Archive for November, 2007
Quote, “YouTube is an illicit organization built upon a self-destructive philosophy.” Jakob Lodwick raises some good points about why YouTube’s HD aspirations will fail, or simply undermine the very premise of YouTube’s success. I also like that he hits on the major reason why most sites built around user-generated content creation aren’t the real deal — because their creators/owners don’t even use the service. They don’t believe in their own product. They believe in making money off of what you’re creating. Huge difference.
Thanks to Amazon.com and their Affiliate tools, I now have a .com/booklist page full of recommended reading. There’s more to be added in time, but it’s a good start for now.
In our time a beard is the one thing a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.
— John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America
Icelandic illustrator Siggi Eggertsson updates his portfolio with all kinds of goodness, like this Polar Bear here.
His work is energetic, fresh, angular, uniquely colorful, typographically delectable, and highly creative. Check out the style on this illustration of British band Zoot Woman and the variety of styles in these posters for the Coke Side of Life campaign.
Study up!
Marvel Comics has digitized 25,000 back issues. $4.99 a month for a year subscription, or $5.99 month-to-month. 250 issues are free to browse through for a limited time. (via Airbag Industries)
How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.
— Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Rumor has it that Microsoft wants to build a Flickr competitor, in effect trying to round out a suite of web solutions to mimic its desktop operating system offerings. Ignoring Microsoft’s track record of not being able to build a decent web solution for anything, how could this possibly work for them on a scale where it’s a worthwhile investment?
The current customers for this kind of web solution are already firmly entrenched in Flickr (or Facebook, which hosts more photos than any other website.) They have photosets, meta data, comments, favorites, contacts. Does Microsoft honestly think anyone that invested in Flickr will jump ship? So in order to be successful, they have to market this to completely new customers. Microsoft users are already downgrading from Vista to ye olde XP, and now the company is going to start an uphill battle in an area where they’ve never had success, in a market already flush with established, innovative companies. That sounds like a brilliant waste of time, manpower, money, and energy.
Of course, since it’s Microsoft, they’ll lean on the same strategies they always do: marketing muscle and feature bloat. But features are not going to make me leave Flickr. I don’t post to Flickr because of features anyway; it’s about community, and doing a handful of things very well. Microsoft’s feature-heavy solutions try to do everything, but they do it poorly and make it more difficult to actually get anything done.
Here’s a better business plan: why not just spend the money allotted to this project to FREAKING FIX INTERNET EXPLORER for web developers by making it standards compliant?
Rubin Recommends that you pick up the recently-added Remastered Led Zeppelin Collection for $99 on iTunes. If you’re into that.
This leather hymnbook iPod cover lets you “cherish your music.”
The new MSNBC design breaks in some ugly ways when the user resizes text.
Do web designers just not care about how their designs scale?
Sales is rooted in what’s good for me. Evangelism is rooted in what’s good for you.
— Guy Kawasaki, author of Selling the Dream and Rules for Revolutionaries
Josh Boston has Thanksgiving musings in the form of Native American Graffiti like #%*! Pilgrims and Not India on Flickr. Brilliant satire, as always.
What beautiful HTML code looks like on a handy cheatsheet.
Two and a half years ago, I posted Welcome to the Rest of Your Life, letting my handful of faithful blog readers know that I had resigned from what was then known as New Spring Community Church to go out into the big, bad world to try my hand at being a “real” graphic designer and, to put it mildly, learn what the heck I was doing. It’s been a good 30 months. Three states, three jobs, lots of contract work, lots of clients, lots of projects, and a wife later…
We’ll be waving a bittersweet farewell to Boston soon, in order for me to join the team at NewSpring Church as Creative Director, and also to head up the cultivation of internet awesomeness. It will rock. NewSpring has grown by about 3x since I left (staff, attendance, and managerial structure) and is on the cusp of even more growth and change with the upcoming addition of their first video venue satellite campus, the need for a more-than-just-informational website to connect all those people, some lacking cohesion in branding that needs to be addressed, and a growing communications team. The challenges are big and uphill, but I’m turbo-excited to get to work and into what’s next.
On more of a So Serious-style vibe, I have no desire to do work that is “good… for a church.” I don’t want to “sell Jesus” like a product. That stuff sort of makes me want to laugh and vomit and cry all at once. It’s sad (though wholly understandable) that there’s baggage and pre-conceived notions about what design and the church are supposed to look like. Many of the church’s attempts at visual communication delve into poorly-executed, ill-informed parody, or only cannibalize ideas and co-opt styles from within the church community (which, let’s be honest, is a sub-culture of our own making and often out of touch with the reality most people operate in on a day-to-day.)
What I want to do is really great design work. Attention to detail. Knowledgeable use of typography, illustration, and photography. The creation of a cohesive visual language that creates clear visual communication and engaging environments. And then I want to carry all that online in a seamless way that creates a similar environment there. And in that, I think we might be in new territory for me (and hopefully for churches, too.)
Details to follow. Onward and upward.
In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action. — Aristotle
The Superest is a game of My Team, Your Team where player 1 draws a character with a super power and then player 2 draws a character whose power cancels the power of that previous character. And then you repeat. Kevin Cornell and Matthew Sutter handle most of the super work.
This one lost out to the scary monster face for today’s Whiskerino offering.
Goofing off with post-processing on a photo I didn’t use from Whiskerino today.
Rick Webb has a few issues with iTunes, shuffle, music videos, Front Row and how Apple just doesn’t have it together on seamless integration lately.
