Review / Bolletje Bröd in melk

This is actually a paper milk carton package but not with milk inside, but special kind of cornflakes. The cornflake are kind of soupsticks but then as small balls. It really doesn't have allot of taste at all even the ones with chocolate doesn't really taste the great. However they have something around them that doesn't make them get all soggy after putting them in milk.

However I like the packaging it's but funny that it's same as a normal milk package. How ever might be frustrating if you pour with the wrong packages because breakfast isn't really a piecefull moment to eat, because everyone is in a hurry to get to work or school.

However I doubt people would be buying it because really it taste like eating soupsticks with milk and that doesn't have much taste at all.

Event / GDFB Graphic Design Museum

Here is a place you need to visit when you are in Breda a special Museum all about Graphic Design. I went there for the seminar Personality and design but not really made much pictures during the seminar because it was fairly dark and didn't want to bother people by using flash. Also I had missed the opening with the Dutch Queen opening this museum. The outside of the building there are flags placed which people could a spot to place their own flag. Too bad at the end of the week people had stolen few of the flash on the side.
We are going to look at the inside of the museum. However this looks more like art then graphic design they are pretty inspiring and also good to see different techniques.

In the middle there is a stack of posters you can actually take with you when you have visited this museum.

On the left you see a gate sign from the airport and below is a special interactive table with a touchscreen, there are very high tech and very cool. This is placed below which you can reach through the stairs on the side or the main stair in the main hall.

Here on the left you see a big room with allot of signs and allot of magnetic figures and letters on the wall which you can pull off and can paste on the signs. On the right is a wall which downloads different posters on the wall and project it on the wall.

Here on the left is a maquette or small model of a school where they sell small tiles as to companies for advertisements. The ones who buy the most tiles goes up on the walls which make a kind of competitions between certain companies who want to get higher up or have a better spot. Right there is a table with Nikes and next to it the Mac show a website of Nike.

Couldn't help myself to put my own name up on the wall. Not sure if anyone have changed it by now. But there a Mac on the side where you can write a certain name or word and that will be projected on the wall will small words building up the letters.

There are much more things inside the museum however not going to spoil it by showing everything. There are also a big collection of different stamps through all the years and names of who had designed them. And also designs of old dutch guldens which had very cool design through out the different years.

Review / 125 year aniversary Côte-d'Or

This is something that is truly special, Côte-d'Or made a special edition for their 125 years aniversay and when back with the packaging back to the original design which actually looks quite nice for an old retro design. Its actually a real neat and good design which is simple but not too much

The original packaging include doubel layer of chocolate making it have more in one package then the new packages. Inside the chocolate have a special design with the elephant included between the chocolate. However it looks good it does make it harder to break the pieces evenly on places where the elephant sits.
However too bad they didn't ad any special competition for this special event, would have been nice if there was a golden ticket like Willy Wonka. Maybe tip for them when they his 150 years, because actually nobody was buying this special anniversary package faster than the normal packages. Also there were really little announcements or advertisements that they would be making this special package. Only I did saw the announcements few months back on a special packaging website but nothing was shown on the television which is the biggest medium to catch costumers.

The conclusion is it's really cool they made the original packaging which looks very good for an old design, however they might have done more marketing for this special event.

Review / Limited Aquarius Tropical Gold

Today saw something special for Beijing by Aquarius. A special limited edition with taste of GOLD tropical. The taste of it is quite nice and easy to drink, bit of grapefruit taste. Also really do like the blue and gold color scheme, but I am not fond of the Aquarius logo, what I like to call the logo is Aqu Arius. I call it that because the A in the middle cuts off the word into two pieces, which isn't really a nice flowing design.

On the bottle it says in Chinese Limited Edition but not sure why they did it though because the bottle is only available in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg. Also they added a special contest where you only have to type in a special code you can find on the bottle and win a golden medal worth 200 euro. However the limitation isn't that they made only a few but that it's only avaible for this moment for the Olympic games and availability in only some countries.

The design is printed on a shrinkwrap and printed all the details first and then layered up with gold and then finished up a coating of white so everything would not be transparent. Main colors are dark blue, gold and white, plus full colous for the olympic rings and the Beijing 2008 logo.

Actually really don't like the bottle shape at all plus the logo. Actually the Asian or Japanese design is much better than the European version. I am actaully not sure if they actually sell this drink in China because I only found they are sold in many European countries and Japan.

You can compare it yourself with these website the European site and the Japanese site. I am not sure why but lately see that every country often has it own design and not everywhere the packaging for the same product is always the same. Just like it is tailormade for those countries, however you see some countries really get cool designs while others get damn ugly one. For me this sound very odd even for major companies like Cola Cola.

