art
Pecha Kucha @ The Improv (10-20-09)
http://www.pecha-kucha.org/“usually pronounced in three syllables like “pe-chak-cha”, is a presentation format in which content can be easily, efficiently and informally shown, usually at a public event designed for that purpose. Under the format, a presenter shows 20 images for 20 seconds apiece, for a total time of 6 minutes, 40 seconds.”
Every so often you have to try on a different hat. So I’ll be putting down the dj gear and performing a little monologue for you at Pecha Kucha, on October 20th at The Improv in downtown San Jose. Myself, a few others from work, and many other enthusiastic speakers will be taking turns, delivering high-energy, fast-paced presentations. Come be part of the fun. =)
No Such Thing As An Original Thought?
A friend of mine recently asked, “What are your thoughts on emulating artists works in order to learn and grow into your own technique?”
Every deep thinker eventually has the worry that he/she is only repeating things he/she has heard elsewhere. “Am I really smart? Or am I just building on the work of people before me?”
The truth is, that’s just how thought works. we learn from other people. No child ever started drawing by letting their mind flow… they ALL started by learning from someone else’s example.
In my opinion… there’s no difference between you emulating someone’s style for practice and a child emulating how to draw a flower or a house or a rainbow. Eventually they may develop their own style characteristics, but it’s more a result of experimentation with mixing/matching styles… or learning to embrace your own imperfections/nuances/mistakes and then exploiting them.
Our culture advances one baby-step at at time… and everybody builds on the work of those that came before them. This is especially noticeable at my job, where clients only communicate in terms of things they’ve seen elsewhere. “Give me something clean…Apple-like… with animation like on the sprint commercials…”
As much as we pride ourselves on being “cutting edge”… we are still affixed to the blade. We still have to design within the constraints of what is popular or current. People here are always discussing design trends so we can stay ahead of the curve, so I get to see and discuss a lot of popular trends…. and it’s apparent that each trend is just a slight variation of the last.
Last year grunge elements grew off of the text… now the text is made out of grunge elements.
Last year the logos were colorful and ribbony… this year the ribbons got shaded to appear bent or folded.
Time to stop worrying about being 100% original. The best you can do is to put your heart into your work. Remember, it’s the SPIRIT of the piece that makes it special. Not the execution.
The Case for Working With Your Hands
Props to Resynthesize for finding this…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?_r=1&em
a FANTASTIC article in the New York Times about the intrinsic (and often overlooked) value of working with your hands. Authored by Matthew B Crawford, whose new book, Shop Class as Soulcraft sounds equally impressive.
“In the boardrooms of Wall Street and the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, I don’t think you’ll see a yellow sign that says “Think Safety!” as you do on job sites and in many repair shops, no doubt because those who sit on the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the consequences of the decisions they make. Why not encourage gifted students to learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their fingers will be crushed once or twice before they go on to run the country?
On a related note, I recently read a piece suggesting that art students are subject to a similar style of “life-training.” For example: when you set out to draw a portrait, there are no set rules for where to begin or what style it should be rendered in. When you are moving the pencil, you are making hundreds of tiny decisions per second without any detailed instructions. Only you can decide what strokes are “right” or “wrong” or when you are “done.” In this respect, art teaches us confidence… how to make your own decisions and stand behind them… and just like in a repair shop, if you screw something up, the feedback is instantaneous, tactile and measurable. You can’t fudge numbers or lay people off at the end of the quarter to cover up the fact that your kerning sucks.
For this reason, it’s a shame that the art programs are usually the first to get cut when the budget is looking lean. But I digress… if you have time, read this article.
Having a Purpose
Historically, I have had the hardest time justifying my life to myself at previous jobs. How can you stay aligned to your morals and spiritual values when you are part of an sick and twisted corporate machine? It’s hard to keep your head up when you are marketing for a company that expects it’s manpower to take the hit whenever their numbers need padding… or when you watch them make a conscious decision to do wrong because paying the fine is cheaper than doing what is right.
