photos courtesy of Just In Berlin

VHF
UHF
8-Track
Reel-to-Reel-Tape
Cassette-Tape
35mm
VHS
CD
DVD
Blu Ray

Fuck You

The name Blu-ray Disc is derived from the blue laser (violet-colored) used to read and write this type of disc. Because of the beam’s shorter wavelength (405 nanometres), substantially more data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc than on the DVD format, which uses a red (650 nm) laser.

Everything prior to this described the storage media or delivery mechanism. But Blu-Ray describes a feature of the device that reads it. So if we follow this line of thinking, CDs should have been “red ray”… 35mm film shoulda been called “developer”… VHS tapes shoulda been called “Magnetic Head That You Have to Clean All the Time” or something…

Hell even VCR makes immediate sense. it’s a video cassette recorder. “CD players” make sense because they play cds. But a “Blu Ray player” does not play blue rays… it should be called “Blue Ray Emitter”… the good ol’ BRE.

What was the logic on this one? Cuz it sounds cool? It’s another marketing thing isn’t it? Assholes. I demand a little order in my chaos.

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.

The first time I punched in my new work address on my gps, the robot lady’s voice said “arriving at duarte… on right.” but it was pronounced “doo-art”… this morning i had the gps with me so i could find this random cafe that i have a gift card for… and i punched in duarte’s address to find my way back. (these devices are so handy when you move to a new town) This time, for some reason, it prounced it correctly… “duarté… doo-ar-tay…”

What changed? was there some sort of firmware update that i missed? Did the thing hear me making fun of it and change? It got me thinking about two things:

1) how funny would it be to make an insecure computer that was sensitive to being bagged on? It learns by trying to avoid the discomfort of embarassment… maybe it could pick up data from it’s surrounding via microphone and camera… sensing your laughter and then listening for key words to figure out what it did… Might be an interesting experiment.

2) Why do people think that pronouncing things in a “foreign” way makes it sound fancier or something? Remember the story about Target being called “tar-zhay” in france? I heard somewhere that rumor was actually started by Target themselves… part of a guerilla marketing strategy intented to raise target’s profile by making it sound like an upscale boutique… (however i cannot find any evidence of this now online… there may be a two-tier urban legend going on here)….

Either way… the pronunciation thing… lame. Softimage, the 3D graphics software www.softimage.com/ , is referred to as “Soft Imahhhje” by the company themselves for exactly this reason. I thought people were just trying to sound fancy but i went to this tradeshow and the company reps referred to it as “Soft Imahhhjjjje” right there on the podium. Where the fuck do you get the Je sound from? It clearly says Soft… IMAGE. Soft fucking image. Don’t be lame.

I can’t remember who, but i had a friend refer to wikipedia as “Why-key-pedia” once and that one baffled me too… is it because it’s spelled Wiki and not Wicky? Or is there something deeper going on here?

I know there are a million other examples of this practice but i can’t think of any more than those right now… so i implore you… please add to this list… right now…

This is for all you designers out there…

www.makemylogobiggercream.com/

Work has been rewarding these last few days… especially when i got an email this morning asking if i am available for a phone interview at 11am on Thursday!

I don’t want to jinx myself here, but i am so excited to just be CONTACTED by these people i can barely contain myself. i am, at present, actually peeing all over myself and my cubicle… it’s true.

If things go well, i may be doing graphics for ManBearPig awareness presentations…

cross your fangers for me! =) xooxoxomgwtfbbq

So I just got back from a week-long escape… or escapade… whatever you want to call it.

Long story short….

Work sent me on a business trip to memphis tennesee for the national sales meeting… Me and one other guy here ran our booth during the day and at night we sampled a lot of the city’s finest BBQ and… well… drank quite a bit.

I received quite a shock during this trip… in ways i didn’t expect… i learned a lot about how my frustrations with this company have been, for the most part, misguided. Most of my issues are a direct result of our poor leadership here at home… NOT the evil-doings of the corporate office… in fact I found more support for my personal goals from the corporate office than i’ve ever seen here at home. In a strange twist of events, this business trip actually energized me.

So… a little change of perspective there…

And on my last day at the conference, I won a raffle too (didn’t even know i’d entered this raffle) and scored a SWEET mobile navigation device… buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do I never would have purchased one of these things on my own but now that I have one I’m fucking stoked to own it. When I got home, I drove straight out to sunnyvale and Emily and I used the device all weekend as we drove around the bay area… and it impressed me to no end. Not to sound like a sales pitch or anything, but there is so much more utility to these things than expected… the restaurant and gas station locators are fucking AWESOME.

Saturday afternoon we shopped for halloween costumes (we got KILLER costumes lined up this year) and bought the new season of family guy that just came out… Made chicken and waffles for dinner… then Sunday we drove up to Stafford Lake for the Sunset party… always a good time.

In the end of it all, I feel refreshed… more refreshed than i have in a long time. I feel a renewed purpose… a renewed sense of enthusiasm… a new sense of success in many areas of my life… excitement for the near future… and the inspiration to accomplish many goals when i get back to the house tonight.

