Okay, if you walk out of Walk The LIne and don’t feel like going home and playing all your Johnny Cash CDs loud enough to annoy your neighbors, then there’s something mighty wrong with you. And if you don’t own any Johnny Cash CDs… well, ah, you best get yer ass to the movies ‘cause you might be itch’n to buy some afterwards.
When I was a student at Pratt, I got to meet Paul Rand on two occasions.
The first time
The chair of my department introduced me to him at an awards dinner.
“Mr. Rand, this is James Spahr. One of our best students.”
Paul Rand took a look at me. He extended his hand and I shook it.
“Nice to meet you Mr. Rand”
Paul Rand then looked at me again and said, “You’re never going to wash that hand again, are you kid?”
I was speechless.
The second time
Paul Rand spoke at my graduation. I met him again before the ceremony.
“Mr. Rand, this is James Spahr and Michael Kelly, they designed this year’s yearbook”
Paul Rand had a copy of the yearbook in his hands. And look of disgust on his face.
“This? It sucks”
Paul Rand’s attention was then quickly directed away from my friend and I.
(I’d like to point out that said yearbook won several design awards and was included in Graphis Book Design 2, and the other speaker that year, Lori Anderson, was far more kind and generous with her yearbook comments).
I saw The Incredibles on Saturday. It’s a great action adventure film with an amazing sound track.
I’m most enamored with the look of the film. In many ways this Pixar film has so much less to do with the look and feel of traditional 2d cell animation than any Pixar film before. It seems so much more like a CG film modeled after a stop motion film, like Wallace and Gromit or David and Goliath.
I say this because there are definite cartoon elements, like the simplification of the faces, and the exaggeration of the human forms. But in addition to these obvious (and intentional) falsehoods there are elements of utmost realism. Like the environments, the emulated camera, the clothes and to some extend the hair. (The hair is great; Syndrome’s hair is to die for; but the wet hair is sometimes painfully rendered as to completely destroy the fantasy world).
It creates an odd and very compelling universe that is just mesmerizing to watch.
I have a problem with the purple election map that has been all around the internet. I like the county by county map better, but in many ways I think they are both deceptive because of their use of color.
Mainly the state level map averages too much—which is the point. In reality, I think it is a brilliant piece of persuasive design being peddled as objective. (The best kind of persuasive design, I suppose).
Differences in blues and purples, and to some extent reds are hard for our eyes and brains to distinguish. (A side note, we excel at detecting variations of greens.)
Conceptually the red to blue map is great. The lack of contrast is what I do not care for. There are a couple different ways you can make colors different from each other. In the color model I find easiest to think in, a color can differ in hue, saturation or in lightness.
Varying the red or the blue in saturation or lightness ruins the colors conceptually. We want the red and the blue to be different but equal, so lets keep them the same in lightness and saturation. What we can do is vary the saturation and/or lightness of the purple. In this way we create a map that shows where the Kerry supporters are, where the Bush supporters are and where the true purples live.
I’ve also gotten rid of all the county dividing lines. They were creating way too much visual noise, without providing any real pertinent information.
Yes, my map is also deceptive while pretending to be objective. And I think I like that way.
Lawrence Lessing manages to say exactly what I’m feeling, with much more elegance than I can muster right now.
Sam Brown has a bunch of drawings on paper instead of his normal digital tablet drawings.
This new batch of paper based sketches are great.
So it looks like SONY has officially shelved Fiona Apple’s new album “Extraordinary Machine”. If one looks it is very easy to find MP3s of 2 of the tracks of the aforementioned record. (search for “Extraordinary Machine” and “Better Version of Me”).
Spectacular. I’m upset that I can’t hear the rest of the album. ( “Extraordinary Machine” has a great Louis Armstrong feeling about it). Both tracks are quite upbeat when compared to her earlier work.
I wonder if the possibility of just releasing the album electronically was discussed. I’m curious how much cheaper it would be for the label to do so.
There is a fantastic collection of political photographs on the New York Times website today.
Ah, so that’s what has happened to the new Fiona Apple CD, according to Rolling Stone.
A new term was coined at last night’s IA Salon.
slanty adj, a term used to describe a design that purposefully reduces functionality or usability to protect the space or community from the activities of irresponsible users. Named after the common technique of architects to used inclined planes to prevent people from leaving things, such as coffee cups, on flat spaces. The Giuliani era pedestrian blockades in New York City are a very slanty design.
mmm… Slanty. (obligatory Simpsons reference)
This cartoon which is associated with an AIGA event is hanging in the office’s kitchen. I don’t know who put it there, but it’s big (2 feet by 2 feet) and pretty darn funny.
