Design on the Cross

I complain about religion alot. I would argue it is one of the most destructive forces in our modern society, but thats not what this blog is about. This blog is about the cross. Seriously, what the hell?

Why do christians insist on using one of the most horrible, gruesome and violent actions AGAINST their religion as the very icon they stand under? Okay, I'm Christ, sitting at the right hand of God in heaven. People are praying to me, but wait, their surrounded by the very thing that brought me pain, missery and death. Just a few bad memories tied to that, and I would hope my dad feels the same way (and considering the holy trinity, thats pretty likely).

And its not like theirs a lack of imagery in that religion either. Here's a painting of baby Jesus.

Why not a wheel? Lots of people got tortured and killed on those. Or, heres an idea, how about something with positive conotations? If anyone else tried to make a symbol of pain and dismemberment a publicly used icon they'd be burned at the stake

Hmm, stake ...

Unlock Someone Elses Future

If your not quite sure what your looking at, its a set of lock picks. A set of real, functional lock picks. Its also a business card. Clever? yes, unique? you bet, legal? well honestly, I don't know. Its really hard to buy lock picks if your not a locksmith, which is what makes this little piece interesting. It has 4 metal picks and a tension bar that snap out of its little frame. This little card contains everything, except a working knowledge, needed to get through any standard door lock. Craig said design is a risk, well, here it is.

iWatch 2.0

Taking the minimalist iPod approach to an extreme, we have with us today the i/o Watch.


This is a white plastic watch with the time displayed in red dots on its surface. No interface, no buttons, no exposed anything. There isn't even a place to put the battery. The only problem is actually wearing it would ruin its mystic and presence. Very cool.

Natural Conclusion

I like spiders, they're helpful little arachnids that keep our homes free from pests, stay out of the way, and can be quite cute.

I also like scissors, the wonderful surgical look of a big pair of steel scissors is as classic and iconographic as a fire hydrant, or a toilet.

So logically, I like this


Its a spider, made out of bits of scissors. I don't often put art on here, but this fella, with no prectical application, has such a distinctly menacing verve to him I had to post it. He's sharp, and dangerous, but can be quite helpful if respected. Just like scissors. Just like a spider.

This, however, is Similar to a Musket

Another amusing video for your infotainment. This one was made by no one.

This Isn't a Musket Either

On a design unrelated note, check out these guys.



They're a comedy troupe called "Those Arn't Muskets". There stuff is clever and fresh, and delivers some of the best one-liners I've heard in a long time.

Design is Risk and Swearing

Because Craig can't get enough good publicity for his design is piece, I'm gonna mention it. A month long guerrilla campaign raising awareness for dangerous ideas? BRILLIANT! Worthy of expletive, so here it is, the only occurrence of the word in my entire blog, because Craig is just that good. Fucking brilliant!

The amount of time and effort that went into organizing, and delivering that piece is staggering.

An entire fake report for hand in day? Yes. Numerous co-conspirators to deliver your pieces? Naturally. An alternate project to deflect suspicion? Why not. A POEM?! Well god-damn if he didn't!

Many projects convinced me of the creators "Design is ..." statment, but only Craigs proved it to me. Truley, design IS risk!

Cooking Never Looked so Sexy

Now THIS is a sexy stove


The iZona Cook Surface is the iPod equivalent of a stove. It doesn't have any numbers. Turn the dial and the little red indicator lights up, more red means more hot. The truley universal interface has no characters on it at all. It relies on concept of "a big dial on a stove" being pretty universal in its meaning.

Footcycle

I want one.
It serves no purpose, its awkward and ugly, and thank god theres only 1 in the world. But I still want one.

Macin v. Micro

Hey check this out. It acurately sums up the difference between M$ campaigns and Mac campaigns.

The Living Tetris didn't Work as Well as Expected

BWAHAHAHA ha ha, a-heh heh, aah

AAAAHAHAHAHa ha

But seriously. No, on second thought, there is nothing serious about this.

Life Through 342 UC lenses

Pantone has released a series of sun glasses. The lenses are tinted with Pantone colours. This serves no real purpose, but it lets us designers act like slightly bigger design nerds. WOOO, Pantone 122 un-COATED, YEAH!

Just a Bite

My mother doesn't have a sweet tooth, neither do I particularly. Whenever we have cake, pie, tart, flan, squares or anything else of the type she'll ask for "just a bite". A small slice for the taste, but not a real dessert. Which is why this piece caught my eye.

Its a cake pan with pre-sized slices in a variety of sizes. This is quite a clever design, as different people eat different amounts. Its about time someone got around to figuring that out!

Pity these Fools

To celebrate April Fools day, we're going to look at some of the worst advertising and PR attrocities that cost millions.
1. Killing Napster
In 2001 the RIAA (The Music Industry) killed Napster, and signed their own death warrant. No company, in the history of business, has managed to so blindly over look TRILLIONS in revenue. Napster represented throngs of savvy young music consumers with dispossable income and a desire for music in an exciting new format. No, "represented" is the wrong word. Napster WAS throngs of young consumers. Ignorance made them sue Napster, but thats nothing compared to the level of stupidity required to sue your own gawdamn consumers. "If I sue them for millions over the music they download, surly they'll see the light and start buying our records again".

