Russdesigns » Inspiration

Tyler Durden meets Sense & Sensibility

russ — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 02:47:30 +0000

I am Jack’s inflamed sense of jealousy. Some of my friends put together this short, Jane Austen’s Fight Club for our church film festival and it won by a landslide. Now over the weekend its become a minor internet phenom. Love it. Official site here.

Honda reinvents the bike that invented them

russ — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:06:43 +0000

There’s definitely a stigma to motorcycle riders being bad boys, but in the 50′s, those were pretty much the ONLY people who rode bikes. Motorbikes were looked down on by the average joe, and Hollywood only reinforced the stereotype with classics like The Wild One and Easy Rider. But Honda didn’t want to sell to the outlaws and thugs. They wanted to make a bike that not only everyone could ride, but would want to ride. They came up with the Super Cub.

Honda looked at everything wrong with bikes at the time and addressed them in the Super Cub. Motorcycles are too big. The Super cub was tiny, even a kid could ride. They’re intimidating. The Cub was cute. No roughneck would ride a bike like that. With a 50cc engine, you weren’t breaking any land speed records, but that didn’t matter.They got 200+ MPG, they were fun, they were affordable, and they were indestructible.

To top it all off, they paired it with an amazing advertising campaign: You meet the nicest people on a Honda. Simple and brilliant. Nice people ride Hondas. Myths dispelled, hearts warmed, and wallets opened. To this day, the Super Cub is the number one bike in the world. Occasionally I’ll see one of these here in L.A., but in China, I’d see hundreds of Super Cubs a day. Thailand could easily have a million. Now, 50 years later, Honda wants to do it again with the E.V. Super Cub, and I have a feeling they can pull it off. If Honda can dispel all the negative thoughts about traditional electric vehicles, they may just have another instant classic on their hands.

Inaug app brings the straight dope to Facebook addicts

russ — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:19:01 +0000

So I check my Facebook profile a lot. I’ll admit it. I also spend a decent amount of time browsing Flickr and updating my Twitter status too. Don’t get me started on Youtube. So when I heard about this Inauguration Report Facebook app being developed that combines them all into one, I was intrigued to say the least.
I’m a big fan of simple and straight-forward, which this app delivers on. It pulls images from Flickr and Twitter updates tagged with Inaug09 all into one module. It also ties in with the Inauguration Report iPhone app, where any pictures taken with it will automatically be uploaded to the player. The icing on the cake is the live audio stream from NPR of the president’s address. It was put together by my peeps at Sapient Interactive, the same design agency that created that kick-ass touchscreen Coke machine at the Olympics and more recently CES.

The Democrat battle continues on the visual front

russ — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:45:09 +0000

When Shepard Fairey dropped his “Hope/Progress” screenprint featuring Barack Obama, I’ll admit it was an inspiration to me. The bold red and blue colors seemed to reinforce Obama’s main tenets of bridging political party divides, and the bold call to action was a reminder that individuals still can (and should) make a difference. That visual inspiration was also one more thing to add to the growing list that Barack Obama brought, which Hillary lacked. So when I saw Hillary Clinton‘s new poster in a crowd photo, it made me do a double-take.

While it’s an obvious attempt to duplicate Obama’s success, it comes across as a pale imitation and blatant knock-off. It’s also completely uninspiring. It makes me think more of some dystopic sci-fi movie like Bladerunner or 1984. And I don’t know about you, but it kinda looks a lot like this older political poster:

Super Famous

russ — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:10:56 +0000

Their designs are super clean, unique and they cling to decidedly Euro stylings, which in a post-Ikea U.S., Americans are finally catching onto. Superfamous is a refreshing portfolio site and reminds me that websites can be just as fun to look at as they are functional.

A leg up on animation

russ — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 17:40:52 +0000

Over the last couple weeks/months, Three Legged Legs has been blowin’ up.
Lots of great work from this animation shoppe. And they are in Santa Monica to boot.