every day i drive by the worst billboard ever. the first time i saw it, i thought it was a giant penis with arms. the odd cropping of the mans head and the belly extending below the bottom of the billboard are to blame. do you see the subliminal penis or is it just me?

this years sxsw bag design finalists are up! i went with a little less humor in the design this year. conceptually, the design is drawing a parallel between the interactive necessities of the computer (input cables) and the interactive necessities of the human (the five senses).

this year, i also played down the "sxsw" text and used it more as a graphical element. thought being, the bags are distributed to sxsw interactive conference attendees who already know what conference they are attending. the text was also used to enhance a layerd or complex feeling created by the many cables.

to save time and spend no money, i became my own model. i needed the human representation to make the concept but really wanted it to be about the interaction with technology. this is the weakest part of the image, i fear it becomes too much about the face. that is one of the reasons i crop the face, to put more emphasis on the ear.

the colors mimic those used in this years sxsw branding in an attempt to lend a bit of design continuity to the bag.

well, enought design babble, there is some great competition this year, check it out!

my 2004 entry...

my 2003 entry (the winner!)...

whew, finally am mailing out birth annoucements of son 3. thanks to a few cool designers that provided me with some great critique; Rebecky, Greg, Robert, Casey, Brian, and Sergio.

the announcements are 18" by 6" and fold into a square (making for expensive postage!). can you count the influences? a fascination with hatch show prints, side show freaks and the circus drove the design.

oh, if you think it is offensive to portray my new ofspring with such a large head, you should have seen one of the early comps where his head didn't fit on he paper. (link also includes behind the design notes to myself for all you design freaks out there)

bargarrletterpress.com did a great job printing! go there now to see some cool shit. kissing the paper with inky lips!

back in the day, apple used icons that looked like the machine you owned to represent your hard drive. aside from the happy mac on startup, this was one of the most endearing things connecting me to my machine. visually, it made sense and no explanation was ever needed. it gave individuality and personality to the machine.

so, at some point (at least two or so years ago?) apple decided to use a very generic internal hard drive icon (as seen above) to represent your hard drive. it is the same on all macs.

my mother has never seen an internal hard drive. additionally, it is generically named "Macintosh HD". HD for hard drive i suppose, but I wonder what my mother thinks it stands for. it is now a meaningless icon.

i know it is a small thing, but from a company that prides itself on branding, design, usability and individuality, i am dumbfounded and disappointed.

has anyone seen other musings on this topic? i am sure apple had some sort of reason, i would be interested in hearing it.

friday i went to see stefan sagmeister and hillman curtis speak. i had never seen either one, but am fairly familiar with their work.

i am not a great fan of sagmeister's work but can see the importance it has in both commercial design and fine art. sagmeister's work almost always challenges the viewer to look beyond the visual. much of his work is in your face. his text treatments go against everything you were ever taught in typography class (if you graduated before 1990). much of his work looks both organic and un-natural at the same time. probably his most well known work is the disturbing poster (above) done in 1999 for a speaking engagement.

so, with those opinions in mind, i expected his personality to be harsh, arrogant, and annoyingly opinionated. i was completely wrong.

sagmeister discussed work done after a one year break from commercial work. he was very humble, soft spoken and very likable. further confusing the presupposed persona i had manufactured in my head, was his austrian accent that sounded like a kinder and gentler treminator. sagmeister is one of those people that is not just smart, but frighteningly intelligent. one of those freaks connecting dots that i can't even see.

curtis spoke about the creative process and success factors of the process. one factor, is to erase cynicism. yep, erase cynicism. something i am unable to do in the current economic/political environment. a world without cynicism is a world without griff. i can not exist. i might argue cynicism can fuel creativity, but i can see that it might be cheap fast burning fuel. anyway, he is a better man than i if he can erase cynicism in todays world, and i know he is probably right.

curtis showed some interesting work. one piece that directly reflected a video piece done by another designer. he admitted that it influenced him. it was kind of odd to see such a well respected designer mimicking elements of another's work. it exemplified the rip, remix and burn culture we live in. regardless, his presentation was on target. curtis also frightened me with his intelligence (even though he was hopped up on cold medication and had to bail out of the q and a session).

every time i attend something like this (or thumb through print magazines design annual) i go through the same predictable emotions. first is am in awe. awe changes to a feeling of being inspired and a desire to build some cool shit. finally an overwhelming feeling of hopeless bleak despair. realization that i am not worthy and that i am a pathetic insult to the design profession. i could never design something at that level. it's a good thing i don't have a handgun at those moments or they would be my last moments.

