It’s a blog!

I thought I had really bad jetlag, but it turns out that I have a cold. I’ve been absolutely miserable in the absolutely gorgeous weather.

Things are pretty quiet around Prologue, but it’s only quiet on the surface. Everyone is pretty much nose to the grindstone around here. I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to talk to people about their work, but I get to catch a glimpse over people’s shoulder’s every now and then, and I haven’t seen a single thing that isn’t gorgeous.

And if you were wondering, Keith, Kyle’s been on “vacation” this week, which means he’s not in the office. He had a meeting somewhere else at 11 this morning, and then he had to go speak at AIGA in San Diego, the same place Hank was speaking at earlier. It’s a small, small world.

But Kevin has been a great guy to learn from. I kept asking questions on the way to work, though we had to stop several times so he could answer calls and distribute information correctly. Kevin’s roll at Prologue is to bascially make sure the whole opperation runs smoothly. He’s involved with every project that runs through here, though he’s not always in the design process. His knowledge of the industry is uncanny, and I feel that just by talking to him, I’ve gained a lot of insite into what it’s really like.

And I don’t just mean about design. He’s had ups and downs in his life due in part to his passion for his work. It basically led to his divorce. He said that being married to another desinger is one of the greatest things in the world. And while his current job doesn’t allow for a lot of creative work, he talked to me about being able to actually make enough money to support you or your family, and how that might mean doing something different than you originally intend. I’ve always heard the flowery speach about doing what you love and other stuff they tell you in school, but the truth is you have to live. If you can make money doing what you love, that’s great.

After talking to Andrea and Kevin, I am getting more of a perspective on interactive design. Not a lot of people really know what’s going here at Prologue, and Andrea and Kevin don’t really know that much about interactive. It really is my passion. I love the idea of design that isn’t stagnant, that changes every time you look at it, that adapts to what you do.

Most of what happens at Prologue isn’t anything ground breaking, at least from my point of view. The stuff is killer, and totally brilliant, but I don’t really see any more signifigant advances in one way communication, other than getting it faster, at a higher resolution, and more realistic.

Exploring uncovered territory is what gets my blood flowing. I always seem to get bored by the same routine. I’m looking forward to getting my head back into the interactive mindset. This place is cool, but I’m thinking it wouldn’t really be the fit for me that I once thought it would be. It would still be cool.

And I think I saw Ricky Gervais getting coffee today.

Incase you don’t know, I’m in L.A. spending time with my friend Kevin at Prologue Films.

I woke up at 5.30A, rediculously early, to catch the MARTA to ATL. I missed a flight once, so I err on the side of caution. It did give me time to fix the site I’ve been working on for months now. The functionality of the site is down cold. Now all I need is to finish laying out the pages and it’s done. Oh, and devise a way to run a proof system with as much automation as possible.

It’s now almost midnight for you ATLiens, but here, it’s almost 9, and we’re still at work. That’s right, I’ve been put to work while I’m here. It’s sort of complicated and I’m not sure what I can and can’t talk about, but I’ve been busy. To give you a hint, I was told that I can’t be caught taking pictures. We’ll try to get a few for you, my adoring public. No promises though. Plus, I left my camera cord at home, so no pics until at least Saturday.

Anyway, I landed at LAX at about 12p, local time. I was going to blog about something cool on the plane, but since I can’t upload the picture, I’ll wait til I get home. This is really a reminder for me to do it later. Kevin’s wife Andrea (also a designer) picked me up from the airport, and she had a lot of good input on industry stuff.

She drove me over to Prologue where we met up with a rather distaught Kevin. Things here are pretty crazy. He had a conference call right after lunch, and his headache magically went away after the call. I then sat down on a meeting he had with Paul, and Kevin really carried himself like a design director. The conversation honestly sounded a lot like an exchange you would get between a student and instructor at PC, except of course for the real world implications/limitations. But I was put to work on research for the account, before Kevin wanted a whole slew of ideas. So, I might have to use my brain soon.

Veronica, if you can read this, call me.

You’re just jealous that I’ve been playing pool with hot babes all day.

Ask a Ninja is a podcast that I was made aware of sometime last year. It was pretty funny at first, then it went through a sort of SNLike suckie phase. Let’s face it: there’s only so much that ninjas can do.

