A Truly Vicious Blog

I've had my blog here at blogger since the summer of 2008 and have recently decided on not just a redesign but a restructuring. I've noticed recently that apps like Gowalla and Hipstamatic which I love to play with have integrated an option for posting to Tumblr. Well after a little perusing I found Tumblr's code to be much more friendly to play with. Not to mention when I initially made this blog I had no clue what I was doing with code, I've come quite a ways. :) I even decided with this redesign to create a secondary version of my logo that could handle areas that are not so horizontal. So for future blog posts you can visit me at http://theviciouscircus.tumblr.com/ Enjoy!

Alice in Wonderland

I'm a big fan of Alice in Wonderland and felt it would make a great addition to a pitch of samples for art directors. This is not a client project and never took place but is my interpretation of how it could be done. It is 2 posters, the program cover, and a shirt design for the staff. I set this fictitious project with the Port Tobacco Players, they are an awesome local theater of volunteers that do great work.

Art School Cliches

This is absolutely true and hilarious. I especially love "Did you know? 98% of infographics are 100% pointless. See pie chart for details." :) You can download a pdf here.

Nothing to Lose Shirt

My second shirt off the press. This is part of an on-going series of illustrations I'm working on called the "New Originals" which are reimagined illustrations from works I did around 10 years ago. I figure since my skills and means have improved why not take a second look and see how I would do these pieces now. I don't have my online store up and running yet but if you wish to order a shirt you can do so by dropping me an email I'll let you know cost with shipping and the turn around time, you can even pay via Paypal.

Oh and if you're curious about the font. It is a new typeface I'm working on called Atreyu, this is the sans version, there will also be a blackletter, slab and serif versions to this super family in the coming months. :)

Jessica at SP 2010

SP 2010 Speaker - Jessica Hische from Semi Permanent on Vimeo.

A short interview with Jessica Hische at Semi-Permanent Sydney 2010. Love the music too :)

Transparency Data

"Today we're releasing TransparencyData.com, a new service from the Sunlight Foundation, and technically the most challenging thing we've ever done. TransparencyData lets you query and download bulk data about transparency. We're launching with two datasets that have never been merged before, and without an unprecedented amount of access." -Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs Blog

The site was designed by me :) and is the first project of mine at the Sunlight Foundation to go live.

Four Letter Words

Four Letter Words from Rob Seward on Vimeo.

Simply Amazing! Technology is fun :)

CODEORGAN

This is nothing but Win and Awesome!

TED talk with Don Norman

Don Norman is the author of The Design of Everyday Things. This is an awesome video where Don talks about happy design. Enjoy! :)

MyVomit-A-Pedia

This morning the White House streamed a video conference announcing the Open Government Initiative to promote transparency in government. During the announcement they used the government site MyFood-A-Pedia as an example of a data set that was released to the public. In this case one containing the nutritional data on foods commonly eaten and the site is to help with curbing childhood obesity issues. But seriously this is what you came up with?



This REALLY hurts my feelings (and makes it just a bit difficult to keep my lunch down). Not only is the logo and site awful, if you search common foods such as "Big Mac" or "Whopper" things people do eat that can lead to obesity issues it doesn't give you anything. Are you serious? The nutritional content for these foods is available on the back of the sheet that comes on your tray at McDonald's and Burger King. If their thinking is that people can just get this info elsewhere how helpful is it to make this site in the first place. It NEEDS to contain all the data, not just bits and pieces. And for God's sake get a real logo!

McGreen

Originally found at Brand New



The German outpost of the fast food mega chain, McDonald’s, recently announced that around 100 of its restaurants in Germany will change their well-known red backdrops to a deep green by the end of 2009. McDonald Germany’s VP, Holger Beeck, stated that the move is “out of respect for the environment.” But Germany isn’t the first to go green, France has been leading the European greening since 2006, when it launched the internal L’Eco Journal and its web site now features the logo against said deep green. This move is part of a bigger effort by McDonald’s to actually be green philosophically, more than just aesthetically, as chronicled in the McDonald’s 2009 Global Best of Green report. There are a couple of items for discussion: a) Is literally going green too lame? And b) does it hurt the brand by moving away from the very recognizable red? My take is, on the former, yes it’s kind of lame but at least they picked a nice green and, on the latter, McDonald’s has such a broad palette of brand icons — from the mnemonic Parapapapa sound to the Big Mac to the yellow arches — that substituting red is no big deal… in fact, just look how cool and recognizable it looks against black in the U.S. web site.

Pareidoodle

The above is just a doodle I did with Pareidoodle. Pareidoodle-Drawing Conclusions, is part of my master thesis Play and The Discovery of New Ideas. Pareidoodle is a new way of drawing ideas in a digital world. Based on the psychological phenomena known as Pareidolia, where a vague or random stimulus is perceived as significant. This phenomena is seen in common examples such as seeing images or faces in clouds, the Virgin Mary on a tortilla or even hearing hidden messages on music albums played in reverse. By using random marks and colors the user’s mind begins to make new connections to what they are drawing on and alongside in the seemingly meaningless and instill them with a sense of meaning through their own hand.

You can try Pareidoodle for yourself or even download a desktop version for Mac or Windows, here. Enjoy!

Elizabeth Gilbert on Nurturing Creativity.

Snagged from Scott over at PVP Comics. A must watch!

Are You Serious?

What the hell? I'm sitting here pouring over different websites of design studios and seriously people some of this is just plain shit! As graphic designers we are visual communicators, information architects, the alchemists that merge words and images to create golden messages. But what does it say of what you do when your site looks like...well I was going to say crap but after seeing the poster for the upcoming Banksy exhibition which uses crap it would be an insult to the aesthetic nature of crap.



A few choice sites that have made me exclaim "Are You Serious?" are:
This apparent homage to a romance novel
The 80's called they said, STOP IT!
Marketing made simple = ugly
Cute for about .001 of a second then just annoying
It scares me that this is a dude. And next Yaoi!*
*note I only know the term Yaoi because of web comics making fun of it and still had to wikipedia it to know what it was.

I should seriously consider just opening my own studio that all I do is the websites for other design studios because it is obvious I could make a killing just doing this.