If Best Coast has not already made the Best American Non-Required Reading‘s list of top band names of the year it soon will.
East side. West side. Best side.
September 2nd, 2010March of the Penguin Classics
August 31st, 2010Well that explains THAT. Penguin is celebrating 75 years of being awesome and torturing high schoolers (in many ways, the same thing) and is going all graphic design crazy on their literary classics. Well done.
In other news, if you have yet to visit Penguin UK’s blog, you’re missing out on one of the better corporate blogs on the Web. Much like today’s librarians, you expect them to be all stuffy and uptight, but it turns out that the hipsters were busy taking over the literary world at the same time they were conquering Williamsburg.
Dirty Words
August 25th, 2010Fact: Cee-Lo Green is the soul machine.
Fact: Cee-Lo Green can rock a costume.
Fact: Cee-Lo Green has a new song with a teaser music video that’s nothing but text. No chicks, no boats, no Cristal, no ice. Just colors and fonts.
Bonus points for the LACK of Sketch Rockwell font. I think we can all agree on that one.
In related news, the song’s lyrics, title and theme all contain a word that is giving my mother heart palpitations right now and she doesn’t even know it exists. You can find it easily enough on google. Pretty screen shots, full speed ahead!
Update: This version is miles better than the recently released “official video.” You’ll always be the official version in my heart all-text video!
Wikipedia Brown, Girl Detective!
August 15th, 2010Friend: So what are you busy with these days?
Me: Doing this and that. The usual. Oh and a couple of weeks ago I was spending all my free time working on this really cool/fun murder mystery dinner party-type thing for the AAF District 3 Convention. It was like an ice breaker type deal.
Friend: …
Me: It’s cool though, it’s like Clue but with social media. We gave out clues throughout the evening over twitter and you could tweet back to the characters and it was all interactive and stuff. People had to guess the room, the weapon and the murderer just like in Clue, but with less chance and more reasoning. Anyway my job was to come up with these suspect profiles and twitter script to help everyone solve the mystery while also confusing the crap out of them.
Friend: Huh. Well that sure is something isn’t it.
Me: Well, I mean yeah. It sounds weird, but it was pretty fun. I think everyone had a really good time.
Friend: mmhmm. Sounds…interesting.
Me: It’s cooler than it sounds.
Friend: Oh no, I’m sure it is.
Me: But I mean you kind of have to be there since it’s like an event, more than like an actual piece.
Friend: mmhmm.
Me: I mean like, if there was a “performance art” category at the Addy’s, then that’s where this would fit. It’s cool just trust me.
Friend: Oh I do, I can’t wait to see it.
Me: Okay, here look. Banks Wilson of the eponymous Studiobanks did all the graphic design and stuff and project managed the whole thing. See all the characters are all based on the original Clue character drawings from the 70s. Slick, huh?
Friend: Oh cool!
Me: Yeah, and I created suspect profiles using all the Clue characters but I put kind of a modern twist on it. You know trying to make it kind of funny and adding in technology references like Foursquare and Facebook and all that jazz.
Friend: I like the pictures a lot.
Me: Seriously? That’s all you have to say? What about the words?
Friend: Oh those are nice too. I can’t really see ‘em that well.
Me: Click on the picture, it opens in a new window and you can make it full size. Or you can see the pdf here so you can zoom to your heart’s content.
Friend: Oh, ok. Those are kind of clever.
Me: Well keep me in mind for your next corporate event or children’s birthday party. I’m taking a balloon animal making class next weekend and I’m pretty sure I get a certificate at the end.
Friend: Would you dress like a clown?
Me: No. But for an extra couple of bucks I will write a story about a clown.
Friend: That’s a deal breaker.
Me: You just missed out on the most epic children’s birthday party ever.
Friend: I’ll take my chances.
Book Marky Mark and the Do-Gooder Bunch
August 15th, 2010So I recently got the chance to do a little work for the awesome folks over at Better World Books. They’re a non-profit that sells books online to help promote literacy. Let me repeat: non profit. book seller. helping people read. Swoon! They had a booth at the Lilith Fair and needed some copywriting help for some signage and bookmarks. Why yes, I would love to make some words for you! Here are my words all ready to save your place in a book. Which means my words are in a book which, if I understand the transitive property correctly, means that I am now a published author.
The Great Cover Up
July 15th, 2010Remember all those awful Penguin Classics and other books we were forced to read against our wills in high school and college? Remember how painful they were? Now with the wisdom of years I look back on those books and my god so many of them are still terrible, but check out what they’ve done with the covers! All of a sudden, I’m thinking man, this Moby Dick looks like an action adventure I could really get into, rather than some overstuffed tome I somehow avoided reading in high school. Look at that whale! It’s jumping out of the water like one of those great whites on Shark Week! I mean come on! How could you not want to read this book?
And Wurthering Heights! It looks so intriguing and mysterious, like something your cool artsy friend sketched in their binder during math class. It like, totally gets you, and like sucks you in and before you know it you’re entrenched in some mediocre story from the least impressive member of the Bronte crew.
The Frankenstein I read in high school was a mere 100 pages or so–every one of them insufferable. But this, this actually looks cool. Granted the entire book isn’t in comic book form, but all of a sudden I want to know more.
And check out the author bio, even that’s done as a comic. So much more interesting.
I include my BFF Kurt Vonnegut here as well, simply because the spines of these books include a shout out to Vonnegut fans who know that that asterisk isn’t an asterisk at all. Mwahaha…inside joke!
The Stranger offers a side-by-side look at the before and after of Vonnegut’s redesigned books. Maybe it’s because he’s gone to that big clam bake in the sky, but I think using Vonnegut’s own drawings and handwriting is far more interesting than whatever geometric thing they had going on before.
Americans love America almost as much as they love a long weekend.
July 4th, 20101. I think it’s completely awesome how the muppets have embraced the interwebs.
2. The Swedish chef for a patriotic sing-a-long celebrating AMERICA? I know we’re a melting pot and that fits nicely with the whole cooking thing, but really?
Loose lips sink ships & other disasters
June 21st, 2010While I’m not a fan of propaganda per say, I love me some propaganda posters. They’re either unintentionally hilarious, placing the burden of either winning or losing the war on your tiny little shoulders, or they’re delightfully helpful. Remember to eat your vegetables! Reading is fun! Brush your teeth!
I am now the proud owner of a fake British propaganda poster, which isn’t so much informative or cautionary as it espouses one of my many long held beliefs.
In other news, someone has created a very clever BP related propaganda poster based on one of the classics. Granted, the execution leaves a lot to be desired, but the idea is pretty wonderful.
So, while it’s not nearly as awesome or compelling at as the original below and the quotation marks are only borderline acceptable, it still deserves some props.
When life gives you wheelchair, make lemonade!
June 14th, 2010This is by far the greatest thing I saw on the interwebs today, a worthy successor to my gal Oprah. I just hope she doesn’t pull a Leno and take back his show once he gets one, which is completely inevitable.
Also, this needs to exist, like now.
Like Oil & Water
June 2nd, 2010Thanks for ruining our environment BP! Although I appreciated the music selection in your ads about how green and environmentally friendly you are, and of course your logo, I always viewed you with some skepticism. And now it’s come to this. You ruined our fancy environment. I know, I know: it was an accident. The damage is done old chaps. And for the record, this is not at all like that time we dumped all your tea into the ocean. Since you’re busy not fixing what you broke, the interwebs have helpfully stepped up to free up some of your time by creating new advertising for you, employing withering sarcasm, my very favorite form of communication.
