Throughout the year we slowly start collecting new music and by the end of the year we amass a large collection. Then as the last month of the year approaches we start to take a look back at the songs and albums that defined our year. We reminisce about the situations and the emotions that each song holds to us.

So in the spirit of that I decided to put together the Top Ten Albums of 2010 that have made my 2010. Each album in this list has made a moment in time for me in 2010. It was actually quite hard to put them in an order of 1 to 10 because in my mind they were all number 1's. So enjoy the little playlist I put together from each of these 10 artist.





The Radio Dept. - Clinging To A Scheme


Beach House - Teen Dreams


The Roots - How I Got Over


Geographer - Animal Shapes


Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History


Blackbird, Blackbird - Summer Heart


Gorillaz - Plastic Beach


Local Natives - Gorilla Manor


Freelance Whales - Weathervanes


Sun Airway - Nocturne of Exploded Crystal Chandelier

Design concepts interest me. The thought process that goes behind a project is intriguing. So today we are going to look at the Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse ($70). This is a minialistic ergonomically-sound pointing device. The flexible palm rest allows you to flatten the mouse to turn it off and make it more suitable for packing. The metallic middle strip lets you perform gestures to quickly and easily move around your documents. This mouse is packing a 2.4 GHz wireless USB Nano Transceiver that can connect wirelessly right out of the box with virtually no interference and has up to a 30-foot wireless range. Just in case you could see 30-foot away from your computer. Below is a video of Young Kim the Senior User Experience Designer talking about the design process of making this new Microsoft mouse.

This amazing Youtube video was made by Genrocks. It's this year's movies transformed into a seamlessly generated remix of 2010 movies. It has 270 of them into what you would call one giant ass video. This incredibly seamless, perfectly timed editing is mind blowing. All 270 film clips is listed here. You can find her on twitter too.

Di Liu a 25 year old Chinese photographer, has been awarded the 2010 Lacoste Elysee prize. I can see why. He is known for his works which deals with conflicting relationships between nature and human society. So in his series he chose to depict different animals in different cities and the overwhelming part of their daily life in the city.

On a side note. What would you do if you saw an animal like this in your city. Leave a comment in the section below.








via: Designboom

On my random image search I came across a Mixtape Series album cover I thought was cool. So I started to dig for the original source and I stumbled upon The Comprehensive Mixtape Series. This Mixtape Series looks like it started about 9 months ago and every 3 months a new one becomes available. I have to give props to the creator of this site due to the great collection of tracks within the mixtapes and the mixtape covers are very eye-catching as well. Oh, did I mention that these mixtapes are Free to Download.

The internet is filled with inspiration from a story to an image. We as people find ideas and inspiration in many avenues amongst the cloud that we call the internet. So today let me introduce to you Designspiration. It was founded by Shelby White, a Seattle based graphic designer and owner of Wanken Blog and co-writer on ISO50 blog.

Designspiration took Shelby about 10 months for his idea of growing a community full of inspiration. This minimalist designed platform seems simple but it is full of great features to help you find your inspiration quickly and neatly. Some of the features are the live type search, color search and easy keyboard navigation. After toying with this site I quickly added this to my favorites. If you want to read about Shelby's thought process then check out the post on ISO50.

If you would like to get involved in sharing your works on Designspiration it's membership driven by those who are already members. So send an email to to register AT designspiration.net with a link to your portfolio or the type of inspiration you’d be uploading.

Shelby will be doing a live broadcast on Tuesday, December 14th at 12pm(noon) PST to talk about the project and anything design or photography related. So if you have questions he will bring the answers. Happy hunting.

Vimeo has some great talent and interesting videos amongst their large collection. I came across this video "Crossover" while checking out the blog, The Fox is Black. This short film was directed by Fabian Grodde who had some amazing 3D artists. It took me a minute to realize that those bug weren't real. It looks really real though. I'm still not sure the meaning of the video but I will go with what Bobby from TFIB said. He said that it’s about the spread of Christianity in the world, specifically in less civilized areas. Of course this is all told through tiny stink bugs and a giant spider, but I’m sure you’ll see what he was talking about.





DIRECTED & PRODUCED BY:
Fabian Grodde
3D ARTISTS:
Alexander Schumann, Christian Brinkmann, Stephan Hempel
COMPOSITING:
Fabian Grodde
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY:
Rafael Köhler
SOUND:
Johann Niegl, Alexander Binder

Jakub from ISO50 posted about NPR streaming the new compilation "We'll Never Stop Living This Way" by Ghostly International. So I thought I would share this information as well. Since more than half of the artist on this label are favorites of mine. Ghostly International is a great label that has a plenitude of amazing and talented artists. You can listen to all these songs before the release on their site in 3 parts, it includes plenty of exclusives and some of the hit singles by the main crew of artists that have released on the Ghostly label. This is a digital-only release which will be available on Dec. 14, but it'll stream on NPR in its entirety until then. Please share your thoughts on the compilation and the label in the comments section below.



Tracklisting below:
1 GOLD PANDA – Peaky Caps
2 SHIGETO – Eternal Life
3 OUTPUTMESSAGE – Bernard’s Song
4 MATTHEW DEAR – Fleece On Brain
5 DABRYE – Jorgy (feat. Waajeed)
6 MOBIUS BAND – Multiply
7 TYCHO – Coastal Brake
8 DANIEL WANG – Berlin Sunrise (Diskjokke Version) [Unreleased]
9 SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS – Half Asleep (Lusine Remix)
10 AEROC – My Love, The Wave Break
11 LAWRENCE – Five Leaves
12 CHOIR OF YOUNG BELIEVERS – Hollow Talk
13 TADD MULLINIX – Exchanging Modes
14 THE SIGHT BELOW – No Place For Us
15 LOSCIL – Union Dusk
16 BENOIT PIOULARD – Little A Strongly More Go I
17 PALE SKETCHER – Dummy (Bahnhoff Version)
18 CEPIA – Tape
19 MIDWEST PRODUCT – Clarity
20 OSBORNE – Outta Sight (Luke Vibert Remix)
21 LUSINE – Double Vision
22 SOLVENT – Loss For Words (Solvent’s CompuRhythm Mix)
23 JDSY – Horizon Line
24 DEASTRO – Tone Adventure #3
25 MICHNA – Redline Flights
26 THE REFLECTING SKIN – Traffickers
27 MUX MOOL – Crackers
28 KILN – Flycatcher
29 KATE SIMKO – The Creative Part
30 COM TRUISE – Cyanide Sisters [Unreleased]

I came across Network Osaka on Flickr and man was I satisfied with what I found. This guy has some great talent and he should. He has been doing graphic design since way back in 1992 on his Macintosh LC.

When I was reading up about him on his about page. He said something about graphic design that caught my attention. He said, as a designer, I strive to engineer form and function in complete harmony. Removing unnecessary design elements and having a concise and direct approach to design problems will ultimately create a successful product valued for both its content and its design.

I went through his Flickr sets and picked out some of my favorites. If you get a chance check out his Flickr and his Website. You won't be disappointed.