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.

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

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 :)

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.

Awesome Video and Song

Illustration

I am Graphic Design graduate student, but it helps to get out of the department. This quarter I'm over in the Illustration department burning one of my electives in a class entitled "Illustration Concepts & Compostions" (I already used 2 electives taking Type Design classes last year that resulted in me winning the Monotype Scholarship).

This first piece was an exercise in color interpreting as we choose the phrase "Fish on a Leash."
I'm big into penguins and decided for some reason to forego fish for whales. It turned into what I now call "Moby and Captain Ahabguin."


The next is my current work in progress for an illustration for a Guinness World Record. I originally began with the world's fastest speaker, since I wanted to do something difficult to illustrate and not something under "World's Biggest..." or "World's Smallest..." I fought with my originally idea up until a day ago and changed it to something I had spotted a week ago in the Guinness World Record book. The World's Deadliest Cheese.


It's called Casu Marzu, google it, it's pretty gross.

Xmas

Since I was away for the holidays and came back straight into grad classes I figure I would take this opportunity to share a few treasures from the xmas. First what I gave out from my exhaustive "Santa's Workshop" enterprise. I began last year by trying to make all my gifts by hand and did so as well this year.

First up is the "Ping: The Drinking" mini-bar mirror I made for my "brother from a different mother" Ping.


Next is the "Bar Sweet Bar" bar mirror I made for Rob. (Sweet custom letter).


And lastly is the grand finale. A 14 in. Geisha softie I created for my girlfriend.

WOLVERINE!

My 48-Hour T-Shirt

The second 48-Hour T-shirt is now available. That’s the design, above: Two colors on a brown American Apparel 4.3-ounce fine cotton athletic fit T.
A summary of the research inspiring the design, below, is also available in PDF form, here.

A psychological study offers an interesting lesson in “false consensus.”
The research involved dividing into two groups; members of each were asked to read an essay about Rasputin, and then asked to evaluate their feelings about him. One group was given an essay that noted Rasputin’s correct birthday. The other was given the identical essay, but the date of his birthday was changed — to be the same day as that of the reader.

The latter (same birthday) group evaluated Rasputin notably more favorably than the control group did.
Mark R. Leary cites this research in The Curse of The Self, noting that if our opinions can be affected by such a “minor, egocentric matter,” it should be no surprise that “factors even more intimately related to our views of ourselves also influence our judgments of other people.”

So: Perhaps if you wear this T-shirt, you will make a good impression.
Design by Greg Eckler (www.theviciouscircus.com), MFA student in the graphic design department of Savannah College of Art and Design.

The T-shirt “I Show How You Feel” is available until 10 a.m. (Eastern) Wednesday, for $18 plus shipping. (We DO NOT guarantee delivery by Xmas. I think there’s a good chance you could get it by then, but we can’t promise. Please read the details related to delivery timing and other matters, here.) Order below

The aim of The 48-Hour T-shirt Project is to prod consumers to think more about our own behavior, about how we can be manipulated, and about how we manipulate ourselves. Yes, doing this by way of products may be seen as either ironic, clever, or hypocritical. That’s (part of) the point.

You can order the shirt here

Eddie Izzard + LEGO Star Wars = Win