The Agency Attitude

If you ever get a chance to work for an agency, give it a shot. The atmosphere is uptempo, frenetic, work hard/play hard, zany & crazy. You've got lots of creatives wandering the halls (they're the ones in ripped jeans and cool t-shirts). Mad Men this is decidedly not. In fact, I have never seen a realistic representation of a marketing/ad agency (at least not a modern one).

Irreverence is a big part of the overall attitude. Take this example found on top of our vending machines here. The sign on the left was the obvious original warning. The sign on the right appeared recently. Enjoy the chuckle.

A Vlog That Matters

Video logs or vlogs are a newer addition to the media. With the rise in popularity of volgs, there are many videos being posted that have value and importance. In terms of mainstream television, they usually cover topics in a few seconds and leave out much detail, for some reason I find them to leave out more detail about the war. In terms of volgs, it seems that there is a gap they have begun to fill, that the mainstream news just does not cover. This gap is on war reporting. Seems so simple, yet this is so important. Here is a link to a the PBS website called Media Shift. This particular article discuses how this gap is filled in vlogs and how there are some vlogs that ‘do it right,’ or use the medium well.
The example that Media Shift gives is how there is a citizen journal called Alive in Baghdad. It takes shape as a blog but serves as a political project as well. Considering that mainstream television only shows a small part of what is actually going on in Iraq, this journal/vlog shows all the details and serves to inform people. This is truly a vlog that matters.

This site, text-image.com, creates images using colored binary code on a black backround. I thought it was pretty cool and good inspiration for the first part of our assignment. check it out.

Typography Kicks @$$!

There is a website called Typography Kicks Ass that was started by a typography enthusiast. The site visitor writes a message and when they click "submit", it generates a collage-style message using fonts from Flickr images. Here is my message for our class (click here if you can't see image below):



Some of the type can get very creative. For example, a lamp post was used as a "1" in one of the versions of my message. Have fun with it!

Creative Toilets

Foreword: Oh dear! I didn't realize that we had a communal blog to post on. If you would like to see my previous posts, you can find them here. Sorry about that.

I did some research for a response on my 501 blog and came across this blog posting about public bathroom design. These bathrooms perform all of the basics, but there's so much more to them. They range from cool to funny to overdone and crazy. No matter how crazy they get though, the color schemes flow together nicely. You'll notice some styles are complementary, analogous, etc. and the various textures convey different emotions (ex: compare the bar bathroom with the flowery one).

The designs alone would certainly be reason enough to excuse yourself to the loo!

Pre-Conceived Colors

The cartoon assignment was thoroughly enjoyable - who doesn't love cartoons? I chose a classic character: Garfield. I was a little surprised that I had a hard time painting him anything other than shades of orange. Garfield has always been (and should always be) a fat, orangish feline. Having been presented with an image in a certain way for such a long time, it was hard to try to break away from the pre-conceived image that I had in my mind. I wondered if anyone else felt that way coloring their cartoon.

Web 2.0 Resource

There's some great stuff up on this website. It's called Feed My App, and it's a portal site with links to all different Web 2.0 sites for a variety of uses, most of which are free or at least offer free trials. There's everything from business applications to social networks.