Well, despite 3 feet of snow and more to come, Christmas was awesome this year. Mrs. Kyality got me some winners! The graphic above is a rad new tee she found on the Chop Shop. It silhouettes 55 classic rides from pop culture including some of my faves such as: The Delorean from BTTF, the General Lee, the A-Team van, the Mach 5, Luke's Landspeeder and of course, the classic 1955 Lincoln Futura-based Batmobile. Can you guess the rest?
I also scored this sweet scale model of a sooped-up MINI Cooper Convertible to replace the aging BMW Z8, which has graced the top of my dresser for years now. I totally dig the black rims and red Brembo brakes. And though I seriously doubt I'll ever own a non-S MINI or a convertible, I can still geek-out about them, right?
I saved the best for last... we found this piece for our home. It's a letterpressed print of the Salt Lake Temple designed completely from typography. Utah-based designer Cameron Moll created this limited-edition print and we were lucky enough to nab one of the last ones. We've been told for years to have a picture of the Temple in our home. Now we have a very inspirational pic—in more ways than one!
Still gettin' used to the single button glass trackpad. But the raddest thing is that a brand spankin' new Apple LED Cinema Display is on order too. Booyah!
So I’ve lasted a whole month without writing a MINI post. And I’ll admit, it’s been tough. So sorry Team Boo, I’m back on the saddle. This weekend the MINIzilla reemerged for winter, just in time for the first decent snowstorm of the season.
Speaking of wheels, I’ve been curious if the two-piece rims that roll on in the summertime could successfully be disassembled, painted and reassembled. Then I came across these little photos. This guy disassembled the rims, rattle-canned them with five coats of paint, hit ‘em with some matte clear-coat, then reassembled them. The results are pretty amazing.
So now I’m thinking about painting the inner pieces of my rims the exact same color, Dark Silver, as the body of my rod. I just think it’d be a cool, simple way to make my rather common MINI extremely unique. Here's my current rim, thinking I'm goin' grey!
When I was in junior high, I discovered SNL. My favorite things on the show were the commercial spoofs. The best usually featured Phil Hartman as some smooth salesman. One of his commercials was for a car that was luxury on the inside and jalopy on the outside.
Well, I think I've discovered a subculture within the Volkswagen enthusiast community who have taken this idea to the next level. It's a unique take on the concept of a sleeper. Basically you find a crummy old Rabbit or Golf, pimp out the engine and the interior, then trash the exterior and strap a bunch of old luggage on the roof rack. And voilà! You've got yourself a super rad junker that'll take almost anything off the line. Seriously, if you know who these people are or what this type of VDub is called, lemme know!
On Saturday, the Coldplays rocked the Energy Solutions Arena (a.k.a. The Delta Center) in a manner that would do the great Bono Vox proud. The tracks from their latest album Viva la Vida were the standouts of the evening. The entire arena was brought into the action, whether it be through performances from up in the stands, remixes of their own tunes out in the crowd or via a blizzard of billions and billions of butterflies being blown from the rafters.
The show was straight-up surreal in a very, very good way. Granted Chris and company skipped the junior college-sized venues and went straight on to grad school-sized arenas, but they wore it well. Here's the hottest number of the night.
PS: And yes, my non-sexual man-crush on Will the drummer is alive and well.
Two years ago, Casino Royale, the first installment of the Bond series reboot, ended with Daniel Craig’s rough and tumble Bond character capturing a mysterious man by the name of Mr. White. Fast forward to the now and we rejoin the action immediately thereafter within the opening moments of director Marc Forster’s follow-up—Quantum of Solace. It’s this very moment-to-moment, edge-of-your-seat mindset that makes this next flick in the new Bond series a winner.
Quantum is absolutely action packed. In fact, if I were to have any critique, it’s that there’s barely enough time to catch your breath. But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Forster does a fantastic job of infusing drama and emotion into what otherwise could have been an adrenaline overload. Not to mention we finally get a proper car chase.
You may remember Marc Forster as the director of my 2006 Favorite Movie pick, Stranger Than Fiction. Well, he not only brought with him the same exceptional production value, he brought MK12 as well. MK12 is the motion graphics studio that executed all of the killer mograph in Stranger, they were also responsible for the gorgeous opening sequence in Quantum to the rad vocals of odd couple Alicia Keys and Jack White. You typophiles out there will totally dig the killer font choice and accompanying motion. You can see a music video of the Keys/White opening track, Another Way To Die, by clicking here. Though it's not the opening credits sequence, it's still a great little duet.
