Kevin Quealy, NYT Online Design Lecture, WAC

Hey guys
If there is anyone still out there, just came across the above webcast on the WAC website.  Very interesting talk on interactive media at the NY Times.
Just follow this link....
http://channel.walkerart.org/play/kevin-quealy-new-york-times-graphics-department/
Stay warm!

New Year's Toast...

'Last Leaf' Video courtesy OK Go and EMI

Hello everyone..
Just finishing up your final grades and wrapping up the semester.
Congratulations on your wonderful Merit Award presentations. It was a pleasure to take part in the fun...
Your journals and lab books will be available to you next Tuesday in the Western Faculty office, and your remaining grade sheets tucked into your Summit mailboxes.
Congrats to all presentation and video-post winners... your prizes await you...

Cheers and have a safe and Happy New Year!

Soth like Both

Alec Soth has taken over the photo world in the cities and I’m frankly sick of it. Every museum or gallery I have been to since I’ve moved here has had some of his work in it and it’s starting to become cliché. When I first saw Soth at the Weinstein gallery, I already knew that he was a hit and I didn’t know why. Comparing him to Mapplethorpe, I thought he wasn’t anything special. In fact, I didn’t see much of anything in his work. I was wrong. When visiting the Walker Art Center I heard that Soth had an exhibit showing. I decided that I should peruse it and see if I could finally figure out what the hype was all about. Alec Soth isn’t just a photographer. He’s a narrator and a story teller, if those two things aren’t already the same.

The difference between this exhibit and the others I had seen with Soth in them, is that Soth’s work was displayed by itself and much fuller. I saw a lot more of his work and was able to make some sense of them instead of comparing him to the other photographers around him. His exhibit is multi-roomed that contains all wall spaces filled with photos, some sculptural objects related to his work and even a video recording explaining some of his works. All of his photos were large, chromogenic prints, and sometimes he interlaced them with hand-written notes that help create captions and stories for his art.

There isn’t just one photo that I appreciated or found something that I enjoyed. To start, Soth has so many photos that span across the Midwest and any other parts of our country and Canada that you can’t help but to find something to recognize. When looking at a couple of girls from Davenport Iowa, in a picture called Mother and Daughter, I tried and felt like I had some connection. I knew nothing about these two girls, but since I’m from Iowa and I know their type, or at least I think I know their type, I have a connection. Since Soth is taking pictures of ordinary people in familiar places, we have a connection to the people. Seeing them in a museum setting brings a feeling of importance to the viewer since they know the person, or at least their origin.

Not only can I get a strong connection to Soth’s photos but allow for so much imagination with his photography. The majority of his photos have one small caption or just the title that give just enough information to form your own ideas about it. In one particular photograph he leaves it devoid of any title or caption. This is a picture of a lumberjack looking man with red hair sleeping on a log in the forest. There is so much to be interpreted here. In an article I later read about this exhibit, Soth states that he wants some of his photos to be interpreted. Apparently this man he met in a monastery, although he wasn’t a monk. He wants the viewer though to come up with their idea of who this man is. Soth states he looks like a leprechaun, but I think he looks like a fairytale lumber jack, like Paul Bunyan or somebody. As art states too, I can’t be wrong.

One of the photos I remember from the Weinstein was a picture of a balding, middle-aged man sitting in a living room in front of a fire holding a birthday cake. Sitting next to him on the ground is a woman, barely dressed in a swimsuit, very obviously a stripper. When I visited the Walker, my thirst for the story there was finally quenched. When visiting Missouri, Soth attempted to find the loneliest man. He found many interesting subjects, but this guy topped them all. Spending 5 days a week at a strip club, Soth took him out to eat. He finds out that his birthday is the next day and none of his family or friends are alive to celebrate it. Soth buys this stripper and you see the results in the Walker Art Center. What a crazy story! This kind of realistic story-telling feeds into people’s need for imagination.

The greatest achievement that Soth has under his belt is the personality of the people he takes portraits of. Soth’s portraits very obviously tell something about who the person is. Their pose is not contrived; it’s something that exists in their real lives. How does Soth capture this though? A photographer must get to know the people or person before he can take a picture that captures so much personality. It’s beautiful and powerful, but I wonder how he does it? How does he establish that strange relationship between stranger photographer and ordinary person? How long does it take for that relationship to flourish enough to produce the picture? In the instance of the Mother and Daughter in St. Paul, their picture was taken in the parking lot of a K-Mart. Not much time must have been given, and yet this picture is very believable.

Soth’s photos have so much going on. I feel almost foolish for dismissing it so quickly. The imagination, the true portrait, and the raw story create some of the best photography I have seen in a long time. This is the kind of picture that I can relate to and the kind that I want to take for myself. The question is, how do I go about it?

M.C. Escher

The Festering Wound of Typography

This may be a tad cliche to whine and scream and bitch about Comic Sans, but I think I have an interesting approach to doing so...

Comic Sans is the root of all evil in the universe. The font was designed to replicate the look and feel of the text represented in Comic Books, while boiling down the stylistic elements of comic text for practical and universal application.

That doesn't sound so bad. It's kind of cheeky. It's nice. It's cute.

The reason this particular font is the modern crucifixion of all things good and right in our civilization of visual communication is this: Comic Sans, while attempting to replicate the look and feel of a medium that relies on several other elements to properly communicate for use beyond that initial medium, cheapens its source material and prolongs (and even contributes to) the downfall of the hand-written script.

