Angela Chang- It doesn't hurt

The music video "It doesn't hurt" of Angela Chang, a Chinese singer, makes me feel so good. The music is very nice, but it's not what I wanna mention later :p Since I really these kind of abstract video like this, so at the 1st time, I watched it, I fell for it :p

There are many interesting things in this video: the make-up, the lighting, the dress, the combination between the music and the images, etc. As you can see at the beginning of the video, there are several images appearing and they fit with the music perfectly. Besides that, the lighting of this video is very awesome. There is always a right amount of lighting in each and every scene. For the scene that she's in the forest, the lighting reminds me of something evil and weird. It's not too scary, but kind of mysterious. Moreover, she doesn't make-up too much in those scene. While other scenes, such as in the hall or the close-up of her face, there is more make-up, but the face still looks very pure. And I think the make-up plays an important role to stress her beautiful features on the camera. Next, the way the crew chose the dresses for her is also good. Each scene she has a different dress and each one create a different but meaningful mood. The concept is abstract, so no one can say exactly what is going on in this video. However, due to its abstraction, the video is much more special than other typically linear music video.

Poster for Mar Group

Hee-haw, that is my poster done for Mar Group of Economic University :D Actually one of my old friend, Tram, asked me to make a poster for their new workshop, of which name is "Sếp của thời gian" (which totally means "The boss of the time" in English). This workshop will help students manage their time successfully to reach their achievements. At that time, I was kind of lazy because I had a lot of assignments to do, but it seemed that there was nobody that could help them, so I had to :-s

As you can see, there is something looking like a small target, which represents the goals that you wanna fulfill in your life in this case. Besides that, the triangle seems like a dart as well as a sand-glass. So it means you're trying to control the time to complete your goal on-time and successfully. I don't know why I chose green as the background's color, but it's suitable for the whole theme, isn't it? :p Inside the triangle is the name of the workshop, "The boss of the time". Other big texts are its main points of the workshop, "A series of skills for life" and "Skills of managing time". I put them next to the triangle to stress it more and make the structure clearer.

I just wanna create somethings extremely simple for this kind of poster like this. But the "client" forced me to stuff it with a lot of information. Through this experience, I can see that it's not easy to be a designer. You have to depend on what your client likes and wants. Anyway, it's a very nice experience for me.

Converse website

The Converse website is used to promote many shoe styles of Converse corporation.

What I really like is the loading page icon, that is a shoe. Depending on which page is loading, the shoe will show different states, for example changing the color of the shoe over and over again. Though it's very cute to have something like this, I think Converse can help users predict the response time in downloading by showing the size of the download next to the shoe.


It is very useful when there always is additional information about the link. Whenever users is moving the mouse over the link, the link is change into the information explaining what the link really means. I think it's good to help new users interact more accurately and effectively. By doing this, Converse has shown respect to supporting users’ navigation behavior.

Another thing that I really like is the sound effects (actually I always like websites offering audio feedbacks to users). Though the designers just use one sound effect to illustrate the states of various kinds of button, it's kind of nice to let users know they've successfully pressed a button.

A successful point of this website is the well-designed main navigation. Whenever users move over it, the options appear actively and strongly, which fits the main theme of such a site promoting shoes for teenagers like that. Besides that, if the mouse is out of the specific area, these options automatically become their original states smoothly. Moreover, before coming to their positions, these buttons rock themselves to and fro. Though this kind of movement is very simple, it shows the extremely careful observation of the designers.

As Converse is the type of stylish shoes for young people and who wanna show off :p so the background needs to be powerful to fit with other elements such as the navigation, the loading icon, etc. I have to admit the background is quite messy, but due to its confusion, an extreme stylish, strong and modern mood can be built stably and lively. Moreover, the background is filled with the images of good-looking and healthy models wearing Converse shoes, giving a modern and stable look for the whole site. It also makes the site different from other simple sites. It's surely "Less is More", but sometimes "More is More".

Books recommended for final project

I've read these 2 books and found that they're extremely interesting and useful for the final project of Don.

1. Visual Creativity: written by Mario Pticken. This book, with 817 illustrations and 794 of them in color, is intended for creatives in the following fields: advertising and marketing, photography, game design and development, cartoons and non-stop animation, new media, architecture, etc. I think by reading this book, you can strengthen your imaginary skills as well as be able to use these skills to develop your own stories and sequences.

2. >on screen> in time: transitions in motion graphic design for film, television and new media: written by Melanie Goux and James A.Houff. The transitions, images and text changing from one to another over time, play a big role in motion graphic design. This book offers audiences more refined and thoughtful transitions and why the artists in this book chose these kinds of transitions. Through interviews and images, readers can explore the life and work of 16 highly regarded motion graphic designers.

A sunny day in countryside

The song is created based on the idea of a sheep walking around his farm and feeling so good and he's trying to find some sunflowers for that beautiful day. Actually, it almost fits what I was thinking in my mind. Funky and funny rhythms play on a countryside atmosphere. I think the title "A sunny day in countryside" is suitable for the song, do you think so?
Let's enjoy it!

Escape from Love

That is the name for the song I've made lately. Actually, I just wanted to create something funky and noisy in Garage Band, then the song was born suddenly when I combined and overlapped several audio clips. The name "Escape from Love"was inspired from the song "L.O.V.E" of Ashlee Simpson, as the rhythm of both songs are totally funky and strong, which may make audiences feel like swinging their body and dancing.

I did not finish it yet, since I'm still thinking about its ending part. However, this short song sounds kind of nice, so I post it here to get your comments.

Spore website

Spore is a website of Will Wright, the creator of The Sims. It was created to promote an online game, in which there are several phases through the development of civilization and technology. There are also a series of characters, based on each period of phase. I think the idea is based on the development of human being, as you can see, each phase is designed according to a specific point of time in human history.

Some screenshots of creatures

First, what makes me impressed is an outstanding and funky piece of intro animation flash at the very beginning. The intro is short, but totally gives the audiences some ideas about the style and the characters throughout the game, as well as the missions for each phase. Secondly, we all can see there are blocks of text, therefore it must apply CSS style in Flash into their website. So instead of using Flash to contain the text, CSS style in Flash will help the later work and change much more easily. The site architecture is very plain. There are only 3 pages for the whole website, not including the external links. However, its purpose is to give the users some information about the game as well as the screenshots and stuff. So that's enough for it.

Some screenshots of The Space Phases