Filed under: Good Stuff
One of my classmates from VCU sent me a project that he is working on and I thought it was inspiring to post. Ray is a crazy idea factory, and I mean that in a good way.
Anyway, this past year teaching, I had to teach a class based on a social issue – I picked Manners and the decline of them. One of my students wanted to do something about graffiti (which had nothing to do with manners directly) but in our talks I came up with an idea – take something ugly and make something beautiful: So I started designing patterns based on gang tags:
SO then this year, Jim started radiation on his tumors and the Dr.s marked up his body. For my own therapy, I took photos of the marks and turned them into patterns:
So I’m thinking about getting them produced – I figured its the kinda of thing that clicks….
Any thoughts??
Filed under: Ooooo, toys
I was going to create some headline for this post that uses the term that describes people with plastic fetishes, however the Big Brother system at work thinks that looking up the word “fetish” in Google is a violation of morality. Blocked internet is fun, especially on days like today where I’m struggling to stay awake. Fortunately I have been able to find some loopholes around Big Brother but not for this particular query.
So anyways, the only reason I was posting this was because I was excited about the new Kid Robot figures coming out this week.
Ledbetter
Finders Keepers
From artist Joe Ledbetter comes his first fully designed and sculpted blind boxed mini series with the same vibrant colors, shadows, and character expressions we’ve grown to love. This new series of vinyl figures are essential to both Ledbetter fans and every one else who adores cute animals.
The dimensionality is great but what am I to do when my small space alotted for Kid Robot figures is full? That’s the point I’m at now but I think these new guys are a bit too cool to pass up.
Typograpic title sequences are few and far between so I thought I would post this little sample from Vacancy. Created by my friends at Picture Mill (still waiting for you to return that call), the sequence kind of reminds me of a K. Cooper sequence except without the pay-off. I guess overall the film was pretty bad according to Netflix, but I admit that I watched it on FF because I was a bit too scurred to handle it.
Filed under: Logos-a-go-go
I have much love for this logo for Yorkville Common Pantry.
Yorkville Common Pantry (YCP) is dedicated to reducing hunger and promoting dignity and self-sufficiency. Our services are provided in the Upper East Side and East Harlem to our neighbors in and around these communities.
As the largest, nonsectarian, neighborhood-based provider of emergency food in New York City, YCP provides 1,250,000 meals annually to all who come seeking relief from hunger. The Pantry was founded in 1981 by a coalition of East Side churches and synagogues and receives strong support from its forty-five member Board of Directors.
Every time I walk by it it just makes me happy. I’m not sure who designed it, but methinks Michael Bierut might be involved in some way since on the Pentagram blog he talks about some environmental graphics for the organization. Either way, it’s kind of brilliant. I hope they fix the old crappy one on the website though. Blech.
Filed under: Misc. Crap
Well, here is the new bloggy home. I’m giving WordPress a try because after some research it seemed to be the most flexible free blog. Of course I can’t alter the colors or anything like that because then I would have to pay for the service, but I can manage to make some small changes. I’m not a huge fan of the narrow content of copy but maybe one day soon I will change the template and everything will be grand. So feel free to give it a test drive and bitch all you want. No one will care anyway.
Also I may eventually move all of the archives over here but that sounds like a cold rainy day job. For now you can access them via the +my archives link in the blogroll.
Filed under: Adverse-tising
Did I make an ass of myself? Is it a conspiracy? I reported a while back on the Clean Butt commercials and now it seems that someone else had the happy butt idea. But really who came up with the idea first? I feel totally betrayed. Did I invest my fascination in the wrong company? How will I guarantee that my butt will be a happy butt if I don’t have the real thing? I don’t want a generic somewhat melancholy butt, I want the full-on happy.
What happens when packaging completely fails in terms of accessibility? Enter the rant about Microsoft’s packaging for Vista and Office.
From joelonsoftware.com
I bought a retail copy of Office 2007 today (I’m loading up the new laptop I got for the world tour, which is a Thinkpad X61s), and I must be a complete spaz, but I simply could not figure out how to open the bizarre new packaging.
It’s a hard plastic case, sealed in two different places by plastic stickies. It represents a complete failure of industrial design; an utter F in the school of Donald Norman’s Design of Everyday Things. To be technical about it, it has no true affordances and actually has some false affordances: visual clues as to how to open it that turn out to be wrong.
This is the same box that Vista comes in. Nick White over at Microsoft seems proud of the novel design, but from the comments on the web it seems I’m not the only one who couldn’t figure out how to open it. It seems like even rudimentary usability testing would have revealed the problem. A box that many people can’t figure out how to open without a Google search is an unusually pathetic failure of design. As the line goes from Billy Madison: “I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
Wasting five minutes trying to get the goddamned box open is just the first of many ways that Office 2007 and Vista’s gratuitous redesign of things that worked perfectly well shows utter disregard for all the time you spent learning the previous versions.
And then there are the actual directions to get the box open. Really, a box needs directions with illustrated photos to tell you how to open it? Lordy.
Believe it or not, quite a few people have asked how do you open the nifty Windows Vista Box or packaging after purchasing Windows Vista at the store. So I figured I’d do a step-by-step process on how to open your nice new copy of Windows Vista without smashing or destroying its cool packaging.
Step 1: Understand how the Box is sealed.
Windows Vista’s box is sealed when you get it so nothing falls out, like the DVD’s and Quick Start Guide.
Step 2: Remove the seal.
You’ve got to remove the seal first on the side of the box to proceed to actually getting the box open.
Step 3: Pull the pulley.
There is a red pulley on the top of the Windows Vista box. After the seal has been removed, pull the pulley out away from the box. Don’t squeeze the box when doing this. You don’t need to squeeze. The box should just open up.
Step 4: Enjoy Windows Vista!
I’ve done this on quite a few Windows Vista boxes and never ran into any problems with the packaging being unable to open. However, that is not to say some packaging may be a bit harder to open than others. But you should be able to use the steps above to open the packaging none-the-less without damaging the packaging itself.
Stolen from hive.net
Filed under: Stuff that moves
I’ve spent the past couple weeks packing and unpacking boxes, but I did just finish the first season of Big Love which I found to be quite good. I’m not sure if Bill Paxton gets an extra $5 everytime he exposes his ass ($2.50 per cheek), but that’s what it seems like. Really Bill, put it away. Even with that I think it’s still worth checking out.
The title sequence is quite addictive and sometimes I watch it twice per episode (torrent you know, no HBO). I think it’s the blend of music and imagery that makes it work, and there’s always something about HBO’s title sequences that just stand out from the rest of the crowd. I still think it’s hard to top Six Feet Under’s opener by Digital Kitchen, but there is generally a quality that is pretty great.
So here’s the making of, it’s about 12 minutes and we’ll see how long I can have it up before someone makes me take it down. But really it is for edumacational purposes you could say, so they should appreciate that I’m sharing it. The logo was designed by Spine and I think that Rock Paper Scissors in LA did the motion work. The visual metaphors are pretty great, and here I just thought it was a weird opening about ice skating. Who knew it was so deep?
saved in three parts because youtuber wouldn’t allow me to get it all in one file.
Check out these cool little perforated books you can make. Oh the wonders of crap to buy on the internets!
Some pretty cool examples of vintage packaging here. Everything was so much cooler back before filters in Photoshop.
