http://www.sinnermanensemble.org

I have so much to write about, so much to tell.  My world has just been bursting with inspiration in the last few weeks, but I have so little time to share. So I’m leaving you with a simple link to a site I’m working on.

The SiNNERMAN ensemble is a new upcoming theater production group based out of Chicago. They will be premiering their second play this May. I’m working closely with them on establishing their brand identity, including but not limited to: their logo and their website. Stay tuned.

Keeping in my ’seeking out inspiration’ kick, I just registered for the Seed conference with Jason Fried, Jim Coudal and Carlos Segura on October 29th. I’m looking forward to it, I hope to learn a lot. I’m also really enjoying networking as of late. I’ve been astounded by the people I’ve been meeting lately and it started with An Event Apart.

Coming out here to Chicago has been a huge opportunity for me, there is always something new and inspiring going on that fascinates me. So much to learn.

Last week I was lucky enough to attend a screening of Wes Anderson’s Hotel Chevalier at the Apple Store. The screening was hosted by producer Roman Coppola. Afterwards Roman stuck around for Q&A. The crowd was excellent and his rapport with them was phenominal. While film is not my field of choice listening to Roman was really inspiring. He spoke about starting a project, from researching it and making compromises to achieve a vision. I’m really looking forward to The Darjeeling Limited.

It’s weird but I spent years in New York, the “cultural center of the world”, and somehow I missed opportunities like this. I think I’m just more in tune with the world around me now.

I’m excited.

I completely agree with the critics like John Gruber: The London 2012 Olympic games logo is hideous. It’s just inexcusably ugly.

Coudal Partners attempts to defend the logo but to me I almost find their defense offensive to common sense. They attempt to state 10 reasons why it should be loved, they make no comment of the fact it’s visually unpleasant. Regardless of why we ’should love it,’ the fact remains still that the logo is ugly. No amout of politicing in it’s favor will change that fact. However, for the sake of argument I’ll bite and respond to their defense:

It’s not boring. The bright colors and distinctive design definitely DO stand out and it’s immediately recognizable. Everyone’s talking about it. Designers always complain about the status quo, so we find it surprising that so very few are taking a stand for a somewhat radical design.

It looks like something out of the Flintstones. Just because it stands out doesn’t mean it’s good. I’m kinda insulted by the end of that statement really… The whole ‘designers always’ comment. Just because it’s a radical design doesn’t mean it’s good. I’m all for daring and unique if you can pull it off well and it looks good. Yeah this logo is definitely daring and definitely unique, but it doesn’t look good.

It’s different. It avoids all the go-to pratfalls of current logo design. No brushstrokes! No feathered drop shadows! No mirrored reflections! No gradients, patriotic colors, rainbows, ribbons, landmarks, symbols of unity, maps, swooshes or globes!

Yes it avoids a ton of cliché’s, and that is a good thing, but it subscribes to several others, most notable the neon pink ‘futuristic’ look of the early 1990s children’s toys and TV. I feel like I should be watching Saved By The Bell.

It’s reproducable. Aside from the word “London” going chunky when sloppily rendered for the web (notably on the BBC reproduction that ended up on every site critiquing the logo), it’s good to see a logo that’s so easily printable, broadcastable, embroiderable and moldable (think of how horrible those 9-color rainbow brushstroke logos look when they’re process-printed out-of-register with a 100 line screen on a McDonalds Cup!). It even looks pretty great in black and white.

It’s flexible. A variety of color combinations, shapes, and patterns are available, keeping the logo slightly different on each view, but consistent (the BBC showed only the pink and yellow version, which didn’t help its case). Also, keep in mind that an Olympic logo is almost always saddled with the logos of corporate partners. This square, bold mark will hold up.

It’s the basis for a graphic system. Events require a complicated system of signage, identification, ornamentation, and even architecture. This logo and its associated colors, shapes, type and patterns are the perfect starting point for some fantastic signage, event icons, banners, tickets, uniforms and merchandise.

So… basically it meets the requirements for being a logo? The whole point of creating a logo is to be able to create a brand image around it. Anything that can’t be printed with other logos or in different sizes would be simply unacceptable. Just because this logo can do these things doesn’t mean it should be picked.

The last part in that group actually scares me… ‘a basis for a graphic system’ ugggg a whole theme based around this hideous thing… yuck!

