[VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS]

Hi, I’m Lee-Sean, and this is my first post. I’m going to tell you the story of the how we developed the Meu Rio logo and identity, but first I would like to confess something. Maybe it’s obvious, but I’m not from here. I’m neither a Carioca (native of Rio) nor a Brazilian. I was born in Taiwan, grew up in Arizona, and lived in various other places since: Boston, Barcelona, Nakatsu (Japan), New York. I consider myself a citizen of the world, and now an honorary Carioca.

I arrived in Rio for the first time in 2010 along with Alessandra, co-founder of Meu Rio, and our Purpose colleague Emmy. We came to do, among other things, the preliminary research for the development of the brand identity. Before coming here, I had already made an effort to better understand Brazilian and Carioca culture: I studied Portuguese, I read books and watched movies about Rio, I listen to Brazilian music, I play capoeira.

But as a gringo, I also had many stereotypical and touristic images of Rio in my head: the big Jesus statue, the Sugarloaf, the wave-patterned pavement designed by Burle Marx, the beach, Carnaval, Carmen Miranda, etc. I knew I had to avoid clichés and create an identity worthy of the Marvelous City. The challenge was to create a brand that respected and celebrated Rio’s cultural heritage.

The first phase of our research involved total immersion. We travelled all over the city. We interviewed many Cariocas. We conducted observations and took hundreds of photos. All of this might sound like sightseeing, but really it was tiring work. Rio is full of visual delights and a city of stark contrasts between mountains and ocean, urban grey and rainforest green, modern and old, “asphalt” and favela.

We found abundant sources of inspiration: the colors of tropical fruit and plants; urban street art with its rough aesthetic and perceptive social critique; the sensual curves of nature, modern architecture and the bodies of Cariocas at the beach; and the first meeting of Donald Duck and Zé Carioca.

After finishing the first phase of research, we began drawing. I made several sketches. See some examples below. I tried to capture the “ginga” (swing) of the Carioca lifestyle and express the popular spirit of DIY.

After deliberating, we ended up picking the current logo.

Our logo subtly evokes the form of a coconut. Coconuts hydrate and nourish Cariocas and serve as an icon of Meu Rio. The irregular shape and imperfection help encourage popular participation.

The “Folk” font we used for the logo was created by the Brazilian type designer Marcelo Magalhães and is licensed for reuse under Creative Commons..

By definition, a brand identity is a system of visual and stylistic rule, but at Meu Rio we aim to be more than just that. Our intention is to create a “living system” brand identity that is open to participation and remix, a brand that will grow and evolve over time, and that can easily live in online and offline contexts, in two and three dimensions. This post is about the history of the Meu Rio brand, but the story is not yet finished. We continue moving forward along with your participation.

What do you think of the Meu Rio brand?

Impact Is What You Can Get Away With
Brands and organizations looking to make real social impact should go beyond the app to “do good” or “give back.” Impact isn’t an app, it’s an uprising. It’s not just a meme, it’s a movement. Warhol and McLuhan both said, “Art is what you can get away with.” Riffing on this provocation, we challenge social innovators to get away with more. What can change makers learn from artists? How do you channel cultural power to achieve deep structural change? How do you stimulate promiscuous participation? How do you turn social innovations into social movements? This session is for makers, thinkers, and doers looking to level up their understanding of the art of mass mobilization and achieving transformative impact. We will present from our experiences building 21st century movements at Purpose and engage in dialogue with fellow “movement entrepreneurs.”

Vote for our panel proposal. Thanks!

Brazil is known for its supermodels, but what about its social innovation models? Besides the economic boom, the country is finding a new groove in the field of digital collaboration and activism.

Last year, I moved from New York to Rio de Janeiro, where Purpose has opened its first overseas office. I have met with local innovators and interacted with all kinds of people on the streets, at the beach, and in botequins (informal bars). These experiences have all enriched my work in social innovation. Besides stimulating my creativity, immersion in a different culture and working in a foreign language have heightened my sense of mindfulness and empathy, reminded me of the virtue of humility, and taught me a few things about what it means to innovate.

Read the rest of the article at Fast Co.Exist.

