A Touch of Color

So a friend of mine is opening a jewelry store and asks if I can design a logo for him. I give him my rates and send him a questionnaire/creative brief so I can get a better idea of what he is looking for. The name is A Touch of Color. Now many times as a designer we will often face having to work with something that seems a bit off. A Touch of Color may not (for some) feel like a jewelry store name so my job is to make you think jewelry store when you see it. The overall concept with both directions was the intertwining of elements in jewelry, this goes beyond just links on a chain but also the use of different elements such as materials, metal, precious stones and so on. Both directions do this but in different ways. Both logos are hand drawn and then inked (when his business loans come through) he'll have me finalize the one he likes, making it a digital version and I will begin to create color versions for usage. I start all logos in just black and white because if you get the mark to be strong in just one color than the addition of color can bring more life to it without the color being the sole strength of the mark.


This mark was inspired by some of the work by the brothers at Invisible Creature. Dealing with long and sometime ornate names of bands helps them create dynamic marks that speak volumes of what the audience is in for.


With this direction I was looking towards something more traditional, using a combination of John Downer's Brothers and Zuzana Licko's Mrs Eaves both from Emigre. I redrew them by hand in order to create the interlocking letterforms but have the intention of making Mrs Eaves the workhorse typeface for A Touch of Color's business system. It is a beautiful typeface that I think helps bring about the feeling of the handmade and antiquity of the jewelry. And the entire package is only $95!

The Race Begins

So the Great Internet Balloon Race is up and running and will be for the next week. It is interesting to see little balloons drift across the page :)

and check out the view of the Race Map


and a little closer


Don't we look so much more interesting than everywhere else you could go!

The Great Balloon Race!

A small new addition to The Vicious Circus is a small floating orange raccoon balloon in the lower right corner! It is because we signed up to be part of the World's First Internet Balloon Race that was created by Orange (a mobile phone company in the UK). The race takes place in a few days and is absolutely free to take part in as well as to register your site to be part of the race. The goal is for people racing is they go from site to site earning "miles" and are in the running for winning a trip to Ibiza. This is an ingenious viral campaign and well it is free advertising for everybody. And like P.T. Barnum said "Without promotion something terrible happens...Nothing!"

Harley Quinn

Some time ago I found that Coop had done a pencil sketch of Harley Quinn. I am a huge fan of Coop's work, and this was the perfect motivation to study his work. I have his book Devil's Advocate and love perusing the pages of his work. I took his pencil sketch of Harley Quinn seen here



With my self taught talent and style using cell shading and gradient meshes in Illustrator I created this digital inked and colored version of Harley. I am a fairly good digital illustrator and this was my first venture into the inking and coloring side of things that is usually only found in sequential art.



I hope you enjoy it as much as I did creating it. It used to be a practice for artists to copy master works in order to study the hand of the artist, but sadly in today's world many people fear to create things not "original." People tend to forget what they can learn by simply tracing something. It was growing up redrawing Todd MacFarlane's Spider-Man that helped me years later not draw fingers like sausages.

Concept Vs. Gimmick - Round 1

I have always been bothered by people (often in advertising) that use the term Concept when they mean Gimmick. I've been working on an essay/rant about this recently. Since we were talking about what a Concept is last Friday I figured I have a good example of what one is in relation to the other.

A Concept is what Michelangelo had before he created his sculpture of David. An all encompassing idea that shapes the creation and form of a piece into a unified whole.

"Michelangelo's David is based on the artistic discipline of disegno... " "...he worked under the premise that the image of David was already in the block of stone he was working on — in much the same way as the human soul (may be) found within the physical body." -Wikipedia

The statement made of Michelangelo's discipline of desegno led me to look that word up on dictionary.com with the result as such: "drawing or design: a term used during the 16th and 17th centuries to designate the formal discipline required for the representation of the ideal form of an object in the visual arts, esp. as expressed in the linear structure of a work of art."

It is in this progression that I would most certainly state that as the best example of a Concept as I can find.

Unfortunately the meagre small-mindedness of some marketing/advertising people who quest to give their lives a more elevated venier by using "catch" words to invoke a professional sense of themselves mutilate this high-ideal word worse than those of us who often say experiment when we mean, exploration.

