Blog
-
Limp
This noun/verb is mentioned in the tome I’m currently immersed in for a second time since like high school, D.F. Wallace’s Infinite Jest, hailed by some as a modern classic US-Of-A hit in fiction lit., a claim I’m as yet undecided on except to say it’s one dang interesting read from just a formalist, school-of-pop-culture,…
-
Current Tracks
Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit King Crimson – Starless and Bible Black Radiohead – Hail to the Thief; Amnesiac R.E.M. – Reveal Pixies – Doolittle Led Zeppelin – III In an effort to free up some memory for my current graphic work I’ve resorted to shutting down all non-essential operations in WinXP incl. SETI…
-
Instructo Art
Instructo Art, by self-proc. Master of the Obvious Matthew Vescovo, graphic designer. Cool little airplane-safety-pamphlet-like illustrations on “trivial habits and daily customs that humans have developed throughout history.” Also has a gig doing filler spots for MTV. Esp. like “Ratings System” and “Black and Curly.” Like a lot of the quirky design links I’m coming…
-
Phalange Neglect
I just poured boiling water over my thumb! Pretty much by accident. See I bought this 500 g little tub of Canada No.1 White Unpasturized Liquid Honey and I hate it when sticky food stuffs leak, like syrup bottles or 2-litre Cokes, and dribble down the outside of their walls and form tar pits of…
-
Victoria Squash Tournament
Took in a good three hours (spectating only) of what I assume was the city’s top Squash action on Saturday, the finals of the 2004 Victoria City Squash Tourney at the Vic Squash Club, 1811 Cook St..
-
Week Two With zero one
A challenging and educational week. Constructed an actual working draft site under deadline in less than 24 hours. Still assigned with multiple design tasks, but this time the real difficulty lies in having to incorporate rough-but-pre-approved templates and
-
Robot, Our Friend
Could it happen in my lifetime, my own robot? In grade about 2 my friend Denis had that one from Radio Shack, Omnibot. Programmed with magnetic audio tapes and could carry a drink. I was very jealous.
-
Japan Package Design
Japanese Toy and Candy Design. Kids must learn a lot of early self control in Japan. If you had intense packaging like that here, our youngins would either wimper with visual overload or go into hyper parental nag mode: It has giant bright cartoon colours and cute bug-eyed animals, must have, buy them now Mom!…
-
Current Tracks
Boards of Canada Dan Bern – Fifty Eggs Evaporators – Ripple Rock Crash Test Dummies – I Don’t Care That You Don’t Mind Elliot Smith – Figure 8 Kevin Shields Soundtrack to Lost in Translation
-
The next iPod
The iPod of the future. Short film/long ad format. Also, meant to post this a few weeks ago. Interesting article at Wired, asking four designers how they would re-do the Google interface. Exactly the kind of task I want to start presenting myself with on a regular, for-the-experience, portfolio-building basis: take an existing design, improve…
-
SETI anniversary
It’s been 390 work units, 2777 CPU hours and exactly one year since I and my P4 1.5 signed up for the University of Berkeley’s distributed Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program.
-
Mating calls / New Food
Is it mating season among the amphibious members of my neighbourhood again? The chorus of croaking is once more, uhm, charming the night air. The calls of thousands of what must be horny toads travels loud and far from the great pond on the Cedar Hill Golf Course and up the side of the little…
-
Sand art video
A 10-minute video (18.4MB) of a live art performance featuring sketches in sand on an overhead projector. From the Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival (SICAF) 2003. Windows Media Player only. Thanks friend of Rosco for the link.
-
Week one with zero one
Assist-ed/ing in the design of three web templates for two of zero one’s clients. The challenges are great and just what I hope to excel in: incorporating client requests, defining a site’s role, balancing aesthetics with usability, working with a team, etc.. On Wednesday attended all-day meetings where zero one took us, the web developers,…
-
Bits and Pieces
Must learn more about Art Spiegelman, graphic novelist, 1992 Pulitzer Prize winner. Artists in Vancouver trade 2×3″ cards. Want to make my own. Shoegazers: Adjective for distorted guitar emo bands. “Seen this one?” “Ya, too much acting.” – Two lunkheads in a videostore, from BBC dark comedy series The League Of Gentleman. Eating at a…
-
New Job: zero one design
I have officially been hired as a web developer with zero one design inc., a local firm that specializes in the fields of arts and culture.
