After what feels like the last eight months of obsess­ing a bit too much about work, some­times it’s hard to remem­ber just how to make your­self smile. Tonight, catch­ing up on lit­er­ally thou­sands of unread arti­cles I found this beau­ti­ful short of Danny MacAskill explor­ing an old iron­works. Gor­geous, inspir­ing and a gen­uine delight to watch:

(via Imag­i­nary Foun­da­tion)

Here it is finally, dear readers–a sum­mary video of last year’s daily365 por­trait project. Many of you have asked for or inquired about it and my apolo­gies for keep­ing you all wait­ing… the last few weeks have kept me busy with hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tions and visitors.

What do you think, dear read­ers? See­ing a year’s worth of por­traits alone in a few min­utes just makes me tired to watch. Phew!

For those who attended the 99% Con­fer­ence a few weeks ago in New York, got a pre­view of stills from most of this com­mer­cial; but now that it’s be released to the pub­lic, we can all enjoy it:

What do you think, dear read­ers? Can a bank really stand for some­thing? Would you do busi­ness with Stan­dard Char­tered Bank if it were in your town? And how about the visual side of the piece? Love it? Hate it? Are you a fan of Sag­meis­ter and his work? Never heard of him before? What do you think??

Finally, the per­fect use for an iPad:

Next week holds the promise of the US release of the first film by Banksy. Last week, an extended teaser for the film was released which begins to out­line Thierry Guetta’s (aka Mr. Brain­wash) pur­suit of the mys­te­ri­ous artist. Check it out:

A list of venues and show­times across the US is avail­able on the film Web site.

Lately, I’ve found myself attend­ing a lot of net­work­ing events and meet­ings; not sur­pris­ingly, one of the results is many con­ver­sa­tions about the design ser­vices I offer through (A) Muses Media.

Per­haps though, I should con­sider an ad like the fol­low­ing:

Great stuff, right? Espe­cially that smash­ing logo at the end…

Back by pop­u­lar demand, another install­ment of tips for life. Enjoy!

A brief video of the cur­rent instal­la­tion at the Bar­bi­can in Lon­don by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot which explores the unex­pected rhythms of daily life.

[OK, so it’s not the real Werner Her­zog… but it’s still funny]

The end of print pub­lish­ing? Or?? Watch and see:

I tweeted about this months ago but some­how over­looked shar­ing this won­der­fully fun art­work here.

On dis­play at the British Library in Lon­don is a paint­ing by British artist, Patrick Hughes:

Beau­ti­ful!

The videos of last week’s Ignite Bal­ti­more 5 are all avail­able on YouTube; life is good.

The event itself was great; big­ger and even bet­ter than IB4.

Here are a few of the more mem­o­rable pre­sen­ta­tions:

tran­script of Brian Sacawa’s talk
Part of what I liked about this talk was the belief in Bal­ti­more he expressed– that we are not sim­ply, “Brooklyn’s farm team.” His tongue-in-cheek humor didn’t hurt either.

Wolver­ine AND Teddy Roo­sevelt in the same pre­sen­ta­tion?! Yes, please. Why do I have a feel­ing Tom has a master’s the­sis worth of notes on this topic lurk­ing in his sketchbooks.

A great, smart young woman who is work­ing hard to change the world around her.

To me, this was the most impor­tant talk of the night–a brand strate­gist talk­ing about the power of sto­ry­telling and the val­ues of the­atre being applied in business.

As a jump-start to the week, here is a gor­geous piece to get your cre­ative juices flow­ing, dear readers:

So it’s Valen­tines Day, for those who cel­e­brate the occasion…

Can’t say I’m the biggest roman­tic– I grav­i­tate towards the Baude­laire and Poe end of the spec­trum ver­sus the Keats and Byron end. Even so I enjoy thought­ful obser­vances of the day whether expe­ri­enced first hand or not–it is a shame really that we need a sched­uled hol­i­day to get us to artic­u­late our affec­tions but what­ever works, right?

For those who pre­fer the greyer end of the spec­trum, here are few tunes for you:

This video was made by a fan after Mark Sand­man’s death but it’s a good song, imho.

So dear read­ers, how do you observe this spe­cial day?

Later tonight, much of the world will no doubt gather round to enjoy the open­ing fes­tiv­i­ties of the 2010 Win­ter Olympics in Vancouver.

And while I could prob­a­bly write an entire post about the glo­ries of the beau­ti­ful city of Van­cou­ver (the art! the cof­fee! the food! and on and on) instead I’ll share my favorite 2010 Olympics-related promo to get you in the mood for tonight’s open­ing ceremonies:

I just love this piece STUDIO AKA pro­duced as a BBC promo.

Have you seen Danny Yount’s titles for Guy Ritchie’s Sher­lock Holmes? Wow!

Read Art of the Title’s inter­view with Yount here and see the evo­lu­tion of his work on this project as well as the full cred­its themselves.

Image: Art of the Title

Today finds Charm City buried once again, in a blan­ket of sparkling white. The effect is beau­ti­ful, bewil­der­ing and even a lit­tle inspir­ing though at some point after hours of shov­el­ing, the snow will become less than charm­ing. In the mean­time, here is a piece of visu­ally stun­ning eye/brain candy straight from Japan for you, dear read­ers, snow­bound or otherwise:

Doesn’t this just make your eyes smile and the snow a lit­tle more fun?

You know, women work­ers can be sur­pris­ingly good pro­duc­ers.…

And remem­ber, this all boils down to four things:

• 1) Don’t mix plea­sure with business
• 2) Women can be awfully jeal­ous of one another
• 3) Avoid undue familiarity
• 4) Women are more sen­si­tive than men

This gives me flash­backs to Oakland…