Booyakasha

Teh End

This is definately my favorite flyer i’ve done so far… i had the most fun ever with this concept.

For those of you not in the know… This is Want It’s annual decompression party; formerly “Rawktoberfest”… last year we kicked it up a notch and the turnout (no small thanks to you) was PHENOMENAL… Ambient Mafia hosted the chill area, and Want It’ers in the main room…

Blurry-eyed and psyched, I was dragging my gear up to the main stage to play right after Forest… and right as i was setting up, this unbelievable smell hit me… my eyes started watering and my throat started to close up… I looked around and everyone was scrambling to get out the emergency exits…

We had talked to the whole complex about the fact that we were going to throw a party that night but some fucked-up tenant had just moved into a small room that shared a wall with our main stage… and nobody knew he was there… after calming him down several times, he went completely fucking apeshit and apparantly ran out into our party and broke open a gallon of ammonia, officially ending our night.

It’s still surreal to me… that some copper-plated douche bag would actually resort to chemical warfare and risk the health and lives of hundreds of people… for WHATEVER reason. Clearly, the guy was unstable. After a long discussion, it was decided that we wouldn’t call the cops on this guy… we’d let him get evicted and avoid the possibility of another incident. Nobody got hurt… just our feelings.

So now.. without further ado… Want It proudly presents the sequel… Two areas of completely mind-melting music on decompression weekend… don’t worry about blowing your wad the night before SF Decomp, as this is a donations-only event. Costume-up and come rawk out with us on saturday night and then wind up at decompression on sunday!

Or don’t … your call… but you may regret missing this one!

Anyway I always have to remind people that even though the job title may say “designer” the chances of you being an artist for a living is pretty much slim-to-none… illustrators have that glory but we do not. Our sense of good taste, balance and style are going to be beaten into submission over and over as our clients throw all our good concepts and hard work in the trash in favor of “the safe option”

I have been bitching for years that my job here is less “graphic designer” and more “production designer” because I design only what they tell me (since I’ve vitually given up on selling these people on edgy ideas) and i spend more time layout out content and not “being creative”

After a while my mood began to suffer. I NEEDED to be more creative in my position or I would have to leave. I searched for ways to push the envelope and put more of myself into my work….  I slowly began to try to affect the direction of branding here and before long I came to a startling realization….

Marketing = Problem Solving

The real creative side of your job is going to take place in the 3 hour mind-numbing meetings you will find yourselves in…. in the shower in the morning… in your car on the way to work…  while watching tv at night.

It’s called “Marketing/Communications” for a reason. The constant challenge is to wrap your head around HOW you are going to communicate a given message to a customer…. HOW you are going track market response and effectiveness…. HOW you are going to change people’s general opinion about a dying brand?

Two examples of brilliance that pop to mind are Jack In The Box and Target. In the late 80s Jack In The Box nearly went under when several customers died from ecoli poisoning due to shitty food-handling practices. How does a company regain the public trust? A daunting task, yet they pulled it off by bringing back “Jack”, their old mascot, and airing a commercial in which he blows up a board room of executives and supposedly “takes back control of his restaurant business”…  Somehow they pulled it off and sales are better than ever.

Target was struggling and decided to be the leader instead of the follower… they used crazy tactics like starting word-of-mouth rumors that Target was really pronounced “Tar-Jey” overseas…. creating a buzz that Target was somehow fancy… shortly after that they acquired Mossimo and other dying brands… picked up a few aspiring designer product lines and not only put them on their shelves… but they integrated the design into their entire store. Countertops suddenly matched the products that lined the shelves… they implemented a lighting standard of no less than X lumens-per-square-foot. The days of temp employees being able to bring any old red shirt to work are gone. I used to go into Target around Xmas time and I couldn’t tell who was an employee and who was a customer but now there is a rigid standard… a pantone color for “Target Red” and no leeway on pants color….

How is this marketing? It’s marketing because Marketing = Psychology. People are JOCKING Target these days and it’s exactly because of these changes. Their marketing department spends way less time thinking about creative artsy imagery for ads and more time brainstorming on their next psychological assult on the public.

It’s shady and it’s underhanded but it’s what we do. We control people’s minds. You think you know what is “cool” and “hip” in the world? No… we gave that to you. We decided what is cool and we told you what to think. Jack In The Box and Target both spent YEARS on “guerilla-marketing” to change your opinion of them… We are the REASON you are addicted to buying things. We are the bad guys. Yes it’s true. Anyone actually IN marketing will attest to this. Our job is to be sneaky and influence entire generations… To make you feel inadequate without our product… To make you afraid… To make our name the first word you think of in the right situations…

Where Do You Draw the Line?

