10 Things that Make me Happy

As many of you are aware, the Doctor is always happy. If you want to always be happy, here's what I prescribe:

1. Cartoons
They're colourful, imaginative, emotive, distinct and wide ranging. Basically, better than real life.

2. Food
We have built an entire culture around food, which is weird cause people look stupid when they eat. If we're willing to look like idiots in front of other people it MUST be big. So eat good food often.

3. Video Games
Video games are the ultimate medium, a fully engaging enviroment controlled by the viewer. Video games are the future, no question.

4. Chemicals
Yay yay yay, shut up. I'm not saying its good, so calm down, I'm just saying its fun and relaxing.

5. Music
Playing or listening, few things are emotionally connected as music.

6. Sleep
There is nothing more refreshing, and satisfying than a good nights rest on a comfy bed.

7. Breaking Stuff
The best way to learn about something is to screw it up it, then try to fix it. And I love learning about stuff, which brings us to the next point

8. Learning about Stuff
Every time I learn something new I become slightly more useful, more preparred.

9. Arguing
Some people throw hands, I throw words. An argument is the pureist form of logic. Two competing ideals clashing on nothing but the merit of their philosophies. Now THATS a fight

10. Mindset
What makes me happy? My mindset. I understand that the only real purpose in life is to derive as much joy as I can from it. Once you accept this, it easier to say to yourself "Don't worry, be happy".

A List of What I've Learned

Thumbnails always make everything better

Illustrator the artist in the family, In Design is the accountant ... Photoshop is the retarded cousin

Bad people do good work, Good people do bad work

There's no such thing as perfect design

I don't know dick-all ... except that I don't know dick-all

Authority figures are just as flawed as me

The earth is well rounded, it's pretty much the only thing

More of a Greeny Black

I'd like to share with you one of the single best ad campaigns in history. Not a Macintosh, Guinness, the beer company. Guinness made St. Patricks Day their ad campaign.

Serious man, silly hat. Guinness has literally monopolized Guinness. Bars of all varieties ship in kegs of Guinness just for the occassion. "Green Beer" means Guinness. Many campaigns have followed, they failed, but the original is still alive. People still demand Guinness on that drinkinest of days. And who can forget the Guinness book of World Records? When Guinness gets it right, they hit house-hold name status, like Kleenex or Q-Tips.

Max is the Rabbit

Every designer should at some point read Sam and Max: Surfin' the Highway by Steve Purcell. Many of you may remember the cartoon show, and some of you may remember the cult Lucas Arts adventure game Sam and Max Hit the Road. Well, this is where it all started. Surfin' is the entire collected comic works, all hand painted by Steve Purcell. The comics are bright, vibrant, carefully weighted and laid out with interesting elements, cartoonish exaggeration, and smack fulla style. Here Are Some Samples.

Steve Purcell is a classically trained illustrator and painter. His works, while light hearted and cartoony, are masterpieces of colour and design. I urge anyone with a passion for cartoons to buy this book.

Now here's a little something from my personal collection

i

The biggest contribution from Macintosh to the design world is simplicity. When those colourful iMacs started tumbling about the screen, a new design movement was born. Nay, a new design rebellion. Tick tock tick tock...

BOOM!

But enough of that. Simplicity, minimalism, ease of use, human interface. Mac gave us a future glossed over with white plastic. The interesting bit is that white plastic is not hip, new evolutions must transpire. Wait and see what comes next.

Blogging with the Devil

The Fender Stratocaster. In my opinion the quintessential guitar. Much like my post on the Charger, this piece appeals to me because it clearly defines a thing. All the intent and potential, the very idea of "Electric Guitar" is summed up in these curvaceous lines.

Form follows function, and Fender follows the rules. The upper arm of the body holds the strap bolt further forward, while still allowing easy access to higher notes. This steadies the guitar better. The cutaway body, a slant cut in where the forearm rests, makes it easy to steady your arm against the body for more precise pick work. The arch in the bottom makes the Stratocaster easy to balance on your leg. Look at the space around where the neck reaches the body. Can't you just see a hand wrapped around there, mashing some insane licks?!

