Claudio Mendonca

Blog Day Post

Cláudio — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:22:46 +0000

I just learned that today is the blog day. I didn’t even know it existed. I thought it was a nice idea, even me having a not very updated blog, this is still a blog. Here goes my small list of must see blogs in my business area. Enjoy!

http://www.davidairey.com/
David is a Great Designer from Ireland, this is his personal website, with his work and thoughts about design and logo design. I also learned a lot about blogging with him, analyzing his blog, and posts. He is a great guy, very attentions overtime I contacted him.

http://www.logodesignlove.com/
This used to be David’s second blog, now he just runs the blog, with guest posts, but the quality of the articles remains unchaged, with interesting thing about logo and branding.

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/
This is my favorite all things webdesign blog. With quality stuff on a daily basis.

http://www.swiss-miss.com/
Tina Roth, a swiss designer in NY. She has a great blog, with tons of interesting things about design and lifestyle. Great blog.

http://lovelypackage.com/
A huge, higly updated blog about package design, with a lot of student work, and high quality pack design. Worth seeing every now and then.

http://www.blogday.org

This might also interest:

No Related Posts

SmartPad – No glory for number two

Cláudio — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:30:25 +0000

Toshiba showed off its SmartPad prototype today. Apple posted it’s third quarter earnings today. Apple sold 3.27 million iPads. On high-end technology world, second place gets no glory. It’s just a copy. The real deal is to be number one. Apple have always been one or two steps forward then any onther company in the world, when it comes to product creation. From concept, to design, they are amazing, and the other companies will just keep following them. Althought I have some issues about some of their products, I do like them, a lot.

This might also interest:

No Related Posts

Worst Mouse Ever

Cláudio — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:29:30 +0000

Apple’s Mighty Mouse is a terrible product. It’s is a good mouse for about 2 months of heavy use. After that, that little ball stops working properly and after that is only downhill. It has a good resolution, but the little ball just destroys everything. I have had 4 Mighty Mouses at home, 2 of them were cordless, and all of them ended up with the exactly same issue. Overuse malfunctioning of the little annoying ball. They don’t last 2 months. Thank god Apple created the magic mouse. I bought one, and it is great. I still do some odd scrolling with it, but it’s ok. It’s a good mouse.

The best mouse I have ever had is an old logitech mouse, from 10+ years ago. I bought it to replace the even worse mouse from my first iMac ( a Graphitti iMac DV ) when I was 14 year old. That rounded mouse were terrible. So I bought this logitech, and it still works great. I still carry it, in case my magic mouse fails me. I have this problem, I don’t fully trust cordless mouses.

This might also interest:

No Related Posts

Google + Metaweb

Cláudio — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:54:42 +0000

A few days ago, I saw this video on one of the blogs I read often but I forgot which one, sorry.

Google just bought the company, and they are off for more big searching improvements. Amazing, we will see good things soon coming up.

The whole idea of entities on the web, makes me think on how this FreeBase thing works out? From a fast check on freebase.com, I coudn’t find out much, mas from what I saw, it looks like a more complex (codewise) wikipedia.

Read the Post from Jack Menzel, a Google director of product management on his blog.

This thing will have profound implications on webdevelopment. Gotta wait and see what the community will create around this new idea.

Checkout the video that explains how metaweb’s idea works. It’s great stuff.

This might also interest:

No Related Posts

Around Venezia

Cláudio — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:50:03 +0000

Last week I bought tickets for me and my soon to be wife to Italy. With that in mind, I stumbled upon this beautifull video in Burano. Watch it in HD, it’s awesome.

Around Venezia from Icam on Vimeo.

This might also interest:

Editorial Design – Jornal MDS

Cláudio — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:09:33 +0000

The “Jornal MDS” is a newspaper designed by me at Informe Comunicação. The visual project was designed by Chica Magalhães, my boss here, and I have designed some issues of the newspaper in these 2 years I’ve been working here.

The visual project is very light and open for design possibilities.

Here you can see the pdf version of some issues of the newspaper.

Jornal MDS Especial

Jornal MDS December 2008

Jornal MDS January 2009

Jornal MDS February 2009

I hope you like it.

