it's nice to see that this kind of thing bothers other people too...

I walk by this "your being set up" message every day in the subway and was really happy to see that yesterday someone corrected the spelling!

photoshop trick

I found another tutorial on psdtuts.com and learned how to use the photoshop displacement map tool and clipping masks when placing vector images over a photograph. I switched it up a little bit from the tutorial and left the base image visible, and I think it would have been better if I had better illustrator brushes on my work computer but all in all its a pretty neat trick:

google

Here's an interesting article I found on AdAge about the dangers of Google and their "cloud computing"...my favorite quote is a response to WIRED's magazine cover asking: "'Is Google a monopoly?' -- which is sort of like asking "Are grizzly bears dangerous?" even as one is munching on your left leg."

I always knew google was important but its a bit scary to think that it has become such a powerful monopoly throughout the world...

mesh tool

I decided to do a tutorial in illustrator on the mesh tool since I've never used it before and made this boot:


















it's so easy to use... just very time consuming if you want to get all the shading and details right. now I'll have to try and make a drawing that's more interesting than a boot...

graffiti

I've always been interested in graffiti, partly because it varies so drastically depending on whether or not the artist actually has talent. Most of the stuff you see seems to be young kids who just got their hands on their first spray can, randomly spraying their name on a rock wall to get their moment of fame, or just to feel like a badass defacing public property. But then every once in a while you find some great typography hidden in the mess. I saw a lot of that when I visited Spain and Italy 2 summers ago with my mom. I just found this website that has dozens of graffiti tags catalogued by letter based off of photographs of actual graffiti in Paris. It's pretty interesting to see all the different styles laid out next to each other and the site itself is fun to play on!

good printing vs bad printing

Here's a cool stop motion video I found on creativity-online by some designers at Kingston University. They use multiple camera angles to capture a group of HP printers shooting out pages of designs in patterns. Interesting use of geometric shapes and patterns...

and speaking of printing, BBH labs has created a downloadable app called the iSaw that makes a horrible chainsaw noise every time you try to print from your computer. I think its a pretty interesting idea as even I tend to print things more often than necessary. I feel that this office is a bit too quiet for loud chainsaw noises though!

serious webcam work

While surfing Creativity-Online I found this awesome video by Masashi Kawamura + Hal Kirkland from BBH. The video is made entirely from choreographed webcam videos of people all over the world, working with grids to connect each image. I especially like the parts where the raindrops are falling through the screens and where the people are all linking arms...