Relax in the Sity

up of slices that extends along several poles to fill the area its in. It features organic curves and lines that make a variety of different seats in the one chair, from a chair, to a fainting couch.

I love open ended design like this. The modular nature, and accommodating design are cool, but the fact that its not predefined is what I really love. Its a series of curves, you decide how and where you're going to sit.

And get this, it's called the Sitscape

Design is so much fun

Foot Ball or Füt Bål?

Question. What's the one thing that costs more than US military spending? Advertising on the Super Bowl. And this year's harvest was a tasty one. So just what are the Super Ads trying to tell us?

Most of the ads feature a protagonist being helped by another figure. Many of the ads show this other figure succeed, many show them fail. In several of the ads the helping figure, the master, is the product being advertised. This shows an awareness in the US of the faltering economy, the failing government, and the falling country. Now they're reaching out for help, or more over waiting for it to arrive and solve their problems. The failing masters show a certain level of pessimism.

For example, the Budweiser Ad features a horse being helped by a dog. Cars.com has a man being helped by a witchdoctor, with unexpected results. Career Builder has a series of ads with people unwilling to leave their undesirable position till a helping figure pushes them in the right direction. Whoa, that last one was really telling!

Really more of a Death Krinkle

Paper is dead, it just hasn't accepted that yet. Print in general has dug its inky claws in a bit deeper, but must accept eventuality as well. Many people will argue that the hardcopy will be around forever because it only takes one power-failure to lose everything. To this I say, guess what the "hard" part of "hard drive" means, it's really rather similar to the "hard" part of "hardcopy". It only takes one fire, just as likely as a power outage, to lose all your hard copies. People believe a hardcopy is more reliable that a digital copy because computers are still new and mysterious. Just because you can't recover it doesn't mean it can't be recovered. For quite some time now they've had a machine that can take the plates directly from a hard drive and recover the data, you don't even need the hard drive!

As for print, we've seen it begin to fall. The rising popularity of Digital Picture Frames, big screen Billboards and electronic magazines shows people are already embracing a paper less society, meaning it's only a matter of time till we get a paper-less society.

Divining the Watcha-ma-jigger Box

As an avid video game player (One of the reasons I prefer PCs) I feel it is my duty to justify video games. So, I have made it my quest to find ...

Sexiest Console Design

Sexiest Console Design again, because I didn't want to muck up my pretty title with hyper-links. So without further ado, though I assure you tireless research went into this decision, The WonderSwan Color!

What?! I hear you cry. Bet you didn't see THAT one coming. The WonderSwan (all one word) Color is a tidy little hand held released in Japan in 2000 to compete with the Gameboy, if anyone's heard of that obscure toy. Now lets run down the list. Sleek, minimalist design, years ahead of its time, unique line work unlike anything to date, balanced asymmetrical elements, and to top it all off, an innovative design element:


It can be used sideways. And, might I add, looks just as sleek and unique while doing it. It can be argued that there are better designed consoles, or that this is a handheld, not a console. However the WonderSwan gets extra points for innovation. It was the first to really innovate the control scheme. And is the only console to date to use original design elements with its curvy lines, layered shapes, and heavy asymmetry.

All this makes the WonderSwan Color Sexiest Console in Design

It's all about Time

So, I know your sitting there, thinking "What does the Spin Doctor do when he's not BLOWING MY MIND?!" and I hear these thoughts. So, in my magnanimity, I've decided to grace you with that information. So here is The Spin Doctors Week-O-Graph!Damn, thats kinda sad.

It's like a big Mini

I don't like cars, don't know anything about motors beyond "Gas is flammable". But there is one car I love, the 1969 Dodge Charger RT

The Dodge Charger is a hot rod. Hot rods don't take corners, they don't stick to the road. They're not comfortable, efficient, or well made. They are big, loud, and fast. And no car conveys that image more than the 1969 Dodge Charger. King of the Quarter Mile, hell on wheels, when I rev the engine it should sound like the World is coming to an end.

