Corporate Graphic Design Guide

This morning I want to share one of the greatest GraphJam flow charts ever, especially if you’re a (cynical) graphic designer or commercial artist.

See, it’s not just your soul that’s being crushed. It’s everyone’s! The joys of design by committee are limitless. One early GraphJam comment says: “And if the committee fails to destroy the [...]

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The Prisoner, retro ball chair, web and uniform designs

Ever seen The Prisoner TV series? A friend recommended it, so I’ve started watching the episodes. I think some YouTube clip called it the “most discussed and controversial cult TV series ever made.” Well, perhaps not, but it is certainly interesting. The set designs are very 1960s, with lava lamps everywhere and mod furniture [...]

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The Dark Knight, Flash programming, YouTube

Last weekend we went to see The Dark Knight at the Dallas Motor Vu Drive-in. It was a double feature that started with Journey to the Center of the Earth. We were there from about 8:30 PM to 2:30 AM. There aren’t a lot of drive-in theaters around anymore. It’s fun to go to [...]

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Giving in to Doritos: The Quest

Well, the Frito-Lay marketing ploy worked for a second straight summer. Today was grocery-shopping day. I hadn’t bought a bag of Doritos in over a year, not since the X-13D Flavor Experiment . . . which of course turned out to be the oddly compelling but ultimately quite gross Cheeseburger flavor. Now, today, I couldn’t [...]

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WebVisions 2008 in review: Part two

This is a continuation of WebVisions 2008 in review: Part one.
On Thursday and Friday, May 22-23, I attended the WebVisions 2008 conference at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. Below is a quick overview (or: potentially understandable scrawling connected by lots of ellipses) of all five sessions I attended on Friday, with links. Many [...]

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WebVisions 2008 in review: Part one

On Thursday and Friday, May 22-23, I am attending the WebVisions 2008 conference at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. (Also see my review from WebVisions 2007. I didn’t compose a write-up when I attended in 2005 and 2006.)
Below is a quick (read: marginally coherent) overview of all five sessions I attended on [...]

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Microsoft-Yahoo wedding called off (plus ceiling cats)

Today Microsoft said that it was abandoning its blockbuster bid to acquire Yahoo after the two companies could not agree on a price: “Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo.” Probably for the best.
The news reminded me of this video: Microsoft designs the iPod package. Awesome.
Every company has its own strengths, right? Remember the epic [...]

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WordPress 2.5 upgrade

Today spiral::notepad was upgraded to WordPress 2.5 (released yesterday). The basic design of my custom theme has stayed the same, but I took this opportunity to add some features and widgets I had wanted to implement in my theme for awhile.
WordPress 2.5 improvements include “multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted [...]

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USO All-Stars and Chuck Norris in Iraq

I flipped through a friend’s April issue of Maxim magazine the other day and found that Scarlett Johansson has taken it upon herself to battle al-Qaeda!
Well, actually, it was more like she did a five-day United Service Organizations (USO) tour of Kuwait, but whatever. There wasn’t much to the article, really, but it did include [...]

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Happy Leap Year, Pop Minds, Will Ferrell

Happy Leap Year, everyone! Or perhaps that should be: Happy Birthday to all leaplings!
We observe the modern leap year because Earth orbits the sun every 365.242 days, which evidently isn’t an easy number to work out on calendars. Seems to me that the way we count time is a rather sloppy system that’s been grandfathered [...]

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