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…
This just in. Photos by Jim Arnott.
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…
I don’t know how he does it. He has a kind of discipline that I don’t understand. If he didn’t have a wife and family, I would guess that he’s a monk. Good luck Jasper Blake. May the force be with you.
There’s a coffee shop in my neighbourhood and they do stuff there that I really admire. Yes, they also serve well-made, organic, fairtrade coffee. But they do more. I’m not a music geek. Heck I hardly even enjoy music. But I recognize the role that music plays in human communities. The Spiral Cafe people seem…
Spent last weekend on Galiano. There’s nothing better than sharing a cool island weekend with cool friends.
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…
These always make me laugh. XKCD
I like Good Magazine! They’ve been rewarding good ideas lately with some good video ads!
So last week I wrote about a bus ad that I photographed and posted claiming that it was racist. But I didn’t really speak to how or why it was racist. And it’s important to be able to say why.1 The tagline: “GREAT MEXICAN TASTE, WITHOUT THE RUNS” So the implication of this tagline is…
Just in case you ever wondered about the blackness (B) and hardness (H) ratings for pencils, I have provided for you this really handy chart.1 As an illustrator, I have a fascination for pencils. Not that I’m a pencil snob. Probably many other illustrators would have a good laugh at my meager collection of pencils….
We made this piece last year. We picked up a magazine off of the shelf in our neighbourhood grocery store. Yikes. I am very interested in the way we shape people through media, especially advertising. What I find interesting about magazines, is how any individual image seems unimportant. But what is the aggregate affect of…
This is a good ad. I love the copy. It’s folksy – the language is down to earth. Heck, it could be my mom talking, the voice of the ad is that good. “Fact is, truth is an essential part of any successful ad campaign. Smart advertisers have known this for years. That’s why the…
Between Vulcan and the Little Bow Provincial Park.
Advertisements push our buttons and our boundaries. Ad copy that once might have been rejected for being too risky or simply in bad taste is now often fair game. Companies and organizations work hard to create a brand that is irreverent, humourous and memorable. And that works for many organizations – especially if you are…
Well this is pretty cool. I loaded the WordPress app onto my iPhone and I’m going to actually post. This being my fifth post, this app has enabled 20% of my actual posts. And that is not bad. But how hard will it be to assign my dropcaps and first line CSS? Hmmm. Not too…
PHP is a scripting language. I really don’t know a lot about PHP other than that WordPress and Drupal work because PHP works. I believe that it allows for site content, and data about the content, to get stored in a database and that this makes it easier for people to manage this content without…
Pentagram is a stellar design studio and I enjoy to check out their blog now and then. They did a cool redesign of craigslist. Awesome.
I had the good fortune of going to Drupal Camp last weekend here in Victoria. There were so many cool nerds there! I haven’t launched a site using Drupal yet — at least not a site that’s intended for public consumption. But I hope to. As a CMS it’s a lot more clicky than WordPress…
This blog owes most of it’s functionality to WordPress. The look and feel of this site was originally inspired by Jon Tangerine and Mark Boulton. However, the theme has morphed quite a lot. Wish I could say it’s done shifting, but I doubt it.
