On Repeat: Evan Marc “Emotional Ecology”

by Jason Caldeira

If you’re at all like us, you love going out and checking out new restaurants, having cocktails with friends (usually 1-4 too many), and exploring all that the city (Chicago in our case) has to offer. Personally, I’m not a big fan of “the scene” and tend to be immediately put off by overt trends and those who follow them too closely. Where am I going with this, you ask?

Some restaurants and lounges, whether trendy or not, really know how to set the mood via music and decor. There’s nothing inherently groundbreaking about a minimalist sushi restaurant playing downtempo house while you sip Saketinis, but damn if it ain’t enjoyable. Enter Evan Marc.

Listening to Evan Marc’s Emotional Ecology is akin to dining al fresco at the aforementioned sushi lounge on a balmy summer night. The album is sexy, warm, thought-provoking and inspiring, chocked full of beats just heavy enough to give you the urge to dance but reserved enough to relegate said dancing to your Bertoia side chair. Turn it on, turn it up to 7, grab a cocktail and enjoy.

Evan Marc “Centigrade” from Emotional Ecology

Monday Link-O-Rama

by Jason Caldeira

Every Monday (or whenever we can remember) we here at FlyCasual will be posting an assortment of links to sites that influence us in some way or another. So without further ado… let the linkage begin:

AisleOne: Helvetiriffic!
Baggu: I love simple “why didn’t I think of that” concepts.
ReForm School: Makes me feel like a kid again.
Swear Words: Brilliantly executed horizontal navigation.

That’s all I’m going to post in hopes that you all take a few moments out of your day to visit and absorb these sites. It’s getting progressively more difficult to sift through the bazillions of horrible sites out there, so whenever we find sites that are doing things right it’s important to pay proper attention.

Objectified in Chicago

by Jason Caldeira

I was lucky enough to attend the Objectified screening this past Tuesday night, and I must say… as much as I really wanted to be in love with the film, it just didn’t grab me the way Helvetica did. This could be largely due to the subject matter; I’m a graphic designer, after all, and Helvetica (the font) has a very special place in my heart. But I think the issue I had with Objectified was more on a filmmaking level than based solely on the subject matter.

To me the most interesting thing about Helvetica was the depth in which designers would go to explain the subtle nuances, the importance, and their love of something that to most people comes off as incredibly trivial. And after all sorts of poetic musings about a designer’s love for a typeface, the film would jump to another designer with a radically opposing view; hatred for Helvetica so deep that one designer actually blamed the font for the war in Vietnam.

Objectified, on the other hand, really didn’t offer up a whole lot of point/counter point, nor did I feel like I got meaningful insight into the minds of some of the world’s top industrial designers. I left Helvetica feeling inspired, confused, educated and cynical all at the same time. I left Objectified needing more.

That being said, I strongly recommend everyone view the film and formulate their own opinion. The director, Gary Hustwit, has something special going on, creating films about subjects that have a very niche audience, but at the same time appeal to everyone. We all use products every day that we barely think about, and these products are the fruits of some design team’s labor. Supporting an independent film that gives these designers a forum to explain why they do, what they do and how they do it is really important to sustaining design as an art form (as well as sustaining independent filmmaking).