Liu Bolin is protesting the government shutdown of his art studio by painting himself invisible into the landscape.
His art is wonderful on many levels, but the metaphor for his protest is clear. Art and design students can learn much from how his deliberate blurring of the lines between figure and ground produces interest and novelty. Liu’s work succeeds on many levels, but most notably in the way that it evokes at the same time delight and sympathy; something very difficult to achieve.
Last Friday I traveled to Waco, TX to the campus of the Texas State Technical College for the annual meeting of the Web Design & Development Advisory Committee. This was the second time in 3 years that I’ve been able to attend and it was great to see everyone again and to make some new friends.
My gift from the TSTC Web Club: a t-shirt from their recent campus fundraiser
Nerf-gun game, Humans vs. Zombies. Thanks guys!
TSTC is taking quite a conscientious approach to their curriculum and working to ensure the best, most relevant instruction for their students by engaging professionals from around the state. In fact they’re reaching out beyond the borders of the state of Texas, as for instance Chris Mills joined us via Skype from Manchester in the UK. By learning what professionals and agency owners are doing today, preparing to do tomorrow, and what we’re looking for when we hire, TSTC can more appropriately shape what they’re teaching. It’s a good plan.
I like the fact that our advisory committee does more than just offer gentle suggestions or general guidance; we’re helping to make the real decisions. Our recommendations are immediately translated into specific agendas and specific curriculum offerings, are voted on, and then incorporated into the schedule that will be submitted to the state board. Our responsibilities are tangible, which prevents the typical malady of committees: ineffectuality.
So, thanks to Bob Simonette and the faculty and students in the TSTC web department. It’s encouraging to see what you’re doing with higher education. I dig what you’re doing and I look forward to working with you in the coming months. Now …if we can only do something about your website…
Last Wednesday the Texas Unit office had the pleasure of a visit from Matt Weinberg of Vector Media Group. Jetting his way toward a vacation, he stopped off for the day to hang with us and we took full advantage of the occasion to goof off for the whole day. We’ve been working with Matt for a couple years, but we’d never met each other in-person. It was about time
Above: Nathan, R.A., Matt, Andy
Food and games featured prominently in the day’s activities. After some interesting and serious design profession discussion and a lunch of juicy burgers from Kelly’s, we opened up a can-o-whupass teaching Matt how to play Unitball. Our crew swept all 3 games (with Nathan winning 1 and me winning 2). We just figure that Yankee web developer people (he’s from NY, you know) must do a lot more work and a lot less serious playing around than us Texas folk.
After what must have been a humiliating experience for Matt at Unitball, we moved the party to the coffee shop for a couple games of Icehouse. Yes, it was a total nerdfest, with R.A. and especially Nathan dominating the play and shutting out the rest of us. Back at the office we did do a bit of work, as Matt’s crew and ours are involved in a client project together. But that interruption to fun was over quickly and there was just time enough to introduce Matt to some fine beer at BJ’s and then real TexMex at Chuy’s before dropping him off at his hotel.
It was a pleasure to visit with a formidable professional like Matt, share some ideas, learn some things, and goof off a bit too. Big thanks to Matt for taking the time to drop by and hang with us. We can’t wait ‘till next time.
I came across the Incredibox site today (thanks to onefloorup) and it kind of made my morning. The site is clever and fun and simple. It doesn’t do anything revolutionary or earth-shattering, but it does one thing that matters. It brings a little joy into people’s day. There’s a lot to be said about doing something as simple and kind as spreading joy. So to Allan Durand, Paul Malburet, and Romain Delambily: Thanks and good on ya.
Here’s how to make yourself look like a boob and make your publication look desperate and inconsequential:
Vote it up for us? C’mon, folks. Just don’t.
Bobby McFerrin is one of my favorite entertainers of all time. He knows how to convey and infect others with “happy” as well as anyone on earth. That is a worthy talent and skill. Here Bobby allows the audience members to show off their intuitive knowledge of the pentatonic scale in creating a beautiful duet with him. Greatness.
World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.
An interesting bit of oddness in magazines this week. One of our clients, Woot.com, was featured in a Maximum PC magazine article about Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8. Interesting to note that the Woot website is not a site that requires the use of IE8’s august “Compatibility View” function. Can’t imagine why they picked Woot as the example here. At seeing this, Woot’s creative director Dave Rutledge said:
“We wholeheartedly support use of screenshots of our site as the lorem-ipsum of demonstrating and discussing any browser features or functionality, regardless of how irrelevant or tenuous the connection is.”
Fun times.
What is with the half-broken, difficult, problematic, proprietary, buggy, near-unworkable, and otherwise unsatisfactory solutions we’re presented with for rendering fonts beyond the chosen few web-safe fonts? Seriously, with all of the magical, amazing, and near-miraculous innovations that developers bring to the web in other quarters, why is it that basic specialized font rendering is somehow beyond everyone?
As a developer I want to be able to simply place copy in a <p> tag or <h2> or <li> or any other appropriate text markup and have it render in the font I prescribe. I don’t want it to render as an image and I don’t want to have to adjust and readjust my CSS to accommodate the buggy results. I don’t want to have to worry about line breaks or dimension or anything else that is non-contextual. I just want text to behave like text. Period.
As a consumer I want to see things the way the designer/developer intended me to see them …unless I want to override that default presentation according to my preference. And I don’t want your buggy, shoddy, broken font rendering solution to get in my way. Ever.
Here’s a challenge for developers: Create the tool or technology that allows for what I’m describing here. Do it right; no hackery and no buggy, whimsical results. Maybe even demand that people purchase your solution. You will have earned that reward. Do this very soon. Stop making everything else until this one job is accomplished, for this is too basic a problem to leave unattended.
Just get it frickin done. Is this really too much to ask?
UPDATE:
What he said: http://tinyurl.com/cyexkk