It’s timeless. We’ve read complaints that it’s reminiscent of Tangrams (popular since the 1800s), Jamie Reid’s “Never Mind the Bollocks” cover (1977), MTV (1981), ’80s new wave design (Swatch, Bennetton), Emigre Magazine, early 90s television titles (Wacaday, Going Live, The Ben Stiller Show). We’ve read complaints that it’s too ‘current’ and it’ll look dated by 2012. We’ve also read complaints that it’s too futuristic or modern. As far as we’re concerned, all design is influenced by other design. This design rises above its influences, yet remains simple enough to stand on its own. If current trends continue (towards four color, “computery” 3-D), this logo will be even more fresh in five years.

I hate this defense.. just because there is a lot of bad design out there that seem to have a lot of similar conventions which this one lacks doesn’t mean this is good. It just means this one manages to stand on it’s own with it’s ugliness, it succeeds in being ugly in a completely refreshing way.

It’s English. The two names that come to mind when we hear “british design” are two of our favorite designers of all time: Neville Brody and Peter Saville. Without being a direct knockoff, the 2012 logo is evocative of their work, the punk and new-wave movements, rave culture and everything we like about the United Kingdom.

What? Because it’s jagged and neon it evokes all these things? I kinda find that demeaning to those cultural movements.

When we hear “my kid could have done that!” we think “success.” Some of the greatest logos of all time involve two lines (the Christian cross) or three lines and a circle (Mercedes). Your kid COULD have done that, but she didn’t. Nor did she design the graphics standards manual that goes with it. So give it a rest. Or send us her resume.

There is a difference between this logo and a Jackson Pollock painting. Sure they both have that same criticism of them, and that defense. But the fact of the matter is Pollock’s work managed to have an air of excitement and interest around it, bottom line, it was good. This logo is just ugly. Just because it’s simple or different doesn’t make it good, this defense could be raised to almost any piece of art that is simple, doesn’t mean it’s right or worth defending, and it detracts from the real instances where this defense is important. It comes off as that elitist ‘art for art’s sake’ attitude that so often leads people to think all artists are self righteous nut-jobs. It hurts the design community as a whole when you use this excuse on something not worthwhile.

It cost £400,000. That’s probably a bargain for an incredibly high-profile complete graphic identity system for an international company/event designed by experienced professionals. Anyone valuing the importance of design should give that argument a rest, too. We wouldn’t have taken the job for a shilling less.

Do you know what that translates to in Dollars… shit. I’d kill for a gig like that and laugh all the way to the bank. I cannot believe London’s olympic committee got suckered into that. It’s comparable to the emperor’s new wardrobe. Someone must have convinced them this was smart when the fact is they got takenL The emperor has no clothes on.

It’s unexpected. Chicago is bidding for the 2016 Olympics and the temporary logo is a perfectly decent design. It’s attractive, memorable and generally liked. It even generated a fair amount of internet buzz. But those brushstrokes and gradients don’t reproduce well, the narrow vertical orientation complicates usage and by 2016, the Sears Tower is likely to be Chicago’s third-tallest building. More than anything, the London logo takes the Olympic logo to a new level of boldness, abstraction and simplicity. And we’re a bit jealous.

Just because it’s unique doesn’t mean it’s good. It doesn’t hide the fact that it’s ugly. Yes it stands out.. because it’s ugly.

To make matters worse it says nothing about the olympics ANY logo could be put in the middle of that zero and it would symbolize that. The logo cannot stand alone and evoke any sort of meaning. It cannot exist and say ‘olympics,’ ’sports,’ ‘competition,’ or anything for that matter without the olympic rings in it. seeing things like this make me miss people like Paul Rand who knew how to use symbolism to make something meaningful, is there no one like him left these days? There is a point where abstraction without meaning is just dumb and any function is lost. This is way past that point. Is there really a whole generation of designers out there that meaning and symbolism is lost on? That scares me really.

I’m seriously considering going to ‘An Event Apart: Chicago.’ I’m very out of the loop design wise and I think it might be a really good idea. That and maybe finally joining AIGA, I wonder if they have a Chicago branch?

CEO of photosharing site Zooomr, Thomas Hawk is taking Flickr to task for the changes they announced yesterday.

