August 12, 2009

Kiwi!

I had forgotten about this piece until a friend of mine had posted it up on facebook. I originally saw this sometime last year and it still amazes me.



Note the following is from the artist that created this piece (not me):
"My Master's Thesis Animation, which I completed while I was at The School of Visual Arts, MFA Computer Art, in New York City. Created using Maya, After Effects, and rigged using The Setup Machine by Anzovin studios. If you would like to download there is a small version at my website: www.donysanimation.com"

August 09, 2009

Clash of The Giants

Something I've obviously noted since coming back north is the rebranding of Giant foods.




The Original Logo




The New Logo

I can understand the need to rebrand especially in a market that wants more organic, natural foods and a more experience centered shopping environment. The cornucopia aspect of the logo isn't bad but the lettering just seems I don't know...generic. Many of the old stores featured signage in ITC Benguiat which in it's nouveau style at least felt organic. The new logo's lettering is emotionless and somehow doesn't capture the cornicopia essence of the mark. I think some hand lettering is in order and using the existing font as the brand's workhorse instead of it's logotype. But then again that's me, I could be wrong.

August 08, 2009

Non-Prophets Fresh Kinetic Typography



A motion graphics piece by my grad school friend Seth :)

August 07, 2009

Elizabeth Gilbert on Nurturing Creativity.

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

August 05, 2009

Now On YouTube!



The Dark Knight

I went ahead and created a YouTube page so that I can put my motion graphics pieces up on it for easier hosting and viewing.

gregeckler on YouTube

August 02, 2009

The History of Web




This page mock up is by davelawrence8.
I love the idea of what would Apple.com look like in 1983. It has me thinking what if we tried teaching web design with parody? The history of graphic design along with it's importance in print. And often parody is used in the teaching of it. Why is the history of web design not as important? We would probably see even more progressive web visuals if more students knew the history.

June 12, 2009

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.

May 19, 2009

Gettin' It On In Taiwan

The quarter is almost over and with it my grad school career :)
I have just finished my 4th and last thesis project which can be found here. My master thesis in titled Play and The Discovery of New Ideas.

In other notable news some of my work, that of my self promo piece that I designed was exhibited last week at the 2009 Young Designers Exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan. And while they were showing it off I sent them some Vicious Circus stickers to pass around :)


my self promo
note it actually unfolds quite a ways unfortunately they didn't have a display box big enough


You do now!


Apparently they love the stickers :)

there are tons more photos and when I get a chance I will sort them out and put them on flikr

March 21, 2009

Processing

This past quarter I had to take Digital Studio 2, for most this is just web design, but since it is about interaction I decided to step up and see what I could do. I taught myself Processing. It is an open-source programming language developed by Casey Reas and Ben Fry (as graduate students) at MIT. I used a book they published through MIT to teach myself and the end result was (in accordance with the class) a website located here My Adventures In Processing.

It was to say the least a learning experience, I knew little of even html when I began and learned how to program from the ground up, needless to say when I got half way through the book and it then said "now we will learn the easy way, object-oriented programming" I said, "what the fuck! there is an easier way and you bastards had me run in circles to make stuff work the hard way!" which is in the end all well and good because now I understand more of what I am looking at. Take a look and tell me what you think. I am now working on programs that will work in turn with my master thesis :)

February 09, 2009

What The F#@K?



This “Power League of Printing” video was produced by the Printing Industries of America to attract young people to the trade.