I said it first, but they said it funnier

An Open Letter to James Cameron from Papyrus.

Word.

An open letter to James Cameron

Sir,

I had the pleasure of viewing your latest film, Avatar, this past weekend. While I was content to wait for Avatar to be released on DVD, The Scotsman was desperate to see it and I figured what the hell. I have to tell you James: I liked the movie a great deal. I had assumed the film was going to be an empty vehicle for special effects and CGI, but the story – while predictable at points – had quite a lot of substance and gravitas that I was not expecting. Bravo.

And while I'm giving out kudos, allow me to talk about those special effects and CGI: Nothing short of visually stunning. I'm so glad I got to see it on a big screen to fully enjoy the visual buffet you severed up. Amazing and spectacular.

But.

You spent millions and millions of dollars on this film. You have revolutionized the way motion capture is used and logged thousands of hours in post-production. You fully imagined a fictional world that still felt grounded and textured enough to be believable. All of this... and the best typeface you could come up with for the subtitles is Papyrus?

Seriously? FUCKING PAPYRUS.

James allow me to explain to you something that one of the 732 designers working on this movie did not: Papyrus is overused. It is the Comic Sans of the decade. Seriously. That font was over before it began. It's used by every hack wannabe designer who wants to make something look "antique," or "ancient," or in your case, "native." It's like dressing your movie up in a stunning ball gown and then accessorizing with leg warmers. Do you know how many thousands of expressive and interesting fonts and typefaces are available to you? Like what about Centaur? Or, Caslon Antique? How about LTD Pabst or Celestia? Try Fable or Galahad. Libra could look nice, or Serena. All of these typefaces are a steal at under $100. Considering your budget, you couldn't shell out $75 for something that didn't come included in your system fonts. And let's pretend you didn't have room in your budget for a new typeface: There bajillions free on the internet. In short using something as common and overused as Papyrus smacks of laziness and cheapened the whole movie for me. Every time it appeared on screen I wanted to throw popcorn at it.

Please take a typography class,

8K

The Vote of the People

Sarah advised me that Bartleby Snopes has a call for photos for their next issue. So I'm going to submit. But I need your help, because I don't know what to submit. I have about eleventy thousand photos, most of them portraits, interestingly enough. Also, I'm sort of unsure about what those Bartleby Snopes kids are looking for. Their first issue doesn't give me much to go from. Are they looking for more artsy? Sweet? Standalone photography art? So I'm going to ask you for your help. We're taking a poll here, people.

I've sifted through my Flickr, and come up with these 30. I've tried to find the ones most versatile, but feel free to look through and find others if your favorites aren't in here. Please vote in the comments!
Phew. Please vote early, vote often, and vote awesome. (FYI, there's no limit to the number I can submit, but I obviously want to submit my best work. You can list several, if you like.)


VOTING IS NOW CLOSED.

Thanks, everyone, for your help. I submitted something like 10 shots this morning and now we wait.

In the meantime, my brain is cooking. Looking over this lit journal made me miss working on Woodcrest all those years ago. I can't put my finger on it, exactly, but there's something so special and and exciting about working on a creative publication like this. I think I'd like to do it again. Anyone know of any lit journals that are looking for help? Anyone want to start a lit journal with me?


UPDATE

Well, that didn't take long. Not 10 minutes after I submitted, I got an enthusiastic email and it seems they will be using several of my shots. WOOT! Thanks for all of your help and advice!

Shocking twists and horrifying developments!

You know what you need? A new calendar.

Oh look, here's one I designed for my class this last semester.

It was this whole concept involving B-movies related to office work. It's sort of silly, but I had fun doing it.

I effing hate Comic Sans

But otherwise, this video is hysterical:

ETA: I tried embedding it, but it makes everything all wonky. Go here instead.

Super Exciting Arty News

So in my last post, I hinted at something SUPER SECRET and awesome that I didn't want to jinx by talking about.

Well, now I can talk about it. Are you ready?

My friend Hunter, having seen some of my design work from the past semester, alerted me to a digital media art show and urged me to submit my work. The deadline for the open call was literally that very day (in fact, I had technically missed the deadline by 12 hours) but Hunter told me to go ahead and submit anyway. I figured balls to the wind, why not? So I went ahead and submitted three of my favorite pieces.

I just found out that one of my pieces was accepted.

Which one? Well, you're just going to have to come and see:

The Off the Wall Gallery/Dirty Frank's
NE corner of 13th and Pine, Philadelphia
ENTER DIGITAL
Opening Reception Thursday, June 5
7pm - 10pm
Show continues until Friday, August 1st.