School / OP ART

I had this for a while on my computer it's an optical art for a school project for art history lesson. I bet I was the only one who made the optical art self instead of just downloading a picture from Google. I like doing these kinds of optical trickery, like the animated businesscards are also optical trickery.

Event / GDFB studyday part 3 Studio Smack

Studio Smack made the intro video of the Graphic Design Festival Breda and they do allot of animation works. The Studio Smack group consist of 3 guys who mainly use alcohol to get any ideas, plus they often make videos for Heiniken, most of their videos are also showed at different bars.

One of the video that really cought my attention is Kapitaal which actually is a black white view of the city showing in white everything that is graphic design. And if you ever been in Breda you will notice that it's Breda it self shown in the video.

To view more of their works go to Studio Smack.nl and also preview their latest work captain Buttnose or Assnose.

For the rest of the day it wasn't really interesting looking at graffiti art at Electron and t-shirts design at Kop. On the day after was a big seminar about "Personality and design" with allot of big designers and that made it or young designers that have made it. Also walked through the brand new Graphic Design Museum.

Event / GDFB studyday part2 toeval

After the seminar and walking through the museum we went to a small building close by. There was the inhibition of TOEVAL which means in English CHANCE. The exhibition is of a personal project of Henk Cornelissen.. He wondered how long it would have take to throw the word TOEVAL with a dice and it took him 11years to throw TOEVAL on the correct spot.

Here above you see the final sheet 11 with the word TOEVAL on it. It took him 516.228 throws to get the word TOEVAL.

On the way he had few time the had thrown TOEVAL but not on the correct position and also had words that had the same letters but not the word. However it looks spectacular it's not something I would do because it take way too much time to do this.

He also done some other design like poster or other thing he also use to design with help of dices. Instead of just making a patern out of your hand just throw few dices to make a certain patern.

Something else I spotted one where there only have 000000 or just a single side fell on this 6 throws. Next up is Studio Smack which was placed on the otherside of Breda where we had to walk a long way.

Review / Fanta redesign

Here is the new Fanta design not bought in any special country but in the Netherlands. The design isn't really special but not really my taste of design. They made a new font type and logo which is more bolder and also stopped with the special design for the "play on!" theme.

Not really digging th overall design of the can and not really thinking its a major improvement. Lately seen many package design that went to a simplistic design but gone bit overboard making it look more like an old design then refreshingly new, while the old design doesn't even look anywhere close to this design.

In a few weeks I will be traveling to Germany again and try to find the reclosable cans again, and will also be visiting an Art Academy in Kassel to visit people I met during Graphic Design Festival and also to look at works of students there .

Review / Coca Cola Light Sango

Here is a new taste of Coca Cola Light, this is orange mixed with Coca Cola. Actually the taste isn't really new because when I was little I have mixed Fanta with Cola allot of times. However the orange taste isn't really that strong with Sango, I rather just go mixing up Coca Cola with Fanta though, however you get a bit ugly brownish beverage instead of black.

This can of Sango actually come from Belgium which my sister bought it. It's kind of odd seeing that Netherlands actually is almost the last to get new kinds of beverages.

The design of the can is the old standard shape and the background main color is polished aluminum. With 4 colors printed on the the can; white, black, orange and red. However I don't like the polished look, it doesn't really look like it fits for this design. The best for the background is that they change to brushed aluminum, which I think will look much better. Also use more lighter fresher color orange because they orange they use is bit on the brownish side. I doubt it's a hit compared to Lime Cola. The taste isn't really special inof or made it better then before, they should either increase the taste or find better mix.

Lately Coca Cola light have been allot of new taste added and tested.

Review / Aquafresh iso-active

Another Aquafresh this is on the market for a while now. The basics of this package is actually same as shaving cream or gel, these two canisters contain special iso-active foaming gel which would clean your teeth's much better. And I can say my teeth's does feel much cleaner and smooth after brushing with it.

However there is a mayor flaw in this package design. The flaw it the with in the material they had use for the pushcap of this can. They used a too soft material, the straw of tube that goes down into the can wasn all dented and flattened like a chewed straw. This mainly cause a problem and the toothpaste or gel could not come out of the can anymore. The problem is cause because people pull the cap first to snap the cap loose so you would not be shooting toothpast while you don't need it. On the second bottle we just directly pushed the top and shotted out some unneeded toothpaste.

