ceci n'est pas une blog.

Make it big. Make it read.

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:23:33 -0600

Make it big. Make it read., originally uploaded by tofu mugwump.

I've nothing left to offer, save for pithy art + design truisms. This is what my BFA got me.

Train in the Alps

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 02:33:23 -0600

Train in the Alps
Originally uploaded by tofu mugwump

I miss Europe, even if I hated Switzerland.

The politics of blogging

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 21:01:48 -0600

Lately I've been contributing to blog controversy at the Art Guild page, but that's not my only poor updated web presence!

I have a deadjournal dating back to 2000 (high school, angst), a livejournal dating back to 2003 (freshman year of college, super angst), a myspace blog, a facebook account, this poor excuse for a blog, and who knows what else. As you can see, only one of those is really safe to link to though they can all be found easily enough.

I need to compile all the entries someday into a private file and then burn the computer it is stored on. And then make a machine to reburn those ashes. And then burn that machine.

Anywho, someday soon I need to consolidate/remove some of the ancient more embarrassing blogs and make the final blog look halfway decent. I also need to update my portfolio site very badly. At least my flickr page is pretty. My mnartists.org profile is also gaining in content, though currently out-dated.

I am officially done with undergrad two weeks from tomorrow. I plan to refine lots of my past life come then, as I'll have all the time in the world come then. Whee.

readymade CSS layouts

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:02:18 -0600

The internet these days is just so easy. Check out some cross-browser supported, CSS columnar layouts ready to use.

blog catch-up

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 17:25:00 -0600

Week 5: Blog about a Kiosk you have found... What do you think about it? Pros and Cons?
Near TCF Bank on campus, there is an "automated teller machine" which I recently explored. Clear on-screen instructions combined with animated graphics made it apparent I was to insert and remove a magnetic striped card. I entered my personal identification number (2) and a screen with more options appeared. I opted for a withdrawal and selected an amount. The machine asked if I would like a receipt, to which I replied no. I was then issues cash. Of all the kiosks I have interacted with, I like this one by far the most. Bribery may be a factor. I also appreciate that most of the sounds have been disabled, because if anyone used it last fall or before, every key punch made a beep. Annoying. The only con for the machine is that when I take money out, a matching amount is removed from my bank account. I'd prefer free money.

Week 8: Why is accessibility using css important or not important for your current web design project?
Annie and I are redesigning the Arrowhead Regional Art Council website, which provides numerous grants to artists and art organizations in the area. Accessibility is essential, because access to the grant applications and information must be universal to provide equal access. If the site is not accessible, disabled artists would be unable to use the provided services.

final variations for senior show material

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 23:58:49 -0600

I am so incredibly f***ed.

Postcards

I think this is a keeper. I'm okay with having an entirely different look from the posters, and the cut up look of the photograph with the fading typography conveys the disconnect of the Chris/Topher christopher idea. Now to figure out if handwritten type works on the back. Augh.

I was very pleased with myself when I decided to dot the "eye."

Eh. Not as strong I think.

11x17 Posters

Same concept as my other posters, only I finally drew my 9th grade hair (unifies the series). I switched back to a sans-serif typeface. The color adds a lot, but I'm still deciding between Avenir or Din Schrift. Both look a little friendlier than some sterile modernist thing.

I think the larger type will work better for screen printing. I have already screenprinted 10 or 12 posters of just hair. Now I just need to make screens for type and test it out.

8.5" x 11" Posters

I'm not sure why I ventured into the 8.5" x 11" poster territory. Maybe because I need to see things printed, and my printer can't go any larger. With the book pages I could theoretically glue a real book page to each poster and do a hand-inked hair illustration (they take like a minute). It's cheaper to incorporate color that way because I can print everything at home.

Note the book's title: The Last Hurrah. This could double as a show title (since my name is the real title). Anyone paying attention would notice each poster has a different head of hair and a different page from the same book, which I think would be a cool postering exercise.

The hair isn't as effective in the 8.5" x 11" format.