Speaking of typography, pay special attention to the location titles throughout the flick. Someone out there with some basic design sensibilities finally had the forethought to create some beautifully customized, superimposed typographic compositions for each of the locations in the movie. This simple, yet thoughtful detail adds volumes to the viewing experience.
Finally, what I love about this new Bond series is the genuine storytelling. What I mean is this. I have a friend who is a really good storyteller, mainly because he’s a top-notch exaggerator. When he repeats a series of events back to you, sure it’s very entertaining to listen to, but it becomes obvious that everything’s blown a bit out of proportion. I’d equate this to previous Bond series such as the Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan eras. With this new series on the other hand, it’s kind of like you’re hearing for the first time what really happened. And let’s face it there’s something intoxicating about hearing how it all actually went down.
PS: There's a killer new trailer for J.J. Abrams' new Star Trek movie, right before Quantum. Download it here.
The documentary Dear Zachary tells the story of the 2001 murder of Dr. Andrew Bagby in a parking lot in western Pennsylvania. The prime suspect, his ex-girlfriend Dr. Shirley Turner, promptly fled the United States for St. John’s, Canada, where she announced that she was pregnant with Andrew’s child. She named the little boy Zachary.
Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne, Andrew’s oldest friend, began making a film for little Zachary as a way for him to get to know the father he’d never meet. But when Shirley Turner was released on bail in Canada and was given custody of Zachary while awaiting extradition to the U.S., the film’s focus shifted to Zachary’s grandparents, David & Kathleen Bagby, and their desperate efforts to win custody of the boy from the woman they knew had murdered their son. What happened next, no one ever could have foreseen… they commissioned a killer movie poster. Pun intended. Click here to enlarge the poster.
So it’s been just over 6 months since I first started rocking the MacBook Air and I think it’s about time to give a long-term update. Unfortunately, the news isn’t all that good. First, I’ve gotta say that obviously the Air’s design is top notch. Apple’s done an incredible job of designing a striking, stylish, compact computing machine. It’s ergonomic, it’s easy on the shoulder when in my messenger bag, and it’s beyond portable. The MacBook Air is the easily the leader in the ultra-compact category.
However, there are really two areas that I’m not so stoked on. The first is the straight-up hardware and performance. Unfortunately, I’ve already had to replace the Airport Card, antenna, and even the hard drive! Luckily the machine’s under an AppleCare plan and the doods at MacDocs had the foresight to do a quick Time Machine backup once the hard drive kicked back some unrecoverable errors.
Now I can understand a faulty piece of hardware, but I have to say, I’ve never had to restart, force quit, or watch the spinning-beach-ball-of-death more than with this machine. And this occurs frequently, even during basic browser surfing, or blogging. Yeah, it kinda gets old.
The other major struggle I’ve found is that this machine is from the future. Now it’s true that we’ve officially entered the future since we’ve now elected an African-American President, but the MacBook is apparently from an even more distant future. In the MacBook’s future, the internet is screaming fast, media can be compressed to miniscule sizes, and discs of any kind are non-existent. Though I look forward to this future, the fact of the matter is that it just isn’t here quite yet.
I’ve found myself continually flustered by my inability to rip a disc in a hassle-free manner. It’s currently very difficult to manage and transfer media files wirelessly. And unfortunately, most of the infrastructure outside of my office and home just isn’t Air-friendly and find myself defaulting to my iPhone more often than not.
The best part about the MacBook Air, is that it conjures up some serious wow-factor with clients, which is sweet. But more importantly, the Air is apparently the precursor to the new MacBooks. Prior to the Air, I at one point rocked the 12-inch PowerBook G4, and loved it. So if you’ve seen Jony Ive’s new 13-inch MacBook, I’m sure you can guess what my next computer will be!
Sometimes a Cooper can pass for A. Cooper. Also, by popular request, I'll be focusing on some non-MINI related topics for the next little bit... sorry SouthernJ.
This is happening… whether you like it or not. The first true electric vehicle to hit the roads for the masses (well sorta) is a MINI. Actually it’s the MINI E, not to be confused with WALL•E. The MINI E's electric drive train produces 220 Newton meters of torque and hits 6o mph in 8.4 seconds. Unfortunately, the top speed is electronically limited to 95 mph. But the MINI E does feature a suspension system perfectly tuned to match its weight distribution and obviously sports the brand's hallmark agility and handling.