Conclusion it's a good toothpast that does it works and you sure beats a pushtube packaging. However if the straw get al jammed you can't get anything out and just wasted allot of money. Unlike a pushtube where you can squeesh out everything with no problem. On the design side it a quite good looking design very fresh with the use of the metallic color of the aluminum it self for the background. However they need to refine the design and use a stronger plastic for the tube or straw.

Event / GDFB studyday part1

It's been few weeks since I went on to the studyday at the Graphic Design Festival Breda. It was a cool experience and met allot of people and designers.

First up at the studyday was a seminar of Anthon Beeke a well known dutch designer. He showed one of his work which he wanted to be and art piece and not a design, and talked about what are the difference between a designer and an artist.

This person I am very unsure of he is called Bruno Monguzzi if I remember it correctly. He should had added something to what Anthon Beeke had talked about but more likely he practised his speech for the next day. The day after is I went to a big seminar with allot of designers, he spoke almost an identical speech. And when he was finished his speech he had a little arguing with Anthon Beeke.
Ji Lee was also there and he made a wise comment that you should be proud of what you make and just love what you are making, and don't have to be and artist or designer just do what you like to make.

After the seminar there was time to walk in the Museum of Breda and could watch old graphic design. There are designs displayed from 1890 to 1990, about 100 years designs.

Here are few pieces of the collection they have.

A big wall with all kinds of posters. You see major differences because today are allot of high detail pictures but they used to use less colors you see print with simple methods.

Here are different signs. You can see they are real old typografy and also some new things.
This is a building just outside of the museum and looks very hightech while it is attached to and normal looking building you see on the left. Not sure what kind of building it is though but it looks very special.

This picture was taken walking to the small building where Toeval or Chance was displayed, that I will show in part two of the studyday.

Just somethings I came across in Rotterdam

This was very early just came back from Breda where I slept at for the night. I came across this Qmusic van parked under the Nationale Nederlanden building. However not sure if it was a special thing or just for advertisement.
This is made when I walked back from school I actually walked another way then normal, actually wanted to see if anything was happening at Unilever. I found they placed 2 of the Olympic characters in their lobby.
They sure look really cute and also humangesly big. I wonder if they would sell one of them I like the green character more then the red one though.
This I made just for all the shapes, lines and layers . But too bad I forgot to change the ISO to low and all the picture is too grainy to be good. Maybe will take a new one on another day.
This is just for cool looks of the big and high machines however need to look at the color setting cause the colors doesn't look really correct.

Event / 100% Design part 3

Now in the corridors going to hal3 are some projects displayed of the Fine art Academy of Maastricht. This looked very cool but not sure what happened tot the 2nd A in Maastricht.

Left is a very cool collection of different plate with cool design behind it. One of them is this a plate withe pill and also see dents in the plate made by the pills. Right there is a chair made out of manyy layers of paper. Really not sure if it would hold thoug but for sure it looks very artistic.

This is a very cool chair not sure if it is possible to sit on it though but surely looks like a very special design. It made of metal wire are meshed to this chair shape, and looks like a very tedious job to make a chair like that. Now we are of going to hal3 where its was the darkest hall of all.
This is a very cool stand it got kind of layers looks and the thing that attracted me the most is that lamp with the hovering logo on next to it. This stand have very radical design and also a chair made out of carbon fibre. Too bad it's too dark to make a good picture of the carbon fibre chair, you can barely see it just on the left top.
These are special curtains which you could rotate any of the diamond shapes to let more light through. A very cool looking concept but looks very heavy and also very tedious job to rotate every one to get more light through and then rotate them back.
These two chair looks very unlogically made but looks very odd from differnt side but very cool. Below is minature model of these chairs.

Here are two small miniatures of which they had placed on the stand. There were actually more but these were the few ones which I could take a good picture because of the lighting and the others were black or had too much light reflection with a flash.

Here is a view of on the top of the building on the special place. It was the tea house and made picture of those special stairways from one building to the other.

Here is a view of the top from outside, you could reach the top by a very cramp elevator or walk all the stairs. I choose for walking because there were allot of people waiting for the elevator. When I walked back down I met the girl with the tiles dress again, actually I should had followed her so I could interview her for an article for a school project.

Here us a map with offsite locations however I didn't went to those places because I arrived fairly late and did not knew there were offsite your could had gone to with those mini Coopers. However still it was a good event to see possibilities in furnitures and inspire a bit with innovative and fresh designs. And this was it about 100%Design and will be talking about Graphic Design Festival Breda next and really met allot of top designers including Ji Lee of the Bubble project. Also me helping kids making signs for in Breda self use use of vinyl sticker sheets a plastic sign.