The gallery guide has been nixed. There is no way I am going to finish any extra design material for my show. I still have 10 paintings to finish (17 days... Jesus), some photos to matte, all of my labels, printing of this material, and a printmaking portfolio due Tuesday. I need to find a couch and someone to commit to driving me. I need a few people. I will have a lot of shit to hang come March 20th.

Why am I going to Chicago for spring break? A brief bit of rest before my complete mental break maybe.

thumbnails for project II (tweed website revamp)

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:55:47 -0600

Click the thumbnails to open a larger version.

. .

Presentation? We don't need no stinkin' presentation! Web design is so much about boxes inside other boxes. No wonder everyone wants rounded corners and drop shadows. I'm excited to make the Tweed website look like every other site (content everywhere! the hobloginization of the web! boxes! columns! lists!). It should be exciting. I am leaning towards the design on the bottom left of the third set of thumbnails. Header with Tweed name/logo and a photograph of the interior, Sax Gallery icon to right, with a large "feature" image of a current exhibition flanked by thumbnails for other current exhibitions. The column on the right is for weekly events like speakers and student exhibitions. Below the feature current exhibition there's space for upcoming exhibitions and a "modular" space for store specials, featured work from the collection, announcements, etc.

purple monkey dishwasher

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 00:19:05 -0600

Do you find the above image distracting? If it were on a billboard and you were driving, would you get into an accident? Duluth is seeking to restrict electronic billboards, which at this point is a little silly I think. The signs are not yet animated. They are static images, that maybe have one to three frames per advertisement. The motion is limited. LED signs have been in use for at least two decades I think. I don't know how many people crash their car looking what time it is on the bank sign. Who knows, the temperatures are surprising in Duluth, so perhaps someone has gotten distracted by a Walgreen's display.

If billboards become televisions, then yes, they need to be regulated. Otherwise, it's just a way to display information that doesn't require paper and paste, which seems like a positive change from decaying billboards.

oh my blog

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 00:08:17 -0600

I forget that professor make syllabi (or blog assignment listings as the case may be) for a reason. Also, blogging is the least like responsibility at this moment, so it wins out.

What is a good font for web / interactive design?
For the past four-six years I would have said Verdana and nothing else. Before that I had an unfortunate courier phase. Now that I am trying to design websites instead of just making them, I am at a loss. There are very few useful articles on web typography because its a difficult field. There was a period where it looked like font on demand downloading would become a standard feature, but conflicting systems and licensing issues have more or less killed that technoloy. Research a few months ago revealed these as "universal" display fonts: times new roman, georgia, andale mono, arial, arial black, impact, trebuchet ms, verdana, comic sans ms, courier new

Naturally I don't recall my source. Of those, courier is awful for almost all circumstances, times new roman is overused, impact and arial black look terrible for body text, and don't get me started on comic sans.

That leaves Georgia (a handy serif), Andale Mono (not much better than Courier New), Arial (which I've been using more lately), Trebuchet MS (a refugee camp of recovering Verdanites), and our good friend Verdana.

Yikes.

20 spreads for project II

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:50:09 -0600

The spreads can be viewed here on a good day when my website does not suck. Augh.

Things to do:
Finalize gallery guide, postcard, poster by next Tuesday (must be approved)
Get estimates
Finish Screenprinting posters
Send to printer

possible non-profit website makeovers

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:34:26 -0600

Duluth Rotary Club
Greater Downtown Duluth Council
Kitchi Gammi Ya Ya Ya
Arrowhead Regional Arts Council
Armory Center

Group members: Annie Haubenhofer, Laurie Lawrence, Topher McCulloch

Gallery Guide Roughs

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 02:27:23 -0600

Front:

Back:

It's designed to fold down into a map-like shape: 8 columns and 3 rows. I decided a simple accordian format would be too boring, and booklets folded down from 11x17 seemed too small. Folding down an 11x17 into this map format, however, makes the page seem much much bigger. I need to integrate the imagery better (I'd like to break the grid more instead of having a ton of equal sized rectangles), and the line through the white space on the bottom is space for a timeline of my life. The idea is that the gallery guide is literally a "guide" to my life, leading through all the development up to now. It's also a prototype for a "designer's memoir" which is told primarily through images and all that ephemeral crap kept around. Someone pointed out that that's the function of a scrapbook, but my approach is a little more abstract.