I recently appeared with my colleague Alessandra Orofino in the Fast Company article “An MFA Degree For Designers Who Want To Change The World” by Michael J. Coren.

So you want to change the world? Cynics may send you off to Wall Street or a white-shoe law firm. Those with gumption will look for another way. The new Master’s of Fine Arts in Design for Social Innovation has opened its doors just for them.

“We’re adamant this not be a program where people sit in a classroom and talk about how great it’s going to be when they go out and change the world,” says program chair Cheryl Heller at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, and a board member of PopTech. “It is helping designers go beyond self-expression, which is how most designers are taught, and how to put [design] into practice to create a change.”

Read the full article here.

Video of me giving a Pecha Kucha-style talk at a Purpose.com event in March 2011. I weave together a story that combines design philosophy and movement building with anecdotes and metaphors from capoeira, pop culture, and literary history.

There was a camera glitch halfway through the talk, so please pardon the jump cut. Music by Hepnova.

My Purpose colleague, Alessandra Orofino, and I will be teaching at SVA’s MFA program in Design for Social Innovation when the department opens in fall 2012.

Social innovation is the application of new strategies and models to solving the challenges the world faces and to strengthening society.

The MFA in Design for Social Innovation will prepare students to apply the principles and ethics of social innovation as filters for understanding and as a discipline for engaging with and improving the world through design.

Graduates of the program will be more than graphic designers, filmmakers, advertising creative directors or interactive systems designers. They will be all these, mastering all the skills and knowledge of how to apply them to have a positive impact on business, society and their own lives.

Check out the department website for more updates.

If you are interested in giving a 5-7 minute Ignite/Pecha Kucha-style presentation about your artistic, activist, interactive, or just awesome work, email me at leesean [at] purpose (dot) com.

Designer’s Statement

JETAANY “JET-AH-NEE” – a bold, dynamic, genki brand, embodying the best of Japan, JET, and NYC

The Apple a symbol of New York City as well as the teaching profession

Red like the rising sun in the Japanese hinomaru flag and the indelible ink of an inkan seal

Brush strokes evoke both traditional Japanese painting and urban street art

Download PDF

Celebrate everybody’s favorite Franco-Swiss modernist architect/designer with this shirt that is a machine for living in!

Le Corbusier by Hepnova
See more Le corbusier T-Shirts

My friend and former ITP classmate, Carolina Vallejo’s project, Design for the First World needs help with funding on Kickstarter and with spreading the word around the internets. In Carolina’s own words:

My ITP thesis project Design for the First World, is a competition with a motto: The Rest Saving the West.

I’m proposing to flip the traditional equation of the first world helping the “third” by calling artists, designers and thinkers of developing and emerging economies to propose ideas to solve 4 first world problems: obesity, consumerism, integration of immigration and low birth rate and aging population.

The call is open until July 1st, and there’s a 1000 dollars prize along with a catalog and an exhibit coming in the fall. I’m still looking for great contestants so if you know awesome people from and living in a developing country send them my way!

Also, I’m raising money through Kickstarter and i’m 84% funded (5 days to go!) so please consider donating if you can, tweeting and posting on facebook are also of GREAT help!!

Thanks much!

Carolina

Networked coffee mugs provide an update to the old 10th-cup-free punch-card customer loyalty program. Our highly modular system allows any coffee shop to use one of our mug readers, link it to their name and physical location, and get started immediately with the program. Shops will sell RFID-enabled stickers at a low cost to customers who provide their own reusable coffee mug. Once the sticker is applied to a mug, that mug can be scanned at any participating coffee shop’s reader to log refills anywhere the customer goes.

The BetaCup (we liked the name, so we went with it!) reader – the in-store device that reads each mug’s sticker – provides haptic feedback in the form of a light thud to let the customer know that the mug was indeed scanned. The customer will feel the vibration through the cup. It also provides visual feedback with low powered LED lights when a 10-cup milestone is reached, so that baristas and servers will know when to issue a free refill. Each scan is followed by an appropriate timeout so customers will be unable to take advantage of the system. Optionally, businesses can use our API, or new services that are created with our API, to create real-time displays to show BetaCup usage at their shop.

Read more and vote for BetaCup on Jovoto!

