The Byczek blog is dead. Long live The Exaltation.

When I started this personal blog of things that I found inspirational, I never thought I would find an outlet that so many other people would connect with. Since March 2010, I’ve been fortunate enough to watch the site visits grow and grow, eventually adding up to tens of thousands of unique visitors. Just about a year and half old, The Byczek Blog has, proverbially, grown too big for it’s britches and a transformation of some sort was bound to happen.

I’m happy to announce that I have launched a new site, The Exaltation, with the purpose of not only sharing what I love and admire, but expanding to include a team of incredibly talented and thoughtful friends and colleagues. The Exaltation is all about high praise for art, design, architecture, films, music, fashion, events, products and whatever else we feel is worth sharing and celebrating. The site will hopefully grow steadily and morph along the way, and I look forward to cultivating a great site worthy of it’s name. I want to thank you for all your support and hope that you’ll find just as much inspiration in the new project.

Visit The Exaltation here, and be sure to like our Facebook page.

 

Contre Jour – iPhone game

I’m only a couple of levels into the recently released iPhone game Contre Jour (which roughly translates to against daylight), but I am loving it. Visually it’s kind of a mix of Little Big Planet’s creatures with Limbo’s muted palette (with a little bit of Darcel’s one eyed attitude). The game itself is a simple but extremely engaging scene scroller as you help the main character, Petit, grab light sources and traverse an rough terrain by transforming the land around to move him in the right direction. The whole game is bathed in simple textures and monochromatic tones, punctuated only by bright blues and Petit’s ever wandering eye.

You can grab the game for only a buck on the iTunes App store here.

Brian Dettmer

I recently visited this year’s installment of the US Artists show, which took place at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Basically a way for galleries, local and national, to showcase their best and most interesting works that were up for sale. Ranging from colonial to contemporary there was quite a range on display including some amazing paper cut sculptures by Brian Dettmer. Using materials like books, maps and other printed ephemera, Brian carefully constructs astounding worlds and visions with incredible depth and composition. The pieces I had a chance to see appeared to be carved out of single books, like dioramas constructed out of nothing but hundreds of sheets of paper. Amazing stuff to see up on screen, but even more fascinating in person.

Visit Brian Dettmer’s portfolio here.

Agustin Surai – Inventories

If you’re a designer like me (which I’m assuming most of you are), then you are well versed in all things Adobe Illustrator, and if you use AI like I do, then after a vigorous designing session your artboard surrounded your creation tends to look like a whirlwind of colorful ephemera and bits and pieces of discarded materials. That’s exactly what I though of when I first saw Agustin Surai’s Inventories series of illustrations. These pieces are like snapshots of a debris field in a hurricane – tree limbs, animals, electronics, clothing…all flying around independent of each other. Other pieces in the series seem to tell a story or collect a narrative of sorts using only the handful of objects on the canvas.

See more artwork by Agustin Surai here.

Scott London – Burning Man 2011

Take a look at this great set (100 in all) that photographer Scott London took during this year’s mother of all freak-fests, Burning Man. I’ve never been myself and honestly, I still haven’t worked up the courage to spend that much time out there in the desert without all the modern amenities I’ve grown accustomed to, but it’s amazing to see such a large group of people creating huge structures, machines and other artwork in the vastness of that terrain.Maybe next year…maybe…

See Scott London’s Burning Man photos here.

Gary Hustwit’s Urbanized

Documentarian and director Gary Hustwit has just released a trailer for the upcoming film Urbanized, his third “design” related film after Helvetica and Objectified. If the previous films are anything to go by, this surely won’t disappoint.

Learn more about the film at it’s website here.

Design Philadelphia 2011

Just got my promotional mailer officially announcing Design Philadelphia 2011. Now in it’s 7th year, Design Philadelphia is a ten day long city wide umbrella of events, speakers, exhibitions and workshops in many mediums include graphic design, fine art, fashion, photography and more. I’ll be trying to hit as many highlights as I can (last year’s Light Drift installation by artist Meejin Yoon was fantastic) through the Oct. 13-23 timeframe.

Follow all the upcoming Design Philadelphia events here.

And be sure to check out Mike Smith‘s excellent posters designs (like Participate above) promoting Design Philadelphia here.

(postcard design by Paragraph, Inc.)

Shane McAdams – Ball Point Pen Paintings

These “paintings” by Shane McAdams remind me images taken with an electron microscope of paramecium or algae strands. I say “paintings” not with disdain, but because they are actually all produced using various common ball point pens on a resin surface. The compositions are excellent and I love the layered and unfocused quality the resin gives to some of the strokes and lines.

See more of Shane McAdams’ works here.

Ana Benaroya

Hypercolored beach guidos, fire breathing monsters, Christians hell bent on hedonism and bearded ladies are just a few of the colorful characters that inhabit the canvases of the work of Ana Benaroya. I really enjoy the warped and skewed forms she creates, and am especially fond of her gestural portraits – blobs of colors and swaths of dots and patterns are then embellished with wild eyes and bright red lips. Capturing the absurd and the abstract in fantastic ways.

Visit Ana Benaroya’s portfolio here.

Back4theFuture.com

 

This week, “sneaker freakers” and fans of the beloved 80’s Back To The Future film trilogy finally saw the realization of one of the holy grails of movie-fashion concept designs: The Nike Air MAG. A prop designed and used for the second installment of the film, the Air MAGs (or Magnetic Anti-Gravity) were fantastic futuristic sky tops complete with lights and auto-lacing technology. They were of course only an idea in a film about a supposed future, but fans fell in love with them and hoped, prayed and even petitioned to see their fateful production.

This week, Nike, in partnership with Universal Films and the Michael J. Fox Foundation released a limited line of 1500 pairs of the Nike Air MAG to be placed on eBay for charity auction to raise funds for the Fox foundation seeking a cure for Parkinsons disease. All of this is wonderfully explained on Nike’s new microsite Back4theFuture.com, a cleverly devised website to promote not only the legend and spirit of the films and the storied shoe, but also aiming to shed light on the affliction of Parkinsons in a witty and encouraging way. The site, which I believe was designed by Nike’s longtime agency of record Wieden and Kennedy, follows a similar structure to the previous Nike Better World site, leading the visitor downward through a series of automated tiles displaying messaging and finally landing at an interactive display video complete with a cameo from The Doc himself.

The site is clean and brisk, with bold messages set in Nike’s 80’s trademark tightly kerned bold Futura to give a perfect retro-future look and feel. Also, be sure to check out “The Continuum”, a running blog of sorts on the site that collects news, articles, events and social network activity related to the release.

Visit Back4theFuture.com here.