I have a prototype printed that I'm going to write all over and try to think of ways to enhance the design and content.

just say no to new blogs

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:51:07 -0600

Posters

I was really happy with this and considered it final, but when I started showing people I felt hesitation. The stamp and date will go to the right to make an overly stable base for the image.

The poster is more about subtlety, so I don't think I like the huge lettering here. It shows you better my tracing of some typography. I am attached to how "SELF-TITLED" looks (not that I'm even sure that's my final show title), but I am open to criticism.

Playing around with collage some more here. Bud suggested incorporating the show information into the book pages, which I thought was clever. I need to print this one to see if it works in the real world.

Postcards

Close up of the collage poster. It's sort of a word find. I've never been one for distressed/illegible typography, so this collaged word-find approach was kind of fun. I repeat the information to make it a little less obscure.

A secondary idea inspired by too much abstraction. For the hair posters, I definitely need to use a silouhette of this year. The hair idea was inspired by how hair is in reality a poor determinate of gender, as lots of men have long hair and lots of women short, but it marked me as a 9th grader. This school picture inspired the entire painting series, and was cause for plenty of angst. The covered eyes hint at discomfort with the image. In a final version, I'd physically collage the title over the image and have visible tape.

Back of the postcard. I like the computer-based hand lettering, but it does not work mixed with digital versions of the same font I think. The concept is that I'm primarily a design major, but the show is going to be 95% studio based. It's also a critique of the awful typography show cards have.

"9. Remember your granny won't ever use Second Life"

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:43:39 -0600

The BBC posted fifteen web principles [link from Design Observer], which I think are quite pertinent to our class discussions. Also of note is #12: "Accessibility is not an optional extra."

Second Life

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 14:45:55 -0600

That is almost all that remains of my early days of 3d modeling and virtual reality chat worlds. A google search on "Myrth" (my old username) and "ActiveWorlds" will reveal several pages of where my hands dipped into the cyberpot. I won a world design contest or two, was features on some hip ActiveWorlds pages, created a world for a Bot Expo (that never happened), and generally was a huge nerd. I was pretty active for a 13-16 year old.

Imagine my surprise when this "SecondLife" thing started showing up in the news. I was taken aback. A new 3d chat world with build options? Whatever happened to ActiveWorlds? Research revealed ActiveWorlds was still kicking, and for $69.95/year. Citizenship in my day was $20. Then I started to realize Second Life's draw. Avatars are customizable. You have to pay to build, which being an involved creative act, is not really for the masses. However, vainly adding doodads and gewgaws onto a virtual representation of you. Now that’s commerce. How else would you convince someone to shell out for a virtual American Apparel t-shirt? This is the MySpace generation. Time magazine voted "you" as the person of the year. "You" as in YouTube as in you fucking narcissist. I can't judge, as my senior show is going to be entirely self-portraits, but that's another matter. Building was why I loved ActiveWorlds. I'm obsessed with the miniature and recreating worlds. I love Legos, and I even love Christmas villages. I miss my train sets. These days I'm channeling my model making needs into painting and drawing, but the idea stays the same.

I still haven't tried Second Life for myself, but I don't think I want to. I want to build. Not look pretty. And buying land just doesn't sound appealing in a virtual setting, but even ActiveWorlds, which once allowed tourists to build free, has been turning the option off to promote citizenship. I guess vanity was hinted at in ActiveWorld's avatar structure too. Tourists can only be a faceless man or woman dressed in gray, labeled simply "tourist." Paid citizens can choose from a much larger list, including exciting things like an alien and a bald German guy named Helmut. No customization. I left ActiveWorlds after 3.0. It's now on 4.0. Maybe SecondLife's success will cause the implementation of a customizable avatar.

Either way, both places are great for a cyber-lay.