It's A Strange World Out There

I find it amazing how small the world has gotten recently. With all of our technological gadgetry we are now only a click away from our neighbors on the other side of the world. In the poorest of countries, far from the reaches of what we would call civilization, one can find all the trappings of capitalism.

As a designer, and one who specializes in branding, I should take heart that my sisters and brothers are doing their jobs so well. Nike, Pepsi, Apple and Starbucks are no longer the just property of the USA and they haven't been for years. Quite possibly the world belongs to them now.

So it never ceases to amaze me when I see a story that challenges merely because it is so radically different from what we understand in the "civilized world". This story comes to me by way of Neil Gaiman's blog.

A Little Humor From One of Our Own

More Freebies!

Check this site out for some great graphics, backgrounds, icons and even tutorials so you can learn to create your own. They also have a blog with some interesting posts. It looks like they are just getting going but I am sure that there are more great things to come.

And if you want to add some foreign flair, try out Mujka. Not only will you find an assortment of talented contributors offering free graphics but you'll also find brushes, borders and produt news.

And for fun icons or myspace tokens to add to your mix, try out boredsketchbooks.

Creativity Can Save the World

Guy Kawasaki brought this story about a creative solution from PlayPumps that just could save the world. Frontline also had a story about this. It is amazing what we could be doing for our world instead of to it. And how much less money would it cost us if were made these kind of investments in the people of the world instead of how we are currently doing it?

Free Fonts!

Many times, free fonts are more trouble than they are worth. The kerning is bad, there are incomplete character sets and a phlethora of plain BAN design. But… there are always exceptions to the rules. Below are two places to find very nice examples of font swag. Make sure to read the fine print. Blambots has some pretty serious restrictions for usage, but Exlibris has very generous licensing.

On display here is Vaporized, Blambot's new free font for April 2008. It was designed as a sound effects font for comic art and works great for smoky/cloudy effects and sizzling energy beam blasts. The font includes Regular and Italic. Blambot is a great place for all the inspiring graphic novelists. In addition to frequent free font giveaways, they have a few articles about creating and publishing your graphic novel.

Exlibris has a number of well designed fonts ready for download in Mac and PC formats. These type treats are ready to go and should be a fine addition to your already overstocked font folders. And if you really like Jos Buivebga's fonts, visit his blog and subscribe to his feed so you can be the first to hear about any new offerings!

The True Face of Leonardo Da Vinci

Say No To Unwanted Mail

Are you tired of all the mailbox clutter? Do you dread going to your mailbox because you know most of what is in there is unsolicited mail from advertisers? Do you hate wasting your time sifting through the clutter just to find that tasty bill? Do you shudder to think of all the trees that were sacrificed only to end up unwanted and unread in the landfill?

If you answered yes, help is as easy as a click away.

Direct Mail
The key to stopping all that unwanted advertising mail you receive at home is getting your name off the mailing lists. Of course, that's a lot easier said than done because there are, literally, thousands of commercial lists out there. Register here to remove your name & address. And Call 888-567-8688. This single automated phone line takes you off the lists of all major credit bureaus. You can also do this online.

Catalogs
The National Wildlife Federation (NWF), Natural Resources Defense Council and the Ecology Center have developed a new website called Catalog Choice. This site provides a free, easy to use service to allow individuals to opt out of unsolicited catalogs that arrive by mail. The website has already reduced catalog mailings by 5,682,372.

A Thought for the New Year

The common man sees the world as nature sees it, 

yes and no, good and evil, on and off — 

the artificer, the scholar, the intellectual 

sees the world in threes, and makes a full time occupation 

of explaining the unnatural.

— attributed to Kilroy

Illustration Friday - Little Things

My goodness. Time sure has found a way of getting away from me. And I am still slammed. My initial happy little stress-free job has grown legs and arms and has gotten to be quite a needy little monster. But as luck would have it, I just completed an illustration for a promo at the Museum for "The Santaland Diaries" and it seemed to fit perfectly with this week's topic.

So, in the sprit of the season, merry Christmas to all who believe. May your God be kind to you in the coming year. And may PEACE find us all!

Unaobama?