In his post he uses customer complaints from Flickr’s forums to make his point that Flickr has lost it’s way with these changes and they need to reconsider them. After reading through the post it seems to me like just a bunch of noise and childishness. Let’s take a look at what is actually changing here:

1. In our ongoing efforts to Make Flickr Better^TM, we’re introducing two additional limits: the new maximum number of contacts is 3,000 contacts (good luck with that), and each photo on Flickr can have a maximum of 75 tags.

Okay.. well I could see this complaint as somewhat half valid.. there are people out there who use Flickr to promote their work professionally and they want to reach as many people as possible, putting a limit on the number of people they can have as contacts kinda does suck. But at the same time Flickr’s contact system is a lot different then say MySpace’s friends list system. Just because someone makes me a contact, doesn’t mean they have to be mine. Me personally I only make people contacts under a very small set of circumstances:

1. If I know them personally
2. If I read their blog regularly
3. If I LOVE their photo work

I think it’s a safe bet if you have upwards of 2,000 contacts that you really aren’t looking at everyone’s photos that much in depth and I also doubt you know all of these people personally. I think it’s a pretty safe bet that if you have that many contacts it’s in effort to get people to add you to their contact list as self promotion. While that’s okay it’s a little disingenious, as really, I doubt you care about them all that much and isn’t there enough shameless self promotion on the web these days? Where’s the line between it and spam really? Maybe I shouldn’t cast judgement but with their ‘Good luck with that’ comment it would seem that Flickr feels the same way. There is also a positive benefit to this, it requires people to be more mindfull of the people they add to their contact list. In the end it strengthens the community, as it requires people to consider things more heavily. Flickr also claims it will allow their systems to run better, and I can imagine that being so, having more than 3000 of anything in a database will bog things down, capping people’s contacts will almost certainly improve speed and take load off the servers. Yes it will save them money.. but they are a business, it doesn’t make their service any less awesome.

Next up: The 75 tag limit. This is also about shameless self promotion in my eyes. If you’re tagging your photos that heavily, you’re tagging them for the purpose soley of other people finding you, not for accurate results and almost definitely not for easy personal organization. Limiting tags in my eyes is also a good move for the community as it once again will require more thought put into things. And really, 75 tags? I rarely put more than 5 on something. 75 is a very high number. I doubt few people at all will be limited by this.
Oh but it seems with the exception of Mr. Hawk not many people are making a big deal over these changes, it’s more about the second change.

2. On March 15th, 2007 we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.

For many this is a big change… but like it or not, those people are by far the minority. Flickr has seen such a dramatic growth in users over the last year that the ‘old skool’ users are dwarfed several times over by the newer users. There are more than a few people bitter about this move but mostly people who were skeptical about the change when Yahoo! bought Flickr. The fear, as near as I can tell is irrational. All the complaining I’m reading sounds really petty and stupid, people afraid of change. They people complaining sound to me like angsty elistist teenagers who stop liking a punk band because they signed to a major label or something. It’s stupid.

In reality… what is the big difference? The only thing this affects at all is your login and password. It does not affect people’s site address or your Flickr screenname. The change is minimal, these users will experience no difference except having to type something different at the login screen. For example: my Flickr account is linked to my Yahoo! ID of ‘reallocalcelebrity’, but my Flickr page address does not reflect that name: http://www.flickr.com/people/localcelebrity/ and at the moment I have my username as ‘reallocalcelebrity’ which does match my Yahoo! ID, but I can change this at any point if I want, it does not have to match my Yahoo! ID.

I thoroughly enjoy that many of the self proclaimed ‘old skool’ users of Flickr don’t realize this. Many of the complaints reposted on Hawk’s blog relate to the misperception that they will lose their user name or be forced to change their page address, neither of which is the case.

The other complaint is that these users will be required to have a Yahoo! ID and many feel that this will open the floodgates to them for spam and marketing emails. I kinda think this is a tad bit irrational. I have a Yahoo! ID / Yahoo! Mail account… and I pretty much don’t use it, except for Flickr. Having the account has not added any spam to any of my inboxes or in any way had any effect on anything else in my life at all. As Flickr also points out you don’t even have to use the account for your Flickr alerts email either, you can give them another account and have them notify you at that account when someone adds you as a contact of comments your photos.

So in actuality… Flickr is making you sign up for a Yahoo! ID, but they are not making you use it for anything other than a login and password.