truly disappointing was the fact that not a single one of my design students showed up for the event. where is the love? kids today.

last year I was lucky enough to have my design adorn the SxSW interactive canvas goodie bag given to attendees.

today i found out i am one of 5 finalists for this years bag! i am afraid i will not be so lucky this year, i am up against some strong competition and one of my illustrator heros, David Chien of nakedgremlin.com. I look forward to meeting David, and the other finalists juan huerta, christina bowerman, and kenn louis in austin this year.

i thought it would be fun to mix icons of interactive technology with a little southwest/mexican folk art. and it wouldn't really be art if i didn't mix in the classic battle of good and evil, now would it?

hey, what do ya know! i was recently notified by diarist.net that i had won the best design category! thanks diarist.net, you made my day!

today we pay tribute to the very munch under rated lower case g. always a favorite of mine, it is easily the most creative and fiercely independent letter of them all. as any typographer can tell you, little g is the soul of a font, little g is the dna of a font, little g is alpha and omega of a font.

you say you can't tell the difference between helvetica and helvetica neue? check out little g, he will show you a world of difference.

you say you can't decide which font to use? let little g show you the way.

give it up for little g.

the hot wings at wingnuts taste like cheese burgers, i wonder why.

as an internationally sactioned visual design official, i award wingnuts 5 points for ingenuity and designing on a dime, but must deduct 3 points for a typographical infraction (improper use of upper and lowercase letterforms within a single word) . wingnuts final score is 2.

ultranote - this reminds me of a hotel in dallas that was once a hilton hotel. the new owners simply removed the "n" from the roadside sign and replaced it with a "p". it is now the hiltop (yes, with only one "l").

i found the logo above in usa today

an inept designer has managed to turn the "tour of hope" into the "tour of hype".

please turn in your graphic design licence at the door.

brilliant corners pointed me to an article that touches on some some similar thoughts that I have been having lately.

late last year zeldman did a public redesign of his site. visible changes happened daily. some minor some major, some even seemingly contradictory to changes made the previous week or sometimes day. At SxSW in the spring he talked about the redesign. his main reason for doing it publicly was to share the redesign process and the thoughts in action with his readers (largely made up of web developers). his was not the first to transform before his users eyes, but definitely the first high profile site of some one regarded as a direction setter in the industry.

i am a great fan of zeldman, but this irritated me greatly. it seems like a whimpy way out. as a visual designer, i take a stand right or wrong with my designs. the potential for failure has always been an accepted risk. as a visual designer i am presenting a specific identity or persona to my users. I only want them to see the finished product, i do not want them peeking behind the curtain.

so, why are we seeing this more and more often?

because we can. technology is the enabler. css and content management systems make radical visual design changes easier than changing your shirt.

because the precedence has been set in the software industry. i wonder what percentage of my software is the latest most current version available. i bet less than 5%. remember when beta versions were only released to power users? all software now seems to be in a beta like state. browsers are probably the worst offenders, i have always felt that my browser is work in progress rather than a finished product.

because the adoption of user centered design processes justify it. making changes and adjustments on the fly as they are identified in the users actions makes sense. i think back to the days when user testing was only done to "finished" products and laugh. such a simple concept.

because it is a much more casual world than ever before. i used to wear a suit and tie to work every day. at some point the world realized the suit and tie had no correlation to the quality of my work. the quality of the product is more important than an untucked shirt tail now and then.

because this economy sucks. no one is willing to pay for a major redesign. phased approaches are the only thing people are willing to spend money on. identify and fix elements, pay as you go.

i feel all these reasons are valid. so, i will accept these changes to be successful, but i will do it kicking and screaming. i so want to return to the old days. as a visual designer, i love the pomp and circumstance around a relaunch. i love the shock and awe of a newly finished design. i love the debates spurred by a radical redesign. i love the feeling of finishing something.

change is the nature of the beast in this industry. i am fairly certain in 15 years i will look back and laugh thinking of grandiose relaunches of the past and the archaic processes used. processes that had roots in print design, a medium that shares very few similarities to new media.

a little obey giant with a dash of cuban constructivist art, a hint of evil and a splash of old skool pixelated video game art topped with a smarmy catch phrase, and what do you get? a winning shirt design for the dallas chapter of the international game designers association!

coming soon, look for it on the back of a game developer near you!

i know, i know, i fixed the typography issues (font, kerning and leading) in the early comps on the dallas igda site, so get off my back.

