Obviously I have no taste.

Thanks Brandon

How do I know this? Because Gizmondo told me. And now that I have posting rights you know, too. Basically modern-day Apple products look oddly similar to the Braun products of yesteryear. I’ve got nothing witty to say except “O rly?”

In other news, the iPhone calculator is basically a Braun calculator ripoff. Yay!

Gizmondo loves you

This is kind of cool, a site that lets you customize your Apple products with the color of your choice. They also have some other products on there but who the hell cares about those things.

My charming Crush 3G with matching earbuds and dock comes to a reasonable $225, once you buy the phone of course.

While my ever so masculine, magnificent, Divine-inspired Fusion iMac with Glacier accent logo and Jade mouse are but a modest $540. All in all very worth it.

Paint some stuff

Bonus points to anyone that creates the fugliest of fug combinations. Please send it on.

Thx 2 Kvn fo da 411. OMG WTF? LOL!

Marius has new artwork for sale starting today… jump on it! If I didn’t already have four paintings and a small gallery of posters I would get on that ish right now. I like to think that one day I will have a Valdes mural that encompases my apartment and makes my bitter, black heart start to turn warm.

Zoo Valdes

I love spray butter. There, I admitted it. There’s something so great about spritzing your food with glistening, faux-butter laden with thousands of deadly chemicals that is so rewarding. There’s no such thing as too much, you can always spray a bit more on until you get that perfect, greasy, delicious texture.

Before

After

So recently Parkay did a little makeover on their logo and packaging, evidenced above. I’m not sure why this is important to me, but like most food packaging makeovers I had to hold it and study it. I always wonder if consumers ever noticed or even care. No, they really don’t give a shit. I really don’t have much to say about it except if I were to describe it with adjectives it would be “swirly, and creamy.”

Here’s more fascinating butter talk:
For more than 65 years, families have been enjoying the rich, creamy, buttery taste of Parkay on all their favorite foods. In addition to their great taste, all Parkay varieties are cholesterol free. So go ahead and spread on the buttery taste. Products include Original spread and stick, Light spread and stick, Parkay Squeeze, and Parkay Fat-Free Spray. All Parkay soft spreads have zero grams of trans fat per serving.

Parkay was introduced in 1937. Since the 1970s, Americans have gotten to know Parkay through the Talking Tub, which has partnered with celebrities such as Laurel & Hardy, Deacon Jones, and Al Franken to figure out if that buttery-tasting spread is really butter or… Parkay.

While searching for images I came across this amazing Parkay cookbook. The illustrations are awesome though you know that centered vertical text makes me want to rip it to pieces. But feel free to pick up a copy for me and I promise not to deface it. I will merely cuddle and caress the illustrations.

And for all you youngsters out there, this is the annoying crap we were subject to for years…

These are some cool little things I’ve spotted recently:

One of a kind printed journals from Yee-Haw

Be sure to check out the American Vice Presidential Wrestling Pandemonium on the Potomac poster. Please don’t sue me Yee-Haw, I know your images have a copyright and I’m beyond poor and potentially going to be unemployed.

Of course there’s always Hatch Show Print.

Hmmm… did they get rid of their official site?

whoMi’s Mini Who-Mi Calendar

For anyone that can’t get enough of ‘veti. I know what I’m getting Massimo this year.

If you are considering a holiday present for me I would like the snakeskin mini agenda wallet, or the champagne metallic wallet from whoMi.

Sometimes, in the name of rebranding, a company goes out on a limb and sometimes they just do something really stupid. They aren’t always the same thing but say hello to Electrasol Finish! who is guilty of the latter.

Enter a long-ass rant about dish washing liquid…

I tried to research the Electrasol product family for the history of its existence but couldn’t really find anything. I know they aren’t a new company but honestly I didn’t know what they made – I thought oven cleaner or dish washing liquid or something but I didn’t know they made Jet Dry as well, those horrendous commercials have scarred me – but isn’t it a little stupid to do away with your product name completely to change it to something totally generic? Are they forever going to have that stupid “The New Name for Electrasol” sticker on there? On the commercials, which is where I noticed this, are they always going to say the same thing. Who the hell is going to start calling them “Finish”? I keep calling them Fresh every time I think about what their name is, so there. But I’m sure this is the brainstorm of some wonderful “branding agency” that decided that what the brand needed to freshen up their appearance was a new name. Dumb.

