Don’t Be a Butt Hole

On my way home I saw a sign that said “Watch for Children.”
I said, “That sounds like a fair trade.”

- Demetri Martin

Seeing how this is my second entry to feature a “butt hole” of some sort, I’ll keep this short. 

You’ve probably spent a good portion of your life looking for them, deciphering them, and even cursing at them. No, I’m not talking about your roomate, I’m talking about road signs.

Road signs do one crucial thing: relay information. And all though that seems like a simple task, as designers we often get caught up in sparkling doo-dads because they provide instant visual gratification.

Communication is fundamental to graphic design. Don’t be a butt hole, make your graphics communicate.

And thank your lucky stars you don’t live in this city.

What SheSaid

Above: Kim Hoang, Melinda Moore, Raquel Krouse and Melissa Robinson.

SheSays finally landed in Los Angeles this past Wednesday, with its launch event at the Weber Shandwick offices.

With existing chapters in London and New York, SheSays offers resources (such as roundtable discussions, networking events and a mentoring program) for professional women worldwide to supplement their creative digital career development.

During the chapter launch, the panel discussion centered around the apropos topic of social media, and featured three of the industry’s thought leaders.

The presentations kicked off with Melinda Moore, VP of Trailer Park, who has worked on cross-platform campaigns for companies including imeem.com, msnbc.com and Vivendi Universal Televsion. Melinda shared case studies from her work with YouTube as a tool for social change, with a spotlight on will.i.am.’s use of the video sharing site to gather support in the effort to end world poverty.

Raquel Krouse, VP and Social Media Lead at the IPG Emerging Media Lab, provided insight on the importance of listening as customers are talking more with their peers online about products and brands. Raquel presented examples of how active listening has helped social media-savvy brands uncover opportunities, stay competitive, manage their reputation and avert crisis.

Bringing it all together was Weber Shandwick’s own Melissa Robinson, SVP, Digital Communications, who drove home the point that with new outlets and tools, companies still need to create content that is relevant and compelling. Melissa shared her work with Stand Up To Cancer and how they engaged organizations, bloggers and social media sites to help mobilize a legion of supporters. They joined a “Virtual Standup,”  which increased online conversations and helped drive consumer participation in the telecast which ultimately helped raise $100 million for the cause.

The Q&A session which followed allowed for an in-depth discussion with the audience on the future of Twitter, ROI measurement and the importance of human analysis of data collected from listening tools.

The SheSays launch had a terrific turnout and leveraging the momentum and success of the launch, the next event, featuring mobile gaming, is already in the works and is slated to take place early April.

SheSays, “Join Us!”

With chapters in London and New York, SheSays (the social network for professional women in digital marketing and advertising) finally lands in Los Angeles this month with its launch event. A panel of industry experts will navigate us on an informative trip through the ever-changing world of social media. The presentations will be followed by an opportunity to meet & mingle with your LA digital sisters.

SheSays LA Launch Event
Social Media: Add as Friend
February 11, 2009 / 7-9:30 PM
Weber Shandwick (located at the Pacific Design Center)
Green Building, 7th fl.
Los Angeles, CA 90069
www.SheSaysUS.org

To RSVP for this FREE event, click here.

Note: Space is limited. Reservations are recommended.

Photoshop Disasters

You ever drive by an accident on the freeway and found yourself unable to keep from staring? It’s a phenomenon we LA natives are quite familiar with. The traffic reporters call it “spectator traffic,” others call it “rubber-necking” while all call it “incredibly annoying.”

Why do I bring that up? Because the woman pictured above seems to be experiencing a case of rubber-arming, and just like a multi-car pile up, I can’t stop looking. Take a moment to reexamine the photo.

Either this woman has a very unusual arm condition or this is a photoshop disaster.  With all the attention that this bending of time and space commands, you can’t help but wonder, “What were they thinking?”

Everytime you need a healthy dose of “WTF?” please visit Photoshop Disasters, a blog dedicated to the abuse of Photoshop. One thing for sure I’ll be double checking my compositing to make sure they obey the laws of physics.

Here are a few tips to keep you safe from photoshop disasters.

1. Never abuse the clone stamp tool. Cloning in a body part should only be attempted by seasoned photoshop veterans who understand things like how light behaves and basic anatomy.
2. Be mindful of your lightsource, nothing is more distracting than shadows pointing in every direction. On a similar note, make sure your shadows don’t give your composite a floating effect.
3. Learn the value of the burn and dodge tools.
4. Use a reference point when skewing and warping 3D objects
5. And for goodness sake! Clean up that clipping mask!

