Located in both New York City (Creative Fluff’s base) and Buenos Aires, Concealed Lighting has managed to provide innovative solutions for creative problems posed by clients for lighting design.  The first, and possibly my most favorite examples are their display lighting examples.

Aside from the fact that I’m a sucker for anything that glows blue, I found their creative display lighting reminiscent of fibirous spider webs and it was an excellent example of using natura as the basis for a design concept.  What’s most interesting about this specific example is that it uses its subtle lighting to make impressive  shadow illustrations on plain walls getting rid of any need to spend money on creative wallpaper.

This second example is a completely lit bookcase / storage displace with built in LED’s that illuminate every compartment.  Concealed Lighting’s use of LED’s instead of lightbulbs offer them the ability to consume less energy, it allows for flexible/subtle lighting sources, and it is less likely to set anything on fire removing any and all health hazzards.  The bookcase remains minimal and fuctional while retaining the ability to qualify for something that would be displayed in the MoMA’s product design section.

The final piece from concealed lighting I want to discuss is the Nikon display.   The subtle lighting in the background is far from a neon sign with Nikon’s name on it.  Instead it is a warm, f uzzy, but recognizable version of the logo created by hundreds of golden LED’s.  Even though its a lighting display it manages to retain Nikon’s corporate branding while expressing it in a creative manner.

If you need lighting design done for you or just want to check out their portfolio make sure to see them here: concealedlighting.com

Windows Live Mesh is an online web application which allows the sharing of files between multiple computers, and what makes it different than other online storage applications is that it allows the syncrhonization between multiplie media devices.  For example, you can sync up files between your PC, Mac, iphone, Blackberry, and almost any other media platform.  Windows Live Mesh prides itself on being the best web application for: 

•  ”Unified Device Management” - enabling your devices to report into a common service, for status, for health, or to report their location.
•  ”Unified Data Management”- or the transparent synchronization of files, folders, documents & media, the bi-directional synchronization of arbitrary feeds, of all kinds, across your devices and the web.
•  ”Unified Application Management” - for centralized web-based deployment of apps across the devices you own.
• “Centralized Management” - where you could configure and personalize your devices and remote control into them from just about anywhere. 

And from the moment I started using it, I found that the software wasn’t that far off from its ideals.

When you click the large call to action button in the middle of your screen it brings you to a desolate page devoid of..well..anything.  You start yourself up by clicking “Creative New Folder”, name it, and right away you can start loading files.  If you have Vista or a Vista knockoff you’ll notice that it looks a lot like its File Browsing system.  And since it looks just like it, you assume that it can operate the same.  To test this out, I went ahead and tried veiwing the fules I uploaded as thumbnails.  However, to do this I had to install Microsoft Silverlight.

I had been hearing a lot about Silverlight but I never paid it much attention.  Upon installing the software I found something interesting:

It functions just ike Vista!  I was particulary excited because I can easily upload videos, flash movies, and other animation files and view them right there on the web without installing anymore software.  I also didn’t have to wait for a conversion time of the video, it would just play right there the moment I uploaded. (If only Vimeo could learn how to do that).  If you’re looking for a way to keep lots of files between you and your fellow bloggers, try Windows Live Mesh out, it makes for a great online content management system and it’s easy to use.

“Charlotte Day combines her passion for pattern and illustration with her love of plants to produce unique botanically influenced designs for textiles, stationery, wall paper, merchandise and editorial projects. While her main tools remain pencil and paper, designs are digitally assembled in order to create perfect repeats and provide work in commercially compatible format.”  (http://www.charlottedaydesign.com)

The above image is some of his designer wallpaper that I thought was fitting for the season.  Simple, creative, and visually remarkable Day’s work is a great example of tasteful wallpaper.  Charlotte’s artowrk is reminiscent of the arts and crafts movement and takes the period of art in a new direction.  Instead of my normal rants and reviews of artwork, I’m simply going to show some of Day’s work.  Make sure to visit her website at:

http://www.charlottedaydesign.com

Before taking a look at more of his work lets take a look at Natrop’s background.   Natrop recieved his BFA in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a merit scholarship.  Since then he’s been featured at a multitude of galleries and has been invited as a guest lecturer to the School of Art and the University of Tennessee.  Not to mention the Vincent Prince Art Museum.  Natrop’s work features installations of fibrious paper cut outs that immediatly give the feeling of soft fabrics and spiderwebs.

Not of all his work consists of these paper cut out installations.  His work encompasses a multitude of forms and the paper cutouts can easily become static, wall-mounted pieces of art.

If you want to see more of his work make sure to check him out at http://www.chrisnatrop.com/ Creative Fluff definitely reccomends him.

Roskosh was born on MAy 12th, 1984 and attended the Arts Institute of Bournemouth and recieved a BA in animation in 2007.  During this time period and onwards Roskosh has been creating stunning illustrations remniscient of early 70’s pop art while managing to retain a large part of Roskosh’s personal aesthetic.  The main motifs in his work seems to be that of story/fairy tales.  Knights, dragons, robots, damsels in distress and damsels causing distress.  His work is provacative, simple, attractive, and inspirational.  An interesting thing I found with his work is that it is extremely textile, in that the way he colors images gives the impression that the illustrations could easily be printed or woven onto cloth and retain the same amount of quality.  Below is more of his work which will speak for himself and make sure to check out his work at: http://www.louisroskosch.com/

Backboard is a relativily new application which sets itself out to be an:  ”easy [way] to securely collect feedback and approval on documents, presentations, graphics, and websites.