There is an interesting article over at Slate.com about serial killers and politicians. Below is a list of quotes about both. See if you can figure it out. Of whom was it said:

A) "He was a gung-ho type of person."
B) "He was the straightest guy I knew. The most we ever did was go to a party and drink beer."
C) "I always knew that [he] was going to do something great."
D) He was competitive, even in fishing. "It was, 'I caught seven fish and you only caught six.' "
E) "He's so smart. His mind just works a lot differently than others'."
F) ''He was deeply competent, organized, and good at what he did."
G) "Just a nice guy, like a big teddy bear."

Check out the article for the answers. Due to the nature of the story, I'm sure that they won't surprise you, but they're still pretty amazing.

Illustration Friday – Wired

It only seems fitting to get back to Illustration Friday after a three month absence with this week's topic. And I hate to dig up the past but this old illustration seemed perfect because it relates to my current situation so well.

We live in such a wired world. Almost all of us are glued to some sort of wired technology — screens, circuitry, light waves, audio-visual sensory overload. As I sit at my desk, my computer screen stares back at me all day long, all 23" inches of it. It's in my face all day. My phone is right there next to it. It is rather old fashioned. We are a non-profit here at the Museum despite my amazing screen. My cell phone is in my pocket and I am wearing a headset to drown out my cube neighbor's nose blowing. And if that wasn't enough, I seem to be mainlining caffeine and sugar. And through it all, I believe I am more wired by the work load. And I took this job to get away from the self-employment rat race. To have more free time with the family. And instead, I am busier than ever.

So, I hope you will forgive the recycled drawing. It is my whole-heated intention to return to a weekly post at the very least.

Thanks for visiting. I do hope to see you soon.

Shame on Ashley!!!

I received a very well intentioned e-mail from my cousin yesterday about a missing girl. I did a quick Google search and quickly found out this was a hoax. I responded to my cousin and told him and everyone else on the list that if you get an e-mail like this, the best thing to do is check places like Urban Legends or Snopes to see if they are real or not.

Usually with these kinds of things people are fishing for e-mail addresses. So, even if you feel you have a real e-mail it is best to copy and paste the pertinent info into a new post and send that along.

So once I found that this was indeed a hoax (a joke by a girl in Philadelphia) I sent an e-mail to my cousin and all on his list to let them know. Below is a great response to use should you ever see something like this again.


Everyone,

This is one of those things, I have two baby sisters, not that they are babies anymore, but nevertheless, I have two younger sisters. When I see an email like this I never hesitate, and I certainly don't think to check, cross reference, or research whether or not the said email is true. I see a missing little girl who obviously could not defend herself against a violent malicious world and my heart simply goes straight out to her and her family.

I try very hard not to forward or send spam email to all of my friends and family. When I hear, when I find out that something like this is a hoax it breaks my heart. I think about all the real missing and abducted children out there who might have a chance at being saved, and when I find out that pranksters are playing a practical joke it just kills me.

It is because of emails like this that people become skeptical and pessimistic. This is also the reason that these kind of emails do not get sent on or forwarded.

The sad truth of the matter is this, like the fable of old about the boy who cried WOLF, after you hear it so many many times and you find out the "cry" is not real, you stop to believe.

So when the time comes, when a child REALLY goes missing, no one cares, and no one listens.

This is the damage that these fakers have done to all the missing children, to all the parents of those children, to the community at large, and to all the people of the world.

The next time we hear "CRY WOLF," we will never believe, and that one time, that one time will be the time it actually matters. That will be the one time we as a world internet community could have made a difference.

But, like I said, No One will believe the alert is true.

So here and now I ask all of you to send this forward so that we can make the guilty parties involved actually feel guilty about what they have done.

My cousin was the one who did a little research before passing this on and found out the truth; THIS ALERT IS AND WAS A SCAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let us all hope and pray that the decency of humanity will never let this happen again.

Just imagine if this girl was your daughter.........your sister.............your friend. How would you FEEL if you knew someone out there in the world had ruined the chance of her survival because of a hoax???

Let us all stand up right now, stand proud, and stand true. Let us all stand tall and say, "We will not tolerate this kind of behavior anymore!!"

It is time we bring morals back to the American, no, to the World population.


