SoVibrant Opinion8: 2012

21 December 2012

10 Greatest Moments of 2012

Good morning readers.

This is the last working day of 2012 for Sovibrant. Its been a exciting, memorable year and here are some of our favorite moments of the past 2012 months.

Nasa Finally landed a fully working robot on Mars. With the

Mission to find signs of life and discover more history about

how our solar system was born.

NASA's R2 Robonaut became the first helper droid be used on board

the International Space Station for science experiments and general

repairs and maintenance

Mo Farah Won the 10,000 m and 5,000 m Gold at the London 2012 Olympics

The first Brit to win a Gold in these events

Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian sky diver became the first man

the free fall through the sound barrier. He also broke the record for

highest sky dive, highest free fall, longest free fall and most viewers on

Youtube for a live event with more than 8 million viewers.

On "Super Saturday" of the Olympics 2012 games in London you could

hear a pin drop as Bolt and Blake lined up in the Olympic stadium

for the 100m final.... Did any one really doubt the man ?.

President Obama was voted in for a second term after a debatable

Presidency. But yet he still managed to end a few wars. Give the colonialist

a percentage of what was rightful there's. Found and killed the worlds most

wanted terrorist.

After the 2012 London games Michael Phelps becomes the

greatest most decorated Athlete of all time. With a total of 71 medals

in major international competition. Winning 57 Golds, 11 Silvers

and 3 Bronze spanning the Olympics, The Worlds

and the Pan Pacific Championships.

China sends its first female female astronaut in to space

After 8 years in a controversial fight. the war in Iraq final ends.

Sadly with 4,805 US and 179 UK trooped Killed in action

Bradley "Wiggo" Wiggings became the first British rider to win

the Tour de France then 3 weeks later went on and won Olympic gold

at the London 2012 Games

20 December 2012

Best Picture 2012

Good morning readers..

Its edging even closer to the end of 2012, a year where we have blogged about a huge range of different genres, topics, designs, people and events.

We would like to thank you all for your support. Our blog is going from strength to strength and your loyal following of our regular features such as "Artist of the week" and "Design classics" is hugely appreciated. A big thank you to all of our readers.

As my last blog for 2012, I would like to share some amazing photography from around the world and taken throughout 2012. These pictures are truly incredible and remind us all just how beautiful our world is.

Enjoy and see you in 2013.

The largest raft of canoes and kayaks in the world

Capsized cruise ship Costa Concordia from space

Sovibrant / Photography

18 December 2012

The English baccalaureate (EBacc) system

You may have read or heard recently that Education Secretary Michael Gove (Pob) plans to exclude all art and design subjects from the core curriculum in schools. A piece of news that at first I didn’t believe, until I looked a bit deeper on the internet.

In September, Mr Gove announced plans to replace GCSE examinations for students up to the age of 16 with a new English baccalaureate (EBacc) system. Creative subjects such as art and design will not count towards the EBacc qualifications, which instead are graded on performance in academic “stem” subjects. These stem subjects are English, mathematics, history or geography, the sciences and a language.

This news is crazy, and to all those people working in the creative industry and countless jobs in art and design, a bit of an insult from the current Government. It’s equal to taking out all languages from the curriculum, as the visual language of art and design is equal to any foreign language and understood worldwide. Creative services as a percentage of GDP is higher in the UK than any other country, so why this Government doesn’t want to support, promote and build on this is unbelievable.

From architects to yacht designers we all needed a grounding in art and design, and if I wasn’t encouraged and told in school about the wealth of careers available to a pupil interested in art and design, then I hate to think what I’d be doing now. Probably a Politian bringing misery to one and all !

Art - Design - EBacc System

www.sovibrant.co.uk

Evolution of The Batman logo

Good afternoon readers

We at SoVibrant are great lovers of the movies, and one of the sagas we love the most is the recent Batman trilogy. However the Batman franchise has been going well before most of us reading this were born.

Cathryn Lavery has created this Poster which shows the incredible evolution of such a simple logo over the years.

Enjoy

SoVibrant / Media

Design Classic No. 52: The Bic Cristal Ballpoint Pen AKA 'the Biro'

Today's design classic is perhaps not one that would immediately spring to mind, as it is so commonplace that it can be easily overlooked. However, many design classics achieve their status by working so well that they can be taken for granted.

The humble Bic Biro was invented in France post WW2 and by 2004 had sold over one billion units. The beauty of the design was its efficiency and ability to work 'first time, every time'. Remember the Biro was an alternative to the fountain pen, which could be messy, required frequent refills and was relatively expensive.

