30.5.07

TADA!

Like-Love is up!
You're thrilled. I know. I know. But contain yourself. Focus.

I will be adding two more projects of the next month or so. This is the first time I have moved off the Flash time line based training wheels of web site making. Please let me know if you find spelling or any other sort of errors but don't let me know if you like pink better than green. cheers!

Thanks to
Bean for the help! I didn't even have to ask.

26.5.07

Friday Night Lights

Took a walk last night. I have always admired the way the street lights hit their neighboring trees and have been threatening to shoot them for years now. It was not an empty threat!

24.5.07

Together We Can Fight the Nothing

1/2 of my spam for the week

22.5.07

Good Read

Bruno Munari. Brunari for some of you.
"Simple is never easy when the result must be quality."-Gina Kay

21.5.07

W.B. Yeats on the Sopranos Last Night

"The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity"

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

-W.B. Yeats "The Second Coming"

Thanks James

And if you are looking for something to wiki, the entry for this poem is excellent.

& Thanks Jeannius

- ..............COLOR/BRIGHTNESS..............+

So I have a pantone book that gives the hex formula. More importantly it hightlights the most vivid colors for for web(hex formula). Usually when I am choosing colors for a print piece, I take the PANTONE book to the window to view. The natural light reveals the actually color intented. I wonder, now, how much this matters. How many people are going to pull your business card out to call you while they are outside versus inside...with flourecent lighting to boot?! Not many.
Anyway, I almost took the PANTONE color bridge coated™ book over to the window. Silly me. I mean, some of you probably get a little natural light in your work space but I am guessing that for most of you its a least a mix.
The bottom line is that there is no certainty in web colors. Everyones got different monitors, different resolutions settings and different lighting sources.
This really bothers me because I love color and I want to control it to some extent. Even if you don't like my chosen colors, I'd like to know that you don't like the exact colors that I chose. That way we can be sure that you have bad taste ;)

Anyway, I watched Eraserhead by David Lynch this weekend. The DVD guides you through television brightness and contrast corrections before you even get to the menu. I loved this and followed the instructions to a T. It was very much like calibrating your monitor under Mac supervision. Brightness turned all the way down. Max contrast. Bring brightness back up until you can "barely see" the provided image on screen.

Plants & Weekend

The little sprouts are basil... I think. I don't know what the tall one is.This weekend was fairly relaxing. I will be posting the fruits of my labor soon. Otherwise, I took it easy.

Giglio Boys

For those of you who don't know about the Giglio Boy estate, allow me to explain. This is their club house is near my subway stop in Brooklyn. The house itself looks Floridian and the inside, my peek into the foyer at least, is hunter green with sport memorabilia and framed photos on the walls.
The men sit outside with their lawn chairs on the sidewalk during the summer and smoke cigars. They are always polite and sound just like the characters on the Sapronos.
Every holiday they decorate. I mean, they really go all out. Its pretty impressive.
I walked by this morning and saw this:
You guyyyyys *shaking my head*

18.5.07

Blueberry Nights & Twin Peaks

Wong Kar-wai, the Hong Kong director who was president of the jury at the 2006 festival, opened this year’s event with “My Blueberry Nights,” a romantic confection that begins with a lingering shot of vanilla ice cream melting into the gooey filling of a blueberry pie. -New York Times

I love a Wong Kar-wai film. The costums. The lighting. The long looks. Like David Lynch or Peter Greenaway, his film are drenched in a sensation, leaving the story line free from restraints of the typical and overstated methods.
Sherilyn Fenn as Donna Hayward in Twin Peaks

Rachel Weisz stars in Wong Kar-Wai's "My Blueberry Nights

I appreciatethe portrayal of women by the 3 said directors. They are bizarre, unapologetic, seductive....I could go on with the adjectives but I won't. The bottoms line here is that, as you see above, the styling is not so different. Stunning.

I should mention that this is Kar-wai's first Engllish-language film and its NYT review was not so hot. I will see for myself.




I Will Trade You

2 cats...Don't be fooled. That is the look of shame not cuteness.
....for a vacuum cleaner

Radio Waves

17.5.07

Best. Blog. Ever.

Reference Library.
I want to repost everything I see on there and tell you how interesting I think it is but that is quite lame. Andy has a mighty culling power that is of its own. Respect.