PLEASE


Send this email forward. Let everyone know, this type of behavior will no longer be tolerated!

With any luck, and with all the hope that I, and you can believe in, this email will get back to the original person who sent out this false alert so that the individual who started all this insanity will know how destructive there actions have become.

Just so that everyone knows, this is not a forward, ( granted I hope it will become one because of the severity of the issue ) but know this...... this is not a forward! These are my thoughts! These are my words laid out on the page and I believe in them.

Remember....

this is your DAUGHTER.......

this is your SISTER......

your MOTHER......

your FATHER.....

your BROTHER.....

your AUNT......

your UNCLE.....

your GRANDMA......

your GRANDPA.......

Any one of these people could be the missing person that YOU and your FAMILY are looking for.

So let us stand together and let these cyber pirates of the moral human spirit know that fake alerts about missing persons are not a practical joke!!!!

As I said earlier, PLEASE, send this forward. It is far past time we all began to stand tall and proud on a pinnacle of moral ground.

We have all, myself included, let it slide for far too long. And this is why I am drawing a line in the sand here and now.

Enough is enough!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No More!!!!!!!

Still trying to CLEAR my Schedule

Work is getting a bit insane here. We just had a name change. We are now known as the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville. It is a MUCH better fit for us as we only have two pieces of work that can be classified as modern. It has been loads of work just to get the name approved and now I have the logo and all the brochures, stationary, posters, signage to design as well as a new web site. I also landed a few freelance illustration gigs and web sites. And on top of all that, I am going on a much needed vacation next week so I have to cram two weeks of design into one.

Hopefully, by the end of next month I will be back at it. Thank you for sticking with me through it all. Good luck and happy pencils to all of you!

Illustration Friday – Wind

It's hard to believe that it has been two weeks since I found time to post, but time has a way of blowing right past you. I got busy with some new projects at work and had a freelance project to keep me busy and both had me winded. When I saw the latest topic for Illustration Friday, I couldn't figure out if I would attempt wind, as in wind the watch or the wind blows. As I contemplated that, the museum kept me busy as well as the weeds in the yard. I have gotten very friendly with tillers and jack hammers recently as I work to, FINALLY, get my yard in shape.

With ALL that going on, I really didn't find any spare time to get the pencils out. HOWEVER, the big freelance project that I had actually was perfect for the topic.

I had to do a series of three illustrations for an Office max training presentation. I can't go into the topic any further but I can show you the illustrations.

They were challenging.

They were fun.

They are my addition to Illustration Friday.

Illustration Friday - Smitten

This one is for my beautiful wife Linda.

Illustration Friday - Quiet

SOUND BITES There is nothing like the quiet one finds in nature. And it is no accident that peace and quiet go hand in hand. Avoid an accident… cherish the quiet… and remember… when there is no one arguing… one finds peace… when your baby is sleeping and dreaming… one finds peace… when the hands are on the steering wheel and not on a cell phone… one finds peace… when the sun sets and you have put the last log on the fire… one finds peace… when you don’t care about other people’s possessions… one finds peace… and when two people are in love… both find peace… I missed Illustration Friday last week but I did do something for it. Take a look if you get a chance. Thanks.

fear is not really a phobia but…

A phobia (from the Greek φόβος "fear"), is a strong, persistent fear of situations, objects, activities, or persons. The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive, unreasonable desire to avoid the feared subject. When the fear is beyond one's control, or if the fear is interfering with daily life, then a diagnosis under one of the anxiety disorders can be made. – Wikipedia


What I really fear is what power has done to America – the politicians, the business owners and the poeple. Why do we tolerate it? How do we sleep at night knowing that someone, somewhere is being tortured all in the name of democracy. I do not condone in the slightest the evil or the twisted reasoning that those who attack the United States and other like minded, freedom loving countries. Nut it is no wonder they hate us so much.

This is an exerpt from an editorial in the Washington Post.

Are We Really So Fearful?
Ariel Dorfman

He confessed to anything and everything they wanted to drag from his hoarse, howling throat; he invented accomplices and addresses and culprits; and then, when it became apparent that all this was imaginary, he was subjected to further ordeals.
There was no escape.