recently i have i missed designing for the tactile senses (some times the wysiwyg 72 dpi world seem a little constrictive). i decided to make some hand made books for fun. click the thumbnail images for larger images.

i found some cool black wire mesh that conceptually related to the content of the book (retro robot illustrations). I bound the book with contrasting yellow wire at the top.

i found some silvery semi transparent vellum to contrast the black wire, i used it as an inside cover. the book title is 5 bots. using a graphical treatment of abstracted text, i created a grungy backround for each page.

the book contains 5 illustrations of retro robots and science fiction elements in comic book like frames. the view of some elements is abstracted to the point of being open to interpretation. i originally did the drawings for my son, purposely abstract encouraging him to invent a story to fit the image as he saw them.

i will be creating 20 hand made editions of this book, if you would like one, a minimum donation of $17 will get you one (this is real art folks! that's cheap!)! i will sign and number the last page of each. if you donate a little more, i will doodle a little bot on the last page!

the money will support the costs of this site and also the costs of a new community/collaborative project (details to follow soon). lesser donations would never be declined and will in turn recieve butt loads of good karma!

maybe you want a book but don't gots the scratch. hmmm, i wonder what you do have! art for art swaps are always entertained!

the fewer you purchase, the more my mother will recieve for christmas. any left over money will fund my internet porn addiction.

help, i am losing faith in some of the most basic design concepts and process that i have lived by for so many years.

pencil comps - am i the only designer that still starts on paper?

kerning - come on, show the letters some love, i beg you.

real photography - is that even an option anymore or has stock and the combination of photoshop and digital photography killed it?

branding and identity - i used to think branding was a subset of identity, now i am beginning to thing it might be the other way around. is that a bad thing?

user centered design - sure it's great in the perfect world but is there a single client in this economy that is willing to pay for it?

wire frames - why build a wire frame when you can just build the real thing?

designing for a minimum delivery platform - I am amazed at how many times we are well into construction before this issue arises, does it not matter anymore?

i am amazed to see how quickly and how enthusiastically the web community has embraced creative commons licensing. unfortunately i believe many (not you of course) have embraced it because it is a web trendy thing to do. i also believe few have thought beyond the licensing to understand the potential ramifications of creative commons.

although i may not agree with the creative commons as it is designed today, i support lessig in his efforts. current copyright laws were not written with the internet or digital formats in mind, an issue that needs to be addressed immediately. the creative commons ideas are great in theory, but i am very skeptical of the execution for several reasons.

1. the average person has very little understanding of how current copyright laws apply, i believe the creative commons ideas will be even harder to the populous to understand.

2. it has been argued that creative commons could close the gap between the haves and have nots. i argue it could widen the gap. it becomes a matter of distribution channels. you and i don't have the same distribution channels that disney does. borrowing from you and i, disney could do very well.

3. creative commons has more fuzzy areas than the current copyright laws. on the back end, that leaves a great deal of personal interpretation to a judge.

4. i don't really get excited about letting you borrow my stuff because... well, let's face it... you suck.
as a big headed, ego maniac artist, odds are what ever you do to my stuff will ruin it. honestly, there are creators and consumers. consumers outnumber creators 100 to 1. no matter how much your mother tells you that you are a talented artist, you are not. you are most likely a consumer and there is nothing wrong with that. (of course all of my readers are very creative creators with no need to every borroe anything of mine, "you" is referring to all the non-readers!)

i think many people are so starved for exposure, they are willing to give up rights just to be seen. these people may feel very different about that when some one turns a buck by cultivating their creative seed.

creative commons is the first step in the right direction, but don't confuse it as the solution (yet). Lessig is a man much smarter than me, i believe he can figure it out.

one of the requirements to graduate with a bachelor of fine arts is a bfa show. It is customary for students to attend other student's shows. everyone mills about pretending to be interested, then when they just can't fake it any more, it is customary to greet the artist and tell them that it is a fantastic show, regardless of whether it really is or not.

once i was one milling about a particularly bad show of a fellow student. an apple monitor perched upon a pedestal looped through a series of images and simple animation. my stomach dropped when i recognized six of the images were mine. unbeknownst to me, the student had found my diskette in the computer lab. finders keeper's loser's weepers. he had manipulated the images for the worse, and in my judgement, he had not altered them enough to make them his own.

at the time computer art was a new frontier, he was praised as a pioneer. in my opinion, a pioneer that steals shit.

this was one of the worst feelings of my life, it still bothers me now, 14 years later.

i am disappointed to see a decline in usability of late on the net. it really seemed like usability would define the next generation of the net, but i am beginning to doubt that.

