when, in a moment of self diagnosis, he or she compares their original idea to all of the creative work ever done. The results are often sobering as there is rarely positive feedback in comparison to the amount of creative work all humans have generated over time. Like counting the stars at night, your own ideas can be difficult to appreciate from the static of other creativity around you. In this vulnerable state, invention can seem like the most effective tool in ascending the mountain of great ideas. By creating something never seen before, we believe we’re ensured immediate transport to the top of the pile.

Creativity is about the use of good ideas implemented with skill and consistency over time, producing results that are both intended and surprising, regardless of scale. Society has a general fixation with newness which serves to distract us from appreciating the beauty of process and method, especially in the subject of entertainment. But how does one reduce the habit of comparing ideas with ideas? Possibly, by treating the act of creativity as an extension of our health. If we practice creativity like we consume food or workout at the gym, it becomes a necessity in our lives and hopefully will reduce performance anxiety. Or put simply – 90% of being a Dad is showing up.