:: ( CRIT ) :: DESIGN BLOG ::

A Story of a Man and his Helmet

This past week, I got a chance to experience a little thing called a brand promise. I went to Gamestop on Tuesday at 12am to get my copy of Halo3. I have lived with this brand from 2001 to now. I would also like you to know that I hated the Halo brand when it came out. It represented everything I hated (i.e. Microsoft). I then had my PS2 stolen along with all the games, so I wanted to start fresh with a new system; I bought an xbox and Halo (one of my friends wanted me to buy it). I did, and the rest is history with its console selling power.

I always thought everything with a 3 at the end of it stinks (besides Mighty Ducks 3: D3, as the kids on the streets call it).

Creative (Brand) Recreation

On the heels of a discussion of branding and motivation in Martin Kace's thesis research class. Where at one point we were dissecting why you buy the shoes you buy. I decided to take a look at a few websites of various shoe labels to apply some of the theories on branding for a specific audience on current examples in the marketplace. A nice refreshing dip into real world viability, while my classmates and myself are trying to create are own viable concepts. In that research I came across possibly the coolest shoe website on the planet. I was so impressed by the design of the Creative Recreation site, the designer in me almost convinced myself to buy a pair (and still might). Are designers wowed by nice websites the specific audience they're branding for? Well, probably not.

ceci n'est pas un sachet en plastique

Any day of the week I might duck into a bodega for some trivial item—a guilty-pleasure music magazine, a bottle of seltzer, even the rare banana or orange—and before I even put them on the counter, the items have been bagged for me. Most times, I try to politely refuse the bag- "oh, I can carry these" or "this toilet paper should fit into my backpack"; sometimes, I have to physically remove the items and hope that the check-out person won't throw away this suspect bag, adding to some enormous landfill. Because, that is the point, right? We don't really need bags for all the small, random items we purchase, whether we're on Madison Avenue or Avenue B. With this in mind, is there room to design multiple-use shopping bags and try to curb our consuming desire for more things to carry?

Should Helvetica be the perfume of the city?

After seeing the Helvetica documentary at the IFC, the notion that Helvetica could be referred to as "the perfume of the city" provoked me to ask myself whether we as designers should be doing more to prevent uniformity to everything we eat, touch, and read in our daily lives? Don't get me wrong. As the documentary rightly points out, often Helvetica is used because of its uniformity or its smooth modern qualities that we can easily relate to. But is it acceptable that all over the world we have adopted this politically correct visual language? Are we not weakening the messages we are trying to communicate and deteriorating the beauty of the typeface by over
using it?

Cut&Paste, NY

On Saturday night, the third annual installment of Cut&Paste, the live digital design tournament, blew through New York. Having read about the event and breathlessly watched Internet coverage in the past, this year's tournament was can't miss for me. Asking my non-design friends to stand in a crowded theater for three hours and watch nerds draw lines on four simulcast projection screens would have been met with derision and a lifetime of shame-based ridicule. But, as luck would have it, I just began the MFA Designer as Author program at SVA, so there was no shortage of like-minded comrades to attend the show with me.

Cut&Paste is a live design tournament that pits eight pre-selected designers against each other, tournament-style, mano y mano, Wacom y Wacom. Over the course of three 15-minute rounds, contestants must compose a still image inspired by a common theme, using the typical tools of the trade (Adobe and Wacom are two of the global sponsors, so each designer was kitted out with CS3 and Cintiq displays to get the job done). The designers are also allowed to bring in approved objects that can be photographed and incorporated into their final design.

100 Best Typefaces

As a procrastinator, I sometime find myself with deadlines looming exploring the archives of various design blogs. And on an occasion just like this I, like a digital archaeologist, unearthed a post of Indiana Jones-like proportions from the often terrific blog of Erik Spiekermann.

The post was an annoucement of Jürgen Siebert of FontShop Germany results of the search for the 100 best typefaces of all time. Visit the online results here or download the pdf here. It's wonderful to see how my favorites stacked up against the competition. Unfortunately, I can't describe the method of ranking as both the site and pdf are in German. But I would raise an eyebrow or two to putting Caslon at 47, twenty-four spots below Avant Garde. And the overlook of Bruce Roger's Centaur was a dagger in my letterpressed heart. Who's number one? Who do you think.

Option Shift Control Call for Participation

The Master of Graphic Design Candidates at the College of Design, North Carolina State University is requesting proposals for presentations, design and research projects, proposed artifacts, workshop or panel discussions for their third bi-annual graduate symposium, Option Shift Control*. The symposium will take place on November 30th and December 1st, 2007. Submissions are due by Friday, October 19.

Here's the official call for participation:

Today all types of designers face an audience empowered by technologies; people who create and customize their own products and communications. Audiences (readers, users) now envision products, such as the:

Graphic Design Before and During Graduate Education

When I applied to graduate school for design I had questions, assumptions and hopes about what the experience would entail. Will academia taint your unique perspectives on art and design? The following lists are yearnings and apprehensions I experienced before I applied to graduate school and then comments that revisit the same issues now, halfway through.

Core77.com's Hack2School Essential Guide

Everything the grad and undergrad design student should know (and more) about returning to the sanctity of the academy can be found (and savored) on Core77.com's HACK2School.

Here are a few of my favorite entries:

Keep it Classy 2.0

5 Ways to Sound Smarter in a Crit

Set Your Phone to Vibrate

On a related side note, the Core77 Offsite Series event; Design, Wit, and the Creative Act: Leveraging the power of humor towards great customer experiences, will take place on November 9th at the Art Directors Club . Moderated by the incredible Ze Frank, presenters are Steven Heller, Kelly Dobson, Tobias Wong, and Paul Budnitz. Early bird and student specials are in effect so check it out at www.core77.com/offsite

I beg you to be culturally literate.

Last semester during one of our first classes with Veronique Vienne, we discussed deconstructing texts as a means to uncovering sub-texts. At one point she said, “I beg you to be culturally literate.” Shortly after class, one of my classmates caught me procrastinating on the web and immediately called me out on it. I flippantly responded, “I’m developing my cultural literacy!” It quickly became a running joke having to do with anything not directly design related, and not directly relevant to our studies.

As cheeky as the response sounds, when I say it, I actually do mean it. It’s not that I’m completely serious about finding subtexts while watching a VH1 Celebreality show, nor completely happy-go-lucky about it either, but I’m somewhere in between with a slight lean towards the former because that’s just what interests me.

scene + herd

Welcome back, fellow students... it's an open secret that September in New York is the finest month, and Deitch Projects has been exploiting this annually for their Art Parade, taking place tomorrow in SoHo. Our colleagues KarlssonWilker impressed everyone last year with their Urban Visual Recording Machine, who will shine this year?...Khoi Vinh and Liz Danzico have launched A Brief Message, a short-form Design blog; the first post came from our own Steven Heller. This is one of the cleaner and more attractive blogs I've seen lately, and makes a break from the usual standardized blog form (see here). It's refreshing to see someone not resorting to blog-given type... I know everyone has been buzzing about M.I.A. since her hit "Galang" got slapped on some VW commercials, but isn't the new album awesome? It has some "evil beats" (her quote), and strange rhymes ("Mango Pickle Down River", kids rapping about fish and jumping off bridges with a didgeridoo jamming in the background??),  but I can definitely dance to it. As a designer, it's also interesting to see how M.I.A.'s style gets reflected in her anti-design aesthetic, which I could only describe as 'more is more'. Put on some protective eyewear and be prepared for information overload when you check out her site... have a great weekend!