Neo-Cubist Skull

Here’s a Shout Out from the Artist at Work

Apple WWDC 2010 Remembered

Does Steve Jobs really look like that? Well… that is how I see him.

Commemorating Google i/o 2010 and the Droid

Neo Cinco Sombrero

Celebrating Mexican heritage.

fm “News” Icon

More neocubist technology.

Note: Copyright ForthMedia, used here by permission.

“Design & Technology” Icon

Let’s call this an elaboration of the neocubist theme I’ve been working on for a while.

Like the cubist style invented by Picasso about a hundred years ago, there is a conscious rejection of vanishing lines of perspective. Perspective is a technique artists use to make things look real. Today, of course, if you want a realistic picture of something, you can take one. With your cell phone.

Gradients aside, these images are pretty flat. To give the image depth, you have to move things around inside the frame. Thank goodness for software with layers.

Using a paint brush to represent design, that’s pretty intuitive. How about that gear for technology? OK, you’re probably thinking: technology means computers, gadgets, the Internet. It used to mean something less knowledge-based. More primal. As Alvin Toffler once said, "Brute technology was designed for illiterates–which most of our ancestors were."

Gracenote, Brush, and Gear

Note: These images are copyright Forthmedia, and used here by permission.

Email

Email originated as a text-only way to exhange digital messages.

The Forthmedia office icons were created to give their web site a unique look. The icons have to scale down, and still convey what functionality they represent. I think the neo-cubist style makes them different from the usual doo-dads you see on the Internet. Whether they work as icons or not depends on whether people click on ‘em.

Computer

The web connects computers, laptops, netbooks, and intelligent devices.

Phone

More and more people are using cell phones as their only telephone.

Camera

Digital cameras have displaced film.

Fax

Businesses still use Fax. Gotta have this icon.

Note: These images are copyright ForthMedia, and used here by permission.

© ForthMedia

I got feedback that the first version of this icon was not "feminine enough." How could you tell? It must be that you are getting used to looking at this neo-cubist stuff. I’ve been looking at this highly abstract icon so long it’s beginning to resemble somebody I really know.

Neo-Cubist Before After

You can see the hand-drawn concept sketches from earlier this year. Look under Tags on the left, for a gallery of neo-cubist works on this blog.