Data Architecture for Verbal Analogues

The Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus is another thing that makes me wish I had programming know-how to use my information design skills in user-interface stuff. This is a fantastic tool for anyone who is a visual learner with a thing for verbal patterns (i.e., me). Hello, creative tool.

Inspiration: Minimalist Wikipedia Banner

I looked something up on Wikipedia today only to be immediately confronted with a Wiki rarity: a banner ad. Oddly enough, it wasn't intrusive. In fact, it's well designed, maddeningly so considering how little work probably went into it. Granted Helvetica font face promotes itself, being one of the easiest faces ever to read and utilize. Even so, the colorful photo with the grizzled looking mug just got my attention without revolting it away again the way most banners do. There is something to be said for the way the text runs left to right, terminating in Wales's name and pointing the viewer's eye right to his plaintive yet confident expression in what looks like an innovative working environment, albeit of nebulous nature.

The point of the banner is to drum up donations to support the unwieldy user-supported behemoth Wikipedia, founded by Jimmy Wales.

I've mentioned before that I love bands like Spoon, who use minimalism to great effect in their particular creative discipline. I will try to share more examples of "less is more" in the future. That phrase, as an ethic and aesthetic, greatly accounts for the poignance of some of my favorite art, and motivates some of my own work as well.

Inspiration: David Airey's Subscription List

I have been drumming up creative energy for the last couple of weeks, and I have some things I will share soon.

In the meantime, however, I found myself caught in a Twitter riptide today (something that never happens to me, as I am a rather careful swimmer). After clicking, madly and mindless, to follow about eight or twelve different graphic designers' Twitter accounts, I happened across this little gem of a link.

He may have ended his entry title with a preposition, but I am not complaining. I could spend weeks compiling inspiring graphic design portfolios and sites, without achieving this. Good eye David Airey shares his graphic design blog bookmarks.

davidairey.com/design-blogs/

It's not all up my alley. But then, what is?

A Challenge?

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about "forever". The thought of dying and going to a magnificent place that never ever ends is mind blowing. However, it is so hard to even begin to conceive. No amount of straining will bring you any closing to grasping it. Much like writing, two great tumblers must align. First, you must randomly happen into the proper state of mind, and then the thought must cross your mind.

You can say the words "eternity" or "infinite" all day and it won't bring you any closer. So my challenge is, in the coming days, just try to keep forever in the back of your head through your day to day activities. At least a time or two you will draw it into your conscious mind and be completely in awe.

This is not to say that I or any other human being can comprehend eternal life, but we can begin to have an inkling of an idea, and even that is a very overwhelming experience. It makes me feel very small and extremely thankful.

The Daily Drop-Cap

orry to drop such a simple post on you, but I found something delightful. I was looking for drop-caps (y'know, the big fancy letters at the beginning of classical or industrial text blocks) and I discovered that someone out there is daily meeting this need. The results are beautiful. I recommend giving their site a visit.

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{dailydropcap.com}

From Gabe: A Tortoise Housekeeping Issue

Dear members of The Tortoise Initiative,

A continuing dilemma has arisen from the fact that this blog publishes to our individual online profiles. Click here for an example. You'll note that once our feed is published to outside sources, (no doubt a good thing) there is no way to tell which of us authored which post. The dilemma is then whether to allow the ambiguity to continue, or to manually delete posts from sites such as Google when they republish there.

But the dichotomy is false, in that it can be circumvented, as Ali has been doing, tagging her titles "From Ali." This is both a quaint and efficient way of addressing the problem, and I propose we all do the same. Title your posts with a "From," adding each your own name and a hardy subtitle set off by the punctuation-mark colon, as I have demonstrated in this post's title, from here on out. I recognize this demotes our flowery titles to subtitles of a dull series, but such is the cost of greatness, gentlemen and lady.

Just to keep this inspirational on some level, I will add that in my rather fruitless momentary attempt to look into the proper use and history of the colon, I inadvertently caused this timeline [link] to come into existence. As a communications designer and an old soul, I am instantly stopped in my tracks, a child who has found a minutely life-changing new toy. Trivia and distractions abound, branching off in thousands of directions, all neatly arranged for the eye while expansive enough for the curious mind. Enjoy.

Inspiration: "Yr Cherry Bomb" Vid & Double Triple

I know it's old, but I just love this stuff - the music and the visuals. I think it's a remarkable, even textbook example of design synthesis with sound instead of text. The album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, from whence this single comes, was released in 2007.



