I had an amazing opportunity to meet architect, artist, designer Eddie Sykes. Correction, this was the third time I have met him. Crazy thing, when we first moved to Los Angeles in 2005, we visited the studios of Eddie Sykes and were totally blown away by his work. At the time, he was building a large scale, translucent facade for a hotel in New York. Five years passed and I found myself at his studio for other tangential reasons, this was meeting #3. Eddie met us outside, we both looked at each other, and it was like deja vu from our encounter years earlier.

As we were talking casually, Eddie’s sculptures were dangerously hung in his Frogtown studio. His work very delicate, industrial, raw, refined, luxury, rudimentary… a balance of opposites is very present in his work. Especially the Yakuza Lou–a kinetic sculpture, but also a working chandelier. Each one meticulously handcrafted, requiring up to 4 months to complete a single piece.

The Yakuza Lou chandelier came as a more affordable and production friendly solution to the large scale Yakuza Lou sculpture exhibited at M&A in Silverlake in 2009. That piece was an outdoor sculpture that opened and closed revealing metal and greenery triggered by motion sensor placed in the outdoor gallery. This was meeting #2 with Eddie… well, not Eddie himself but his work.

Re-encounters like this are special. I love how Los Angeles can do that. Even though sprawling, Los Angeles is intimate enough that one can rediscover a person, place, or feeling spontaneously.

More on Yakuza Lou here.
Also, a great interview with Eddie Sykes on the Modernica blog.

As we are inundated with countless messages and visual stimuli, companies like Duarte Design make our lives a little bit easier because of their sole dedication to presentation design. CEO/President Nancy Duarte already boasts a successful book, Slideology which contains 296 pages of organizational goodness. The New York Times, Business Week, and Fortune 500 companies have already recognized Duarte’s talents, and as the company continues to expand, they continue to nurture an addictive and informative blog.

Since they are experts at communication, their blog posts are always to the point, highly informative, and occasionally hilarious. This recent blog post made by one of their writers, Eric Albertson, was an ingenius approach at explaining successful presentation skills as he used the lyrics from Justin Timberlake’s FutureSex/ LoveSounds song:

Image via Duarte Design

Pothole: A deep natural underground cavity formed by the erosion of rock, esp. by the action of water. There’s nothing holy about potholes. Currently in his final year at University of Brighton, Pete Dungey, takes action to beautify such imperfections. Take a gander!

I’m sure you’ve checked out Poketo’s new website and identity by now. An effective logo should be unique, bold, and communicate concisely what a company wishes to convey about itself.

Here is a great resource to some old logos from Vintage Logo Flickr set, a collection of scans from an out-of-print book called World of Logotypes. Enjoy!

Click to enlarge