InformationJunkyard

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The only positive thing to come out of my brothers departure from Charleston has been the fact he overbooked himself and couldn’t use his Band of Horses tickets. So I took one for the team and partied on a school-night. bummer.

About a year ago, these guys were hands down my favorite band. Their first album in particular helped me get through a pretty rough patch in my life. They’re Charleston locals, so every once in a while they do a “surprise” show with little notice. This was one of those shows – I think tickets were sold out before my brother even told me about the show. Hence why scoring his was a bonus…. Jeffy, this one is for you, their “pretend last song” of the night, funeral.

Charleston, living, randomness, Visuals Beer, Charleston, music

Went to the Pour House last night w/ the little brother – haven’t seen decent live music in a while so it was a rare treat. That and $1 PBRs (let’s just say we had quite the beer wall by the end of the night). Hadn’t heard that much of the Whigs prior to the show, but they rocked it with two opening bands Mean Streets and The Features….

UPDATE: On future review, found this nice little jem of a song on my iphone. Jeff, wait till the end for some quality banter. Something tells me we drank some PBR that night….

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Charleston, living, randomness Beer, Charleston, music, rock

Highlight of last weekend was joining my brother and company to be witness Charleston’s fifth Kulture Klash.
Like an adolescent rave with instillation art, the event took place in a dilapidated warehouse in North Chuck just outside of the artsy neighborhood of Park Circle. Break-dancers, techno, bmx stunts, couple hundred drunk art students, day-glow paint and beer. Made for a pleasant highlight to the weekend in the low-county. Especially dug a few of the art pieces, in particular a chandillier made of bike wheels and the painting to the left. If I had a camero, I’d want this stenciled on the hood!

Charleston, living, photos, randomness, Visuals art, Charleston

So, here begins my on-going list of what we will call “Charleston-isms” as this new home grows on me:

1. Cars: My god, I’ve never seen so many accidents in my life. It’s like people say hello by hitting each other with their cars, and they are friendly here.
2. Dogs: everyone has them, I’d like one too.
3. Rain: it happens. In fact, it’s a pretty much guaranteed that there will be a hair-raising thunderstorm roll through at some point in the afternoon.
4. Boats: also, everyone has at least one if not two in their front yard, I’d like one or two as well.
5. Surf: there is none, but what little they have is fun.
6. Water: It’s everywhere and it’s beautiful
7. Bridges: a result of #6, and also everywhere
8. Bugs: comes along with #6
9. Sunshine: wonderful when not #3
10. Humidity: combine #3, #6 and #9 and there you have it.
11. Small, Friendly City: It’s really cool how friendly people are here. I’ve been here only a month now, and I shit you not, you WILL bump into people you know. Pretty cool.

Charleston, living, randomness boats, dogs, rain, stupid lists, surf

Week three in Charleston? or is it week 4?

Got co-opted into my younger brothers kickball team – AWESOME! Nothing like drinking a few beers and pulling out a quad kicking a stupid red rubber ball! We found out last minute we made the “play-offs” (pretty sure everyone makes the playoffs) so team super-bad took the field for one more attempt at glory. good times.

Also had my first going out in the Chuck-Towne downtown; Not too shabby for a random Tuesday night. This could probably grow on me….

as a footnote, the new job is an ass-kicker, which is good! and I’m still talking to myself as according to wordpress the site has 0 traffic, which is actually more coforting than one would think….

Charleston, living, photos, randomness, travel Beer, kickball

Getting settled into that second week of living in Charleston; the odd ins and outs of the new commute; a new place to live; and a new work environment. The first week started with epic rain storms – nothing like arriving at day one of a new job in thunderstorms. Everything becomes quickly familiar by that second week… then something beautiful happens, and the sun catches the clouds just right as you drive home across the bridge back into downtown, and you notice that you’re beginning to fall in love with your new surroundings. Having gone from a 4 mile commute along the beach in California, to find these moments puts the smile back on my face.

Charleston, living, randomness Charleston, living

I don’t often think too highly of all the hoopla that goes into events, but it’s a bit different when you’re involved in the planning! I’d given my notice w/ my current job after 5 years, so I think I’ll just consider this one big ass party for Brad!

Months of work and planning, and we have Depeche Mode rocking “Personal Jesus” in front of the billboard I designed on the W Hollywood. Fucking outstanding.