The Charger, a hatchback style 2-door 4-seater, is 2 tonnes (the Canadian kind) of square steel, and it doesn't hide the fact that it is. Many hot rods act like sports cars, with curvy lines and engines that purr. Not the Charger, it is whole and unabashed about its purpose (wasting gas) and for this fact is my favourite car. No other vehicle so completely embraces its purpose in its design.

Design means Never Having to say Sorry

For me, and isn't that what really matters, design means finding a way to change someone's mind. You don't need to convince a customer to buy something they really want. Design is all about the psychology of changing peoples minds.

This has lots of fun factors, though. For example, if someone thinks you're trying to change their mind, they'll instinctively resist. Some people will interpret your message completely wrong. An ugly design, that people don't like, may be the most effective design. For this reason, design has nothing to do with making things look good. Like the jingle you hate but can't forget.

Remember, the greatest beauty is always a lie

Rhymes with Leopard

I promised something more intuitive than Mac, and that thing is Linux. If you have passed the stage of computer use bordering on complete ineptitude maybe its time to take off your white plastic training wheels and admit that you know what an executable is, and how many mega's fit in a giga. Step up to GNOME or KDE, pick a flavour.

Many Mac fans will argue that Vista is a clear attempt by Micro$oft to be more like Mac, I won't argue this, it's really obvious. And many PC users argue that Mac is trying to be more PC, and admit it, Pentium? Exchangeable hardware? Kinda smells like a PC in here. But let's take it back a step.


Holy Keokuk, was that Windows? No, I think it may have been Mac OS. Or was it, possibly? GNOME? An old version of GNOME? Hmmm, looks kinda familiar. GNOME, and indeed every major flavour (isn't that trendy? They call them "Flavours" is Mac STILL stuck on "Versions"?) of Linux has a sleek, stream lined user interface, with near limitless customization (Have I got the designers attention yet?) and visual options.

And you want "It just works"? How about the most stable operating system to date. Has your Mac ever crashed? I mean ever, even once? Linux can recover from a crash without restarting, because of its structure it has a kind of super-powered Task Manager. This means the most stable operating system to date can't even be slowed down by anything short of a power outage. Or intense system manipulation by trained programmers, which is what it was originally designed for.

So in both the "Interface made for designers" and the "It just works" fields Linux wins. And guess what, you can install it on the m15x from last post. Now THAT is a good designer's computer.

Like going to a candy store and only buying Jujubes

As one of the only defenders of the forgotten PC in the class I feel it is my duty to post a sleek and sexy PC, something cool enough to compete with Mac. And here, ladies and gentlemen, is my offering. The Alienware Area 51 m15x.


Isn't that pretty? In a smooth gunmetal case with minimal ports and buttons cluttering its appearance the m15x from Alienware is super-modern and leaves a strong impression. Not only that, this beast has more power than any Mac book in the class (I will challenge you on that) crammed into a $2000 box. I won't get into the details but needless to say, this is a gaming laptop.

The system has the coordinated, minimalist look so far the domain of Mac, with the sheer powerhouse components of a PC aficionado. No, it isn't perfect, but come on people, there are options other than Mac, it's not the be all and end all, there's always something better.

And yes, that means there is something out there smoother and more intuitive than a Mac, more on that later.

Floppy Compact Disk and other erectile difficulties

Hey kids, today we have an old invention, a floppy disk, but wait ...

It's actually a CD! Cool!



This excessive waste of technology and resources is exactly why I love design. A few months ago Black was the new Black, I made alot of jokes that day, but now Old is the new Black. And these disks are so very black, with a variety of label colours available.

Sometimes you Wanna Go Where Everybody has Taken a Life

A classic of cinematographic mastery, Oliver Stones controversial opus Natural Born Killers was filmed and cut with the speed and fury of a jet engine hitting a bird. The film has a cuts per minute equal to a Pantera music video. It has revolutionary colour use to identify and foretell story elements. And most importantly of all, Woody God-Damn Herralson.



It was originally supposed to be Michael Madson, but they said he was too crazy. Well, the tame, innocent Woody showed us all that he would wear Madsons face as a strange mask given half a chance. Woody's performance as an unstable psychopath is immaculate, amplified by his childish looks and innocent patina.

