Logo envy...

...thanks to Monterey Bay, California.I've always, always liked the Monterey Bay Aquarium logo, but what I discovered on this trip was that the aquarium is actually in what used to be canneries on Cannary Row of Steinbeck fame and that the city's logo for Cannary Row is adorable. Yes, that's a sardine key, folks!

random thoughts

I recently had a conversation with a couple of people about art school, which has caused me to be rather reflective on the whole experience this week. I can't help but think that while art school really opened my eyes to new and fascinating types of art and really improved my thinking about it, it sure did make me completely neurotic about painting. The thought of ending my 'lapse' from the art world and to start painting again strikes a deep chord of fear in my heart. I don't think art school was a healthy place for me to be in my early 20s, too many overblown, fragile egos competing against one another. And I include the faculty in this assessment.

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I tried to explain cost disease during the same discussion and failed miserably. I failed miserably not only because I was constantly being interrupted but I just explained key concepts of the theory entirely wrong! I need to go back and hit the books again.

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From a graphic design standpoint, scrapbookers have it all wrong. I think I've harped on this before. When displaying artwork or photographs, you want to set up the page to present the artwork without distraction, that means everything else on the page is minimized. The best graphic design is invisible. Well, that's a good general rule of thumb, there are exceptions. Scrapbooking is not one of those exceptions.

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I recently read this article from the Chronicle of Philanthropy email newsletter:

Downturn Spurs New Offerings at Museums

Lean economic times have museums experimenting with creative strategies for getting people through the doors, The New York Times reports as part of a special section of museum stories.

Yoga nights at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a get-together for cyclists at UCLA’s Hammer Museum are among the nontraditional offerings as major museums seek new audiences amid declining endowments, donations, and sales.

“We can’t just be about art anymore,” the Hammer Museum’s director, Ann Philbin, said. “Museums are the new community centers.”

Now, it's the last quote that bothers me. I can understand the problem that museums are facing, but at least we can tie the new community events into the mission of preserving and presenting art somehow, can't we? That statement belies an implicit attitude that art just isn't important anymore. Doesn't seem that much of a stretch (no pun intended) to link the spiritual aspects of yoga to the aesthetic sensibilities of artwork, but to completely downplay the role of artwork entirely... can we say mission drift?

If museums want to be community centers, where's the free wireless, yo?

Paula Scher always inspires me.

This video is about 20 minutes long, so be sure to start it when you can settle in for awhile, but it's well worth it.

What I really love about her message here is that creativity is not linked to money. Business people always seem to want to purchase creativity dollar for dollar, but it doesn't work that way. It's driven by more ephemeral things, and can't be pinned down.

bulldogs on the interwebs

My friend forwarded this craigslist ad to me as a joke, since she knows I'm open to freelance work. I think I'll pass. Read on, make sure you get to the P.S.

I can imagine this work will take at least one full day and maybe part of a second day to do. So, it's not going to be a $100. job. I know it will cost more than that. I have made a very detailed list of the changes and updates I need made. It is my hopes that people interested in doing my work will email me their street address and I will mail my list to you to go over and then email me a bid for the work that you can do. If there are things on my list you do not know how to do, submit a bid for what you do know how to do and list what things you don't know how to do. I may hire this done in portions by a couple different people.

Thank you,


P.S. My current web site is www.semperfibulldogs.com If you do this work for me or a big part of it you can put your name and contact information on my site as a web designer. Just about everything about my web site I want changed and or updated. Pictures moved, sentences deleted, new sentences added, different page backgrounds, clip art added including some moving clip art, I want a curser that changes to a Bulldog head when the curser is moved. I want trailing behind the curser-a few words that follow the curser when it is moved. I want a cartoon Bulldog running across the top of the page pulling a banner with SEMPERFI BULLDOGS on it ( I realize this art work will not be something eveyone can do and can be bid separately. I want link tabs changed and with different colors. I want my entire Body of wording stretched to fill the whole page. I want a separate counter on each page. I want the music "Who Let The Dogs Out" playing on my opening page. I want added entire pages of wording.

P. S. My site is with Go-Daddy and I have all the codes, id's and passwords needed to do changes. I want to keep the same host--just change most everything.

I will appreciate all replys
Thank you,

standard

I'm trapped in 4/1 glossy hell.

I watched this...



I really enjoy the animation. From a nonprofit management perspective though, I'm disappointed that it's missing a specific call to action. "Don't Let it All Unravel" is pretty vague. Say I watch the video and I'm all moved and upset and ready to do something... I get to the end and I read that phrase... then what? "Yeah, I'm NOT going to let it all unravel! Ok... how?" At least the video, if it's going to address a social issue, could advocate something specific any person could do, like donating money to an environmental organization, or insulating their home to save energy. That's marketing 101.

But wait, 'creatives' aren't supposed to be concerned about that stuff, right? It's really just about making cool work.

I looked up the organization that sponsored the video. Here's their mission statement:

"Live Earth was built upon the belief that entertainment has the power to transcend social and cultural barriers to move the world community to action. A for-profit company, Live Earth seeks to leverage the power of entertainment through integrated events, media, and the live experience to ignite a global movement aimed at solving the most critical environmental issues of our time."

Does this seem credible? Or will it just make for a bunch of bad, didactic forms of entertainment? Also, does it seem strange that Live Earth is a for-profit organization? It doesn't necessarily mean it's unethical, but it strikes me as a little strange.

evil, evil persuaders

Last night I finished reading a section of this book about how public relations works. Though the author qualifies the beginning of the section that public relations (which, by the way, is one of my majors) is not unethical per se, it seems to me that her hatred for the practice is thinly veiled.

I've found this sort of animosity applies to graphic designers as well. In fact, almost anybody who works in a field that involves either persuasion or communicates on a subconscious level seems to attract a certain level of distrust. It seems as though decades after Freud introduced the idea that humans have a subconscious and are not wholly in control of themselves, we are still rather uncomfortable with the idea. And we still like to dismiss Freud entirely as hopelessly sexist and ethnocentric, even though he was just as much a product of his sexist and ethnocentrist culture as we are of our culture, whatever that may be.

I think there's a difference between persuasive techniques and the message, or intent, they communicate. Are the persuasive techniques that aim to convince you to buy their company's SUV, different from the persuasive techniques used to get you to donate to a reputable nonprofit, or to give up smoking?

Is the fault of advertising encouraging a consumer mindset a problem within the individual advertisement, or the aggregate onslaught of all advertisements? If the latter, how do we hold individual advertisers accountable?