Today, i feel much better about my day-job. Many of our clients are purpose-oriented individuals or organizations who are really trying to make a positive difference in the world. Just now somebody passed around photos of Al Gore on Capitol Hill yesterday, testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the latest information on climate change… and in the photos you can see him projecting our slides.
Warm fuzzies abound.
Also I am very very excited this week to have been given full creative freedom on a presentation I’m designing for a speaker at the upcoming TED conference. (www.ted.com) And lo-and-behold… the subject matter is one that i am DEEPLY committed to; restoring a sense of morals to corporations… the need for people to do what is RIGHT instead of what is profitable.
when i am personally committed to something, it ceases to be “work”
Good times. =)
Here For Now (almost here!)
Music – Complete!
Album Art – Complete!
Mastering – (almost there!)
Friends… I am deeply deeply deeply satisfied with how this whole thing has played out.
Historically, I have had a hard time finishing personal projects… but as I’ve matured I have discovered new heights of patience, focus, and dedication. The last few tracks are off being mastered, and already this is the THE most complete production that has ever sprung from my brain. Nothing was rushed or compromised… but somehow I managed to avoid falling victim to my own ADD nature. For the first time, I have nitpicked the shit out of every detail of something, (from the music to the message to the album art) for years and actually finished what I started. I am still sort of shocked, to be honest.
I’ve spent virtually every free moment for the past 2 years working on this thing… and now that it’s over, I’m not quite sure what to do with myself.
Oh and did I tell you that it’s coming out on Muti? (www.mutimusic.com)
I couldn’t be happier about that. =) <– beaming swami
Only a few more weeks until the official release! Stay tuned… and thanks for all the love, support, and inspiration!
~S
Pecha Kucha Tonight
Going to Pecha Kucha tonight!
www.pecha-kucha.org/cities/san-francisco
more: pechakucha-sf.com/
(voted “BEST HYPERINTELLECTUAL SHOW-AND-TELL” in the bay area by the San Francisco Guardian!!)
Sounds like an interesting event… kinda like ADAC but on more of a sharing level. I’m going to be interested to hear what some of these people have to show. Maybe someday i’ll show some work there.
Also… THIS: sdo.seoul.go.kr/english/index.html seems like a good enough reason to go back to Seoul for a visit! I like how there is a picture of the olympic stadium they built in 1988 (the last time i was there) and right next to it it says that it’s going to to be held in the Jamsil Sports Complex Main Stadium… conference hall. =(
Killer Motion Graphics
I saw “The Kingdom” a few weeks back… and even though the movie was kind of “ho hum” sensationalism, the intro blew me the fuck away. It is an amazing blend of info graphics, motion graphics and video footage… seamless and powerful.
luckily, the design group has it online for us to view =)
www.picagency.com/kingdom_movie.html
I am especially impressed with how there is 2D type floating in 3D space… and when the camera moves it creates differing text sizes that align in typographically sound ways on the horizon line. Also the 3D oil consumption bar-graph for the United States turning into the WTC was pretty clever.
Ford Logo Redesign?
In an effort to “keep up with the jones’s logos” Ford is updating theirs too… just like chevron and dunkin donuts and flippin’ EVERYBODY.
www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/
Clearly Ford would jump off a bridge too if everyone else was doing it. Personally I’m an advocate of “Historic Design Preservation”… All that chevron did with their logo-change was make it harder to print.
“surprising and commendable?” I object. It’s predictable and despicable.
PowerPoint
We had a special guest here last week (on the night of modeselektor)… a presentation design specialist who just published a book on the subject… Since he likes us so much (and since we get business every time he mentions us in his blog), we held his book signing party here. Among the guests were people from microsoft and cisco… and i must say the hors doeuvres were excellent. =)
www.presentationzen.com/presen…wi.html
I can really get into this guy’s methodology and i wish more companies would embrace the less-is-more philosophy… You usually end up with the “make my logo bigger” crowd and the end result is like poop in your zen garden. har har.