All in all this doesn’t bother me. I’ve lived in two apartments with dishwashers and used each maybe twice, so I’m not really their consumer, but what bothers me is that you can take a name with recognition value and discard it only to use a generic, abstract name like Finish. Dumb Dumb Dumb.

Now for my specialty, ripping apart design. Well, there’s not much to start with there, and actually the products on their site only have the Fresh, sorry, Finish, as a small part of the label. Some products have marched onward with the new design as evidenced above. But design-wise it’s just like every other household thingie – Cheer, Fantastik, Soft Scrub (aside, I used to be Obsessed with Soft Scrub. Obsessed.) Typographically it’s the same bubbly shit as used on everything else. However, I must give props to whomever came up with the idea of working with a ligature. Not an easy challenge and I’m super happy to see that the dot on the “i” is not trying to kiss the “f”, but has decided to consumate the relationship. You know what I say about that…

But literally the difference between Finish and every other product is that it is obviously made of diamonds! I mean just check out their site!

It’s like that diamond is literally flashing before my eyes, blinding me with it’s raw beauty. It is breathtaking, stunning, I want to reach out and take a big bite out of it. Seriously, I can’t get enough.

But more importantly how was this idea sold as a “branding” move. I HATE the word “branding” so I tend to put it in quotations. How is this a responsible strategic decision? Who knows, maybe the common consumer doesn’t give two shits about this kind of thing, and more than likely they buy what’s on sale, but was this all really necessary? I guess to an agency somewhere it was. But couldn’t the money spent on this project be used to look at the components and finding better earth-friendly options; or possibly a trip to an ID studio to look at the form; or maybe addressing the visual integrity of the line and making it truly stand out? Rubbish, I know.

I have no answers, only questions, so I’m off to wash my dishes with Palmolive™ the old fashioned way. I’m sure tomorrow it will be renamed Rainbows™ and Madge will come back from the dead and kick someone’s ass hardcore. In my wildest, giddiest dreams.

I would just like to point out that to date the post I have the most hits on is the picture of Pete Rose in his manties. Make of that what you will.

Second most popular is the Rambo/Guevera poster.

Weird. 

This post has also created a new tag – Shameless Self Absorbed Moment. And yes, I plan to use that son of a bitch every single post. Carry on.

Can you believe I totally forgot about my blog? I can! I took the spring and summer to research my personal life and forgot about it until Grace reminded me about it a while back. Then I forgot about it again until today. So yeah, Catherine, I might go back to writing the blog for both of you.

I will work on it between work, freelance, my personal work that I’m trying to get out there and will be located on a top secret site (part of the project), writing some grants, looking into going back to teaching, searching for a new job, and trying to keep an active social calendar. But I’m dedicated to it again. Somewhat.

SVA will be offering a lecture by the world-famous design diva April Greiman on October 21st at 7p. The lecture is part of a retrospective of her work that will be open from October 20th – December 13th. There will be a reception on October 20th from 6-8p. Both events are open to the public.

I’m going to be front and center for the lecture because if you don’t know, Greimy and I are bff’s. I adopted her as my design diva bff after a portfolio review and a tantalizing email relationship that spanned 4 months. I even went back to see her and we had lunch at a delightful thai restaurant and I’m sure I had Pad Thai. She was wearing black. Then sadly I decided not to work there and moved to NYC instead, which is a brilliant decision as I review the tablecloth I just designed. No, seriously, a tablecloth. Sigh, recession.

Anyways, I’ll be chilling with my former-bff trying to make her my current bff. Um, and if you don’t know who she is then read here, or view some of her work on google images. Some people. Oh yeah, that subway station? Would have had the chance to work on it but it is nowhere near as special as my tablecloth. No sirree.