I had often heard it argued at my old job in advertising that something or other needed a Concept in an overused and misappropriated manner that would leave anyone who values good ideas (and good grammer) to take up beating their head into their desk as a recreational past time.

A Concept is Michelangelo's idea of David. A Gimmick is the toy in that box of cereal you wanted as a kid. However from reading Wikipedia entry for Cereal Box Prize reiterates where this misappropration came from.

"The cereal box prize is a concept almost as old as cereal; perhaps older." <(what the HELL does that mean? who writes some of these things?) "For example, Cracker Jack boxes often contained prizes in them, well before the boom of breakfast cereals." - Wikipedia

Concept, Idea, Gimmick. Our lives are overrun with the pastiche of a counter-productive language running head first into itself. Leaving the dazed and confused looters of current cultural trends (see advertising and marketing) to snatch at language well out of their range in order to compensate for actual understanding.

So perhaps the next linguistic evolutionary step is not to create new words (Conidmick?) which would leave us looking like W. trying to finish a kiddie section word jumble. Our focus may be to return to the Renaissance and capture the essence of our meaning with a term like "Disegno."

Then again we would probably end up hearing an account executive in coming years state that this needs more disegno so that it can Pop. Like you can just pick it up at the grocery store.

Interactive Typography

Before I begin addressing the ideas and concerns surrounding interactive typography let me share with you an excerpt from Stefan Themerson's 1965 essay Typographical Topography:

"A page of a book is like a human face. Look at a page by Hemingway and compare it with Sterne and Marcel Proust. They are different typographical beings. But force upon them those ragged edges, and the influence of the author's style on the physical aspect of the page, their typographical physiognomy will disappear. No, unjustified setting is a sort of 'gleichschaltung through diversity,' a very phoney diversity. Produced methodically by chance. For the comfort of thee keyboard, and not for the comfort of the eye. The eye tolerates quite well thin spaces, and middle spaces, and thick spaces. There is absolutely no reason why we should be more puritan than our eye is and affect extreme strickness by using middle spaces only. On the contrary, by using them all, but intelligently (plus an occasional hair or a nut), one should be able to justify any line to a fixed length so that the reading eye will proceed quietly to the right, even if it meets on its way an odd nut or a mutton. It is the end of the line that halts it an sends it back to the left. With justified setting this scanning business is painless, and the eye doesn't take more notice of it than the foot does when you stroll along a promenade thinking of things that have nothing to do with walking. But when you force upon the eye that haphazard rhythm created by those paths of uneven length the process of reading becomes something self-conscious, like walking on crazy pavement where your foot doesn't know how long the next step will have to be. Poest are well aware of it all. That's why the breakline is one of the main weapons in their arsenal. They know that the end of a line, the eye halts, the lungs fill with air, mind is in suspense, the ear muffles the echo of the sound of the last syllable and prepares to receive the new string of rhythmical noises..."

Although Themerson's writing from 1965 take the idea of the composed static text set for the printed page it is important to remember that even in the world of dynamic text that rhythm created for the reader does more than conveys information but also creates a mood, a dramatic dynamic between the viewer and the viewed. In the range of interactive typography this element of poetic rhythm can be easily lost to the use of flashy segues and graphic interpretation that do nothing for the feeling nor convenience of the information and act solely as a form of decoration. In recent years the highest purveyor of this decorative dynamic text can be seen most clearly in what I will call "eXtreme" text. This is in league with advertisers gearing their ads to a young crowd by skewing the image of the product, which is pointed out by comedian David Cross here. This use of eXtreme text is the highest culprit to Bad Flash sites.

It should come to no surprise that the first in my list of Flash sites (I'll be going from worse to best here) is created by no less than Mountain Dew for there range of custom art bottles, known as Green Label Art.



You can experience this atrocity to web design here. Although I must warn you now that it is so incredibly weighed down in Flash effects that it may require you to force quit your internet browser. The use of overly heavy effects, music, flashy graphics that do nothing to convey any information combine to make this one of the worst web sites I have ever been to. Also let me take a moment to address the question "Why would a website designer choose this option?" Easy, because they or whoever is making the decisions is NOT a designer.

