It’s a blog!

Only 16 days til my birthday.

A couple of weeks ago TCM played an Ed Wood double feature: Bride of the Monster and a film once declared the worst movie ever, Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Ed Wood is a very interesting character in film history. If you’ve seen the Tim Burton film Ed Wood, it’s fairly accurate to his life, as far as I can tell. He had a great passion for his art, but was absolutely horrible in making it. He didn’t have a great attention to detail, which is why he is sometimes reffered to Ed “One-Take” Wood.

His films have acheived cult status for being absolutely horrible. He didn’t acheive this form of fame until long after he died. 1950’s Sci-Fi/Horror is one of the biggest influences in my life, and I absolutely loved Myster Science Theater 3000 when it was on air. It’s a show that wouldn’t have existed were it not for film makers like Ed Wood. These B-movie thrillers have been often immitated by suburban kids with their camcorders, including the likes of Tim Burton and M. Night Shyamalan.

Almost every modern director I respect cites 50s sci-fi as their main influence. It’s even the main influence behind Big Smelly Robot. The genre captures the spirit of being a young boy, reading comic books, and letting your imagination run wild. It’s so much fun to watch how excited my nephew gets when watching or talking about a movie. Part of me wishes I could still watch a movie without thinking about technique. You know, just getting extatic and punching the air. BLAM. KA-POW. ONOMATOPIA.

Today marked the “end” an almost 17 week project. The mission was to re-brand Saltworks Gallery in Atlanta. The project was under the umbrella of Portfolio Center Lab.

The project was exteremly taxing both emotionally and physically (late nights). However, I feel it opened my eyes widely as to what the hell I’m doing with my life.

Wade kept telling us that it’s not just about making pretty pictures. I don’t know if we ever believed him. We kept coming in with ideas that didn’t hit on the point. They were pretty pictures, but they weren’t meant to last. The problem was that we were just trying to do what we thought might work without thinking what was best for Brian, proprietor of Saltworks. He didn’t need pretty pictures. There’s plenty of that lining the walls of his gallery.

What Brian needed was a better way to organize information on his art so he would be free to focus his attention elsewhere. He needed a solution, not a design.

My guess is that most people at Portfolio Center see design as, well, design, as art. Through the growing pains of PC-Lab, I’ve started to think more in terms of communication of information. Aestetics are subjective. Just the other week, I saw two people come in a two different times and give completely opposite feedback on the same exact things. Both are well respected designers/teachers around PC. I’m not saying that aestetics don’t matter, but aestetics don’t matter.

It’s not about aestetics. It’s not about ideas. It’s not about concepts. When we presented today, we focused more on our strategy. When we were done stating our objectives, to slightly less than favorable articulation, only then did we ever mention anything about design. We still have to refine the presentation for a re-do.

We did all the right things over the course of the project, we just didn’t have the know-how to do everything when we needed to. It seemed like we were running around crazy with no control, but when I looked at all the comps we had produced over the weeks, I realized that we had been slowly progressing towards our final reccomendation.

My advice to young design students, the quicker you can learn to look at things wholistically, the smoother things will go for you. I think someone said that too me a while ago, but I didn’t realize it until I had to do it.

Today I completed the transfer of trilamb.org to my new server. Trilamb was my first website, and was what got me interested in design in the first place. I wish I still had the first few versions of the site. They would have given Mason a heart-attack. I’m going to ressurect it as a tribute to the wild times of college, and maybe more.

Next month, I turn 24. Four weeks to be exact.

I was appauled when the first headline naming the VT gunman on the BBC News website said he was S Korean. BBC has since changed the headline, but Google still shows the original headline in the search query:

I find not only the initial headline, but the whole idea of mentioning the original nationality of the gunman completely irresponsible journalism. I studied Journalism for about 6 years, including all 4 years of high school, and a degree in Journalism/Advertising. I have profound respect for the journalistic process, but journalism seems to be more about entertainment than unbiased reporting.

If the gunman had been white or black, would it have been as big of a deal? And if the gunman were a gunwoman (which technically isn’t even a word like gunman), would it be a bigger deal? Sure, it’s a fact, but it creates an undue negative impression that could potentially lead to racial violence.

Also, please, please, please, stop reffering to it as the biggest shooting in U.S. history. It doesn’t in anyway affect the outcome of this tragedy, it only endangers more people. Let historians make that call after we’ve healed.

Here’s a short film that I did a while back. It’s shot from a Canon ZR80. I complied footage from the glory days of my undergrad and made a film 6 minute film with about 5 minutes of opening credits meant to be a sarcastic glorification of my own achievement.

We Were Trilambs - 6′06″

These BP commercials have been on T.V. recently done by Mekanism, a production studio in San Fran. Check them out, and check out the site. Some pretty sweet stuff.

Watch Babies | Fuels | Light

Well, I spent all my time last night tweeking this blog with CSS, and have once again failed to address more immediate matters at hand. I hope you enjoy it. More to follow…

It was a pretty good party. I’m still not caught up on my sleep though, thanks to the debauchery.