But this last episode, which I didn’t watch for probably a week, was pretty funny, but it wasn’t talking about ninjas at all. It was a special episode about SXSW. It’s kind of funny to hear a ninja talk about nerdy things that we all remember. It makes it that much nerdier.

The episode:

I posted some pictures of our trip to the beach yesterday. It’s been a fun and relaxing and tiring vacation so far.

I might add captions later, but I doubt it.

I’ve been spending farr to much time on this site: Red Universe. I found a camel running around, but then it went away pretty quick. If anyone finds it, let me know. My nephew really loved the “game”, however, I was less than impressed with the actual work shown on the site.

I’m still trying to grasp the implications of what happened to me in the last 12 hours. But let me start at the beginning.

I’ve ofter reffered to 6th quarter as shitty. The amount of work was at times insane. I had serious doubts about my skills as a designer, and whether or not I belonged here. I’ve always kind of had them, but they never were this strong. I did find comfort in Media Arts, and I was considering a full on switch. The main problem was the ridiclous assignment Nicole Riekki gave me. It made absolutely no sense to me, and I wanted out. I went and talked to Hank about media and Nicole’s class. He wasn’t going to let me out of the class. No way. But he agreed that media was a very viable option.

After Mason layed down the law, I got my act together and started producing some work I am extremely proud of, all the while getting more frustrated with Nicole’s type class.

Monday night, I presented my work for Technology as a Creative Medium. I was a great critique. Best ever. My future as an interactive deisgner seemed more secure. I rode this high horse into my print critique. I kind of didn’t care. If it went bad, it wasn’t going to bring me down.

It didn’t go bad. My book for Nicole’s class came together in the final week. I showed it to the panel. I turned through the massive 24 x 18 spreads in total silence. Anne Elser said she almost cired. Gary Weiss said he wished he had created it. Mimi came up afterward and gave me a hug. Even Pretti, who’s class the essential style for the book came from, told me that even my widdows looked great.

Apparently after that, word got around. As Hank was leaving school, he told me that he had heard that I had a great critique, that my book was amazing. We talked briefly about Roger going to Pentagram, and then his last words were “we’ll talk.” A lot to think about.

My printer mocks me. Printing all slow and crap. Two days. 3 pages left. Model, looks like ass. My hands are too shaky to make such little pieces. The caffiene only works in spurts. Critiqué is the least of my worries today. Maybe not, but there’s other stuff I gotta do. Been up since 7, almost passed out a couple of times. Gonna pull an Adam and dress up all extra nice. Even starting to talk like him.

Things were a lot easier back in high school English class. (if that’s not the most obvious statement of the year) But I was thinking today of a video I made way back when. Got me, and my group, an A, simply because I was the first person ever to make a video for the teacher’s class. I’ve been called innovative before on several occasions. I’ve never considered myself to be innovative. To me, it seems like logic. But maybe that’s what innovation is. Just being able to see things from another perspective, to be the first person to realize that there is a better way to do something.

I’m not good with models, or any small parts. My fingers are too big, and my hands won’t stay still. I wish I could have finished my model on the computer, put together a fully rendered 3-D model. But I suppose that would have been too easy. Instead, I’ll show pictures of a half-done model, and show them a hastly thrown together real life 1:48 scale hunk of crap. I just want some damn sleep.

I had my first critique Monday night. It went super-duper. I’ll post the presentation up here, just as soon as I add some words to it. Otherwise, you might not get it.

Printing sucks. It’s taking me about 20min to print out a single page for my type book. I went with a matte paper, GORGEOUS. I’ve always gone for gloss or photo paper, never again. In fact, I would like to find a way to better bring in matte elements to a screen.

The model’s coming together. The main structure (walls) are almost done. Just need start decorating.

One more thing, I got my plane ticket to L.A. today. I also got one back to ATL. What are the odds? I’ll fill you in on the trip later. But for now, I’m looking forward to heading down to P-town (Pensacola, for all you jerks) on Saturday.

The idea for the widget came from Tim, my buddy from college. He used to listen to this song called 5 O’clock Somwhere. My first attempt was rather Margarittavile-ish. This time, I made it more in what is apparently my “style.” I found a rather drab pic of an office full of cubicles, my idea of a prison (be careful how you put something like that). I saturated the image further to make it look even more depressing. It’s a fun and stupid alternative to the dashboard clock.

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