-
Leap Year Rules
Today is a very special day. The year is now one day longer. A lot of 100-year-old people are actually celebrating their 25th b-day (see below). Kids born today are falling into the same time bubble. Today should be a global holiday.
-
Mario Movie and Nike Ad
New Nike ad features famous athletes, including Lance Armstrong, competing in sports far outside their regular domain. Excellent use of CG and quick editing. Music a bit over-dramtic, but overall inspiring spot. Friend recently mentioned this Mario 1 flash movie epic, which I coincidently stumbled upon today. The saga, replete in pixels, Koopa, fallen comrades…
-
Triplets of Belleville
Saw this acclaimed (by critics and friends) animated film, a Canadian-Belgium-France collaboration now nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, at the Odeon the other night. Narrative synopsis, with possible spoilers: a quiet French orphan boy and his petite Grandmother, who buys him a tricycle to encourage his harbored fascination with heroes of the Tour…
-
Multicultural Bus
Been riding the bus more than usual lately and have noticed the late evening #27/28 can be quite the rambunctious affair. The other night four very young, well groomed Mexican exchange students (two boys/girls), probably high on friendship and adventure, were belting out a litany of Spanish pop harmonies while humoring a happy old drunk…
-
Poster: Night of the Guitar
Poster for guitar performance at the Victoria Conservatory of Music.
-
Jay-Z-Beatles
Friend sent me some tracks last night by DJ Dangermouse and his latest work “The Grey Album.” Album should be doubly in quotes here because it’s really a full length, unauthorized promo remix of rapper Jay-Z’s “Black Album” and The Beatles “White Album.” Making headlines (Yahoo News) for copyright infringement as well as mass online…
-
Book: Jimmy Corrigan
Finished the agonizing, horribly depressing tale, the miserable life, of Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth (Chris Ware, 2000). A graphic novel compilation tracing the suffocating reunion between a hopelessly lonesome, depressed, looser protagonist and his estranged father.
-
Current Reading
No Logo Naomi Klein (2000, Vintage Canada) Literary Lapses and Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town Stephen Leacock (1910, 1912, Prospero Books) Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth Chris Ware (2000, Pantheon) Graphic Design, A Concise History Richard Hollis (1994, Thames and Hudson) Papers of Samuel Marchbanks Robertson Davies (1947, 1949, 1985 Totem Press)…
-
Gardening and Hangnails
Doing some yard work for the girlfriend’s parents this week. Wrestled for two hours today with a man-size ornamental grass bush. Suffered minor abrasions and a small, bleeding cut on my forearm. Victory was eventually mine by hacking away at its dense forest of two-metre tall shoots with a branch trimmer, then going for the…
-
Turnpike Films
Turnpike Films. High quality, high wit, very entertaining ads/promos for cereal, coffee and beer. Gotta watch them all. Had me smiling out loud.
-
Squash BC photo
Not to be an aesthetic tyrant all the time, but the header image of a squash player on the Squash BC web site bothers me. First impression is that of a disability squash association, and the person pictured is a disabled athlete. Which makes a critique of the image seem more insensitive. But the awkward…
-
Text to Speech Converter
AT&T Labs has a demo online that converts text into speech. Nothing new in that – we’ve got cute little iMacs at work that do that – but not as fluently, or in so many languages, even dialects (US/UK English).
-
Quiznos TV Spot
This new Quiznos ad is great. It features what look like dead mice with human mouths and eyes, wearing hats, singing and playing guitar. And selling sandwiches.
-
Current Tracks
Weird Al – Eat it Yo La Tengo – Nuclear War; The Sounds Of The Sounds Of Science Interesting note to Tengo’s SoSoS: it’s a 78 min. album designed and performed as a cinematic soundscape to a series of undersea doc film shorts by what appears to be one of the more under-rated founders, avant…