Our next look is at the Disney site for Pirates of the Caribbean 3.



This site loads slowly but at least not as bad as my previous example. The site is fairly convoluted and requires the viewer to interact with certain aspects in order to enter other parts of the site. It has a high entertainment level and even though it may be a bit heavy handed on the flash I must admit it is fairly fitting for the subject matter and conveys the mood of the subject matter.

Now not all Disney flash sites are that bad and one of my favorites to date is for the up and coming Pixar release "Wall-E." I'm honestly really looking forward to this film.



Here we see Wall-E become an integral part of conveying the information and mood of the site that for Pixar tends to be humorous and appropriately fun for all ages. I don't know if I can give a set loading time for a site, if the site is worth going to I might wait. In Wall-E's case I would wait, in Mountain Dew's case not so much.

What about Flash as a conveyor of information but not so much on the interactive side? Well let’s take a look at Hoefler Frere-Jones, who uses a simple Flash animation to advertise their latest font release Archer.



Typography.com is the home to Hoefler & Frere-Jones and acts as a storefront for the fonts designed by the type foundry. The simple use of he Flash Animation show the selling points of their latest release without bogging down the site with unnecessary decoration that would make interacting with it tiresome and frustrating.

Lastly we come to what I can find as probably the best use of Flash in a website at the AIGA design archives.



The design archives are simple yet dynamic at the same time, acting as place holders in which we can use to organize as well as peruse the work collected from past AIGA design annuals. The ability to hover over a certain piece and then let the information become apparent to what the thumbnail connects to is one of my favorite web interactions to date. The use of Flash in this case became a vehicle in order to create a simpler more dynamic site instead of its polar opposite in the realm of eXtreme text and flashy graphics that some people (usually in advertising) find to be ways of YELLLING at the general public thinking that this is a great way to get someone to notice you. Honestly unless you are engulfed in flames I don’t' really think there is ever a reason to run around screaming your head off like many of these "Bad Flash" sites often do.

We must become adapt not only in the classical forms of proper typography as proposed by Themerson and be able to properly and objectively design with the reader in mind but also begin to realize that this conveying of information in a rhythmic manner adheres itself to dynamic interactive texts as well. Today we must look into the eyes and soul of the human face of the interactive as well as printed pages.

What Is Graphic Symbolism?

I was once asked "what is graphic symbolism?" In order to answer such a question we must first begin by delineating the meaning of such a term to it's base definition and then broaden that to cover what exactly it is that we mean by "graphic symbolism" in terms of graphic design. The basic definition of "graphic symbolism" would as simple as can be put be, the practice of representing a concept, object, activity, place or event by forms of graphic representation be they typographic, photographic or illustrative.

If in terms of the idea of illustrative graphic symbolism we would be speaking of pictography. Pictography by definition is a form of writing in which a picture represents a word or idea. This could be said to be the practical foundation of typography itself when a letterform created in conjunction with other letterforms creates a word that becomes the signifier for an idea, concept or object. But I digress that we in this base case of "graphic symbolism" should state that we are speaking of the pictographic language of the graphic representation of ideas, concepts, objects or actions.

The most successful modern interpretation of "graphic symbolism" is one that everyone everywhere is familiar with, because face it everyone poops, and that is the modern Restroom sign
.

Otl Aicher initially created this “graphic symbolism” when he was commissioned to create the signage for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. Otl set out to create an international language of pictographic symbols that a unified international audience could read, understand and respond appropriately to.

Here is a sample of Aicher's pictograms from icographic magazine.

If in discussing "graphic symbolism" we are looking for the ability to communicate effectively with any range of audience be they a subcultural division with it's own syntactical signifiers or to that of the broader audience (sometimes called the lowest common denominator) we must keep the words of Otl Aicher in mind "Design must surrender to practical criteria." A failure to do this in the realm of "graphic symbolism" can be found in a photo I took while in San Francisco of the warning label on a dumpster.


The image shows the conventional idea that these objects should not be submitted into this bin. It however fails if the person reading the label doesn't have a cultural reference to what these objects may be. Aicher's work became emblematic for the pictographic language he strove to communicate with, however it was created in context of a specific audience that would have a previous knowledge of what they were looking at and for in the illustrative representations of the signage.