The more creative i get to be here at my job, the more evil i seem to become. Today we discussed CAIS certification. it’s something we made up. If you go online and pass a very simple test that demonstrates your ability to use our software, we will send you a silly printed certificate… a sticker for your shop window and a patch for your sleeve. We made that shit up. We made up a status symbol that seperates the average automotive technician from this supposedly new-school higher-tech automotive technician. Then we invaded public schools. We started working with high-school auto shops and now they can train their students on our software under the premise that they will be high-tech and industy-ready when they enter the job market. We say that they will be more valuable and quicker to find a job because they will we be CAIS certified when they leave.

Today, during our 3 hour meeting, I heard someone say “If only we’d gotten in there 5 years ago! The new generation of mechanics out there would all prefer our software and we could leverage that!”

And I began to feel kinda shitty. Because we’re not that different from the companies I flame regularly (like apple)… we are talking about weaseling our way into their schools under the guise of “education” when, in truth, we’re really just promoting the shit out of our product and even trying to “shape” the next generation of our potential customers… That’s what this is all about but do we really have to do it in schools? And is it “bad”? I feel bad about it because I (falsely) still consider schools to be “places of learning” when they are not. They are businesses and they are the brainwashers of our youth. Apple donates a bunch of computers to schools and what happens? The next generation of graduates comes out of school trained on Mac. You know why Mac has become THE standard for graphics and sound? NOT because they are “better for graphics and sound” as most Mac enthusiasts will tell you… (hell the monitor has a few more colors…. less than 20… so what you’re getting 16 million colors on a pc and 16 million and twenty on a Mac? whoop-de-doo) But simply because Apple shaped the market. Somehow apple has become synonymous with education and as dumb as i think it is, it was a brilliant move.

I dunno… what is right? what is wrong? where do you draw the line? I guarantee you you won’t be hearing complaints in the paper about Macs or our software being used in schools…. but you WILL hear about Pepsi or Coca Cola monopolizing the concessions at our public schools and making themselves “The Choice of a New Generation.” Why because you were BETTER? Or because you trained us from a young age?

And I’m not even gonna get into the ROTC programs out there… that’s just the evillest of all evil. My grade-school friend was put into ROTC by his mother because she hoped it would make him more responsible…. the old “military school” fantasy… the truth is she stuck him in a propoganda engine that sold him on being a fucking marine. Is that really what she wanted? I doubt it.

The Way I See It # 141: 

I used to feel so alone in the city.
All those gazillions of people and
then me, on the outside. Because
how do you meet a new person?
I was very stumped by this for many
years. And then I realized, you just
say, Hi. They may ignore you. Or
you may marry them. And that
possibility is worth that one word.

the irony was to be found in the fine print, just underneath

This is the author’s opinion, not necessarily that of Starbucks.

Breathtaking isn’t it? Starbucks is an interesting contradiction a mega-corporation based on hipsters. I mean, obviously Starbucks brought the barista into the mainstream and now not just hipsters buy espressos.  but just one look at these cups and these blurbs and short poems you can see Starbucks pretending to push to the left while capping every paragraph with legal disclaimers, circle-Rs. and the like.

It’s a lot like the new Volkswagen beetle. comes with a flower-pot built right into the dashboard so instead of being a flower child who looks for something gas-efficient to drive, now even the average consumer-whore can own a beetle OH here’s where the flower goes! how cute! Maybe can find a little plastic flower that never goes bad to stick in there!

Amazing how many hippies turned into yuppies when the acid wore off Amazing how quickly the pressures of society and of keeping up with the joneses sets back in.

Once upon a time I was taking a 3-D rendering and animation class and for my final i decided to create a virtual model of a Starbucks franchise I walked into a Starbucks near my house and took about 12 pictures. 3 or 4 just to see what all goes into a Starbucks (there’s a lot of crap in there! lemme tell ya!) and the others were close-ups of wallpaper and tabletops and paintings so that I could make image-maps of them and adhere them to the flat walls of my 3-D model.

Sounds like fun eh? Yeah I was enjoying myself until the angry floor-manager came running out of the back room and got right up in my face.

HEY you can’t take pictures in here! Get that camera out of here!

But. i asked your employee for permission and she said it was OK.

Which employee?!?

Nevermind I’m not trying to get your employees in trouble. Look this is a school project. I thought starbucks was trying to encourage creativity you got that guy in the corner doing a charcoal sketch for chirssakes.

just get out

fine i don’t see why you have to be such a dick about it though I’m just sayin

WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?

forget it I’m leaving

HEY COME BACK HERE (following me to my car)

I’m sorry did you just follow me out into the parking lot? I’m sure that’s against policy.

I DON’T EVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!

And he never did. But I DID end up getting an A on my project and I DID end up getting 5 free drink coupons from Starbucks after I sent them an email about the incident. Do I have any sympathy for the guy for probably getting reprimanded because of me? No. Sorry anyone who takes their starbucks jobs THAT seriously needs a wake up call anyway.

The Way Swami Sees It #141:

A good Starbucks Employee
should steal the little sampler cups
so that when he/she hosts a house
party, they can serve jello-shots in
them and laugh about it with all
of their friends.