More press for I RIDE FOR LIVESTRONG, an online interactive experience I worked on at Purpose:

TechPresident: Avaaz Co-Founders Seek Purpose Driven Consumer Life

Huffington Post: Julia Moulden on How to Use Technology to Change the World

Cool Hunting: This Week’s Picks

PSFK: Online Game I RIDE FOR LIVESTRONG Raises Funds, Awareness, and Social Empowerment

Previous post: I RIDE FOR LIVESTRONG in the NY Times

Ni Hao You Doin’? – A new Hepnova shirt on Zazzle in collaboration with Joey G.

We were hanging out in Little Italy/Chinatown tonight and Joe came up with this brilliant bilingual pun that celebrates the confluence of cultures in a pizza/scallion pancake slice of Lower Manhattan with classic New York wit and attitude.  Here’s to pasta and to potstickers and to Sino-Italian-American friendship! Ni hao you doin’?

Buy the Ni Hao You Doin’ shirt on Zazzle

Ni Hao You Doin’? by Hepnova in collaboration with Joey G

Estrella Intersects The Plane by Matthew Richard

Significant Other by Diego Rioja

The Life Dress by Elizabeth Fuller

Photo by James Duncan Davidson.

I gave an updated version of the It’s Cool to be Flat talk at Ignite NYC last night.  I created the presentation with Nicholas DiBiase of Hepnova, and gave a previous version of the talk at ITP30 Pecha Kucha.

You can also download the presentation here: [PDF] [PPT]
UPDATE (11/17/2009): Here are my presentation notes. Hopefully the video will be on YouTube soon.

1. Hi. Iʼm LS. I am a creative technologist, and masters student at ITP, the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. I developed this talk with Nicholas DiBiase of HEPNOVA Multimedia, who gave a version at Phoenix Design Week last month. This is a manifesto. This is a provocation. Itʼs cool to be flat. Cool like McLuhan. The world is flat. Letʼs embrace it.

2. A specter is haunting the world of the web and visual design. The specter is the gratuitous use of gradients, drop shadows, and faux 3D. This slide is a Wall of Shame. Join me in a holy alliance to exorcise this specter.

3. Welcome to Wankery, Inc. 2.0. Reflections and gradients do not equal instant web 2.0. These visual artifacts are a cheap trompe lʼoeil that dupes clients into paying more for ugly. This slide will be the death of me, one of us will have to go.

4. Design is not a dark art. Art for artʼs sake has its place, but design for design sake forgets the user. As designers, we need to be comfortable with our craft, Itʼs OK, really. Design is about function, not about showing off chops and gadgetry.

5. Design is compressed communication and not decoration. (seems obvious, but maybe those who proliferate gradients and reflections didnʼt get the memo) Good design expresses a lot of information in a short amount of space or time.

6. Simplicity is key. Condense and clarify, it donʼt clutter or complicate. Strip away the unwarranted and the unnecessary. Make positive use of negative space. Silence is negative space in time (pause)

7. Avoid pseudo 3-D effects and embrace flat. Work with rather than fight against with the nature of the 2-D media in which we work, be it print or a computer screen. Work with your constraints, and make use of other techniques, like bold color contrasts, interesting textures, and plenty of negative space,

8. Letʼs rise up in a tidal wave of change to bring flat back to the interwebs. This is restoration, not revolution. Flatness has a long and proud tradition through history and across world cultures, from this Hokusai woodblock print, to Western modern art.

9. From the Ancient Greeks to the Pacific Northwest Indians, flat art is internationally awesome. Artisans and craftspeople have worked with the constraints of the media and materials, and made effective use of bold lines and color contrasts.

10. In the Western Modern art tradition, artists like Mondrian, Matisse, and Kandinsky embraced the flatness of their canvases, through minimal, flat forms, their paintings are in a way, low resolution, high contrast A provocative challenge against the hegemony of traditional perspective.

11. Two more examples. Lichtensteinʼs work is comic book flat, while Calder is seriously simple. Lichtenstein makes the mechanics of the flat page a central element While Calder uses the intensity of his color contrast to take flat reductionism to an emotional extreme.