Charleston, randomness

Spent a portion of my morning re-building Depeche Mode’s “logo” for an upcoming event my agency is producing for W Hollywood Residences. Quite crazy, but I never thought of rock music as needing branding or really what might go into a band’s logo. Perhaps this is common in the industry, but the logo and “brand” seems to shift for each album that’s produced. I guess there is a bit more at stake with a headline band than the garage-band w/ album art designed by someone’s brothers friend.

While I can’t say DM was ever a band I truly dug back in the day, the Violator album cover is burnt into memory. The juxtaposition of the title “Violator” next to the stark visual of the red rose creates incredible tension and was brilliant. More so, it speaks towards the music.

The new brand appears a mash of 80′s glory – large abstract bars of colors – with abstract images and colorful gradients that are the pop-art of ’06. Much like the new music is almost more 80′s now than it was in the late 80′s. The logo cleverly uses these to “bars” to try and spell the “D” and “M” of the band name, but not quite legibly. One aspect I don’t know the answer to, is how much influence the actual band members have over establishing this look, or if it’s cooked up by their record label and stylists behind the scene.

In all respects, a coherent brand. And while I’m personally not in love w/ the aesthetic, it does do an excellent job of leveraging the old glory of a band who’s been out of the loop for a while aggressively trying to make their look contemporary.

big thoughts, Design, living, randomness, Visuals branding, logo, rock, w hollywood

Found this alarming over this morning’s cup-o-coffee and the accompanying design reads, Digital Web Magazine is no more. 

The landscape of web writing has changed. The value of well-edited and reviewed content is giving way to faster, less-refined posts on blogs, comments, and services like Twitter, and it is clear that many writers prefer to draw traffic to their own sites.

It’s a resource I’ve read and used many a time in my learning process, as well as keeping current with some of the bigger ideas that flow behind my profession. The founder statement that refined writing is being replaced the sporadic diarrhea of the mouth that blogs and twitter represent is a scary reality – especially as I sit here blogging about it. Also, it would appear that the increasingly selfish attitude as we all try to curate our “digital persona” are making it hard to get participation in new articles.

In my way, I’ve found myself using this blog increasingly as a vehicle for reflecting on the events that surround me; As a means to continue writing, even if the subject matter varies and is often fuzzy logic. A result of my sporadic writing attempts has been a greater respect for those sites and authors, like Digital Web, who pursue a refined goal with more structured writing.  Not sure how to conclude this thought, so I’ll just leave it hanging here with the hope of returning with some brighter conclusion.

Design, living, randomness blogs, coffee, reflection, twitter sucks

After a nice long weekend of soaking my head in the sun of Palm Springs, I’m back to the grind on Monday and thinking about a few things I’ve been reading up on in the past week.

WebAssist’s Roadmap Series: Having played w/ their products before, WebAssist helps web programers prototype more quickly w/ an impressive array of tools and information. Besides this, they provide some nice information about the what and why’s of web design. Their roadmap series is boiled down, 4-6 page basics of web design. Why is this handy to for experienced designer? Besides some nice refreshers of the basics, the one that really got me thinking was their explanation of SEO, boiled down to 2 pages. I stutter to think how many lengthy emails to clients explaining the basics of search-ability this would have saved me.

The result is it really got me thinking how I could improve my professional practice by creating a series of short documentation myself; Covering theses buzzword topics that clients always ask about. It would help clarify the process and educate the client BEFORE their web-site was designed and built.

Web Designer Wall: Always searching for great sites, especially ones that inspire the web design process. So many times, these sites are garbage “showcase” sites, where you get a bunch of screenshots without qualifying the WHY these sites are listed. This site provides great reading, looking at trends in web design, showcasing great sites as examples of those trends, and backing it all up w/ a great amount of the HOW with their tutorials. In particular, I’m, digging on their JQuery tutorials and thinking of ways to incorporate more Javascript animation into the sites I create. Kudos to these guys for elevating the web-design blog one more notch.

Design Observer: Collect a bunch of rock-star designers from a variety of disciplines and have them write, coherent, passionate articles? What could be better. Great inspiration, and a good read for that 4pm coffee break.

Core 77′s Design Directory: This is my Monday morning treat, their email newsletter id geared towards industrial design, but runs the gamut from furniture design to new sanitation ideas to save children in Africa. It’s the sort of stuff that gives me the brain jitters and informs the soul.

big thoughts, Design, randomness cool websites, Design, professional practice