When word starting hitting the hypebeast sites that Nike was getting into skateboarding, there were plenty of doubters. Afterall, what does a company built on the waffle racer and Air Jordan’s know about the (pseudo) underground sport of skateboarding? The naysayers were silenced and now Nike is respected in the skate world having both a roster of talent and great kicks. One reason I think Nike has always been able to maintain it’s corporate dominance while garnering respect of their customers is they know how to gather the best talent and market themselves to their audience, in a way that shows they understand. That’s exactly what they have done with their new and revolutionary project Debacle. For Nike’s latest skate video, they teamed up with Adobe’s Experience Design (XD) team and Hega TV. Together, along with director Jason Hernandez’s leadership, they have produced a film that is inspiring and breathtaking, in full HD. Luckily for you, the viewer, they flipped the traditional distribution method on it’s head. Nike SB: Debacle is available first online for viewing and download, then a Blu-Ray version will be released later. By now I hope I have convinced you to go watch 30 minutes of the most progressive skateboarding today. Congrats to everyone involved.

Each year, designers and fans anxiously await the start of the Layer Tennis season. 2009 was no different, as Coudal Partners, a Chicago ad and design agency, kicked off a series of live online design events in which professionals trade designs back and forth in real-time, building on top of their opponent’s work. A third party offers commentary which is often whimsical as well as inspiring and unpredictable. The audience can comment during the actual match as well as vote for a winner afterward, all using Twitter. This current season started on February 3 and was held every Friday ending May 29. We are currently in the playoffs in which you can find our featured designer, Sam Potts facing off against Aaron Draplin this Friday, June 12.

In this second season (of its current incarnation), we wanted to get an idea of the impact Layer Tennis has on the participants and the design community at large. Could we find a pattern in the tools or techniques used? What sort of pressures do they face when the ball in in their court and the clock is ticking? Keep reading for the interview…

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I just came across a wonderful short new film by Brazilian director Cisma, the result of the latest commission from Adobe’s very inspiring Adobe Artists project. With the strict rule that everything must be produced using only Adobe products—Creative Suite 4, in particular—Le Sens Propre continues successfully in Cisma’s trademark surreal style. We watch a little girl in her room throw dishes into a tidy and unbroken stack, tie her shoes but accidentally knot up her thumbs instead and see bunnies turn into colorful, soft pebbles. It’s a bit Alice in Wonderland meets Candyland; totally charming to the end. Amazingly enough, no 3-D software was employed in the making of the film. According to an interview with Motiongraphics, Cisma wanted “to create strange scenes and weird connections between elements of the story,” giving viewers the chance to be surprised. It’s this aspect that keeps you glued to the computer screen. Check the Adobe Artist site for other gems, including a short by another Brazilian filmmaker, Nando Costa.

The Australian Open may have just settled on two winners, but there’s another huge tennis event on the horizon that doesn’t require you work on your half-volley or be a clay court specialist. Layer Tennis 2009 is a season of live online design events presented by Adobe Creative Suite 4 and Coudal Partners, in which two players swap files in a real-time design volley, enhancing each other’s work over a period of 15 minutes while a writer adds insightful play-by-play. Each game contains 10 volleys and allows viewers to vote on the winner when the match reaches its logical conclusion. The first dose of design action gets served up this Friday February 6th at 3p.m. You could have a front row seat to all the excitement by simply becoming a season ticket holder, which makes you eligible to vote on the winners and post comments. The Layer Tennis 2009 season has 43 matches taking place every Friday until May 29th. You can tune into the matches on Twitter or get your season ticket for a better view.

Where would you be without Adobe? Since they launched Photoshop in 1989, the technologically ubiquitous software company has been vital in transferring your imagination onto your computer screen. By creating programs like Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and After Effects (among others) you may think they’ve already seen a lifetime of inspiration through to its logical conclusion. But they already have. While Adobe may not be boasting about a program that can help you conjure graphic brilliance from thin air, INSPIRE, a new bi-monthly web publication from Adobe’s Experience Design team (a seriously bad ass group) is a welcome supplement to the company’s cluster of creativity. The online periodical seeks to connect the developer/designer community and put an accent on the importance of experience when it comes to dealing with a wide variety of applications. The new web mag will feature a new theme every two months and include videos, posts, and presentations from different conferences around the world. The theme for the inaugural issue is “New Experiences” and we’re confident after this new experience you’ll keep coming back for more. Even the UI of the site is inspiring, congratulations guys.

