I'm a real adult!

Long story short:

After interning at The Knot Inc for about a month I was offered a job at another company I had interviewed at back in September. After thinking about it I decided that this was a great opportunity to gain some experience (and make some money) even though the agency was really corporate and I happened to love my job at The Knot.

When I told my boss I was leaving she told me that the whole team wants me to stay and they want to offer me a full-time position.

So, the past week I have been super stressed deciding what to. Ultimately it came down to where I think I'd be the most happy. My team here is really young and so much fun, and they are so helpful that I'm learning a lot. SO, I decided to stay here at The Knot. Maybe someday I'll get sick of designing wedding crap, but for now it's awesome!

It's so insane that I felt like shit on graduation day, thought I sucked and would never get a job in New York, and just a few months later I had my choice of 2 really great positions. Happy Day.

Now I'm a real adult with a full time job and billz to pay.

Crazy.

Ballsy Ads

Bold advertising for Alma Magazine is getting a lot of attention. I'm weary about posting a swastika on this blog let alone allowing it to represent my company.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I just don't think the message is strong enough to warrant the use of this symbol. The other two ads aren't as heavy and I think they work better.

But if they want some attention, this is definitely the way to get it.


Tagline:

"Wow! Ninjas are awesome!"
ALMA:
IGNORANCE IS UNNACCEPTABLE

Mari Santos

Mari Santos is an amazing artist/designer from Toronto with a flair for creating fashion out of cheap, ugly, mundane things like old tees for example. Her latest project, Urban Renewal does just that. God knows I love this kind of stuff. I've always felt that we pay way too much money to look cool when we could just have it for next to nothing.

Also, does anybody else think that asians are fucking cool? I mean, they're so much more hip than everyone else. Plus, they have better health and higher IQs...

Anyway, check out Urban Renewal and also check out Mari's homepage (because after clicking around I could go on and on about her other projects too) at http://wiredminds.ca/mari/

Come on Down to South Park

So instead of catching up on freelance work today, I decided to make South Park characters of some of my best friends from my hometown.

Here they are in this order:

Val Complete with yellow bikini, yellow designer sunglasses, drinks, a and a cig. Why the hat? I don't know it just seemed appropriate.
Caitlin Booze, beach, and of course- a black eye!
Jenna Hip hat and a tennis racquet
Doreen Red hair, pirate gear, and a light saber. Doreen, I believe you can die now.
Heather Doublefisting. The viking hat was a bonus.
Amanda I thought the outfit looked like something a preppy Bostonian student would wear, and the weather too.
Kristen Do I need to describe this?
John Little black T, a high tech camera, FOOD, and a halo of course

Make your own at http://www.sp-studio.de/

Chris Jordan: Intolerable Beauty

detail of Cans Seurat, 2007, 60x92"
Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

Chris Jordan is a photographer based in Seattle who's work has been influenced by photographers like Andreas Gursky. Jordan has definitely influenced my own work, as I was looking at him when I did my Darfur installation. All three of the series featured on his website are amazing, but he regrets that they are not nearly as impactful on the web as in person.

His earlier work is all photographed from existing found scenes- as is- pictured in his Intolerable Beauty, Portraits of American Mass Consumption. His newest work Running the Numbers, An American Self-Portrait (2006-2007) features digitally compiled photographs based on statistics of American (and world-wide) litter and consumption. He describes how he had one litter research organization send him 5,000 cigarettes which he dumped out on the floor, photographed, and digitally manipulated to create a massive image of the number of cigarettes discarded in one second all around the world.

I listened to a podcast interview with him and was intrigued to find out that his original interest was not consumerism, but color. He would find scenes like old paint cans in the dumpster in the back of an auto body shop and photograph them for the amazing color they produced. One particular image of a mass amount of trash he took and blew up spurred his interest in photographing things related to mass consumption. I think it's amazing how he could come from almost a strictly formal photographic curiosity, and end up doing something so heavily conscience driven.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

Retro Junk

http://retrojunk.com/

I've recently revisited this site and I can still spend hours on it. As an 80's/90's kid it's so much fun to search for videos of old commercials and the themes from shows and movies I forgot existed!

My favorites? The Goonies trailer, Ray Charles Pepsi commercial, Salute Your Shorts, The Elephant Show, and how could I leave out my personal childhood fav, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

Paula, what are you doing?!

Famed graphic design icon and Pentagram partner Paula Scher has designed a series of free business templates for HP. Suits have a choice between 5 styles- "Bold", "Friendly", "Elegant", "Edgy", and "Modern."

The templates are, as all templates are, boring and generic. There is not a stint of creativity in these stale, one-size-fits all molds. These fonts are nice I guess, but lend nothing to the individuality of a brand. I mean, what is the difference between these "designy" templates and any old Word template? Also, if anyone has seen the documentary Helvetica, Scher comments that she actually hates the font and never really uses it in her own work, even though she chooses none other than Helvetica for two of the styles here. In that light the templates almost seem sarcastic on Sher's part.

In Scher's defense she says “No template is a substitute for hiring a professional designer,” and also gives a link to the AIGA website. “But at the very least, I hope we can stop a few innocent people out there from using Comic Sans.”

Uh, I'm not buying it. That's nice on the surface, but think about it- these templates do more harm than good. This makes the design process (choosing a font or an image) seem as easy as picking out a pair of socks in the morning. No: easier. Is this really what small businesses need? What does this really do to make people understand what designers actually do and how important building an original brand is to the success of their company? This seems to go against everything we stand for as designers and diminishes our value.

Paula, I'm disappointed.