The Vostok blog

This is our humble contribution to @DesignObserver‘s week devoted to Massimo Vignelli:

Yes, it’s a beautifully framed first edition of his 1972 NYC Subway Map at the Vostok studio. It has been here since day 1.

Check the video of Mr. Vignelli talking about it, for those who lack a bit of context.

Acabo de publicar toda la información sobre el próximo curso para formar a diseñadores de interacción. Será la tercera edición del Programa Vostok.

This is the kind of stuff Mark tells you to justify his totally unacceptable levels of coffee consumption:

(original at Homeowners Insurance)

Today we had some spare time to do an iPad wallpaper feauturing our 3-window rocket. Here’s how it looks and the original file for you to use it:

… and the file (links to the one you have to use, 1024×1024 px.):

Enjoy it.

Sam Lown has been recently tweaking the web version of Planetaki. He has made some improvements and minor alterations for a new version that’ll be released this Summer. Watch the video for more info.

We are glad to welcome cosmonauts Gabriela Lendo and Timo Taglieber. Timo is on a space-tourist internship building the iPad version of Planetaki, while Gabriela joins the permanent outpost helping out the spaceship’s comms systems.

Gabriela Lendo majored in International Relations, and her command of English and French are top-notch. She has worked in Madrid for Notisistema, and has headed the communications teams of cinema related projects in London (Portobello Festival) and Madrid (The Cosmonaut).

To sample her work, just take a look at the latest videos we’ve posted.

Gabriela is also an awesome cook, after sampling her banana bread we called the cops on the suspicion of, ahem ilegal flavor enhancements, but it turned out regular banana pancake can be addictive. And she would beat the crap out of Julia Roberts at a smiling contest.

Timo Taglieber majored in Computer Science and Computational Linguistics at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Timo programmed MetaMan, a MediaWiki plug-in that suggests categories and properties based on similar pages. Take a look at his portfolio to view his work.

Timo is very eager to enjoy Madrid’s nightlife. According to the authoritative Xenophobe’s Guide to the Spanish:

The Spanish never go to bed at night if they can possibly help it, because they might be missing out on something more exciting than sleep. On the other hand they never fail to have a siesta.

We are hoping German discipline prevails over Spanish hedonism.

We just recently had a very special guest attend one of our Cosmomeals, Spanish filmmaker Álvaro de la Herrán.

For the meal to be complete, we invited filmmaker Nicolás Alcalá from Riot Cinema Collective. We talked about the film industry, the difficult times it’s going through (both in Spain and outside), the democratization of film, how now anyone can do a short but not everyone can do a good short, the limits (or lack of) and differences between cinema and narrative branded content, the problems with distribution and monetization. It’s tough out there. Lots of questions, very few answers.

Check out Álvaro’s vimeo: the man’s an artist. Special mention to his work with GQ Spain and the first two minutes of his short Marrakech.

We have the impression that there are very few filmmakers with daring and innovative ideas of using web tools to sustain profitable business models around their movies. Would you agree?

Why do you think this is? Or even better: What do you think innovation in films should look like?

yuuuuhuuuuuu… Where are you filmmakers? We need you. Films need you.

We invited Aitor García and Roberto Salicio for a chat a couple of days ago. These guys have lately been up to some serious business with AbreDatos: a 48-hour contest they launched to gather new and interesting ideas to digest raw government data. The winners will soon be announced. Here’s an excerpt of that conversation:

The idea behind open data is that of accountability, enabling a system to work for it’s people and not the other way around. In the U.S. the wheel has already began to turn, initiatives such as the Obama’s administration Data.gov or a society that finds concepts such as democratizing data and e-government more and more familiar, are all important steps towards the right direction.

In Spain the wheel is turning a bit more slowly, but turning nevertheless.  The people behind AbreDatos and all of those who’ve participated are leading the way.

Hunter S. Tyler is the new guy at Vostok. We don’t care about him being a telecom engineer or about his German or his Chinese, we don’t care either about his short films. We wired him for this:

Well.. Being a telecommunications engineer as he is, he’ll obviously add more WARP’s to our programming and systems engines. He is already taking care of all the stuff related to thecosmonaut.org (Riot Cinema’s movie) and will soon start doing other übercool and experimental stuff that’s not been disclosed yet.

Welcome on board, Hunter S. Tyler!

We congratulate Mark MacKay for acquiring his first Canadian passport. O Canada, Mark’s home and native land, with glowing hearts he sees thee rise, he stands on guard for thee…

And now DANCE with us!!