dechezette

13 January 09

Visit to the Cloisters

From a trip to The Cloisters.

11 January 09

Kirby: King of Comics

At the tender age of ten, my first career aspirations were to become a comic book illustrator. It seemed like every comic I was attracted to and every character that I tried to copy was drawn by Jack Kirby.

Kirby’s influence on the medium is undeniable. He created the visual language that transformed the one-dimensional, drab, square panel style of comic strips into electric, action-charged pages where characters exploded from the frames. When Kirby’s characters punched, you could feel it in your jaw.

I recently treated myself to a beautiful hardcover book that celebrates his life in comics. The book contains many pieces of his work in raw form, and is the next best thing to seeing his art in person.

If you haven’t been lucky enough to catch one of the rare exhibits of his work, merchants of original art abound at your local comic convention.

09 January 09

Palm Makes a Comeback with Pre

Palm showed off the new Palm Pre today at CES - complete with their new platform webOS. The folks at CrunchGear caught a demo on video.

The Synergy feature looks very promising. It integrates calendar and contact info from your various email accounts and social networks into a single source.

You can certainly see the iPhone and the HTC TouchFlo influence on aspects of the UI, but Palm has definitely brought some fresh ideas to the table.

Sources are reporting that the Pre’s interface is faster and more responsive than the iPhone, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the above video.

With the Blackberry and iPhone capturing so much market share in recent years, many believe that this is Palm’s last stand. While not revolutionary, with the early reviews pouring in, the Pre looks like it just might keep them in the game.

06 January 09

From the Makers of “Helvetica”, It’s “Objectified”

What attracts us to the objects we surround ourselves with? How do they define us and how we see ourselves?

Helvetica director Gary Hustwit brings us behind the curtain to meet the masters of industrial design with Objectified.

02 January 09

New Year’s Resolution: See More Art

Living so close to Manhattan, it can be easy to take the plethora of art venues for granted and thus put off visiting them. The family resolved to change that behavior, and we all took a trip out to The Whitney to check out the Alexander Calder and William Eggleston exhibits.