Weblog for reading internet design.

I know you all aren’t as good at driving as I am, so check out relearntodrive.com

It’s part of a BMW campaign done by GSD&M in Austin.

When I lived in the Pacific Northwest as a child, the proximity to the ocean was important, and just like Seattle, Vancouver was founded as a very important port city in British Columbia.

The basis for the Vancouver 2010 Branding is the motion of water as told by the tribal inhabitants, the corner stones of the cities history.

The logo takes the tribal abstractions of the motion of water and arranges them in the shape of an olympic flame. The mark also resembles a man dancing, which becomes a basis for the individual sport pictograms.

The background patterns are currents of water in the same abstract tribal style. For the sport banners, green is introduced to denote alpine events, and purple flows through to denote indoor events (is there a better word for that?).

It’s been a crazy-busy quarter, but I thought I’d share some of the work:

Civility Posters: The problem with people in the media that use derogatory terms is the snowball effect it can have. There’s potential the situation could get out of hand if no one stands up.

Privacy Poster: With the availability of communication comes the potential for others (the government) to breech your private messages and listen in on your most intimate conversations.

The issue with political pundits on television is that they only tell one side of the story. Imagine if our kids grow up only knowing half (or less) of the information and make ill-informed decisions based upon what their parents think.

When the NHL came back from Lock-out, it came back with new rules meant to open up the offence. It’s been a while since the games have been as offensive as it is today, so this piece is meant to tie the ice surface with a time-line for the NHL.

The infamous chair project: My chair is about the story of my nephew’s birth and how it brought a sense of balance into my life between my fun/creative side, and my pragmatic side seeking a sense of order and safety, especially when it comes to playing with my niece and nephew, as I also am aware of their safety.

The 2012 London Olympics unveiled thier logo today:

All I can say is WTF? They are pushing this monstrosity to convey the message that the games will be “everybody’s games.” Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of moving the games around to a different venue every 4 years?

In an impromptu class for 9 hours. I mean, geez.

At least my chair sketches went relatively smoothly. The only issue was with the ar-tic-u-la-tion of my ideas. Still need work with the presentation skillz. And, on top of that, I’ll probably be up all night.

My chair is about how my nephew’s birth changed my life. The crazy, chaotic kid that once lived was replaced with a more balanced individual that is still crazy and creative, but is also concerned with the safety of others, especially my 6 year old nephew and 3 year old niece.

If I would have written that before I preseneted, it would have gone easier this morning, or Hank would have found something else to pick on. Sketches to follow.

Edit:

Here’s the pics. Use your imagination a little, but it’s a circular cushon fairly low to the ground with two archs on the back, one an arm-rest, the other a back-rest.

I’ve recently updated my portfolio, and I thought you (yes, you) might enjoy a little look. It is linked to the portfolio button under the header of this blog, so tell your friends, co-workers, moms, personal chefs, and guys named Bill.

Today was a pretty emotionally draining day. Hank’s class went for 12 hours today. We got to tell our personal stories. People cried. My story, the short version: my life pretty much sucked until my nephew was born. And that’s the basis for my chair, the Portfolio Center right of passage.

Still looking for an illustrator for Big Smelly Robot.

More to follow.

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.

It’s amazing what a great photographer can do with slightly mediocre work. Special thanks to Jorge Menes.

More… 

As we left the bar at about 1 am this morning, it began to snow in Downtown Atlanta. Like a total jack-ass, I started calling people. It’s been a while since I’ve seen snow, though I used to live in a place where it snowed every winter. Still, I get as giddy as a school girl when I see it. Of course my natural reaction was to take a picture of it, but I somehow managed to max out my 512M SD card, without even running through my batteries. Crazy weird. I’ll upload the pics from last night once I get home. For now, I’m holed out downstairs in one of the back rooms waiting to shoot some of my packaging from quarters past, while I hear the unsuspecting masses hustling and bustling to hang up all the work upstairs. Today’s going to be one of those long days.