15.5.07

A Toy Of Typography

Delightful. This is true design. Functional. Elegant.
Dainippon Type Organization makes letter fragments that construct both English and Japanese letter forms.

Thanks to Libby via Everyone Forever via Design Tide

I've Got Some Bad News

The kitties knocked over the mint and lavender seedlings this morning.
*sigh*

14.5.07

Plants!

O-0-0-kA-a-aeee, they are starting to poke through. I had to plant more thyme and basil because the original sprouts didn't take. A week or so ago I threw in some caraway seeds and sweet potato spuds. So now I really don't know what's what in all the pots. I guess we will just have to wait to find out!

I do know that this is mint.















... and this is chives.


















An old and very silly man used to tell me that there is no "try" there is only "do"

It is this truism, and countless others, that I base my life upon.
For instance, yesterday I did not try to make a large pot for my friend's birthday.
I did, however, make.... this:
















The tiny hanging pot which now contains caraway seeds survived.






















Speaking of doing, Kristan Horton just finished a series of photographs called Dr. Stangelove Dr. Strangelove. He watch the Kubric movie over 700 times before completing the project, where he recreates scenes from the movie using everyday materials.





























The radar stove is my favorite but they are all so good.... no wait! ok. its the popcorn explosion. Found out about this via The Morning News.

11.5.07

Dress Me In Polish Interpretation And Call Me Interesting

So if I haven't mentioned this already,
Hollywood gets on my nerves for two reasons.

  • Why do we(society) make such a big deal over actors, actresses and athletes? I mean, yes, they are fun and amazing at times but really... they are not making discoveries or saving lives or teaching the future about making discoveries or saving lives. Look I know that I am not either, but my point is that there is a lack of balance in our idolizing that is a little concerning.
  • Hating Hollywood is my laziness cover-up. I can't freakin' keep up. I can't remember all their names and hairstyles. Oh... the skinny girl in the photo where she's holding the latte. She is the one in that movie where she falls in love with that hot guy and there is that funny scene where everything goes wrong. Oh right. that girl...
To the point! You can imagine my satisfaction when I saw these Polish posters for well know Hollywood films. There is no corporate bs and no air brushed acting people... there is also little reference to the movies themselves. Amusing and indulgent for the poster's designer:



















































from left to right, top to bottom:
Godzilla, Gremlins, Greystroke, Howard the Duck, Cabaret, Rosemary's Baby, Weekend at Bernie's and Young Guns

This poster for the Muppets Do Hollywood is so Gonzo! It looks like a Ralph Steadman illustration in Macromedia Flash(sorry about the comp. program reference. Flash produces a certain look to illustrations..)
There should be another muppet movie called Gonzo does Gonzo.

Thanks to Hyun for the heads up.

10.5.07

Painting By Letters

I really enjoying seeing work that blurs the line between art and design(typography).

On Kawara.
Diligent, Good craft. I admire that.


















Ed Ruscha. The poet painter of pop art. My favorite of his typography is the style below found in Lisp. You can see a few more here.
And my new crush...
Tauba Auerbach.
She is nothing short of amazing.

I just lifted the following from here:
Tauba Auerbach’s work deals with the shortcomings and possibilities of language. Her work approaches language as a technology, a system of symbols by which the internal complexities of a person’s mind, body and general self are converted into an external, transmittable form. Implied in her work is the notion that this conversion process is inexact. Her focus on language is a focus on the space between individuals, the gap they attempt to cross to meet one another intellectually and emotionally, and the nature of the tools they use to do so. Her analysis includes a substantive examination of words, and a deep formal meditation on individual letters. “I feel as though I know each letter intimately—its shortcomings and its tendencies. I feel close to them.” Overall, her work attempts to present a more complicated and flexible version of reality than language customarily allows. In her first ever solo show, Auerbach’s musings on language and letters will take the form of large-scale, ink on paper drawings, as well as a chandelier and wall painting in the gallery’s smaller project space.
Twenty-three year old Auerbach lives in San Francisco and works as a sign painter. While she is a native to the Bay Area, her work represents a break from the Mission School with its sparse precision and a clean, Zen-like quality that sets her apart from the rest.