2. Vista
In an attempt to compete with the user friendly Leopard and Linux OS, two very easy, intuitive OS's, Microsoft released Vista, an OS that requires a computer sciences degree to operate ... late. Vista is a good OS, its just not good for the end user. Out of the box Vista expects people to have an indepth understanding of execution variables, multi-layered interfaces, runtime commands and windows quick keys. Packaged with an interface that rivals Quark. Whats worse, it was released late and imcomplete. How late? Just after Christmas late. Just after biggest buying season of the year late. Man, thats just tiny and flimsy ... wait a minute, micro, soft, hey I just got it!

3. Candidate Wal-Mart
Because I had to get at least 1 actual campaign in here. Candidate Wal-Mart was the single biggest ad campaign Wal-Mart ever embarked on, and the single biggest hit to their sales since ... you know what, any stupid comment I could come up with would just undermine the vast failure of this campaign. For those of us in Canada, who may not know what the CWM campaign was, let me explain. Edelman made for Wal-Mart a series of ads that portrayed their lovable smiley face as a presidential candidate. He espoused the benefits of having a Wal-Mart in your neighborhood. He wore a suit. He was hated by all. Wal-Mart spent millions on this campaign, and lost millions because of it, making it one of the biggest PR screw ups of all time.

Well, that was depressing, maybe the rest of April will go better

My Creativity and My Education

Creatducation

Its a well documented fact that intelligence is the single stupidest thing ever. And there's no question that the vast majority of my education ground the ever-lovin' originality out of me. So how did I turn out to be the sweet, sophisticated doctor we all know and love?

This is a tale that starts in kindergarten.

Way back in the day I was a very quiet, relinquished lad. Content to be brilliant and under spoken. We had this thing at the school called "Friday Friday" during which we would all assemble in the main hall, sing the national anthem, see a few presentations from teachers and students and hand out or receive any giant checks from the week. This was always MC'd by a student, and always with the exact same script. EXACT SAME as in it was typed up, printed out, and held durring the assembly.

More on that later.

I had this teacher, her name was Ms. Malcomson. She was as tall as she was wide, and she was frankly quite abrasive. But she cared deeply about the kids. One day, presumably after I had done something quite sheepish, she said to me "You only go through life once, so have as much fun as you can" or something like that, I don't remember, I was 4. Anyway, the next week I hosted Friday Friday and, for the first time in school history, I used a different script. I did a spoof of "Good morning Vietnam". It was really cool.

That was the start of my interest in the creative side of life. After that I took cartooning classes, took up guitar, took art courses, took acting courses, and eventually went to Humber. What a long strange journey it's been.

Kill a Chicken Before it Kills You

I know we're supposed to put things we like here, and thats what I intended to do. While searching for some clever ads I came across this ad from Peta:Check it out at big size to see my complaints. The reason I'm putting this here is because on their website next to this very ad Peta states this ad was designed by "the award-winning Mudra Communications Limited, one of India's biggest advertising agencies". Sigh.

Okay, I don't like Peta, you may go so far as to say I hate Peta, for reasons I won't hyper-link to in this blog post ... oops. Anyway, the ad itself is the laziest excuse for a Photoshop job I've ever seen released from India's biggest advertising agency. Look at that chicken, did they find it on Google? I'm at least glad to see they didn't waste any money on a copy writer at least.

Design Power

Design is a Six Letter Word

So, we're designers, we have the power to shape public perceptions. Let me start over. So, we're designers, we TELL PEOPLE WHAT TO THINK, LITERALLY. Everyone is influenced by advertising. I'm sure we've all met someone who thinks they're above advertising, maybe they don't watch TV, or maybe they think they're above all them sub-liminals. These people are more effected by advertising than anyone else. Hell, I make adverts and I know I'm affeceted by advertising. So what do we do with this vast psychomological power? Well, I sell education. Now, our current education system isn't perfect. But its a damn sight better than naught. With just a little education we could half the crime rate, improve the economy, bring about more public interest in international affairs, and by association, help end war and poverty.

Found Him

I love commercial art, the kind of stuff Warhol pioneered. Taking a commercially recognized sales element and making it into art has so much potential for commentary. So here we go, Waldo, big.

My Compliments

I am lax to write this, because I know I'll never hear the end of it from his smarmy Mennonite ass, but I think the best designer in our class is hands down, Cornelius "Corn-Dog" Quiring.

No person in the class has submited, with such consistency, stellar work. Just recently this point was driven home when Cornelious presented a less than stellar package piece. He received alot of flack for that one, despite the fact that it was a project any of us would be happy to submit.

Feeding the Internet

Hey, does anyone know what this means?Its the Web Feed icon. And guess what? It's royalty free. Check it out, you can find icon packs of it online, literally you can use this wonderful little icon whenever and however you want. It was originally created by Mozilla, the people who made the browser your currently using, and released, for free, onto the internet. And my god, did it catch on. How many campaigns can you think of that use the imagery of this new cultural icon? Here's a big one.