Let's talk about the content of this statement, and not talk about how lengthy it is. I say it has this effect on the modern hand-written script because it, by nature as a typeface, is broken intentionally. "Comic Book script" is the way it is to FIT ITS INTENDED APPLICATION... I am sure that when typing a memo, the people that write in comics do not want a memo to look like a comic. Another thing is, in the process of boiling the stylized elements of the average comic book script down to this socialistic watered-down filth, there are vital flaws in how the characters of our English alphabet was structured to be. For instance, Comic Sans' kerning is broken within the default of the typeface itself. Kerning is the distance between characters. The letters "e" "d" and "s" have substantially uneven spacing within themselves, and in relation to each other. Along with that, several of the characters themselves represent as an almost textbook definition of what NOT TO DO when writing letters. The shortened upper curves of the "c" "e" "C" "O" "o" "p" characters (and others of that nature) are 1: inconsistent in relation to each other, and 2: the overall structure of all the characters embody the typical bad habits of handwriting.

The difference is that Comic Sans is permanent. It isn't like handwriting where it can get better with time and practice. No matter how much you want to (WHICH I KNOW YOU DO), you cannot sit and type sentences in Comic Sans over and over again in the aim of having it get any better.

It wont happen. Ever.

The font I like is Friz Quadrata. It's awesome, and either commonly mis-used (in the 80's) or not used at all. The sharp forms of the characters and mix of elegant curvilinear strokes with very sharp and subtle angular peaks and serifs make it almost look dangerous.

Honestly, there is a lot to say about Friz, but I am so overwhelmed with hate for the previously visited "unmentionable" that I feel I may take it out on Friz... and I don't want to ruin our friendship... She's always there for me when I need her.

(how weird is he? he's talking about a font like it's a woman. And now he's talking about himself in the second person. I have a feeling that sleep wont help him at this point.)

DISCLAIMER: THE IMAGES OF ONE OF THE FONTS HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO CAUSE SERIOUS EYE DAMAGE, SEIZURES, INCREASED BLOOD PRESSURE, NAUSEA, PROFUSE VOMITING OF BLOOD, AND DEATH. IF YOU HAVE ANY EXISTING HEART CONDITIONS, NEUROLOGICAL CONDITIONS, CURRENTLY MEDICATED FOR DEPRESSION OR ANXIETY, OR PREGNANT, PLEASE CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN BEFORE VIEWING "Comic Sans".

[ . To like or not to like... . ]

...that is the question.

I've been to the Walker Art Center several times in the last few years and I've seen exhibits come and go as they please. It's pretty much the same for most museums, if not all. I have a hard time enjoying modern art and photography, however. Especially contemporary modern art. I've loved traditional renaissance work my entire life and that's more where I'm drawn to. So it's no no surprise that there's few things I like in the Walker Art Center. There's several things I hate, in fact, or I just find them so monotonous I pass by without casting a second glance. The latter was my initial reaction to Alec Soth's Misty, at first. I was looking through his entire exhibit and very few pictures actually caught my attention. Each time I passed that particular image, however, I was more drawn to it. It's so simple in presentation and composition, yet the more I looked at it, the more I just simply liked it. It's a beautiful piece, and the female subject's expression only adds to it. It presents a sort of grey feeling, over all, and the feeling is beautifully captured in her face. I really do like this image now. It defines beauty in a different way, which intrigues me. Simple statements can hold as much power as the complex.

[ . Fonts. . ]

Fonts are such an everyday thing that most people don't ever really stop to think about them. They are everywhere, used to usher forth text in various styles and present ideas or portray feelings. A simple font can hold a lot, as it can provide a very powerful message, or provide something so subtle you hardly notice.


The first font I would like to present is Tahoma, and the fonts of the Tahoma font family. It is an OpenType font, created along with the font of Verdana to be a default font for Microsoft's Windows 95 in 1994. It was designed by Matthew Carter, a well-known typeface creator and designer. It is a very basic font, and is considered to be a humanist sans-serif typeface. To me, it has a smoother appearance, and I prefer it to a lot of the OpenType fonts available. I used it as a default for many things, as it can be very presentable in many different media. The understated flow of each letter, and the slim spacing, makes for a stable font that can either be played up or used for its simplicity.


Digitalix is the next font I'd like to bring to light. This font, and the others that are similar to it, hold a form of nostalgia for me. They remind me of the glorious 8-bit video games and things like Dungeons and Dragons, which appeals to my nerdy/geeky nature. It also reminds me of technology, in general. It's such a digital font that it's hard -not- to think of technology. This also appeals to me because I work with computers as a hobby/side living. The creator of this, I'm sure, is someone who just wanted to create it for personal use. There is no real history for this font, as is the same for many modern fonts out on the internet. Still, it's one of my favorites and will continue to be.


The third and final font I would like to discuss is First Order. It is another decorative font, one that is caught somewhere between Arabic and Celtic origins in appearance. The dots blended in with the letters bring to mind an Arabic font, yet the actual designs of the letters lead to a Celtic design. This can be used as nothing more than a decorative font, but it is very interesting, nonetheless. It brings with it a statement of age and intrigue and I would most like use it in one of my advertisement designs or posters. I have used similar fonts previously for prior works. The origins of this font are similar to the previous font, as this was simply created for an idea by a single individual.


http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/family.aspx?FID=19
http://www.dafont.com/digitalix.font
http://www.1001freefonts.com/FirstOrder.php