People. My work is going to be FRAMED. Hanging in an ART GALLERY (ok, ok, a bar/art gallery -- but why quibble?). FOR SALE. I'm dying a little bit over here.

Honorably, honorable, Thank you!

Last night at the Graduate Art Show, I won an award!

I got an honorable mention, which sounds less impressive than it really is. Seeing as there are only two awards given -- The Beginner Award and The Advanced Award. The only award I was eligible for was The Advanced Award, and according to the judges, it was a dead heat between me and the student who won. And I sort of agree that the student who won The Advanced Award did something worth recognizing more than me. She took photos of a cat toy, an aloe plant, and a toilet plunger and made an entire undersea scene from those objects. She and I have very different aesthetics, and I had a larger body of work displayed, but her work took her a long time, was tedious to do, and was particularly imaginative. So I'm glad she won.

Plus, I got SO MANY compliments last night, I almost feel like I won the actual award. Two separate judges came up to me and offered to buy my work. And Liz, the head of the M.F.A. program asked if she could have copies for her new office. Here's the piece everyone seemed to like the most (ironically, one of my least favorites, due to some resolution problems):



That piece also printed out poorly -- all dark and the colors were off -- so I was particularly surprised that this was the piece people liked so much. Originally, I did it for the "Surrealism" project for my digital imaging class.

Also nice last night was hearing the M.F.A. students read their work. I was requested (again) to read at the reading at the end of the month (even though I'm not an M.F.A. student), and received a really nice comment from one of the M.F.A. students -- "You're the only M.A. student who consistently supports the M.F.A. program and tries to bridge the gap between the two departments. I love that about you!"

Much was said last night about community at Rosemont, and I have to agree. I am always impressed and inspired by my peers, unknowingly they encourage me to buckle down and refine my craft -- whatever "craft" I'm trying to hone in on that day, be it writing, design, editing, whatever. It's so nice to have a support system like that, even if they are unaware that they're doing that for me. I need to spend more time with them, and take a more active role in Rosemont programs, I think. It's not like I exactly have the time, but it's good for me.

My teacher from my Critical Theory Class (of DOOM) from last semester was there and she zeroed in on me about my Hegel/Lacan/Doctor Who paper that I need to revise by the end of the month so that I can submit it to that conference in Wales. She very helpfully offered to help me revise the thing, and if I were not going to a wedding this weekend, I would be pseudo-presenting what I have of the paper at a mock conference at Rosemont this weekend as practice. I need all of you to get on my case next week for applying the seat of my pants to a chair and WORK ON THAT FRAGGING PAPER. I am rapidly running out of time to dally with this thing.

Say, are you busy this Thursday?

Whatcha doing this Thursday? Well, besides watching Lost?

That's boring. You know what you should do instead? You should come to Rosemont for a little while for A Stroll Through the Arts.

OK, so it's not really strolling per se, seeing as it's all in one room. You could stroll through the room, I guess, but usually when I see "stroll" I think of a leisurely walk through a garden.

Whatever.

My point is, that 12 pieces of digital design by yours truly will be on display that night. There will also be readings done by the M.F.A. students, including my friend Courtney who writes beautiful poetry, and I'm not even a poetry fan so you know it's good if I'm recommending it. Oh and short films by the video students.

It's free, people. And there will be snacks. You know you want to come. And you'll totally get home in time for Lost, so don't worry.

A Stroll Through the Arts
Rosemont Campus, Main Building
1400 Mongomery Ave.
Rosemont, PA
7:00pm

The Design of Dissent Democracy.

I haven't been talking about school much in this space, mainly because this semester is a complete 180° from last semester. I'm taking two design classes, both of which are rather low-stress and practical (although I do need to get cracking on my presentation for my color theory class). My digital design class -- which was billed as both "advanced" and "includes InDesign," but is neither -- has been a bit ho-hum as I am light years ahead of most of my classmates and the class functions as a lab. Meaning no lectures, discussions, or critiques, just us sitting at our stations doing our work.

Our "work" is to complete 5 projects by the end of the semester. One of the project ideas given to us was to create these "Vote" posters: posters to inspire the 18-25 crowd to take part in the voting process. To be a bit rabble rousing, if you will. I've made several posters. But just today I stumbled across something very cool.

Power to the Poster.

Very cool. I can't wait to see what else they come up with as the site grows.