Event / 100% Design part 2

Here is the second part of 100% Design sorry it took so long for more stuff, cause I been busy with allot of project and haven't had anytime to do some blogging. Will start of from hal 2 of 100% Design because hal 1 wasn't really special only the Tonon swirl chair was special.

Here are a few honeycone like design chairs. They can be folder in a cilinder chair or expanded to be a long chair or couch. I have seen this design before on few vids on Youtube, however this is the first time I saw them in real life.

At Deltalight I saw some cool lights desgins for decoracting your office or trade fair stands, for sure I might do something like this with the lighting for some future project because they look pretty cool.

At 3form stand there were plastic squares of plastic with different materials stuck inside which gave a very special effect. I really liked these thing, however the process isn't really anything new to me because is often used to make various kind of awards. However it's still very cool as a decoration for something.

At the Wini stand there were very cool innovative office tables. Here you see a table with integrated computers that can be fold away when they are not used. Really cool to see and to play with the open en close buttons.

Here is the girl who was in published in the front of the newspaper Metro about 100% Design. She is wearing a dress with tiles on it. The tiles are made and baked in a special way that they will last for a long time and they are all scratch proof. The stand is from Maatwerktegels en they also have a special business card made from tiles too.
This is also a cool stand however not really things I would had bought for my office, cause I rather have some real plants for fresh air then some weird looking plastic trees. However that plastic dog does looks cool.
I had seen this design a while ago on the internet a really funny design of a chair. I'ts actually shaped a bit like a dog that is going to pee. And this was it for today will post the rest soon with some spectacular picture of the Van Nelle factory self and things that were placed in hall 3 and corridors.

Event / Firefox 3 download day 2008

Join this event go to Spread Firefox and pledge to download Firefox 3 on June 17. Firefox want to get into the Guinnes Book of records with the most downloaded software within 24 hours. I have already joined them, because I use Firefox which I much prefer then using IE or Safari. So let's help and set a brand new record.

Ironman pop-upcard

Here is a video of a pop-upcard I am currently working on just for myself, an Ironman pop-upcard. The special thing about this card is not that it just pop-up the helmet in 3d, but I wanted the helmet to move in a special way when you open en closes this card, so I wanted the helmet to flip open/close just like the one in the movie. When you open the card you first see the face of Tony Stark and then when it is fully open the card, the helmet closes up becoming the Ironman helmet.

However this still is a prototype and still need to change few things, like the shin because it's not really correct to the real helmets shape. Also I used hard mat photo paper for this, but really should just had use normal printer paper, because it's hard it does not want to fold back easily. While a mock up version trying to test if the flip open/close works was made with normal printer paper and that opens en closes perfect. Now some fine tuning and colors to finish it. When it is finished I will make a publish the template and show how to put it together.

Inspired / BMW Gina concept

For sure its a real cool concept. The best part I like are the headlight that blink open en closes like eyes. Also it's more adaptable to your own tast like you want another color on it just change the skin and you are done nothing more. I bet this is much easier to clean, just put it in your washer and done and put it back on your car.

Alive Not Dead

I registered myself few weeks ago at Alive Not Dead which is a kind of Asian version of many famous User created content sites like Hyves, Myspace or Facebook. However this is an Asian based one and have allot of famous Artist from Hong Kong and China registered. Not only famous actors or singers also few design artist are registered there too. The special thing about this is you can become a fan of the artist while you see other site you can only become a friends while here you can seperate the friend from the fans. If you like my designs join this site www.alivenotdead.com and become a fan.

Event / 100% Design

This weekend I went to 100% Design in the Van Nelle factory in Rotterdam to check out what's happening with interior design plus bit of networking. The building of the Van Nelle factory it self is one architectural art piece. Some features are well known like the uneven bridges from one building to the other.
Not everything is my taste of design however there were some very innovative designs there and not just contemporary design of furnitures. However for an interior design event they had allot of cars in and around the building.

First there was a Porsche Cayman parked outsite with a quite cool colorsheme which was place there because for Cayman for Kids. Second is the cowskin covered Mini Cooper next to a cowskinned chair, however it looks quite artistic I bet it's a hell of a job to clean. Third is a Fiat 500 not sure why it there but still it's quite an amazing design for a car. Last is the 100% Mini Cooper of the people who are working at 100%Design to take you to the offsite locations.
The first actual design you see when you walk on to the Van Nelle factory ground are these big rings which are called Zero where you could sit on to rest. And yeah it's quite a long walk from the entrance of this place to the actual entrance of the building.
The second thing was this unusual box. Actually I am not really sure what it should had been displaying in on those screens because I didn't found any on-button and all the screens were blacked out.