12. From cartoons to gallery walls. Ren & Stimpy to Murakami. Flat is back to the forefront of pop culture. Flat knows no distinction between the high and the low. Murakamiʼs superflat explores the superficiality of pop culture, but only the shallow know themselves, so thatʼs ok. *Thanks Oscar Wilde.

13. Visual and web designers can take some cues from the modernist architects. A simple ABC from Alvar Aaalto to the Bauhaus to Le Corbusier. Strip away the frivolous And cleanse the degenerate decadence of digital rococo that is rotting away the soul of the internet.

14. Letʼs take it to the bridge with a musical analogy. Hair rock vs. Punk Rock. We want to be punk. Do you want to contort yourself around a polytonal 11th chord with sus 4 flat 2? Or do you want to play a punk rock power chord? Think about it?

15. Here are some memorable and versatile “flat” logos. IBM lconveys the timelessness of Big Blue Chanel takes simplicity and turns it into elegant luxury Ubuntu conveys its values of community and sharing
BP is sinister greenwashing, but aesthetically brilliant And the Wu Tang, is Wu Tang

16. The formula is simple. FLAT is function over ornament. Get rid of the excessive. Elegance is not ornament. The slide speaks for itself. Reflections are the worst kind of vanity.

17. Design is about conveying your values and your vibes. Even without gradients, drop shadows and reflections, you can communicate with bold use of color, line, and contrast. Say more with less.

18. FLAT builds character. Hello Kitty is just a few lines and dots. She doesnʼt even have a mouth, but she is part of a multimillion $$ global empire Their simplicity means that they are accessible and universal, we can project our own meanings onto these characters. These 2 guys below are ODI and AMO, two characters I created last year.

19. This is a challenge to embrace the values of Flatness. This is the DAO of FLAT. Itʼs COOL to be FLAT. Be bold, be iconic, make a statement. Letʼs return to the values of simplicity and clarity in design.

Want to philosophize about flat? Or just tell me that Iʼm wack? Find me on the interwebs at LEESEAN.net or @leesean on Twitter. Thank you!

Here’s a photo by Carlo Demarchis of me presenting last night:

More info

13.4 million Americans watch some form of mobile video each month, and of those 13.4 million people, each watched an average of 3.5 hours of mobile video per month.  By comparison, the average American watches 153 hours of TV per month.  (Nielsen via Mashable, May 2009)

Also from Nielsen:

Except for the teenage years, viewing of traditional television increases with age; the use of video on the Internet peaks among young adults while viewing mobile video is highest in the teen years.

Men continue to watch video on mobile phones more than women, and women continue to watch video on the Internet and TV more than men.

In a 2007 international survey, a majority of all respondents agreed that “recommendations from friends had the most impact on the type of content they viewed over celebrity, amateur and professional endorsements.” (IBM via REELSEO)

According to a 2008 comScore study: on-demand video was the most popular mobile video format (compared to mobile broadcast), with 3.6 million viewers in the US. The report also gave a breakdown of the kinds of content mobile video users consumed:

See also:
Eyes Wide Open: Video Usage Up, More Watch Cross-Platform
Nielsen: Mobile Video Use Lags Behind

I customized the WordPress theme based on code from Chris Pearson’s Cutline theme, and I also got some design inspiration from Upstart Blogger’s Enormous theme.  The font in the header image is Gill Sans Ultra Bold.

LEESEAN.NET by Hepnova

Jackie O: Half Octopus Half Style Icon

Jackie O by Hepnova

Jackie O tribute on HuffPost

The most obvious change is the removal of the big photos that showed up in the header.  After careful consideration, I decided that while I like them, they were taking up too much space in the browser window, especially on small laptop monitors.  I removed the header image so that users won’t have to scroll down so far to start reading content.  If you miss the old header images, you can see them all here.

The other design tweaks are very minor.  I’ve increased the total width of the site to 850 pixels, and played with some of the font settings to increase legibility.  I’ve also brought back an updated Links page.

This site is a perpetual work-in progress.  I learn more PHP and CSS every time I make design changes, so it’s an educational exercise as well.  How does the new site look?  Feedback appreciated.

ODI et AMO by Hepnova

ODI et AMO by Hepnova
Buy a tee shirt online from zazzle.com

More info