What's new // Design
I do graphic design and communications work professionally. You can find my portfolio over at Pink Sheep Media. Here’s a few articles on design.
Bumper stickers and car magnets are an interesting window into human identities and human values. Generally people aren’t paid to put these kinds of things on their vehicles so we know they’re authentic. And in our culture, a car or truck is a serious reflection of who we are. We’re generally very careful about what…
I’m an admirer of the minds behind GeoMemes, and I was visiting their site recently and noticed that they had embedded the advertisement below. It’s not something I would expect to find on the home page of their website. But as the tech nerds at GeoMemes point out, something important is happening this week.
The thing about Rex Murphy that troubles me is the way he calls his show “Cross-Country Checkup” but whenever I find myself listening I hear a representative from The Conference Board of Canada or the Fraser Institute. These guys (they seem to be men mostly) are payed to pretend they’re experts on any topic of…
After the last post I thought I better write something that clearly identifies me as anti-anti-queer.1 Found this cool campaign aimed at challenging the language people use, and the way they use it. I actually still hear it quite a lot. Someone says, “that’s so gay.” But they mean, “that’s not good”, or “that sucks”,…
Wow, this episode of South Park presents an interesting, and controversial, (and hopefully sarcastic) argument. The underlying thesis is that “faggot” no longer refers to gay men: the new meaning of fag is: 1. An extremely annoying, inconsiderate person most commonly associated with Harley riders. 2. A peson who owns or frequently rides a Harley….
Christian Lander recently added Banksy to his list of stuff that white people like. Shit. Well there’s no going back now. I’m a white person and I like this guy. Partly I like Banksy because he has insights into the culture of advertising. This is part of what he has to say about branding in…
http://www.takeactiononclimatechange.com/ This is a good ad. Found it because I’m a Tyee fan. If you have children under 17, you can upload photos of them to the Mom’s Against Climate Change site and they’ll project images of your kids onto walls in Copenhagen and Ottawa during the upcoming UN summit in December. They’re doing this…
Over thirty police officers were counted at Centennial Square on Friday during the No Olympics protest. That’s not including the snipers that were reported to be on the rooftops or the officers on horseback or the officers that make up the dedicated security detail of the torch itself. It doesn’t include the officers at the…
An Olympic sized brand requires an Olympic sized brand management plan. To become an Olympic partner and win the right to bear the logo you will need significant amounts of cash. There are tiers of partnership though, and they want everyone to be able to share in the journey. So, if you want, you can…
I was at my local coffee shop yesterday, and Alison (sp? sorry) was wearing this cool shirt with a cool design on the front. When I noted that it was rather awesome she asked me if I recognized it. I didn’t. Turns out that it’s an old CBC logo. Well, sort of. It’s the image…
Update: I’ve launched an online reference for the brevity challenged at Texting Abbreviations. If you’re like me and not super into texting and/or online social networking tools then you’re probably unfamiliar with various web and texting acrynoms. I’m making a concerted effort to change that. And I’ve discovered that there’s a lot of online resources…
Came across this photo of an old journal entry dating back to 1999. It’s a poem. Just in case you can’t read the writing, I’ve provided the text below. I kind of like it! But I would make some edits, including some different line breaks and a change of a few words. But I’ve provided…
Organizations have brands whether they want them or not. Organizations have brands whether they manage them or not. This is the common wisdom of brand developers and advertisers as they try to show organizations how to be more cool, more authentic and more sellable. Don’t have a unique and memorable brand? No problem. Let’s just…
Cory Doctorow is a force to be reckoned with. I listened to a free audiobook of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom recently and thoroughly enjoyed it. But he doesn’t just write science fiction. He also writes and lectures about contemporary and important issues surrounding publishing, copyright, and the future of information sharing. This…
It is entirely possible for the meanings we create to be beyond our intent and within our responsibility. I’ve said this before, here. You have to read down a ways to get to it, and it’s so fascinating, that I thought I would repeat it. In the wild of human to human interactions, more meaning…
Well I was going to sign up for a Yahoo account but it required that I sign up with my birthday and gender. And I’m not really into it. I really just wanted to be able to submit sitemaps to their search engine for indexing, which is easier if you’re a member (which also doesn’t…
A quick trip to the Black Stilt felt especially rewarding when I saw this poster for an upcoming event that they’re hosting. The Story of Stuff is a short film that made the rounds online, well, maybe last year or so. I was (and still am) really impressed by it. But I’m even more impressed…
Today is a good day to think about our life support system. Our life support is our earth. It’s a delicate mixture of gravity, various nuclear forces that hold our subatomic and atomic particles together, solar energy, some electrical forces that hold our molecules together, a chemical soup composed of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon and hydrogen1…
One of the challenges of branding and marketing is working with and relying on the many subtle, implicit and subconscious layers of meanings that are formed in people’s minds. This can be particularly difficult for people who tend toward the more analytic, more pre-defined, or more explicit forms of communication. Let’s call the former maximal…
Okay, so it’s one thing to notice and criticize ads that are demeaning, racist or hateful. But I’ve been thinking lately that maybe I have a duty to also contact the owners of the ad that I wrote about here and also here, and let them know that I think their ad is racist. Or…
This thoughtful film appeals to me so much because I think the animation is really artful. It reviews the notion of a tipping point (important notion for people to understand) and it’s written and narrated in a way that doesn’t talk down to it’s audience. Also, he’s really clear that climate change is, at this…
I like Good Magazine! They’ve been rewarding good ideas lately with some good video ads!