The most current and prominent failure of "graphic symbolism" is when the image used is no longer culturally significant. At any firehouse in the United States you are most likely going to be greeted with this image in order to warn you that your travel may be impeded by the need for a fire truck to gain access to the roadway.

Since the usage of Hook and Ladder fire trucks has gone the way of the Dodo it seems in and of itself entirely redundant to warn people of something they may or don't know what it is. It is in these cases that the reinterpretation of the symbol used or perhaps an overhaul of graphic language needs to be addressed.

So what is "graphic symbolism"? Well honestly in an ever-changing visual culture it may be entirely worthwhile to ask, what isn't "graphic symbolism"? Anything that can be represented by means of illustration, photography or typography is quite simply "graphic symbolism."

Print Vs. Projected Type

When discussing the elemental differences found in the contrast of screen and printed type by its fundamental nature we must realize that the printed word holds almost no limitations it can be constructed into a extreme sizes such as environmental graphics to even the smallest of sizes found in Die Gestalten Verlag's 2002 publication The Smallest Book in the World. This range of sizes is however lost when translated to the idea of the screen. It may be possible to project extremely large variations of type to sizes that cover city blocks but even though it is possible is it going to be read within the span of time it exists. The pixel becomes the limitation to the smallest of sizes of screen type and makes the creation of "The Smallest Website in the World" inconsequential.

In such it wouldn't matter when the characteristics that differ the most widely between the printed word and (for lack of a better term) the projected word are perhaps found best in Walter Benjamin's use of the word "aura" in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin's use of aura was to refer to the sense of awe and reverence one experienced in the presence of unique works of art. The printed page has for nearly 400 years instilled upon its viewer the ability to transfer (at times) this sense of aura when dealing with the visceral qualities of the printed word. Any printed piece brings with it the textural qualities of paper, the smell of binding agents as well as the beauty inherent in the ever-minuscule inconsistencies of the print itself. We adore the flaws we find upon the printed page because they communicate to us that it was another human being, a real person than was at the other end of that/this particular piece of work.

The onset of the projected word has floundered in many aspects to capture that quality until as of late. Movie titles did nothing for the movie itself until Saul Bass decided to change that viewpoint, samples of which can be seen here. His work became the clarion call that the projected word could do more than merely straight-forward tell us something but also add to the experience in which we were about to begin. The ephemeral quality of the projected word and in many cases the inability to go back (without difficulty) and reread what we have seen again leave the case that the projected word must not just communicate on literal level but on an emotional and psychological level as well. We interpret what we see as best as we can and the more that the designer gives to the audience to interpret (in the sense that it is strengthening and reinforcing the message, not distorting and disguising the message) the better chance the audience has at obtaining the true meaning of the message. Danish science writer Tor Norretranders states in his work, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size, "During any given second, we consciously process only sixteen of the eleven million bits of information that our senses pass on to our brains."

In D.A. Dwiggins 1922 work New Kind of Printing Calls for New Design he states, "The point to be stressed is that the new standard must not be a mechanical standard merely, it must also be an aesthetic standard." Unfortunately as designers and artists we have skewed what the idea of aesthetic has come to mean in typography. Type sizes, color, legibility, font choices are all well and good and are the foundation, the backbone of good typography but there is more to communicating an idea than furbishing new window dressing around it. As Paul Carlos, a New York publications design consultant and old professor of mine said to me "It not about picking colors or choosing typefaces, its about whether it works or not." We must find the best means to communicate the idea and concept we wish others to perceive rather than squabble over whether it merely looks pretty and in this we must begin by addressing the standards in which we communicate.

The Message is the Massage

In Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage, McLuhan states "Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the context." The idea of whether motion graphics are the most effective solution of a particular design challenge must first isolate what is it that we wish to communicate and to whom. McLuhan also says, "Students of media are persistently attacked as evaders idly concentrating on means or process rather than on 'substance.' The dramatic and rapid changes of 'substance' elude these accusers. Survival is not possible if one approaches his environment, the social drama, with a fixed unchangeable point of view – the witless repetitive response to the unperceived." It is in McLuhan's statement here that I seek to show the difference in the proper usage of motion graphics. Is it an effective solution or a flashy song and dance contrived to influence the viewer with style rather than content.