This has been a ViscomLA public service announcement

It Doesn’t Matter If You’re #000000 or #FFFFFF

I think they must have named oranges before they named carrots.

“What should we call these things?”
“They’re orange, we’ll call ‘em oranges.”
“What about those?”
“Aww sh*t… long pointies?”

–Demetri Martin

Every sixth grader in biology class knows that carotene is the chemical that gives carrots they’re oompa loompa glow and melanin gives skin its pigment. But how do things outside mother nature’s domain obtain their color?

What makes Coca-Cola red? What makes Starbuck’s green? Close your eyes for a moment and try to imagine a ice-cold can of Coke in orange. Or try to imagine your local Target store in blue?

Weird huh?

Color has a huge impact on how we see the world. It is emotional and elemental. It is both primitive and endlessly complex. This is why a healthy knowledge of color communication is beneficial to all designers in every field. 

For help with your hues and clues for your chroma visit adobe’s kuler website. Kuler offers new color combinations for every occasion. If you need even more inspiration stop by colourlovers.com.

Type-lovers Unite!

Until the digital age, typography was a specialized occupation. Digitization opened up typography to new generations of visual designers and lay users. Granted, this universal accessability to type options has led to irresponsible usage of the whimsical Comic Sans or the eye-numbing Times Roman. But in a free society, we must embrace typography - just as we do art – as a form of self expression capable of provoking human emotion.

Either consciously or unconsciously, typography has been known to inject friendliness, fear, trust and urgency to just about any visual communication – from office memos to outdoor billboards.  

While most type art goes unnoticed or unappreciated by the masses, those of us who are type-lovers can now show it to the world – or at least sport it on your iPhone or desktop - with these free, user-generated TypeNuts wallpapers.

What a Lifetime of Videogames Has Taught Me

A Short Visual History of Videogames from Kyle Downes on Vimeo.

This post manages to combine 2 of my interests. Motion Graphics and Videogames. Having spent countless hours trying to save a Princess from some sort of world-threatening evil, I watch this video with a sense of nostalgia.  

While most kids put away the consoles sometime around high school, I’ll never surrender my gamer mentality. Here’s what I’ve learned:

Every puzzle has a solution.
Whether you’re arranging falling blocks or text boxes, every problem has an answer. It’s just a matter of twisting and shifting. Insert the right block and the problem disappears. 

You can accomplish anything with the right tools.
Mario needs a fire flower and Link needs the Master Sword, maybe you need a graphic tablet or paintbrush. Graphic design technology has come a long way. Get the right tools, buy a book, take a class. Equip yourself for success.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Everyone knows that warp pipes can’t teleport you to fantasy lands and that winged caps can’t make you fly. Everyone knows that mushrooms can’t make you giant. 600 years ago, everyone knew that the earth was flat.  200 years ago, everyone knew that an African American could never be president. 50 years ago everyone knew that manned-space travel was impossible.

Imagine what we’ll know tomorrow.

Your Pixels Are Showing

Graphic designers are faced with a number of challenges. One common and irksome task is taking small images and making them bigger. Although it may seem simple just to use free transform command in photoshop, this inevitably summons the evil artifacts like the 12th plague of Egypt. For those of you not in the biz, artifacts are the little color blotches that can be found in enlarged photos and are a sure sign of a rookie designer.

But sometimes this cannot be avoided. Sometimes we are obligated to use certain images or we have limited resources and must pull graphics off the web. What’s a designer to do?

A wise man once told me, “When life hands you crap, make a crap sandwich.”

Genuine Fractals by OnOne Software offers you the tools to turn a crap sandwich into a crap souffle! This software uses some sort of ancient Tolkien elven magic to make enlarging photos a breeze. But here’s the kicker, Genuine Fractals can enlarge an image to 8 times the size without loss of quality!

I’ve had a chance to demo this product and although it is capable of enlarging up to 800 percent, it isn’t perfect. There are a few caveats. Upscaling an image from 72 to 300 dpi already takes up 400+ percent of your enlarging power. Another issue with the software is if your image is already artifacting then by no means will it remove artifacts. Garbage in, garbage out.

Other then those understandable limitations I must say that this software is affective and easy to use. They offer a free demo at  www.ononesoftware.com. Go forth, and multiply.

You Pecha!: Part II

Learn the correct pronunciation (among other things) with this pecha kucha presentation about…pecha kucha.

You Pecha!

20 images, 20 seconds each.

That’s all you got in Pecha Kucha, the simple but effective presentation format developed four years ago in Japan that has spread across the world. PK forces one to focus on the message (no more bullets!).  Widely used as a means for showcasing creative, it is now being used in academia and business too. Meet us at the next one.