If you’re getting worked up over this you really need to put your world into perspective. In reality, this whole thing will blow over with little to no impact on anything, maybe a few ‘Old Skool’ users will jump ship to different services but that’s really their loss more than anything. In truth Flickr’s going to work better and continue at it’s gigantic rate of growth while strengthing it’s sense of community while at same time becoming more profitable and integrated into Yahoo! But the end result is more choices and features for the end user. I’ve yet to see how this could be a bad thing.

(via Robert Scoble)

So I’ve decided I’m going to publish a book of my photography. I’m not entirely sure of the timetable for this but I plan to take as long as I need to get it done.The book will be titled “Nothing Left” (you’ll understand eventually) and will be a study of communication in the modern world. Photographs focusing on nothing but signage and power lines. The two most common yet overlooked ways that the human race in the 21st century communicates.I often joke of my fascination with powerlines and signs but in truth they both amaze me. I plan to devote a lot of time and energy to this project over the next year. I’m also sure it will inevitably require travel. If I want to be taken serious as photographer I need to treat this seriously and I’m excited at the possibilities.Check out my work in progress on Flickr. There will be much added in the coming days / weeks.

I already put this on my del.ico.us but I figured it needed more attention because it was that damn good…. More rotoscoping and compositing! I’m sure you’re thrilled oh fictitious reader.

Special Effects house Buzz Imaging shows off how it made the effects used in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The clip showcases some incredible 3d modeling, rotoscoping and compositing work and makes it almost look easy. Don’t be fooled, this sort of thing takes days, weeks even months to get right. But it’s still incredible.

(Via Daring Fireball)

Wow… this makes my stomach turn but I cannot believe how true it is, this guy is a genius.Why Paris Hilton mattersIt’s incredible, hilarious, but incredible how right on this is. This should be cause for a great deal of thinking. I never imagined that something so superficial and worthless could be such a good model for success.(Via Digg)

So, I’m not really a big anime fan or that much of a video editor
but this blew my mind. I can only imagine how many hours this took to complete.

If you’re completely confused, let me explain. This guy noticed that Japanese cartoons or ‘anime’ tends to have a lot of running scenes and decided to do something with it. He spend hours combing over cartoons, isolating scenes and editing down shots to combine them fluidly and create one project. He wasn’t content with just cutting scenes together. He went into the video and used a process called rotoscoping to isolate individual characters from their shots and lay them out in other ones.

Think Roger Rabbit, Lord of the Rings and Forrest Gump.

Painstaking and time consuming to say the least. Excellent work by this Istiv guy, best of luck to him.

(Via Boing Boing)

…I’ve watch the clocks go ’round.
Walked myself through some days
that have put me where I am.
In another time, In another place
all things might have been in place
But for now I’m finding myself up here standing on a rooftop screaming.

Hey world are you listening… listening to me?
I’m here and I’m hurting to begin again.

It’s another time, it’s another place.
We are making more old days.
But for now I’m finding myself out and standing on my doorstep screaming.

Hey world are you listening… listening to me?
I’m here and I’m hurting to begin again.
Hey world I’m ready to listen… and learn something new.
I’m here and I’m willing to get myself through.
-Hot Water Music “Rooftops”

I wasn’t going to do this but Zeldman’s post stirred up a lot in me.

Has it really been five years? I really don’t know what to do… it still seems so unbelievable. I feel like I have spent the last 5 years living in a bad dream just waiting to wake up. I still sorta lie to myself about things. I let the media corrupt me and my memories of what happened that day. I feel cheap and used. Until recently I had almost completely forgotten parts of it. As if they were blocked out of my memory.

The endless smoke. The smell of burning and ash. The jumpers. The smoldering holes that were once buildings. How they didn’t stop burning for weeks.

A few weeks back I went upstate with Christine and her family and found papers from 9/12. I looked though them and every article was in somehow related to the towers. It was like everything else in the world just froze. Like someone put the rest of history on pause for a moment. I had forgotten that baseball went on hiatus, or how long it was before planes were flying again. And how weird it was to hear fighter jets overhead rather than the commercial planes that you were so used to you barely even noticed them anymore.
I was living in Brooklyn at the time, attending the Pratt Institute. I remember everything like it was yesterday. My roommate Dan and I were on our way to class when the guys across the hall from us yelled, stopping us from getting on the elevator.