while i was sleeping, cdnow.com slipped into the swirling vortex of amazon.com. it is quite obvious cdnow content was just slammed into an ancient amazon information architecture originally designed to sell books. if you can actually find the cd you are looking for, the track listing for the cd is near the bottom of the page reach by endless scrolling. much of the great supporting information cdnow had has disappeared.

if you had not noticed, google is starting to suck. before you crucify me for saying such a thing, remember i am talking about usability, not functionality. the awsomeicity of googles functionality increases almost daily. because of that the usability is getting worse and worse. switching between the regular search and the image search leaves much to be desired, it could be much "smarter" based on user tendencies.

yahoo has morphed into a completely useless portal over time. the usage of white space on the home page is the worst i have ever seen. 20 lb of shit in a 10 lb bag. it is really hard to decipher content from advertising (surely done on purpose).

ironically, i felt these three sites were industry benchmarks for usability only a few years ago. coincidentally all 3 have gone from sites with very focused and specific key user tasks to sites with very broad offerings catering to an almost undefinable audience.

wake up jakob it is time to bust some ass.

make sure you attend 20x2 at sxsw. sit in the front row and watch me make a complete idiot of myself. as a bonus, it's very possible you will see a full mental breakdown. breakdowns are always fun to watch when they happen to other people.

anyway, 20x2 was kind enough to extend an invite, so i accepted. recently they asked for a 108 x108 pixel graphic from each participant to use on the site. easy enough, right?

i created the above image. my wife asked "what the hell is that!? i don't get it." i began an explanation of my creation...

"well, it's 20 x 2. 20 panelists are asked the same question and have 2 minutes to answer. so i was thinking the panel is sort of like a team, 20 people with a common goal (answering a question) and they will be timed, kind of like the last two minutes in a basketball game. hence the little animated clock thingy. then i thought about jerseys and how they have numbers, so i scanned my freshman basketball photo and photoshoped 20x2 on the jersey. then i needed some sort of continuity with my site so i choose the ugly green color, blah, blah, blah..."

the explanation continued for another few minutes and i started to realize she was sorry she asked. i am sure my voice sounded like charlie brown's teacher.

she finally cut me off. "why didn't you just use a current photo of yourself? for god's sake it's just 108 pixels by 108 pixels."

at that moment i realized the self imposed hell i live in. the self imposed hell all visual designers live in. not everything a designer builds needs an underlining concept that ties multiple elements together in a tidy package. most people viewing it will never make those connections and just assume you are insane.

that might not be far from the truth.

i'm looking for some feedback from the designers out there.

in the days of old, upon completion of a project, a very detailed style guide would be written for the client. the style guide would contain information about the details of design (fonts, font sizes, leading, pms/rgb colors, etc.). the style guide is used as a reference for future maintenance.

as technology changes, so does process. in today's digital world i am beginning to believe detailed style guides are not necessary. the digital files now store much of that information inside the document. css dictate and document many style guide issues. i rarely consult clients style guides, i simply edit the raw file that has the information built in. i may consult brand books or higher level conceptual documentation, but rarely style guides. i also fear other designers work as i do and if they make style changes they probably never return to the formal style guide update it.

so, do you still consider style guides a deliverable? are they different than they were 5 years ago? how do you not explain not delivering a style guide to a client that expects one? do you charge extra for a style guide?

about once a quarter, a company executiveneighborextended family member will call me and say something like; "hey griff, my nephewstep songardeneraccountant is having a hard time figuring out what he wants to do for a living. he has his own web page and did all the graphics himself. he just finished a site forhis churchfriend's bandhis weddinga star trek fan club. I think he could be an awesome designer if someone just gave him a chance. Maybe you could provide him with a little career counseling."

being the kind gentle person i am, i say sure, i would love to talk to him. before the meeting i will spend a few minutes on his sites to get an idea of the talent level. the sites always suck, with gratuitous usage of animated gifsbeveled edgesannoying midi musicfontsred text on blackall caps textblinking text

i waste time talking bout design, process, tools etc., then the big moment
arrives, guidance. the great pearl of wisdom i impart upon them could have gotten froma fortune cookiea magic 8 ballthe get a clue department, "a good place to start would be to take a classattend a conferencesurf the webjoin agiaread how magazine".

it is the hardest thing in the world to tell some one they suck assare a waste of human fleshshould be a walmart greeter and should consider another career.

there, that's better.

my last post points out a problem, and a very high level solution. one small part of that solution would include this book!