But our little tale of righteous revelry doesn't end there. Why did Mozilla do this? With the internet being a patchwork cloth of creators nothings been universal since html, and even that's not particularly common. So Mozilla thought, very foresight-fully, that they wouldn't be around for ever, but this nifty little feed technology just might catch on. So they gave it an icon as open as the internet.

My Manifesto

The Manliest of Festo's

So, you wish to peer into the life rules of the Spin Doctor? Very well, I present to you the Spinifesto, in convenient little quotables. Feel free to quote.

1 - The Purpose of Life is Happiness
All life eventually leads to death. This fact negates any benefit from long term actions, as in the longest term your still dead. So, live in the moment to find purpose, find enjoyment in that moment to have made it worth living.

2 - The Universe is Really Very Big
Ever think you meant anything? You don't. At the end of the day (ed. world) complete global genocide doesn't have the slightest effect on 99.9999999999999999% of the known universe, or any of the unknown universe. All our piddling little global crises don't really matter when you think about it.

3 - Stress is the Deadliest Virus of our Time
Being relaxed, and content is the healthiest thing you can do. It lowers blood pressure, fights diabetes, decreases the risk of stroke, cancer, obesity, ulcers and gum infections, and prevents virtually every psychological disorder in the book (and all their associated psychosomatic effects). So make time to relax, everyday. All day whenever possible.

4 - Lose the Cause, Find the Solution
Any problem is a problem regardless of the source. Finding the cause won't remedy it, so focus on finding the solution. And don't ever say "My bad". First off, that's syntactically flawed. Second, if your in a situation where you are compelled to say "My bad" chances are everyone already knows it's your fault, stating that is just a waste of time.

5 - Forethought is God
Did you screw up last time? Expect to screw up again. In fact, plan to. Life is much easier when your prepared for inevitable consequences.

6 - Think, then Speak
Always state a sentence in your mind before you let it slip out. You'll sound more intelligent, shoot yourself in the foot less, and leave fewer holes in your arguments.

7 - Nothing is "just"
Nothing, in the history of things, has been found to simply be the way it is, so it's really unlikely that things are gonna start doing that now. The sky isn't just blue, it refracts light across it separating out the blue colour from the spectrum. The worst offence of this logical misstep is the syntactic suffix "...is just wrong". People love to explain away something they don't approve of as quite simply, in and of itself, not good. Wrong, right, or indifferent, nothing simply is.

8 - Logic, above All Else
I speak very plainly. Many of you may question this, as I use alot of big words, but I choose my words carefully. Using the word I know that most closely fits my intended meaning. So when I say logic above all else, I mean just that. Logic, action/reaction, effects and variables, above all, everything, religion, society, law. If something doesn't make sense, than it doesn't make sense. Never accept something just because your told so.

What Design Work would I Refuse

When to not Make Money

There aren't a heck of alot of jobs I would consider refusing. Embarrassing feminine hygiene product? I live in Toronto, takes alot to embarrass me. Self damaging addiction? Hard to get addicted if you never started. Extreme socio-political ideas? Governments too ineffective to achieve anything.

About the only thing that would cause me to turn down a job is if it would make me look bad. This could happen if the client already knows exactly what they want, if association with the client would be damaging. This, of course, must be decided on a situation by situation basis.

Finally, I'd refuse to work with anyone who really stresses me out, stress kills you know, and being angry and tense is a waste of perfectly good living time.

Writing is Design

Writing is a Four Letter Word


Is writing design? To an extent, certainly. On the design end of the spectrum control over our copy lets us pick letterforms that work particularly well, and we can craft blocks of body copy that have the perfect paragraph to paragraph rhythm, without any rivers or valleys.

From the more literary standpoint, wording in an ad needs to be pointed, poignant, and carfully thought out so as to ensure one clear, unified message, just like any visual ad work. And we are certainly wordsmiths when we present our work. We have to be engaging, unique and compelling.

However, good design also demands good design. It takes a visual mind to choose the right font to make someone stop and read the copy.

To that extent I will say writing is design, but design isn't writing. You'd think it would work both ways but it doesn't.

AICA

So, the graphic design contest has come and gone. What does the Spin Doctor think? It was, for lack of a better adjective, American. Very, very American. From the garish yellow and black colour scheme, to the overly bouncy synth theme song, to the excessivly oily host, American. Everything was such a needless spectacle.

As for the design work of the contestants, I was more impressed the further it went. The first pieces, the logos, where mediocre. The packages showed more ... creativity. But by the time they allowed the contestants to open up fully on the "Vote" campaign we saw some real originality. The aggressive "Except You" campaign showed smart and creative type work.

Are Designers Obliged to do Pro Bono Work?

How to Not Make Money

Short answer, no. As designers we don't owe anything to anyone. We are trading design work for money, that should be the extent of our business. We aren't getting paid to do nothing, there isn't any outstanding debt at the end of the transaction. No remainder means no free work.

However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do pro bono work. Its often practical or useful. And I will certainly not deny that the privileged life we lead generates some "outstanding debt" owed to the poor and needy. This isn't because we're designers, though, thats just the currency we use.