Also, be sure to watch the video of Chris Heimbuch, XD Practice Lead, and Ty Lettau, XD Design Manager, discuss the whys and wherefores of Inspire.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what do you think a whole mess of pictures is worth? Well, sparing you the difficulties of applying basic math, we’ll tell you the answer may not be several pages of prose. Your pictures could, however, net you some pretty sweet prizes — that is if you should happen to embark on picturesque adventure from Photojojo, i.e Photo Safaris. These snap-happenings are occuring at locations in both San Francisco and New York over the next several weeks, and will feature displays of photographic fun shot by people just like you. The winners of each “Photo Safari” will receive rewards from Photojojo or their sponsors, which include the venerable folks at Gothamist and Adobe.

In every major urban center in North America, it's not hard to find some form of outdoor public art. Its usually a large abstract sculpture with a bunch of people sitting around it eating lunch. Going beyond the static and structural into the animated and mobile, Lumen Eclipse is an ongoing public art project looking to add some kick to the idea of accessible public art by creating free, outdoor, contemporary motion art.

For over two years Lumen Eclipse has been creating outdoor video art installations, drawing crowds as well as big name collaborators like Yoko Ono, Michel Gondry, Encyclopedia Pictura, Miranda July and more. This year they're casting the net for talent even farther with their first annual LE:60 1-Minute Film Fest. Building on their mission of bringing genre-bending new film work to the masses, each 60-second short will be screened outdoors at Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA.

LE:60 is still open for submissions, but the deadline for entries is close (September 2). With the entry fee a mere $10 and some sweet prizes from Adobe and Red Giant up for grabs, you can't afford not to. After all, it'll only take a minute.

It seems like it was just the other day we were talking about Si Scotts, but if you are looking for something other than playing cards, the FUSShop has just added new print, ‘Hype Type', to their already robust collection of Si Scott prints. Just to give a reminder, these illustratons are hand-drawn, i.e. no Adobe. Just good ol' pen and paper produce these elegant black and white images. His fusion of illustration and typeface has gained him notarity and his work is becoming increasingly sought after, just ask Nike Europe and the BBC. This time it is going to run you a little more than the $6 playing cards — the prints are £59.99 and are limited to 100. Also, if you happen to be in Chicago over the next month be sure to check out his exhibition at the Threadless Gallery.

We've all had these moments — you’re a little tired or jetlagged, and a trance of light reflecting through a plastic container captures your attention for 10 minutes at a café. Most of us snap out of it and realize we should get some sleep or coffee. British artist Alan Jaras turns light and plastic into proper artwork for the fully rested and conscious. No, this isn't digital light palates for promotional Adobe CS4 material, this is creating plastic molds to replace the lens on his 35mm, so the light passing through is directly captured on the film. The results speak for how innovative the process is. For now Alan’s work is only on flickr because he has been too busy creating new images to spend time on his own website. Enjoy the images and keep an eye out for this one.

via Talent Speaks

Web Developers and designers unite! What’s that? You need a time and a place? Well how about June 8th — June 11th at the Holiday Inn Metrodome in Minneapolis? Apparently there’s a pretty awesome get together being held there called the Flashbelt Conference. For the fifth consecutive year the folks at pilotvibe — a local company specializing in music and sound design for interactive media — has put together this Adobe sponsored convention as a way for Web art wizards to network about their net works. This year’s meeting of the minds boasts an impressive panel of industry leaders and speakers, including Mate Steinforth of Psyop and Robert Hodgin of Flight404. Workshop sessions, recruitment events where designers and developers can shop their talents, and a forum for students to have their portfolios critiqued are among the array of activities. So whether you’re established or aspiring to become a part of the web community, Flashbelt is worth the trip.