understanding comics is horribly understated book title. this book is not about comics, it is about visual design as it applies to all media (not just comics). i wonder if scott mccloud knew that when he wrote it.

i often wonder if good visual design can be taught. i believe design skills to be mostly innate, either you have it or you don't. as an instructor, i try to help individuals sharpen those innate skills (just like the force is innate to anakin, but he needs obi-wan to focus it). sharpening those skills starts with knowing why your "designer's intiution" is correct.

because design is innate, it is hard to explain why a particular design solution works (hard because, why would you wast time analyzing something that works?). this book doesn't teach you how to do anything, it simply exlpains what is intuitive to a designer. many times when reading this book i would say to myself, "ahhh, so that is why i always do that!".

buy this book. it's a super easy read and illustrated like a comic book.

graduation season is upon us.

i once had a design student say to me "i have taken illustrator, photoshop, dreamweaver, and all the others. when i finish your class i'll have it made, and i'll get a job."

this was the most depressing thing a student has ever said to me. he viewed his education as a checklist of software packages, and each class being independent of others.

if that is all he wanted, it would have been much cheaper and faster to sit at home and go through the tutorials. software and hardware are tools, not solutions.

learn design, learn color theory, learn typography, learn photography, learn illustration, learn how the eye functions with the brain, blah, blah, blah. combine all of these things, make them work together. then you have it made.

when i teach digital imaging, i tell the students if they refer to the class as "the photoshop class" they flunk. ideally the class teaches the fundamentals of design that can then be applied to any software (or non digital media).

i flunked him.

as a graphic designer i am fascinated by iconology. over the easter holiday it's hard to miss all the icongraphy associated with the catholic church. most obvious is the cross. it hangs on walls, tops steeples, appears in stained glass, decorates clothing, etc. it's is embedded in our culture so deeply, it is often taken for granted, even by people of other religions.

i started thinking about the literal representation of the cross. the cross was the instrument used to kill christ. an odd object to iconize. what would today's church look like if the instrument used to kill christ was a knife, or a guillotine or an electric chair? how creepy would that be?

the flexibility of css has begun a somewhat disturbing trend. many sites now let the user mix and match design elements (background, color scheme, text formatting, etc.). an example would be redcricket.com (please finish reading before accusing me of redcricket bashing).

i wonder if it is a trend or a fad, time will tell. i see little value beyond the gizmo factor and eye candy.

it reminds me of when "interactive" became a buzzword and was applied to everything. people would say things like "you will be able to choose the ending to the movie you are watching". i don't want to choose the ending, i pay money to have a great story teller like stanely kubrick or the coen bothers choose the ending. that is what they are good at, i am not, my ending would suck.

it is the same with websites. as a designer, i take a stand. i design a site to look a certain way. the interface can be a statement supporting site content.

that being said, i applaud sites like redcricket (the best skinable site i have seen) who are pushing the medium further. those experiments may lead to a solution i do agree with, or identify situations where it increases the value to the user.

as everything goes digital, iconography becomes more difficult. if you asked people to describe the physical attributes of a phone 20 years ago, all answers would be very similar. today you would get a much broader spectrum of answers. 10 years from now there may be no consistent answer.

if we continue to use the old icons, my son will have to learn what a rotary phone looked like to understand the icon. thus, it is no longer an icon.

soon a phone will look like your mp3 player, which will look like your digital camera, which will look like your pda, which may greatly resemble your watch. what a potentially visually boring world. as a designer i find this depressing.

my t-shirt design made the semi-finals (1 of 129, yea, you shoulda seen how many entries) on foofighters.com. mine is number 94. there are some really good ones (and some really bad ones). vote for mine if you see fit, i will still love you if you don't. just a little less.

the odd thing is that i originally did this design for the design is kinky t-shirt competition. it lost. i was distraught. it was last minute second entry to the ff competition. i still think it works better as a dik shirt.

soon i will post pictures of the time i sat on my couch in my underwear staring at the wall while everyone else on the planet was in austin attending sxsw learning, living and prancing about.

i am an angry and bitter man.

is a site without links a site? i think not.

added a link page via the chain link icon to the left. design related links.

still debating linking blogs, seems sorta incestuous. not that incest is not fun.

i get sad when i think of today's youth looking at the dodge tool in photoshop and thinking it is a lollipop. sometimes i miss the smell of berol markers. i wonder where that beautifully crafted mechanical drawing compass is. i still respect the exacto knife. i forgive rubylith, does ruby want me back?

i'm gonna spread some rubber cement on my monitor to see if i can stir up some olfactory memories.