That is the hideous predicament of the torture victim. It was always the same story, what I discovered in the ensuing years, as I became an unwilling expert on all manner of torments and degradations, my life and my writing overflowing with grief from every continent. Each of those mutilated spines and fractured lives -- Chinese, Guatemalan, Egyptian, Indonesian, Iranian, Uzbek, need I go on? -- all of them, men and women alike, surrendered the same story of essential asymmetry, where one man has all the power in the world and the other has nothing but pain, where one man can decree death at the flick of a wrist and the other can only pray that the wrist will be flicked soon.

It is a story that our species has listened to with mounting revulsion, a horror that has led almost every nation to sign treaties over the past decades declaring these abominations as crimes against humanity, transgressions interdicted all across the earth. That is the wisdom, national and international, that has taken us thousands of years of tribulation and shame to achieve. That is the wisdom we are being asked to throw away when we formulate the question - Does torture work? - when we allow ourselves to ask whether we can afford to outlaw torture if we want to defeat terrorism.(...)

Can't the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the "intelligence" that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness?

Are we so morally sick, so deaf and dumb and blind, that we do not understand this? Are we so fearful, so in love with our own security and steeped in our own pain, that we are really willing to let people be tortured in the name of America? Have we so lost our bearings that we do not realize that each of us could be that hapless Argentine who sat under the Santiago sun, so possessed by the evil done to him that he could not stop shivering?... (more)

My Back Yard

When you live in Riverside and renovate an old house, you never know what you might find - or find out. My house has yielded some pretty interesting things. Last week, a man showed up at my door and wanted to see the place. He grew up in the house in the sixties and seventies. It seems that Lynyrd Skynyrd actually jammed on my porch numerous times. He told me all about the missing plaster in our house and the history of some of the renovations that were made. He told me how the huge magnolia in our back yard was used to hoist engine blocks out of his friends' cars to work on them and how the gouges can to be in the bathroom door. We always thought that the owners we bought the house from were responsible as they hacked up the kitchen cabinets fairly well among other destructive things.

The stories from the past are certainly amazing. I can't imagine what we don't yet know, but it's the yard where the best treasures are found. Every time I work in my yard (and believe me, it needs work) the earth yields another secret. Recent finds include Batman and Power Ranger figures, a rubber lizard that has been keeping all the Cuban lizards company and a Ronco-matic type hair trimmer comb. Every time the earth is tckled, she yields another secret. The most amazing by far is the unidentified copper work of art my oldest dug up while weeding. If you know what it is, please drop me a line. I am going to start a new feature on the Rap blog for others who have found unusual treasures from the past.

Rube Goldberg Lives

I generally HATE getting impersonal, forwarded e-mail. It's not that I don't appreciate something funny, emotional or moving. It's just that they are… impersonal. I guess to good part of it all iss that my friends are thinking about me. And that in itself is a wonderful thing. And even though I HATE it, it is like watching a car wreck, I find I just can't help myself. Maybe it's because I am hoping that I will actually find a personal note attached. More likely, it's because I just don't want to miss anything.

Here's one of those "moving" ones. It's not the spiritual kind of moving, it's something else. It's actually a Honda commercial. There are no computer graphics or digital tricks in the film. Everything you see really happened in real time exactly as you see it. The film took 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something, usually very minor, didn't work. They would then have to set the whole thing up again.

The film cost $6 million to make and another small fortune to run because it is a two minute commercial, but it is one of the most watched ads on the net and is actually paying for itself. The voiceover is by Garrison Keillor, but I didn't hear it because I

And you thought those people that set up a room full of dominos to knock over were amazing...

CHANGE

It is said that change is the transition that occurs from same to different. While that may be the rule, sometimes it is the other way around. I am getting ready to go into a focus group this morning. While I do enjoy the dialog and ideas that focus groups can offer, most of the time the outcome of the focus group encourages the dumbest that a group can offer.

Our society is influenced and manipulated by marketing and advertising agencies. Pollsters and lobbyists control our political parties. And the almighty dollar has become the Almighty.

But that doesn’t mean that everyone is a victim of the dumbing down of the world. There are mavericks who do what they feel is right and have the courage to stick by their ideas. I applaud them and encourage you all to refuse to change to fit in.