The plug-in electric Cooper only has room for two due to its massive lithium battery pack which sits where the Kyality Kids usually do. The new MINI E motif seems appropriate when positioned next to the current Carfun Footprint campaign that Struck recently completed with BSSP. There will be 500 of these dark silver and yellow Coops leased this upcoming year in California, New York and New Jersey. And the best part is this thing literally kicks out zero emissions.
Lately, I’ve been way into cool pro cycling chase cars. Here are some of the sweetest ones I’ve found. At work, I’ve been trying to put together a sponsorship for the best cycling team in the state, the Ski Utah Cycling team. We’ll most likely be designing their next round of jerseys. Who knows maybe they’ll need someone to drive a Clubman chase car one day!
The Garmin/Chipotle team is by far the most stylish, gotta love the argyle motif. The Mavic team is pretty serious about this sport. Check out the BMW chase bikes. Yep, MINIs work too! Euro wagons are standard fare. The Jittery Joe's team runs MINIs only. Here's one for a Specialized team.
During the 2001 autoshow season, Volkswagen mesmerized crowds with their stunning Microbus Concept. It was a beautiful and progressive reinterpretation of their classic VW Bus based on the original Beetle chassis. Everyone with kids who laid eyes on that thing said to themselves: Yeah, I’d rock that!
I’ve been waiting ever since then to write this, the review of the first VW minivan since the Eurovan. But alas, this is not even close to the review I was hoping to give. For the past couple of weeks VW has been advertising their new Routan; what’s being referred to their “German Engineered” minivan.
Unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Not only does this thing look like a Chrysler Town & Country, that’s precisely what it is. Yep, you heard me right. Apparently this “thing” is made in the exact same factory as the T&C. To be honest, referring to the Routan as a “thing” is giving it far too much credit—a Thing actually was a cool VW.
I once again, feel the need to reference Steve Jobs. In October of 2005, Jobs described to TIME Magazine a phenomenon he called the Parable of the Concept Car: "You know how you see a show car, and it's really cool, and then four years later you see the production car, and it sucks? And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands!”
Rather than giving us the family vehicle we all lusted after, the boneheads at VW gave us a watered down Eurovan in the form of the crappy Dodge Caravan that I already have. Do they not get that they could have easily been the driving force behind bringing us the first genuinely cool family mover? In the words, well word, of the great Liz Lemon… blerg.
PS: Perhaps MINI will seize this wide-open window of opportunity. I could definitely go for a MINIvan.
After 6 years of ownership, almost to the day, we sold our cherry red 1975 BMW 2002. It went to a cool, young couple who reminded us of ourselves (before we were outnumbered by our own spawn). He's a graphic designer and they already have a sweet old VW Beetle.
It's sad to see the empty spot next to our garage, but I will be creating a little shrine in memoriam to our 2002. HabbenINK offered to retouch a photo of it—which will be matted and framed directly above a full color copy of the cashiers check for, you guessed it, $2,002.00 exactly.
On Tuesday Jenny Lewis, the single force on the planet in pure opposition to my lifelong fear of redheads, released her folksy follow-up to her first sassy solo album. Acid Tongue follows Rabbit Fur Coat with the backup talents of all of Jenny’s closest crew including the likes of Zooey Deschanel, M. Ward, and Elvis Costello.
I’ve been lucky enough to catch live performances of the two standout tracks on the album, title track Acid Tongue and See Fernando, between the most previous tours of Rilo Kiley and Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins.
So, yes, my fear of redheads is decreasing more and more. However, my hatred of unicyclists increases daily, as witnessed by the photo below. Man I friggin’ hate ‘em!
One of my most vivid memories of growing up was the drive home from the movie theater after seeing Return of the Jedi with my dad, Normality. My head was spinning with visions of bounty hunters, speeder bikes, and B-wing fighters. Without a doubt, Return of the Jedi was the coolest movie a kid could possibly imagine. Here’s a pic of the ROTJ storybook I had as a kid. I always thought Luke’s hair looked pretty rad in this picture. This weekend I watched ROTJ with the Kyality Kids for the first time. I know, I know it’s a bit early to be showing these kids those kinda scary scenes with the Rancor and the Emperor. But I sat there and cuddled up with them during those particular scenes—and I have to admit—the Kyailty Kids are serious Star Wars enthusiasts. They were glued; they didn’t want to miss a thing.
I realized it had been a while since I’d actually watched good old ROTJ. It was interesting to see how it held up over time. I have to admit—it wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. Granted the acting was either over the top or uncannily stale. But things like the star-fighter dogfight scene still looked fantastic. The old-school motion-control model effects are definitely better than CG in my opinion.
