The Belle & Wissell’s team released their new website this week, presenting the studio’s collection of over 90 projects across multiple mediums including media experiences, interactives, retail & edition projects, and exhibitions. This occasion also marks a 10-year milestone since the studio began in 2003 (initially known as Gabe Kean Design).
The new website includes tailored experiences for desktop, tablet, and mobile visitors.
Take a look at Belle & Wissell’s brand new magazine on Flipboard for a regular smattering of creative and technical inspiration…including architecture, typography, photography, and interesting ephemera from the past.
Flip through Belle & Wissell’s magazine on Flipboard
Born has officially retired but with a new site that archives all the work that was produced by the boundary-breaking publication. The “facilitators” of Born, Gabe Kean of Belle & Wissell (Born’s founder and artistic director), Anmarie Trimble (editor) and Scott Benish (online curator) were all involved, and the design and development teams at Belle & Wissell, Co., brought the project to completion.
See the feature on the Communication Arts website.
Born: 15 Years of Art + Literature
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Gabe Kean
Belle & Wissell, Co.
206 322 7908 x300
gabe@bwco.info
Seattle, WA – September 17, 2013 – Born Magazine sprang to life in 1997, when the Internet was just beginning to unfurl as a cultural force and storytelling medium. After 15 years of publication, Born’s all-volunteer team of editors and curators has written the final chapter on the magazine’s web-based marriage of literature and poetry with visual and interactive arts.
But they are not closing the book. They leave for posterity “15 years of art + literature,” an archive of 419 projects developed for Born by more than 900 contributors at: www.bornmagazine.org
These include lauded interactive designers such as Erik Natzke and Joshua Davis, and a diverse slate of established and upcoming writers, including Edward Hirsch, Bruce Smith, Nick Flynn, and Monica Drake.
Born’s new website
The pioneering magazine was founded in the mid-90’s as a web-based ‘zine with traditional features and reviews, but quickly evolved into showcase interactive pieces. It helped set the standard for online publications and opened entirely new avenues of artistic collaboration.
“Born took the left-justified, typographically-constrained, mind-forged manacles of texts and made them visions, and gyres, and new architectures of color and shape and movement,” says poet Bruce Smith, recipient of the 2012 William Carlos Williams Award and Born contributor. “It made new dreams.”
Born’s story will also be captured in a hybrid multimedia/book project being developed in collaboration with magazine founder Gabe Kean’s Seattle-based design studio, Belle & Wissell. The book’s interactive preview was honored in the 2011 Communication Arts Interactive Design Annual and was a finalist in the 2011 SXSW Interactive Awards. The preview’s creative use of Adobe InDesign CS5 is an example of how Born has creatively leveraged technology to enable the highest levels of interactive art achievement.
Visit the book preview here: http://www.bornmagazine.org/bookpreview/
“Some of Born’s pieces were really amazing and groundbreaking because they showed the immense attention to detail you could bring to web-based interactivity,” says author and Communication Arts emerging media writer Joe Shepter. “It was hard for people to grasp the creative possibilities of the web back then, and Born was one of the earliest online publications to demonstrate its potential.”
Page from Born’s interactive book title 417•903
Born’s creators are showcasing its work as a collection to provide an ongoing resource for artists, writers, educators, and students who look to the magazine for study and inspiration. Though submissions will no longer be taken, Born’s staff expects the archive will continue to inspire new audiences.
ABOUT BORN
Founded in 1996, Born is an all-volunteer project that brings together writers, artists, and others from diverse fields to create storytelling artworks. Its name reflects the creative process nurtured by collaboration and the bringing together of traditional and new forms of art and literature, diverse media, and emerging technologies. As a non-profit organization, Born is dedicated to the emergence and continuing evolution of art forms that bring together different creative genres.
