It’s here: Objectified film trailer

I can’t wait for this film to come out… watch the trailer

In Memory of Charles Hildebrandt

I was sad to learn that the Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies founder Charles Hildebrandt passed away last week. May his legacy carry on.

“To Remember… and to Teach”

Rosewood the new Helvetica?

It seems that every where I look I’m seeing rosewood; not of the arboreal variety, but the typographic one. From US Cellular’s newest ad campaign to titles and bylines in Country Living magazine, even Apple uses it in their iTunes store for the Single of the Week, Rosewood (and other slab serifs with vintage appeal) are going mainstream. After seeing this font in many unlikely places, I got to thinking, what was this font originally created for? Does this have any connection to the way it’s being used today? So I did some research. What follows is a brief history of Rosewood…

Rosewood the font as we know it today was designed by  Kim Buker Chansler, Carl Crossgrove and Carol Twombly for Adobe Systems in 1994. It’s roots are in slab serif styles popular at the end of the of 18th century. Another slab serif, Clarendon, created by Hermann Eldenbenz in 1953, also draws its style from the fonts of the beginning of industrialization. (I wonder if Rosewood drew inspiration from Clarendon??)

For a little background, when the Industrial Revolution began, the capitalist replaced the land owner as the powerful force in the West. This shift brought about new machines that made mass production possible for printers, which allowed consistently new products to sell to consumers. More abundant merchandise stimulated greater demand for products and a market for advertising. Thus, the birth of slab serif fonts, type faces with a sole purpose to catch consumers attention. (Wood type posters are a great example of this.)

So, to draw a conclusion, Rosewood as it’s being used today seems to be serving a very similar purpose as the slab serifs of the late 1800’s, catch the attention of the consumer and sell products. Helvetica, I’m sorry but your lucid efficiancy and anonymity are no match for Rosewood’s character and boldness. Although I doubt Rosewood will ever beat Helvetica in popularity, cheers to more fonts with personality.

Objectified: A Documentary Film

I came across this new film today, Objectified, and I can’t wait for it’s release. Unfortunatly there aren’t any clips out yet, but the synopsis captivated me. Read below.

“Objectified is a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the people who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability. It’s about our relationship to mass-produced objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

Through vérité footage and in-depth conversations, the film documents the creative processes of some of the world’s most influential designers, and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?”

- from the film’s blog, http://www.objectifiedfilm.com.

Poetry in Motion – Birches

Since I haven’t posted in awhile, here’s another one of my projects from school. It’s an exerpt from Robert Frost’s poem “Birches”. Check it out.

Bunny-Friendly Graphic Design

I came across this article from GOOD magazine today, and it got me thinking about green design again. When I first started college, I envisioned becoming a “green” designer, only using solar energy to power my mac, printing on 100% recycled paper, and using 100% soy-based natural inks.

Well, four years later, as a web designer, I’ve pretty much eliminated the need for paper and ink (I still use the ol’ pencil and sketchbook, 100% recycled of course). But then there’s the energy issue, and the whole e-waste issue with the computer. As I write this, my computer is being powered by, gasp, nuclear energy! C’mon, how bunny-friendly is nuclear waste? It’s worse than toxic inks and paper chemicals… Add the mercury and other heavy metals from my mac, and I’m not looking so green anymore. So is this web revolution really any more green than print design? In my quest to become “green”, how can I repurpose the materials I use for web design as Dylan Royal repurposed used materials for print design? Is it greener to go back to print, or can we make these new technologies greener than the greenest print design?  

“Citizenship” Project

I’ve decided I’m going to be adding my motion graphics projects from school to this blog. I want more people to see what I’m up to and I want to know what YOU think about my work, so please feel free to comment!

The above video is called “Citizenship” and it was part of my BFA thesis project this spring. The piece was on display at the 2008 “Emerging Art” show at Keene State along with my two other pieces “Corporate Comfort I” and “Corporate Comfort II”, which I hope to be posting pictures of soon. Watch it, I’m anxious to know what the world thinks of this…

Book Review – Web Standards Creativity

I picked up this book (Web Standards Creativity) at the library recently while doing some research on CSS. (Honestly, I picked it because it was full color and didn’t follow the standard, dry, b&w, instructional book look) It has some great tips for using web standards in creative ways from a bunch of different designers. My favorite chapter was “Taming a Wild CMS with CSS, Flash, and JavaScript”. The site design was for the band Lifehouse, which has been redesigned since the book came out. The design in the book is far more dynamic and interesting than the current site, in my opinion. There’s a great tutorial on how to create vertical text using image replacement. Also, there’s a tut that explains how to use sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) to create imaged text (so you can use a specific font) that can be updated easily via the CMS. Sounds like a technique I’d like to try eventually, though it seems time consuming to set up. All-in-all, a great book for mid-level to advanced designers/developers. Check it out!

WASTE: Artist’s Speak Out on our Disposable Culture

I stopped by the Sharon Arts Center today to see the exhibit “WASTE: Artist’s Speak Out on our Disposable Culture”. Wow…. amazing….. I’m so glad to see other artists here in NH examining the same issues that fascinate me.

While I was researching for my BFA consumerism project, I came across Chris Jordan’s photography and it intrigued me. He makes these enormous photographs of stuff we consume, often times large piles of discarded items in landfills. I got to see some of these photos today from his series “Intolerable Beauty, Portraits of American Mass Consumption”. I find it disgusting yet strangely beautiful. Very glad I had the opportunity to see his work in person, it’s just not the same looking at it online.

Tim Gadreau’s work was also on display. 5,000 photos of stuff he thew away. Reminds me of one of my original ideas of photographing everything I bought for x amount of time. Anyway, his mural is breathtaking. He talks about how he changed his habits after examining the photos shortly after beginning the project. After realzing all the waste in plastic bottles alone, he changed to more eco-friendly and sustainable options (ie tap water instead of bottled). It’s an eye opener to really begin to inspect consumerism on a personal level. I had a similar experience in photographing all the stuff I bought. Just taking that extra 5 seconds to take that photo made me stop and think, why did i buy this? what are the effects of my purchase? I also began to lose that thrill of shopping, and it became (and still is) nauseating to think about all these products I buy and how difficult it can be to break that habit.

There was an article in the Equinox this past week where the journalist interviewed a homeless man that has become semi-famous around campus because of his attire (or lack thereof). He lives in the woods and hasn’t had a job or made money in 11 years. This is so alluring to me, living disconnected from this world of spending and consuming.

So here ends my first blog entry.

Related links:

http://www.timgadreau.com

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

http://www.sharonarts.org/

Hello world!

My very first blog post.