This might also interest:

Rebranding BP

Cláudio — Wed, 26 May 2010 14:55:33 +0000

I will be honest, I did’t know much about BP before it’s “huge ambiental mess”, as this recent disaster has been named. I do know that BP isn’t 100% guilty of this mess, since no one can predict and accident of this proportion, nor predict that the tube to the oil basin would stay opened after the platform sunk. But since they are a multi millionaire company, it should have a department for oil accidents, and these guys should have some kind of backup plan. I am no engineer, so I have no idea about the physics and material implications, but a safety valve could have worked beautifully in this case, preventing that plug to keep leaking oil for a month. But I don’t know shit about this industry, so I have 98% of keep saying bullshit here, so I will just stop, and leave it for the professionals.

The thing that really caught my attention, was something that involved my work. Branding. BP have rebranded itself in 2000, claiming they were “Beyond Petroleum”. While less than 1% of their business were actually not petroleum and natural gas. They painted all their buildings in green, changed the logo to a nice greeninsh flower ( WTH, a green flower for a oil company?) They spent 600+ million dollars in this rebranding ( including ads, painting their building, etc. ).

With an expensive brand like that and a huge ambiental mess to clean up, I decided to help them, and I rebranded BP for free. It’s just a small change on their logo, I think it now reflects better their business. I hope you guys like it.

Recently the world is seeing a big trend for greener companies, and environmental care in all areas, but what we are seeing is companies paying huge branding bills so we, designers, can make them look green, instead of doing the right thing. Looking green won’t solve our problem. I don’t believe we will be able to revert the situation on planet, nor I believe we are the only cause of the global warming, but I do think we can slow it down and gain some time. But if the world doesn’t do things right, we won’t even be able to postpone our problems, and the world won’t be a nice place to live soon. Yes, I’m that pessimist, when I see lies all around us. And I couldn’t agree more with this Greenpeace activist. ( I don’t know who exactly said that to BBC UK, but I’d be happy to update this post with the right name.)

“This is a triumph of style over substance. BP spent more on their logo this year than they did on renewable energy last year, ” the environmentalist group Greenpeace said.

“BP doesn’t stand for Beyond Petroleum. It stands for Burning the Planet,” it added.

from BBC News UK

EDIT: After reading a bit more about the BP disaster, I found out that there were 3 safety valves in deep horizon. BUT none of them worked. So we need to ask a different question. Why none of them worked, and why there aren’t 20 safety valves since they aren’t that safe afterall.

You can see a timeline of BP’s tries at NY Times

Here you can see pictures of BP’s the disaster

This might also interest:

Meditatione

Cláudio — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:09:12 +0000

This is an amazing video created by some friends. When I first heard about the video, I didn’t know anything about it.

One of the things that really amused me on this video was the fact that it wasn’t actually filmed. It was photographed, with a Nikon D90, and then edited on Premiere.

They used some light painting that we have been experimented together a few times before.

The end result was quite fantastic and entertaining. Congratulation guys!

What do you think about it? I’d like to hea

Credits:

Direction and Screenplay: Letícia Uesugi (I don’t have you website, please send it to me)
Actress: Alessandra Carneiro
Photography Direction: Bernardo Carneiro de Mendonça Chagas Ribeiro
Art Direction: Letícia Uesugi; Thales Leite and Bernardo Carneiro de Mendonça Chagas Ribeiro
Special Effects: Letícia Uesugi; Thales Leite
Costumes and Cenography: Alessandra Carneiro
Sound Effects: Letícia Uesugi

This might also interest:

The Unpronounceable Volcano – Caught on Video

Cláudio — Fri, 14 May 2010 19:33:18 +0000

I just saw this from my friend Graziela. Amazing video, very beautiful.

Nature is amazing. It’s a shame what we do to it everyday.

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull – May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

This might also interest:

Super Slow Lightning

Patchbay – Branding Project

Cláudio — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:59:00 +0000

A while ago, my friend Fred aka Patchbay asked me to take a look at his logo. I ended up redesigning his logo. Here it is. You can also see the cover design I did a few months ago for him.