Animation Gem: Brothers Grimm Meet Röyksopp

What Grandma’s nutrition facts have to do with the aerodynamics of a retro Volkswagen van.

We’re going short and sweet today, with this brilliant interpretation of The Little Red Riding Hood, inspired by Röyksopp’s Remind Me.

Courtesy of Swedish animator Tomas Nilsson.

via Coudal

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The Creative (Re)Touch

Aliens, the real Iron Man, and what an orangutan has to say about your electric bill.

A common booby trap that befalls design rookies is the tendency to get all giddy and excited over the various tools and filters of visual editing software, spitting out visual atrocities each more garish and over-the-top Photoshoppy than the next. But, like Spiderman’s aunt likes to say, with great power comes great responsibility — the mark of an exceptional designer is the gift of conceptual vision, the mastery of technical skill, and the wisdom of restraint.

Here are three such creative visionaries, who use the tools of image manipulation to craft sophisticated visuals that capture compelling concepts  or, at the very least, tickle our curiosity and our visceral appetite.

CHRIS SCARBOROUGH

Chris Scarborough makes photographic caricatures, in a good way. He takes ordinary subjects’ existing features and exaggerates them to a dehumanized extent, creating an air of unearthly eeriness about the images.

In some, the manipulation is so subtle you can barely detect it, yet you can’t help feeling the haunting alienness oozing from the image.

ERIC JOHANSSON

23-year-old Swedish interaction designer Eric Johansson has a rare eye for capturing that elusive quantum intersection of reality and the surreal. He takes ordinary landscapes and subjects, transforming them into sometimes slightly creep, often amusing, and always fascinating what-if’s.

Johansson’s work is part Alice in Wonderland, part Tim Burton, part the slapstick visual puns we all make in the privacy of our own creatively restless minds.

Explore the rest of Johansson’s portfolio for a whimsical journey to all the places your mind has always dreamt of going.

CHRISTOPHE HUET

Professional photo whiz Christophe Huet, a.k.a. “The French (Re)Touch,” is a modern-day illusionist. He works with the world’s best creative teams to craft an alternate reality of delightfully surreal images.

His work is an elaborate production that involves entire armies of art directors, makeup artists, actors, extras, creative directors, photographers, fashion stylists, set directors, assistants — you get the picture. And the picture happens to be exceptionally striking, both visually and conceptually — like the brilliant campaign Huet created for French anti-AIDS organization AIDES.

What we find most compelling about Christophe’s brand of creativity is that it is vocally visceral, but it does more than to merely amuse — it uses that visceral element to create visual metaphors that illuminate culturally relevant and socially important issues.

Like this brilliantly simple yet brilliantly powerful illustration of the link between our daily habits and the living beings they affect — a crisp reminder that “the environment” isn’t just some abstract concept we donate to at the Whole Foods checkout aisle.

See Huet’s entire portfolio for images that make your eyes pop while drawing them a little bit closer to your brain.

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How Happiness Happens

What a 102-year-old Spanish man has to do with motion typography and the secret of happiness.

We’re going constitutional today — Brain Pickings is after the pursuit of happiness. And we’ve uncovered three gems that attempt to unravel the quintessential human mystery: What is happiness, and how the hell do we get our little hands on it?

COCA-COLA “ENCOUNTER”

Generally — and perhaps cynically — speaking, the goal of marketing is to show us all the ways in which we fall short, stealing happiness away from us only to sell it back to us at the price of the product. So when it comes to branding, there’s no greater feat of identity than owning the construct of happiness itself. Which is exactly the branding platform Coke has been building for the past decade.

But cynicism aside, Encounter, Coke’s latest spot from Madrid agency McCann-Erickson and director Andy Fogwill, is a delightful bag of mush, the kind that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside despite your every instinct to cringe at the underlying marketing ploy.

You may not be any more inclined to drink Coke now, but maybe you’re just a little bit more likely to, you know, go live the happy life. And isn’t that daily little bit all it comes down to?

via Creativity Online

AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS

Back in 2006, we were fortunate enough to study under Dr. Martin Seligman, not only a renowned TEDster but also former chairman of the American Psychological Association elected by the largest margin in history. More importantly, Dr. Seligman is the founder of the Positive Psychology movement, a nascent branch of psychology concerned with the empirical study of positive emotions, strengths-based character, and healthy institutions.

The Authentic Happiness program is Dr. Seligman’s primary brainchild, a research-driven cluster of positive interventions aimed at increasing our level of happiness — our ability to feel more satisfied, to find more meaning in life, to be more engaged and present in the moment — regardless of our circumstances.

We couldn’t recommend the program enough — it’s free to join and easily the best thing you’ll do for yourself all year or, perhaps, ever. So go ahead and head over to the Questionnaires Center for an accurate assessment of where you fall on the happiness spectrum right now, what your greatest psychological strengths are, what you need to work on and how.

There may not be a blueprint for happiness, but these are the most powerful drawing tools and the widest canvas you’ll ever find.

TED ON HAPPINESS

What’s a Wednesday without some shameless chest-beating? Yep, we have a new episode on TEDify, a TED-based quest for the most sought-after piece of existential human truth, that most fundamental question: What makes us happy?

See the full list of speakers and catch up on the TED talks sampled here — take it from a cynic, happiness can be synthesized, but it requires that you unearth all the right elements to ignite the reaction. And we happen to think TED is the proverbial periodic table.

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