Yet another incredible work by the ever impressive Double Triple. Looking at their design website makes me pretty much mad with design jealousy. Exception: I already had the minimalistic thumbnail concept drawn up for my own site before I saw theirs. Don't let me pat myself on the back for simple ideas anyone could have conceived. Also, can anyone tell yet, that I am a sucker for bright colors? *Looks around furtively.*

Graphic Design Whim: Musician Crushes

Inspiration

Shopping for shampoo and picking up a prescription for back pain at the local drug store last week, I heard a song by the Dodos over the loudspeakers. It was "Fables," a song I think is somewhat catchy, but I couldn't remember that it was in fact the Dodos who wrote it. In fact, trying to recall the artist was giving me fits of discomfiture. This distraction set me up perfectly to heed the pharmacy background music when the next song came on. As the first bars floated down over the mouthwash and toothpaste aisle, I was ready to lump it away in one of several despicable lite rock of top-40 pop categories. This is my usual way of coping with otherwise unbearably insipid ambient shopping music. But instead I found myself lured by cellos and and a woman's alto singing, "I hope you give yourself up too." I texted myself some of the lyrics so I could look it up when I got home. It gave me goosebumps and I found it very attractive. The song was "What Have I Done" by Anna Ternheim, a Swedish recording artist whose music I hadn't previously heard.

Being that I am male, a musician, and an amateur music critic, it only made logical sense that the sounds of beautiful female voices, belying remarkable female minds, encased in winsome female exteriors might cause me some inspiration. It was only a matter of time before said agitation would have me rattling my way back and forth over a computer keyboard in an effort to type my unrequited admiration out into the vastness of the internet. The result is a series of entries that will be published on my blog, in addition to aforesaid "Decade Music" project, entitled "Music Crushes."

Creation

It didn't seem fit for much literary effort, as the concept is more of a back page magazine feature than anything worth much thought. Besides, with a whim, to over-think is to kill. Rather than merely post pastiches of found photography and music video, I wanted some signature touch of my own. I drummed up quick two-step designs that combine fonts and patterns complementing each musician's style or image (or their own album art, if I feel like it). The first one is published as of this morning [link], and features Neko Case and the new favorite number by Ternheim. Next week's entry will feature Basia Bulat and Jenny Owen Youngs. Other artists sure to be mentioned include Leslie Feist, Zooey Deschanel, and Corinne Bailey Rae.

Blog Gets a Flag Facelift

I've started journaling on Blogger again because my life is a mite eventful at the moment; that's why I conceived that blog, "Oh The Times We Have!" in the first place, as a chronicle of events. However, I started that blog before I ever honed my design skills, and blogger's "Rounder" template had really begun to get on my nerves this time around. I was watching Leatherheads while I was designing the new banner and color scheme. Somehow something in the film's convincing reproduction of that 1920s era really crept into the style of my banner.


As a side-note, I do wish young women would more often dress the way Renee Zellweger dressed in that movie. An exception might be given for the bright orange hats. I suppose I wish we fellows all dressed the way Clooney and Krasinski's characters dressed, too. But then, as long as we're discussing personal inspirations and styles, I've always felt a little inexplicably homesick for eras before my time.

As a second side-note, I find it interesting that the publisher's term "flag" isn't defined in disambiguation on Wikipedia. Perhaps that should be rectified. For now, see this page for some common terminology I've learned in class and in the workplace, and to understand my use of "flag" in the title here. Maybe this use of the word is part of a dying nomenclature, but if it is, nobody told me.

KATE MACDOWELL

Elegant but eerie - Kate MacDowell's work reminds me of Pompeii, her concept-creatures arrested in incongruously violent yet serene preservation ...

"idea"

"cuckoo"

"casualty"

"canary"

"bad seed"

one million footnotes

A daily pre-twitter conceived blog, each entry a single line, described by the author as:

"Footnotes to a nonexistent book, a series of observations, a novel without the plot, the autobiography of an imagination, linked poetry of the everyday world, an impossible goal."

Excerpts:





"He considered the varieties of vanilla ice cream he could buy and wondered if the closer something was to nothing the more variety it encompassed. "






"A long enough hug, and the heat moved between them. "






"He spilled the pencils like ink all over the page. "






"It had been forty years since he'd seen a live raccoon cross a road, and this one wasn't attached to a leash. "