Off Book is a bi-weekly web series from PBS that explores cutting edge art, the artists that make it, and the people that share it online. Episodes have ranged from web design to viral video to steampunk culture, and their latest entry into the series is all about color.

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In The Effect of Color, we hear from a handful of color experts about the powerful impact that color has in our everyday lives.

Color is one of the fundamental elements of our existence, and defines our world in such deep ways that its effects are nearly imperceptible. It intersects the worlds of art, psychology, culture, and more, creating meaning and influencing behavior every step of the way. Most fascinating are the choices we make, both subconsciously and consciously, to use color to impact each other and reflect our internal states. Whether in the micro-sense with the choice of an article of clothing, or the macro-sense where cultures on the whole embrace color trends at the scale of decades, color is a signifier of our motives and deepest feelings.

You can find more fascinating Off Book episodes on their YouTube channel.

Can you remember a time when people used to write letters—by hand! Or, read books made of paper, glue and ink? As our increasingly digital world seems to be moving farther and farther away from traditional print media, companies like Paperlux step in to remind us that nothing can replace the touch, smell, weight, and color of a real hold-it-in-your-hands magazine.

Today's article is presented by the leading magazine and glossy booklet printing company, Next Day Flyers. Check them out for fast turnarounds and amazing prices.

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When the graphic design magazine Novum commissioned Paperlux to come up with an innovative magazine cover, the creative juices kicked into overdrive and the result is truly something spectacular to see and feel.

Paperlux, a design studio based in Hamburg, Germany, was seeking a way to focus on the palpable nature of paper. The result was a very tactile approach as a way to draw people to a colorful product sporting a geometric design that makes you ache to just reach out and feel it for yourself.

Geodesic sphere at Epcot Center in Walt Disney World (left - source)

The design was fashioned after what is called a geodesic dome (source). Although the magazine represents a much flatter version of the dome, it still has the texture and look of the real thing.

COLOURlovers spend countless hours creating amazing Patten Templates using Seamless Lite. Today, we are happy to announce some amazing new feature updates to the in-site seamless pattern design process.

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Along with the new features, Seamless Lite has been given some big love and a smoother, speedier designing experience should be noticeable.

How-To: Custom Shapes + Shape Gallery from COLOURlovers on Vimeo.

How-To: Custom Shapes + Shape Gallery

"Save as Shape" Tool

You can now save individual elements using the newly installed “Save as Shape” tool. This will allow you to keep those wonderfully complicated design elements you have been creating for a single Pattern Template. Only NOW, you can re-use those awesome pieces in any number of Pattern Template variation by using, “My Shapes” located in your Shapes Library on Seamless Lite (when you are logged in).

 How To Use "Save as Shape"

In Seamless Lite, create a shape from multiple shapes using the preexisting shapes in the Shape Library. Select all layers that make up this custom shape. No need to group these either, when you save the shape as a single element it will automatically group it and give it the name you give your shape upon saving,

Select your shape layers and click, Save as Shape" in the layer tools area. 

Preview your shape element, give it a title, description if you want, tags and then Save Shape.

That simple! At this point, shapes cannot be shared with one another (unless you do that privately - it's your choice).

Shape Galleries: A Place to Show Off  Your Abilities!

A new gallery for all of your custom shapes, will be added to your profile page the moment you create and save your first shape with the "Save as Shape" tool.

Gallery element for your Shapes (above)

Gallery view of your shapes allows the same filter-view options as other creations on the site.

Each shape has its own information page just like the other creations on CLCOLOURlover.com. Everyone has the ability to LOVE, FAVE and SHARE this shape made by you! Additionally, you have the ability to download the .SVG file, located under the, made "with Seamless Lite" link and DELETE or EDIT the shape profile under the OPTIONS drop-down.

Shapes will also stream on to the homepage of COLOURlovers.com as they are being created. So let's see what you got?!

The Most Colorful & Inspiring Creative Videos from a collection of the most popualr videos on vimeo.com. 12 videos. 30 minutes of fun, playful, creative & very colorful!

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Colourfornia by Nick Thompson

In The Land Of The Northern Lights by Ole C. Salomonsen

Color of light by Boris Ponomarev

Ljósið (previously known as Let Yourself Feel) by Esteban Diácono

Chlorophyll Skin by Lucy McRae

Optimist by Brian Thomson

floating by floating

TIJI "COLOUR" HD by AKAMA

Wall painting by Supakitch and Koralie by elr°y

Grindin'by Nobody Beats The Drum

Max TV Color Artist by Sebastian Langnickel

Ishihara - English version by Yoav Brill

One of the many wonderful recommendations made in the COLOURlovers forum topic, Animation, lead by liddle_r, is the work of sound animator and film director Norman McLarren.

Some of his earliest experimental work included washing then painting and scratching on used film stock, as he did not have access to proper filming equipment. That was just the beginning of McLaren's career. His innovation and experimentation won him many awards over the years, including an Academy Award in the Best Documentary, Short Subjects category for his film Neighbours (1952), as well as other awards at the Canadian Film Awards, Cannes and the Berlin International Film Festival. His experiments in animation and sound created many new techniques that have shaped what we know as film and animation today.

Synchromy (1971)

National Film Board of Canada: Here are pyrotechnics of the keyboard, but with only a camera to "play the tune." To make this film, Norman McLaren employed novel optical techniques to compose the piano rhythms of the sound track. These he then moved, in multicolor, onto the picture area of the screen so that, in effect, you see what you hear. It is synchronization of image and sound in the truest sense of the word.