It was really the little things that got to me. For instance, how does Luke know that Artoo would be serving drinks on Jabba’s sail barge and that he’d be able to launch his lightsaber at the perfect moment? Why aren’t Luke and Leia even squinting on the speeder bikes? Seriously, aren’t they going like 150 mph? And when the team gets captured by the Ewoks, why the crap does Leia show up all of the sudden with a tailored hemp dress on? Aren’t they heading into battle the next day? Shouldn’t you probably stick to the fatigues there Princess? (Or at least put on the brass Jabba bra again, sheesh.) And who the crap made that hippie outfit for her anyway? Did Wicket W. Warrick just bust out a loom and whip up a quick pattern or something?
Anyways. If you get a chance, go ahead and hit the Return key again for kicks. It’s good fun, and way better than the recently released Clone Wars feature. And maybe, just maybe you too can spot Luke’s glove switching hands while he’s riding his speeder bike!
Yesterday, MINI released official concept photos of its long-rumored crossover SUV. Dubbed the MINI Crossover Concept, the vehicle will be making its physical debut at the Paris Motor Show. It sports a variety of unique door arrangements, which in my opinion is an awesome way to keep folks guessing as to what the production model will finally look like.
Aesthetically, I love the proportions. It looks very MINI, though it will be their largest vehicle to date. And as far as the door arrangement goes, I hope the production model, tentatively called the Crossman, will have rear doors that slide backward on both sides. (Like on the driver side of the Crossover Concept.) And I hope it has double barn doors in the back, like the current Clubman. But that’s just me. Here's a link to some killer concept sketches.
My MINI sources tell me that the production version is already undergoing serious offroad tests in South America and that it will be manufactured at the same plant as the BMW X3. Wouldn’t it be so totally aws if you could choose your door arrangement as one of your options!?!
On Friday night, Mrs. Kyality, who recently had our third, had to get out of the house. So she went to the movies with a friend and I was left to fend for myself with the little trio of Kyality Kids. Once the rugrats were all snoozing, I felt the need to watch a serious car flick. After perusing the personal collection and realizing I wanted to see something I haven’t seen before—I hopped on iTunes Movies.
After a quick search, I settled on renting the definitive dood movie classic, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. I had a limited amount of time to knock this one out. So it was awesome that you can actually start watching your movie before you done downloading.
I kicked back on the couch, dual wielding my Apple Remote and my Wireless Mighty Mouse, and watched “The Drift”—as I like to call it—in fullscreen mode on our 24-inch iMac. Seriously I have to say, the image quality was fantastic. It was easily near-DVD-quality, but maybe that’s not saying much for all you Blu-ray-ers out there.
All in all the convenience and quality of renting a flick on iTunes made the evening’s experience pretty awesome. Too bad I spent it watching “The Drift”. I dunno, it was more or less exactly what I expected. The characters were pedestrian, the storyline was predictable, but the driving was driftacular.
It’s an interesting question posed to me by D-mode yesterday. Well, discover the answer for yourself by heading on over to Apple’s iTunes Store. There you can download all 45 minutes of pristine audio and/or video podcasts of Senator Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech from last week’s 2008 DNC for free. It’s definitely worth listening to and making your own call!
Also on 9/4 a new image upload site will launch called Design/ers for Obama. Here’s the description on site’s splash page:
"Many artists including Shepard Fairy have already proven that poster art is not a dead medium in the United States and have also shown how much of an impact a single poster can have. It is in this spirit Design/ers for Obama was created. With the goal of supporting Barack Obama's campaign for presidency, Design/ers for Obama will bring web-powered grass roots campaigning to visual communicators. Think Threadless, but for political poster art. That is, members create posters and upload them to be judged by the community, of which anyone and everyone is a part. But instead of selling merchandise, the best posters will be mass-produced and distributed in cities across the country to be seen by millions. Design/ers for Obama will begin accepting poster submissions on September 4th and will hold four, two week contests in the two months before the election."
So you’re probably thinking, enough MINI posts already. Yeah, sorry about that, but I can’t not write about this one. Turns out that within the past couple of weeks MINIInternational (one word) launched a community-based website for MINI fans with creative sensibilities. It's the site I've been waiting for!
The concept behind MINIspace.com is based on a phrase coined by the designer of the original Mini, Sir Alec Issigonis. Upon drafting the first sketches of the original Mini, he touted it as a "Creative use of space." When I stumbled upon this site, you better believe I was stoked. I set up a profile and notified my MINI driving friends.