One of the reasons i feel that this place is such a good fit for me is because i have strong visual story-telling skills… that’s one of the main points we try to push here… we’re not in the business of making talking points pretty… we’re in the business of engaging audiences… design, not decoration.
I attended a lecture by this guy: www.edwardtufte.com before starting work here and even though he’s an authority on quantitative information graphics, his views on powerpoint are incredibly angry and negative… even going so far as to blame powerpoint for the Columbia disaster. His belief is that powerpoint is making people stupider… that people tend to stick to the font size/resolution limitations and linear nature of powerpoint and they forget how to really communicate… that the presentation itself ends up replacing the content somehow. I am not quite sure how he can make such arching statements when he knows damn well that powerpoint can be treated like a container for whatever the hell you want to stick in there. I have never felt compelled to use ppt templates but he seems to think the world is doing it as a shortcut to thinking.
In the case of school kids being told to make powerpoint presentations for homework assignments i can see how this can be true. Instead of doing real work, they are sort of having fun decorating their assignment with cheesy clip art and somehow the medium becomes the focus instead of the content… Tufte argues “Your method of delivery should always be invisible… ” and most powerpoint presentations end up being more of an advertisement for powerpoint than anything else.
And in the case of the Colmubia incident i can see his qualms too… The Columbia Accident Investigation Board says “At many points during it’s investigation, the Board was surprised to receive similar presentation slides from NASA officials in place of technical reports. The Board views the endemic use of powerpoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA — Other professional organizations have also noted the increased use of this presentation software as a substitute for technical reports and other meaningful documentation. Powerpoint (and simliar products by other vendors), as a method to provide talking points and present limited data to assembled groups, has it’s place in the engineering community; however, these presentation should never be allowed to replacec, or even supplement, formal documentation.”
Agreed. But to go off of this and say that ppt is making the presenters, consumer, and everyone witness to it dumber by forcing them into a 1st grade level of communication is a stretch. Tufte, you’re great at what you do… but something tells me that your advisory role on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board made you take the tragedy personally and you are looking for someone to blame…
Just like anything else… HOW you use it is where the art lies. Ableton alone doesn’t write good music. Owning a ferrari doesn’t make you a race car driver. Using powerpoint does not make you a good presenter.
Barbarian Hordes
This weekend I realized and came to terms with one of my bigger pet peeves in movies; Barbarian Hordes.
I am really really over it. I hate when the final epic battle in a movie features the hero(s) versus hordes of faceless enemies… it’s quantity instead of quality… whether you’re talking about hordes of ogres… zombies… barbarians… mutant bikers… skeletons… robots… clones…. It’s all the same thing in my mind… a cheap mechanism that tries to somehow convince you that “lots of stuff going on” somehow equals “epic.” Instead of being dazzled by a brilliant one-on-one fight, I am bored by an ever-advancing mob of faceless drones.
Most times, to accomplish this overload of the ocular nerve, the horde is created with expensive CG, rendered by powerful computers and the end result often appears to be self-promotion of the technology/software they are using. So instead of being dazzled by a story or a battle, i am dazzled by new special effects and I catch myself picking out how much detail is being rendered in comparision with movies from last year.
In any good presentation, the delivery method should be transparent and the content should be the focus.
For that matter the same thing applies to those epic last-battles that occur in clock towers, boiler rooms, and other such terrain. Once again “lots going on” replaces a well-choreographed battle. I’m supposed to believe this battle is more epic than the one at the beginning of the movie because there are rotating floors and conveyor belts, super mario style? The fact is the hero and villain are still doing that fake sword-fight… slapping their blades together endlessly in some kind of fucking dance… So there’s lots of noise… smoke… sparks… molten lead… so what? It’s not impressing me anymore.
(disclaimer before I get flamed to death)… orcs were totally necessary in the Lord of the Rings… imperial troopers were totally necessary in Star Wars… war movies don’t necessarily count because the hordes are featured the whole way through and are an indispensible part of the actual story. Germans soldiers did not ruin the integrity of Saving Private Ryan.
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