Coquette

Explory: A Mobile Storytelling App

I love to take photos with my iPhone but once it's copied onto my computer, they are most often forgotten. I only wish I had time to create fun movies of trips or my daughter's birthdays. Now there's a new app in the works called Explory. With Explory, you can actually your own movies using your photos and videos – all from your mobile phone or iPad. I have never seen anything so brilliant and easy to use. Just think about how perfectly easy it will be to capture a special event, birthday party, vacation or just a fun afternoon.

The team is made up of the amazing geniuses that created Flash who are also my former co-workers from Macromedia back in the 90's. Help support them in the creation of Explory as they try to launch this product by this summer.

Visit the Explory Kickstarter page to find out more about the app and help contribute.

Hello! Lucky Personalized Holiday Cards + Get 20% Off

Hello! Lucky's holiday photo cards are a beautiful way to spread some holiday cheer this season. There are lots of different designs to choose from featuring gorgeous typography and clever designs. I just ordered my cards yesterday and chose this woodblock ornaments design. I love that stamped look of the card which gives it a handmade feel. You can also customize everything you see for the card. Choose your own custom color scheme. I've never seen so many color choices available for customized cards. There are 35 standard ink colors where you can create your own custom palette. You can choose the pre-set text or insert your own special message. Plus I love the selection of stylish fonts. Preview it all online so you can see what you are getting. You can even choose what color envelope you want for your card. (I chose chartreuse for mine.)

I looked for a lot of photos to use from this past year of my girls, but kept coming back to this photo of Chloe and Lulu from last month. We had just come back from the salon for Chloe's first haircut and her hairdresser showed me how to do a cute twist to her hair. I wanted to snap some pictures of her hair before it unraveled later so I had them pose for me. I never expected such a cute photo to come out of that ordinary day.

If you aren't a photo person, you can choose from these personalized non-photo holiday cards as well as regular holiday cards.

Get 20% off your order at Hello! Lucky
Just for Coquette readers, shop for your holiday cards (and more) at hellolucky.com and get 20% off your order with the code Coquette2012. Offer is good until December 31, 2012.

Here's a preview of the great selection of holiday cards at Hello! Lucky:

Note: Cards were provided by Hello! Lucky for review.

Coach's Holiday Hangtag Movies + Contest

Happy Friday! Coach is featuring some adorable stop animation movies featuring their iconic leather hangtags that have been attached to every Coach bag since 1974 to kick off their "The Best Gift Tag" campaign. I love this movie above called "In the Harbor". Makes me miss NYC! Hundreds of hangtags were photographed to get just the right lighting and shadows!

There are so many cute little movies to watch, see the gallery of animations here.

Facebook Contest
But wait there's more! Create your own hangtag animations through a Coach Facebook app and become entered into the contest to win one of eight Coach gift cards. The entry with the most "likes" will win a $500 gift card, the second and third will win a $250 gift card, and the next five most "likes" win a $100 gift card. The hangtag contest runs until December 21, 2011. Visit the Coach Hangtag Animation page and click on the "make your own" link at the bottom to start the Facebook application.

DesignScene iPad App

If you long for design inspiration and have an iPad, pick up this new app called DesignScene. (Watch the trailer on the homepage!) It's a real-time inspiration app that is visual! That's right, now you can surf visually through curated sources that cover everything from art to architecture, illustration to fashion, and photography to typography. The $3.99 app was created by Roger Wong and David Wheeler of Lunar/Theory. Roger is a friend and former design colleague. We worked together for many years and his design taste is one that I admire. It's no wonder that the app is more addictive than reading my own text-heavy Google Reader. Who needs text when you can move from image to image with ease and constant inspiration? It's the best way to enjoy your morning coffee I tell you!

The interface is easy to use and instantly brings you beautiful photos and text stories to read. (Photos from 50+ sites and text feeds from 30+ sites.) You can set up how often the stories refresh with a sliding scale that goes from every 5 min to 4 hours. (I set mine to every 30 min.) Add in your Twitter handle and Facebook login and you can tweet and Facebook stories you love to your friends. You can also share links via email too! Get your DesignScene app, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy a new way to get information and read the design stories of the moment.

NY Kisses

Just in time for Valentine's Day, get inspired and pucker up as you explore the art of the kiss in the new interactive art site, NY Kisses created by Studio Lekker. Lekker means "delicious" and "being in the moment" in Dutch so what can be more delicious than capturing kisses in NY? Visit the site and just start from the beginning or choose a kiss from the slider menu. You can rate the kisses by leaving a comment. All the comments on the site become a part of the experience as they float subtly behind the couple amidst the backdrop of the NY skyline. My favorite kiss is by this couple above. Ah, l'amour!

What's behind a fashion logo?

Saks Fifth Ave's classic logo got a recent facelift and some rebranding done thanks to Pentagram's Michael Bierut. Bierut took the logo and chopped it up into 64 squares so that he could rearrange them into different combinations from bags to ads. The typographic look is decidedly modern and fresh for a logo that's thankfully bringing back it's classic script style that hasn't been used for over 10 years. The close up type boxes and the classic, yet modern black and white color give Saks a much needed brand refresh. You can also read more about the brand refresh at the NY Times.

It's fun to see how the logo's changed since 1946.

But that's not where our fashion logo trip ends. Even Kate Moss gets a logo of her own for her new Topshop collection. This one from the ground up.

Veer pointed to an article by CR Blog about Kate Moss' new TopShop line brand created by English Graphic Designer, Peter Saville, in collaboration with typograher Paul Barnes. To follow with Kate's Boho style, the end result is a font based on the font Albro by Alexey Brodovitch who was the Art Director for Harper's Bazaar (well known for their typographic layouts) from 1934-1958.

(Photo above: Albro font sample as posted on Typophile)