However, I’ve dug through this site and unfortunately its not as cool as I hoped it would be. I like features such as the blog, the size of the profile pics, and the random design contests they host. But the personalization of the profile pages is weak, the custom backgrounds are limited and there’s absolutely no thought put toward featuring both a car and a driver.
I can understand that perhaps they didn’t want to alienate users who are non-MINI owners. But for those of us who do have MINI’s, it would be so awesome if there were further profile capabilities that would allow drivers to post pics, mods, and nicknames of their MINI’s. Actually, that’s not a bad idea…
Last week, my family from NY was in town, so on Saturday, Normailty, Snizzle and I detailed the cars and headed over to a local middle school for a morning photo shoot. I borrowed the ultra-wide Canon lens from Struck and got down and dirty with some vehicular glamour shots of my dark silver 2006 MINI Coopers S and my cherry red 1975 BMW 2002.
Thanks to my killer b-day present from Mrs. Kyality, my sliver 2008 Specialized Sirrus also joined the vehicle roster. She got me a brand new set of Saris Bones 2, the ultimate MINI Cooper bike rack, recently discovered by Southern J. The thing seriously looks like it was made for a MINI. As you can see, it was a beautiful morning and we had a blast composing each shot.
It was also a bittersweet event. I’ve decided after 5 years of back and forth to sell my Bimmer. So the secondary purpose behind the shoot was to capture some "for sale" images. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun car, I love the way I feel behind the wheel. It’s classic, I feel like I know something that no ones else on the road knows.
However if you don’t have 1) a ton of extra cashflow 2) a mechanical mind or 3) a fix-it dood who owes you a favor or ten—owning a vintage auto just isn't worth it. Plus, and this is the good news, the MINI totally fulfills the “I know something you don’t know” vibe. So enjoy the pics. You can see more at my brand new Flickr Stream and if you’re in the market for a cherry red 2002, you know who to contact!
They're a fun pair of rods. At this ultra-wide angle, this little Cooper looks almost Clubman-like!
It’s been a long time dream to do advertising and design for MINI. And as of yesterday the realization of that dream launched. Meet the MINI Carfun Footprint Calculator. What is a Carfun Footprint you might ask? Well, it’s a unit of measurement that pits your car’s fun factor against its environmental impact.
This is an actual quantitative number calculated by a combination of legitimate sources. And once the facts were in, guess which car came out on top? Yep, the MINI Cooper Hardtop has the ultimate combo of fun vs. green on the road today! BSSP developed a killer concept and Struck was responsible for the final design, 3D, motion graphics and development of the Flash app itself. Every time I play with the thing, I’m absolutely blown away by the killer 3D, texturing and motion that the team cranked out. We actually did use quite a few photos from the Clubman shoot from a few weeks ago both as reference and as actual textures as well.
The entire site experience will also literally be delivered through some serious rich media banner buys, which is an awesome feat in and of itself. So if you see a Carfun banner in your daily perusal of the world wide web, make sure to play with it for a bit then click through to miniusa.com and configure a Cooper of your own. But just remember, I call Hot Chocolate!
Check out this sa-weet poster for Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin yesterday. It’s a very Bauhaus-inspired design, which oddly enough lends itself well to whole patriotic/hope/change vibe he's got going on. It’s an awesome piece for sure. So here’s the question, is it bad to want to vote for a guy just cuz of good design?
Well, despite 3 feet of snow and more to come, Christmas was awesome this year. Mrs. Kyality got me some winners! The graphic above is a rad new tee she found on the Chop Shop. It silhouettes 55 classic rides from pop culture including some of my faves such as: The Delorean from BTTF, the General Lee, the A-Team van, the Mach 5, Luke's Landspeeder and of course, the classic 1955 Lincoln Futura-based Batmobile. Can you guess the rest? 
I also scored this sweet scale model of a sooped-up MINI Cooper Convertible to replace the aging BMW Z8, which has graced the top of my dresser for years now. I totally dig the black rims and red Brembo brakes. And though I seriously doubt I'll ever own a non-S MINI or a convertible, I can still geek-out about them, right?
I saved the best for last... we found this piece for our home. It's a letterpressed print of the Salt Lake Temple designed completely from typography. Utah-based designer Cameron Moll created this limited-edition print and we were lucky enough to nab one of the last ones. We've been told for years to have a picture of the Temple in our home. Now we have a very inspirational pic—in more ways than one!