You may or may not be familiar with Erik Natzke. I mentioned him the other day in a post about Shiftspace, but prior to visiting OFFF last weekend, I hadn’t heard of him. Once you see his work though, the only question that comes to mind is how the heck have I NOT heard of this guy before? My speculation on that point is that Erik is just a quiet guy.

His work, however, speaks volumes. Erik is pushing the limits of Flash beyond what even Adobe ever expected the program to be used for – Erik even mentioned that he’s driven the development team nuts by pushing them for further functionality. Lately he’s been working on a “paint by numbers” approach that combines his interests in photography with his expertise in flash to create amazing images like the one we’ve shown here.

Something else to note about Erik is his willingness to help others understands — or at least try — what he’s doing and to explain his process. At OFFF, Erik was passing out CD’s of his work so that people could deconstruct it and his Flickr feed contains lengthy discussions about his process with anyone willing to ask a few questions. So Flash gurus, go forth and ask. You couldn’t find a better teacher if you searched for a year.

Yesterday, the German automotive giant BMW launched their newest media campaign, BMW-web.tv. What might be called The Ultimate Marketing Machine, the YouTube-esque site is filled with content encompasses all of BMW’s divisions. Each division gets its own channel so it is simple to switch between cars and technology, for example. The site uses Adobe’s Flash player which (usually) makes for quick loading videos. The content is surprisingly varied with the expected commercial pieces to interesting behind the scenes interviews and glimpses into the what goes into creating BMW’s. One small complaint I have is that the site is plagued with slow speeds, even on a high-speed pipe, due mostly to the decision to make videos auto-play and the physical dimensions of the videos. BMW promises to provide plenty of exclusive content (including product launches) on their web magazine so it’ll definitely be worthwhile subscribing to.

Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament kicked off this week in Boston, the first of 11 cities in the International competition’s search for “Originality, Technique, and Overall Dopeness.” Each event, which will be broadcast online and incorporates text-message voting (of course it does), will pair eight emerging designers in single-elimination timed design tournaments, with the ulitmate goal of winning a bunch of designer-coveted prizes (like Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collections and helpful tools from Wacom). While last year’s Cut&Paste stopped in only four cities (San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, and New York City), this year’s live-audience event will make it all the way to places like London, Sydney and Hong Kong, adding intensity, and probably some killer video footage, to the site-broadcasted competitions. If you’d like to get in on the action, you can cruise the Cut&Paste web page for dates and locations, where you can also check out last year’s action (and results). If anyone goes to this, we’d really, really, like to hear about it, so keep us posted.

Let’s get one thing out of the way before we begin: I don’t like Twitter. Yes, you heard me. I simply don’t “get” it and this is not for lack of trying. Just check out what people post on there, things like “Drinking orange juice and waiting tillclass [sic] is over 12:22.” Are you kidding me?

On the other end of the social networking mashups, we have Pownce. Started by Digg founder Kevin Rose and his newly formed Megatechtronium posse consisting of Daniel Burka, Leah Culver, and Shawn Allen, Pownce is described as a combination of IM, Twitter, and I bet I’m the first to suggest this, Hello. While no single part of Pownce is original, bringing them all together is and I think it’s a combination that may prove useful. Currently invite-only (what self-respecting startup isn’t?), the site is very much a Web 2.0 product, complete with loads and loads of Javascript; there’s also a desktop companion which we’ll discuss later on. READ MORE…

The work of So-Cal based Jonathan Moore makes my brain hurt. With a portfolio thick full of award winning work for visually demanding clients like Motorola, Adobe and Disney, Moore’s six years in the interactive design industry scarcely seem to allow for the complete command he seems to hold in his enormous skill set (a line-up including flash motion/development, art direction, motion design, 3D production, web-standards build, and development languages). Working under the moniker New Ezra, Moore creates some of the most aesthetically arresting and enveloping site designs around today, many of which are now available to view at the recently re-vamped New Ezra, Moore’s enchanting online portfolio. I can’t get over how much depth his work displays; his sites all possess the kind of intense realism (along the lines of what we experienced in the Lord of the Rings trilogy) that makes it tough to believe these places don’t really exist. Additionally, we can’t help but blush over the shout out the site throws our way- wow. We’re so very flattered to be counted as a place you find inspiration — thanks, Jonathan!