Use it with your team in the office or around the world. There are no meetings to schedule and Backboard handles all of the coordination for you.”  Backboard makes a great place to have virtual meetings and get feedback and I figured the best way to see just how great the software was would be by testing it out.  As most of you know I launched Megalongcat.com about a month ago so that Creative Fluff would be spared of my rants; so I decided lets test out how good it is at managing my super awesome game-plan for marketing Megalongcat.

There are some issues that are easily overlooked.  You can set Backboard to take a screenshot of a website if that’s what you’re designing, however the script that takes the picture can sometimes mess up and it reads the code on the page wrong and re-creates the page wrong.  Notice the two “feedback” buttons in the screenshot.  There should only be one.  Aside from the simple quirks of any online application, I found Backboard to be really streamlined and efficient.  I could add a list of people via email addresses to review my work and leave comments.  There was even a pen tool so that a person could mark up the page (with a red pen, get it?) and leave comments on why they did.  However, all of this falls apart if you don’t have the proper personal file organization to even get work up on BlackBoard to review.  That’s where Bento Comes in.

Bento is a file organizational software platform that has it built in to pretty much organize anything you might need, here are some examples:

• Address Book
• Animal Stats
• Article submissions
• Artwork
• Assets
• Book Characters
• Buddies
• Chat Dictionary
• Classes

The only gripes that I have with Bento are that it is only available MAC OS platforms, and that it’s a solid framework which doesn’t allow for excessive amounts of custimization.  However I strongly reccomend Bento for Mac users who don’t want to bother with the nuts and bolts of a program and just get the files in order.  If you haven’t looked them up already check these two programs out at:

http://www.getbackboard.com/

http://www.filemaker.com/products/bento/overview.html

That’s what the tagline for Behance’s online project management software called Action Method.  The software claims to be a “radical approach to productiviity and project management”(ActionMethod.com) both online and offline.  Therein lies one of the most interesting features: the fact that whether I’m on the go or at home toiling away, I can access my projects at any given time and update them with where I am on a project. Let me tell you being a designer means at any given moment there’s 1000 projects that you have to keep track of.

After making a free account you set up your project based on the following factors:

Focus: Sol LeWitt December 5, 2008–June 29, 2009 Fourth floor View all related events

Over the course of his prolific, influential career, Sol LeWitt (American, 1928–2007) produced more than 1,200 wall drawings. This installation, which fills a single large gallery, features one of LeWitt’s celebrated examples from the Museum’s collection, Wall Drawing #260 (1975). The work’s subtitle serves to describe the installation: “on black walls, all two-part combinations of white arcs from corners and sides, and white straight, not-straight, and broken lines.”

The Museum of Modern Art
(212) 708-9400
11 West 53 Street, 
between Fifth and Sixth avenues
New York, NY 10019-5497

Museum Hours
Saturday 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m. 
Sunday 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Monday 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Tuesday closed
Wednesday 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Thursday 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Friday 10:30 a.m.–8:00 p.m.

For those of you following Creative Fluff, you already know that we’ve done reviews on artists, designers, and the best web applications around, but one thing that we seem to of forgotten are those all too important resources for start up design studios and small businesses.  When first starting out there are a plethora of costs that many small business and start up owners incur when first starting the business.  These bills can include things like: furniture, office space, pens, pencils, and perhaps the most expensive of all: braded paper supplies.  Business cards, envelopes, legal documents, and even pads of paper should always be branded to reflect the company and since these items are usually purchased in bulprk it’s a necessary evil that must be paid for at some point.

Luckily in today’s talk on resources for start up businesses we’ve got just the solution for you.  I came across PsPrint; a leading printing company tha tprints business cards, stickers, postcards, and anything else you could possibly need to brand yourself, company (or in my case a project for college).  My own experience stems from a poster printing project that I had to do for my typography class in my junior year at the University; it was a rush job and I needed a ton of posters printed at a really low price and PS-Print did the job on time, and well under the price of expensive designer print ships where all of my fellow students were getting their projects done.  If you ever need bulk printing done at an affordable price check these guys out until you’ve got the paycheck to afford the high-end print design companies (I wouldn’t pick the mover PsPrint anyway).

Twirl is actually a program developed on the Adove AIR Platform (Guess adobe is getting pretty serious).  Twirl describes its main features as such:

1. runs on both Windows (2000/XP/Vista) and Mac OSX
2. connects to multiple Twitter, laconi.ca, Friendfeed and seesmicaccounts
3. notifications on new messages
4. shorten long URLs (using snurl, twurl or is.gd)
5. cross-post twitter updates to Pownce and Jaiku
6. post images to TwitPic
7. search tweets using Twitter Search and TweetScan
8. timeline filtering
9. color schemes

As you can see it’s got what it takes to make stalking easier and Twitter a little less trendy.  The only gripe I have with Twirl is that it’s directly related to Twitter.  Friendfeed on the other hand, is something new unto itself.

FriendFeed talks about itself as a place where you can: 

“invite some friends, and get a customized feed made up of the content that your friends shared — from news articles to family photos to interesting links and videos. FriendFeed automatically imports shared stuff from sites across the web, so if your friend favorites a video on YouTube, you get a link and a thumbnail of the video in your feed. And if your friend likes a news story on Digg, you get a link in your feed. FriendFeed makes all the sites you already use a little more social.”

Friendfeed is nice because it allows for direct embedding into things such as iGoogle so there’s no need to install any sort of software to your desktop.  It just needs access to your other social networking applications and you’re good to go.  Imagine it as a combination of Feedburner, Wordpress, Twitter, and Twirl.  You end up with Friendfeed.  Give both of the applications a go if you’re looking for something different ot manage your blogging or social bookmarks.  Enjoy!