According to Wikipedia, 'The Bic Cristal's industrial design has been acknowledged by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as part of the museum's permanent collection. Its hexagonal shape was taken from the wooden pencil and yields an economical use of plastic along with strength and three grip points giving high writing stability. The pen's transparent polystyrene barrel shows the ink-level. A tiny hole drilled in the barrel's body keeps the same air pressure both inside and outside the pen. The thick ink is pulled down by gravity from a tube inside the barrel to feed a ball bearing which spins freely within a brass/nickel silver tip. In 1961 the stainless steel ball was replaced with much harder tungsten carbide which is vitrified by heat, then ground down and milled to an accuracy of one tenth of a micron between spinning plates coated with industrial diamond abrasives. Since 1991 the pen's iconic streamlined polypropylene cap has had a small hole. This hole serves two purposes: first, it minimises the risk of suffocation if the cap is inhaled by a child; second, it equalises pressure inside and outside the pen to prevent ink leakage. The pen is also one of the world's most efficient pens, able to write over 2km or 100,000 words'

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Design at SoVibrant

13 December 2012

Pinterest Pin Board

Hi readers, after an extended and unforgivable blogging absence I have returned! (muted applause) I want to share with you my current favourite new thing...Pinterest. At first glance it may seem like a website for stay-at-home mums to showcase their baking and knitting patterns, but dig a little deeper and it's an awesome collaborative tool. It's a great (and very addictive) way to find inspiration, collect precedent images and create custom project boards to share with colleagues or clients. We have been using Pinterest for some of our recent projects with resounding success and will be looking to use it more frequently moving forward.

Pinterest have recently included the ability for businesses to launch their own accounts to use the site as a marketing platform to increase brand awareness so expect a SoVibrant page in the near future. In the meantime you can see my personal collections here and check out this video from College Humour on how the battle of the sexes is waging over the ownership of the site. Or you can also read this great post on the subject from Cracked.com

www.sovibrant.co.uk

12 December 2012

Here's to 2012

Good afternoon readers.

Today Google released it's listings for the top searches of 2012. Mayan prophecy suggests the world may be coming to an end at the end of this year however looking back, if in the highly unlikely event that we are all going to die, at least we can safely say we ended the human race on a high.

2012 has been one of the most memorable years for a very long time. The year has been filled with remarkable examples of human endeavour, exploration, bravery, discovery, endurance and performance.

Thanks to the world dominating algorithms of Google and the power of social technologies such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter we have been able, more than any other time in history to watch, read and listen and be involved every step of the way.

Rather than listing out every amazing event of 2012 please enjoy the following video from Google - a whistle stop tour of this amazing and magical year of achievement.

Sit back, enjoy and let's look forward to an incredible 2013... If we are still here. ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY_MUB8adEQ

11 December 2012

The Making Of Summer Holiday Park

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to post up a link to the latest 'Making of' recently added to cgarchitect.

This article was especially useful from a modelling point of view. Using the Multiscatter plugin for 3DS Max / Vray the artist has managed to get a really rich and varied grass effect.

Other than the grass, the rest of the model is surprisingly simple yet is just detailed enough to appear realistic.

Click here for the link to the full 'Making of' article

Image courtesy of cgarchitect

Happy reading

Media Productions
www.sovibrant.co.uk

7 December 2012

Design Classic No. 615: The Mk1 Escort RS Mexico

Ah, greetings Design Classic fans. Today we're back in the motoring world for a misty-eyed recollection of Ford's classic Mark 1 Escort Mexico.

The Mark 1 Escort was produced from 1968 until 1974 and replaced the elderly Anglia. The
distinctive 'dog-bone' front grille and 'coke bottle' lines made this car an instant favourite with the public and within six years, two million had been sold in Britain and around the world.

In the '60's and '70's the Ford Works Team were pretty much untouchable in the rallying world and the Escort played a major part. The Lotus-developed 1558cc engine from the Lotus Cortina (essentially an 8V twin-cam head on top of a re-bored 1500, pre-crossflow block from the mk1 Cortina), dropped nicely in to the Escort to make it one of the most successful rally cars of all time. I had a spare pre-crossflow 1500 engine for my early mk2 Cortina, but someone nicked it from outside my flat in Camberwell. They kindly left me the dipstick though.

The Escort's most famous victory came in the 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally and from this the special edition road-going Mexico was born.

Powered by the 1.6lt 'Kent' OHV unit from the Cortina Mk2 1600GT (remember that car Tom?), the Mexico had the distinctive split 'quarter' bumpers and side stripes. The versatile engine was easily tuned to 140+ bhp making it a favourite amongst petrol heads.

But just check this advert for style!

A good one can set you back £20k these days, so beware of fakes.

www.SoVibrant.co.uk where staff drink petrol for breakfast

Images from Pinterest. Featured post image from DM Multimedia

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