The most effective example of a misappropration of motion graphics can be found online at the websites of several retail establishments. The sunday paper in many areas often features a five-pound bag of retail advertisements, coupons and sales listings. The web pressed, gloss 2-3 signature, full-color advertisements of such retailers litter the recycling bins of America the next pick up day. They have been around for years but in recent times it was thought to be a good idea to also interject these weeklies onto store websites. Which in all fairness makes sense, it saves on printing costs and makes it easier (at times) for indivdual who do not get the paper to view them. I would also find them productive as mere pdf files, but no, someone thought 'hey wouldn't be a great idea if we make the pages flip like you were really reading it!'. NO IT ISN'T.

Toys R Us weekly ads

This is by far the most asinine example of the usage of motion graphics I could ever want to conceive. It does nothing, NOTHING for the content and applies itself wholey as nothing more than a stylistic attribute of flashy graphics to placate the many people now a days that adhere to the "I need something shiny to pay attention" philosophy. But is it the society that promotes the flashy graphics in order to be amused and influenced or is it the media that created this beast of burden that now has broken free of it's reigns and is running rampant over society. Fifty years ago the idea that someone had an illness that kept them from paying attention would have been laughable but now we have entire pharmaceutical companies dedicated to the "control" of this "disorder." Is it a disorder or are we just incapable of paying attention because the media in which we communicate is now polluted with an over usage of flashy graphics, loud sounds, special effects, jingles and soundtracks.

The next example is my all time most hated commercial. I saw this last Thanksgiving. It is a commercial for Guinness beer and doesn't have jack shit to do with beer. This damn ad looks more like an ad for some new video game. And that is honestly where I think television ads are headed. With the increased technology and visual levels of video game systems trying to do their best to show how they are the coolest, flashiest and most intense we have seen an increase in these ideas in commercials for things that DON'T HAVE THEM.

Guinness Advertisement

These stylistically high and substance (or for me concept) low advertisements seek to gear their ads towards "new" audiences, ie younger. They skew the image and branding of the product to adhere traits, or in this case flashy effects that do NOTHING for the content. Comedian David Cross once did a skit about this which is well worth watching here.

So are there projects where motion graphics are the answer. Well that began on August 1, 1981 with the launch of the Music Television, MTV. Music videos communicate in ways that advertisements could never adhere and do so in a manner fitting with conceptual thinking as well as stylistic means. In a recent interview in Computer Arts (UK Edition) for June 2008, Computer Arts interviewed Nando Costa, a brazilian print and motion graphics artist. Computer Arts asked Nando "Motion graphics is where some of the most interesting creativity is going on at the moment. Which of your competitiors is doing the best work, and why?" Nando replied "I am constantly amazed by the work of the team at Encyclopedia Pictura. They recently directed a Björk music video which had amazing art direction. I particularly like the work of my friend Maxim Zhestkov. I am also still amazed by stop-motion film-makers. They truly deserve more credit and recognition.

Encyclopedia Pictura is going for the gold in my opinion. Their sites splash page features you with the option of viewing the new Björk music video "Wanderlust" in 2D or 3D styles. At this point I laughed my ass off.

Melena Ryzik of the New York Times spoke to Björk and the directing team at Encyclopedia Picutura about the makding of their new 3D music video. The video of which can be seen here

So there is a time and a place for everything, even motion graphics. Yes this is the MTV generation and the adherence to flashy graphics and styles is not likely to go anywhere but everywhere. As designers the most important question that can be asked before any project is “does the application fit the context and concept of the design?” If we adhere to McLuhan’s “…fixed unchangeable point of view – the witless repetitive response to the unperceived.” We will end up nothing more than style makers and decorators applying choices based on past experience and doing nothing less than becoming the blind-leading-the-blind in a downward spiral that pigeonholes our work. In conclusion to quote Luke Prowse, “I once read somewhere that the only thing found in pigeonholes is pigeon shit.”