Its quarterly publication, Born Magazine, launched in 1997 and brought together creative writers and interactive artists to create experimental, media-rich literary arts experienced only through the web. The magazine retired in 2011, and in 2013 launched its complete online collection, available at www.bornmagazine.org. Born’s exhibit arm, Born Presents, was founded in 2005 and creates exhibits and special projects, including a hybrid multimedia/book retrospective of Born’s work that’s currently under development.
People admiring one of the works from Born’s 2005 exhibition in Seattle “Help Wanted: Collaborations in Art”
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Download a PDF version of the press release.
More press (from SF Gate) on the brand new flagship store in San Francisco, with large multi-touch wall and streetscape media installations (designed by Belle & Wissell). Congratulation to Umpqua and the collective project team!
See the article in The Oregonian. Store opens to the public on Monday.
What do Mark Twain, Marie Curie, and Nikola Tesla all have in common? They are all part of South Lake Union’s latest design installation by Belle & Wissell titled “Macro-Micro”, part of a series of artful and sustainable design projects commissioned by Vulcan Real Estate. This project is just one part of Vulcan’s vision for the new Amazon.com campus in the neighborhood. We invite you to come see it in person at this location.
The graphic metal sculpture, located on Boren Avenue (between Thomas and Harrison) is made from 8,640 multicolor, individual pucks-capable of being rearranged into future compositions to give this project an extended life (a total of 10,000 pucks were produced). The initial theme is based on “innovators”, a reflection of the neighborhood’s past, present, and future.
This Belle & Wissell design project was realized in collaboration with Vulcan Real Estate, Amazon.com, and fabricator McNae Metals.
Giant mesh racks were made to hold and support thousands of metal pucks.
Once the pucks were joined, it was time to paint.
Mesh installed, pucks painted, next comes the paint by number part. Each puck was hand set in the mesh on site using a detailed grid guide.
The finished piece.
Belle & Wissell, Co. is looking for interface developers for full-time and contract employment. The scope of our projects is uniquely vast, so interest in new challenges across various mediums is key. We are currently working on: public art projects, museum media installations with software/hardware integration, single and multi-touch interfaces, programmatic motion design, WYSIWYG content management tools, projected works, experimental filmmaking, and 3D game engines.
If you can use ‘interactive’ as a noun and have experience with any of the following, you could be a good fit for our team: Flash/Silverlight, WPF, C++ (Cinder, openFrameworks), C#, and/or Unity (for media installations, interactive kiosks, and Web experiences). If you’ve got more, we’d like to know about it.
Email resumes and links to work samples: info@bwco.info
Please provide examples of practical experience that show past successful results.
Finalists were announced last week for Toronto’s annual Flash In The Can Awards. Belle & Wissell, Co.’s Paccar Hall digital wayfinding system for The University of Washington’s business school is among those nominated for a Flash Usability and People’s Choice awards.
See a video of this project here.
An interactive directory provides students and faculty with real-time information from multiple data sources, revisions to locations of people and departments, and navigation through the complex floor plans and multi-level building entrances. The project also includes a digital donor program with touch interfaces and passive digital displays to clearly credit the contributions that made Paccar Hall possible. Additionally there is a business Twitter feed interactive that streams constant news from up to twelve Twitter feeds like The Economist and The Wall Street Journal. Write an essay online.
Winners for FITC will be announced at the ceremony on May 3. Fans of Belle & Wissell can cast their vote for the People’s choice by visiting the nominees page.
Retrospective Book Preview:
Born Presents 417 • 903 is a
SXSW Interactive Awards finalist
in the category of Art.
The Interactive Awards Ceremony will take place Tuesday, March 15, and will seek to uncover the best new digital work (from websites to web applications and beyond). Born Presents: 417 • 903 (designed by Belle & Wissell, Co.), is a finalist in the category of Art.
Born Presents: 417 • 903 is a retrospective preview of Born’s developing multimedia/book project that showcases the creativity and talents of those who have conceived some of its most inspiring work. For over fourteen years, Born has brought together hundreds of volunteers to create an unprecedented history of creative collaborative arts on the web and beyond.