Even though a red and green can give an ad that instant Christmas association not all agencies stick with the traditional color palette when it comes to holiday advertising. Some choose a variation, that often includes at least a red or a green, but not always, some create a completely new new holiday palette and only use familiar elements to let you know that it's a holiday advertisement.
Here are few colorful holiday print and video ads, and their color palettes.

Print

Music & Color

Brad Laner - Eyes Close by Josh Laner

From the album "Natural Selections" available from Hometapes home-tapes.com/​Hometapes/​HAUS_HT031.html | Video by Josh Laner. Dedicated to Dad.

Light Drive by Kim Pimmel

Lighting: Kim Pimmel | Sound: Tron Legacy trailers

Stop motion form and colour, using light painting techniques.

I've been interested in taking my Light Study photo series and evolving them into motion pieces. So I edited together those stop motion sequences, mashed up some audio from the Tron Legacy trailers, and out came Light Drive.

To control the lights, I used an Arduino controlled via bluetooth to drive a stepper motor. The stepper motor controls the movements of the lights remotely from Processing. The light sources include cold cathode case lights, EL wire, lasers and more.

Just Colour by Jesper Kirkeby Brevik

Notcot | Alessandro Loschiavo Design

A visualization of an orchestral piece, using just colour to convey the unique character and aesthetic feeling of the different instruments in use. The musical track I have chosen is The Sound of Magic, composed by DJ Dreamland. For furter information on the film, visit the blog site just-colour.blogspot.com

Words & Thoughts

Richard Feynman Talks About Light

Via the COLOURlovers Forum

Words and Thoughts in RGB

*This documentary has two serious factual errors: the visible spectrum wavelengths are between 400nm and 700nm, not 300-700nm, and blue is close to 430nm, not 700nm.

A mini-documentary about color. Narrated by Joana Vieira da Costa.

It won a number of awards - Ovarvideo 2005 Jury Prize, FEST 2006 Audience Award for Best Documentary, Tom De Video ACERT 2007 Best Documentary, Arouca Film Fest 2007 Best Documentary - and was present at a number of important events including the Vila do Conde International Short Film Festival 2006, Videoevento Turin 2005 and Jovens Criadores 2006.

Note: I had cut so many corners (in the making of this film) in fact, I am ashamed to admit, the documentary has two serious factual errors: the visible spectrum wavelengths are between 400nm and 700nm, not 300-700nm, and blue is close to 430nm, not 700nm. (more info in this blog post: asseptic.org/​blog/​823). That is fixed in the second version of the documentary, for which I don't have distribution rights. Contact Andar Filmes - andarfilmes.com - if you're interested.

For this episode of local color we are traveling to Dallas Texas home of football, cowboys and cattle. Now, craft sewing and hip might not always be two terms you toss into the same conversation, but that may change when you meet Callie Work-Leary the under 30 owner of CityCraft – a Fabric Boutique and Sewing Lounge she hopes to build into the Crate & Barrel of the sewing world.

Hip Sewin' from Library

Video Color Analysis

by Sebastian Koenig

"This is a tool I built for fun with Processing (www.processing.org). It simply analyzes the contents of any video and generates a piechart. The value shows the average frequency of occurrence for each color detected. I randomly selected various short videos to demonstrate the tool. I do not own the copyrights to any of the linked videos. If you have a video you would like me to analyze, feel free to ask!"

Metronomy - Radio Ladio Music Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMjmxF58wFc)

Dramatic Look (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Kyi0WNg40)

Apple "Get A Mac" Ads (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCL5UgxtoLs)

Mickey Mouse - The Moving Day 1936 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8FzGOOQNDY)

Design Contest

EDGS2010 Young Designers United

Young Designers United (YDU) is an international non-profit organisation whose mission is to be a crossroad and social online meeting point where stakeholders (designers, companies, institutions and individuals) connect and interact to (co-)create and innovate in optimal conditions.

Competition EDGS2010 Young Designers United (YDU) organises EDGS2010, an online European Design Graduate Show. YDU offers design graduates throughout Europe the opportunity to show design work online. EDGS2010 will invite design icons and experts to select their favourite graduates. This selection will be promoted towards press, ad agencies, companies and public. The icon’s favourites (25 per design field) become subject of the public competition and an iPad module will be launched to support the campaign. At the public competition, visitors can choose their favourites among the icon’s selection. The designers who have the most votes will become winners, as well as the visitors who have chosen the best designers of each field.

Open to: European design graduates. Graduate = student who has finished or will finish school in 2010. Design = all types of design (product design, graphic design, industrial design, architecture, multimedia, illustration, fashion design, web design, animation, digital video, interior design, motion graphics). Submission fee: free of charge. Submission deadline: August 31. How to participate: Fill in the application form at http://www.ydu.org.

Art

Ross Racine

Portfolio | 20x200 online gallery

Drawn freehand directly on a computer and printed on an inkjet printer, my works do not contain photographs or scanned material.

The subjects of my recent work may be interpreted as models for planned communities as much as aerial views of fictional suburbs, referring to the dual role of the computer as a tool for urban planning as well as image capture. Examining the relation between design and actual lived experience, the works subvert the apparent rationality of urban design, exposing conflicts that lurk beneath the surface. Beyond the suburban example, these digital drawings are a way of thinking about design, the city and society as a whole.

Prairieside Forks now available at the 20x200 online gallery.

Greeting Cards

Fishink

Link

After working as an illustrator and textile designer, Craig took his cute, quirky characters and started his own greeting card company, Fishink.

In this video (part of a series) we visit Kansas City based gift, home and fine art retailer Stuff, owned by Casey and Sloane Simmons.

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