A classic of colour and design, the manic tempo never lets up till the end montage. Love it or hate it, there is nothing quite like Natural Born Killers.

Fist Full of Peanuts

While I'm not a big fan of Peanuts, I do love the old fixed panel comics from the newspapers, which where practically invented by Charles Schulz. So today, I present this entry on the fundamental design elements of Snoopy.

And his lil' buddy Woodstock. Snoopy has a fantastically simple and elegant design. His weighted ears and nose help to balance his face, bordered with a smooth curve that brings the eye up over his head and down his nose. The simple cross hatching on his feet create enough noise with the dirt to partially frame the panel without drawing attention. The heavy variation in the line work gives all the shading and depth the image needs.

Woodstock, the small yellow bird, being much smaller has reduced detail to maintain an even weighting. Notice again his foot detail generates background noise to fill in detail without dominating the image.

Plus he sleeps on his dog house, which is funny.

How do you Define Art Deco?

Ever had a conversation with not-artsy person about art? Ever sound like this?

"It's got a strong Art Deco influence" "What's Art Deco?"

Being a big fan of Art Deco I've run into this question alot. And it's an annoying one because how do you define style? Well, luckily 77 years ago someone decided to build a 102 story tall answer to just that question.



The Empire State Building. The coolest building ever. The only building so smooth, Sammy Davis Jr. was once reported to have said "Wow, that's smooth!" about it. And, my favourite example of design.

The empire state building is the very definition of Art Deco. It's vertical lines, geometric elements, triangles and trapezoids all reek of class and 3 piece pin strip suit.

Let's do the Time-Warp Level Again

Well hello plebians. Today I bring you an offering in the shape of Portal, the latest sleeper hit from Valve Software.
Pictured above is the adorable Weighted Companion Cube, unofficial mascot for Portal. Portal features the innovative game mechanic of portals, doorways that allow a player to move from one point to another instantly. The beauty of the game is its simple and elegant design.

You can make two portals with a portal gun, one with the left mouse button, one with the right. One is blue, the other is orange. They stick to white walls, they don't stick to black walls. That's it, that's everything. The elegant and consistent visuals make the game so intuitive and automatic you can focus on understanding the peculiar concept of bending space and time.

Not to mention the gun turrets look like Mac products. Heh heh, iTurret.

The Ways of Dan

Mr. Mitchell is a man who wears his opinions on his head ... literally. The most defining factor of Dan's communication is his trademark toque. The black knit cap emblazoned with the red "Slayer" logo. This toque proudly proclaims Dan as a metal head.

This gets pulled over into his sound. The anthem of the man from Dan is obviously Rock-them but is this really a part of his dialogue? The Dannster has his background music in tow with enough regularity it has become a part of his communication, whether intended or not. I can't actually imagine what Dan sounds like without a bromdignagian git-tar solo in the background.

Which brings us finally to the gesticulation. Danery can't talk without his hands. Though his gestures vague and general, he can't explain without them. I've seen him gesticulate for hours without tiring.

Perfectly unoriginal

Oh my god, guys, oh my god. If you've ever used live-trace, and I know you've used live-trace, then you know it sucks. Artifacting and low resolutions leave little jagged points all over the place.

Not anymore. A research group at Stanford University has created an AI for the purpose of converting images into vector elements. Think of it as an intelligent live-trace.

With more precise settings and alot more processing time this site can spit out fantastic vector conversions. No jagged edges, smooth curves around the dirtiest resolutions.

Tomer Hanuka, and other forign swear words

I recently found the work of a comic artist named Tomer Hanuka in a copy of Juxtapoz (Cover, Jan 08) and was quite struck by it.

His surprising colour choices are always striking. He does all his line work with a brush and ink, you can see the benefits of this in all his work. His simple line work belies the amount of information conveyed by its heavy variation.

He then scans his work and does the colour digitally. The colour is something in and of itself dramatic and unconventional. Cell is one of my favourtie pieces, it uses bright, cotton candy colours to show a zombie rampage. The odd dichotomy is fun.