“Some idiot flew a plane into one of the Twin Towers.”

We ran into his room where his roommate was videotaping it from his window. Although it disgusts me to admit now, honestly… at the time…. we laughed. We laughed recounting the famous story of the plane that hit the state building back in the 40’s. Thinking this to be the same: a very public accident of small scale.

What you have to realize is that we had no idea of scale, we figured it was some private plane and honestly didn’t even think about size or injury. It seemed impossible that anything could even damage the towers, so we didn’t even think anything of it. The longer we stood there, the more smoke I saw, the more serious it felt. But we also figured we were late for class, so we’d better get a move on.

When I got to class most of my classmates hadn’t even heard about it. About 10 minutes in someone comes running into our room and yells:

“A plane just flew and hit both Trade Towers!”

Half of our class went running into the other room to go look out from their window. Once again: the issue of scale. You never really realized how big those things were until a plane flew into them. It seemed reasonable to many to believe that they were close enough together that one plane’s wingspan could hit both towers. As I looked from the window and watched the North and South towers billowing out black smoke it hit me. I was the first one to say it aloud:

“The one tower was already smoking when I left my room this morning, the second one just happened. This is no accident, someone planned this.”

It just seemed inconceivable at the time to everyone in the room and honestly I forget sometimes how carefree we all were before that day. The teacher rushed us back to our respective room where we continued class for a bit. Time passed and he called for a break. I started walking to the on campus cafeteria and attempted to phone my parents back home… strangely I couldn’t get a signal out at first.

“Turn off your phone asshole! Other people need to use the networks.”

Confused and completely caught off guard, I looked up at the upperclassmen had just yelled this at me and I didn’t know what to make of it. The phone was useless anyhow so I shut it off. When I got into the cafeteria it was like nothing I had ever seen before. A massive amount of people were crowded around the TVs that were mounted on the ceiling. Someone had changed the channel from the usual corporate marketing bullshit CTN (college television network) and put on the news. I stood there frozen in shock with my peers as we watched the first tower fall. When I managed to regain thought I then rushed myself to my room and put on CNN. Dan had just arrived as well and we sat and watched in astonishment as the second tower fell.

Neither of us knew what to do, we both agreed that we weren’t going back to class. Fuck class. We spent the rest of the day just in a fog sitting there dumbstruck. I remember trying to load up CNN.com and it crawling. Going even to a white page with headlines briefly announcing countries that were wishing their sympathies. Horribly enough Afghanistan was the first to issue a statement of sympathy. It wasn’t for a few days before we would realize the grim irony in that.

The first thing on everyone’s mind was war. And honestly the first nation people thought of was Iraq. It was no secret even back in 2001, BEFORE 9/11 that Bush wanted to invade Iraq. There were still our enemy, the media had conditioned us to think that way so it seemed to make sense that they might would perpetrate such an evil. All I could scrounge up from the news though was something about an unmanned US spy plane being shot down over Iraq that morning. Something I’ve never seen or heard mentioned since.

At some point I made it to the rooftop of my building and snapped the photograph you see above. The door to the roof was normally locked at threat of expulsion, but somehow none of that really mattered anymore.

My biggest regret, the one thing that gets me to this very day is that I was so close and yet, all I did was sit there and watch TV, like everyone else. I should have taken off and gone into the city and found a way to help but I sat there and did nothing like a zombie.

I can’t explain exactly why I’m writing this or what conclusion I am hoping to come to, the fact is I don’t think I have one. I’m writing this just to write it, just to put it out there. I can’t explain what this is better than Zeldman did so I won’t try:

“These mini-essays are not art. They are not reportage, either (but what is?), and may not even be accurate. We were all a bit dazed—although not so dulled as now. The shock and sorrow were fresh. The events of September 11th had not yet been branded, nor turned into tools of partisan rancor, nor made into a mini-series, nor used to justify atrocity.”

So much of our world changed on that day and for once people really came together. Now I look at where we are today and I am concerned that we haven’t learned a thing. In fact we’ve let ourselves and our feelings be used and manipulated in the name of this atrocity to commit others.

Have we learned the right lesson? Have we done the right thing? Is the world a better place today? I hope dearly we can say yes, but my gut seems to tell me otherwise.