A Funny Chip Kidd Video

I knew Chip Kidd was a great designer and writer, how­ever I was pleas­antly amused to find out that he is also a very accom­plished, if sur­real impres­sion­ist. This is a really funny take on the dif­fer­ence between form and con­tent, and how play­ing with one effects the other. Which is an impor­tant theme of his sec­ond novel The Learn­ers.

More about Chip Kidd

The Magic of Eric Carle

I saw this video on John Nack’s blog and I had to share. Eric Carle is a great tal­ent. There is noth­ing finer than read­ing his books to the kids, then spend­ing hours after they have gone to bed look­ing at his amaz­ing art work. Check out more of his work and more about his life.

Mazel Tov Green Bay and assorted cheese heads!

Con­grat­u­la­tions Green Bay! Great Game…

The dif­fer­ence between a suc­cess­ful per­son and oth­ers is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowl­edge, but rather in a lack of will.”
–Vince Lombardi

The incomparable Saul Bass…

Any­one inter­ested in design, espe­cially motion design, should really study the mas­ter… Saul Bass.

When you are feeling the world is getting you down…

When you’re feel­ing down read this poem and if you don’t feel a lit­tle pick me up, you don’t have a heart beat­ing in your chest. In that case, seek imme­di­ate med­ical attention.

Ulysses
Alfred Lord Tennyson

It lit­tle prof­its that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these bar­ren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a sav­age race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I can­not rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suf­fered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scud­ding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vest the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roam­ing with a hun­gry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And man­ners, cli­mates, coun­cils, gov­ern­ments,
Myself not least, but hon­oured of them all;
And drunk delight of bat­tle with my peers;
Far on the ring­ing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all expe­ri­ence is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untrav­elled world, whose mar­gin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unbur­nished, not to shine in use!
As though to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all to lit­tle, and of one to me
Lit­tle remains: but every hour is saved
From that eter­nal silence, some­thing more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearn­ing in desire
To fol­low knowl­edge like a sink­ing star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle
Well-loved of me, dis­cern­ing to ful­fill
This labour, by slow pru­dence to make mild
A rugged peo­ple, and through soft degrees
Sub­due them to the use­ful and the good.
Most blame­less is he, cen­tered in the sphere
Of com­mon duties, decent not to fail
In offices of ten­der­ness, and pay
Meet ado­ra­tion to my house­hold gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the ves­sel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me
That ever with a frolic wel­come took
The thun­der and the sun­shine, and opposed
Free hearts, free fore­heads you and I are old;
Old age had yet his hon­our and his toil;
Death closes all: but some­thing ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbe­com­ing men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twin­kle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sit­ting well in order smite
The sound­ing fur­rows; for my pur­pose holds
To sail beyond the sun­set, and the baths
Of all the west­ern stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Best Quote Ever…

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time, from the math­e­mati­cian and philoso­pher, Bertrand Rus­sell, not only is it beau­ti­ful, true and poignant, but it is some­thing we should all hope to strive for.

Three pas­sions, sim­ple but over­whelm­ingly strong, have gov­erned my life: the long­ing for love, the search for knowl­edge, and unbear­able pity for the suf­fer­ing of mankind.… This has been my life. I have found it worth liv­ing, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.“
– Bertrand Rus­sell, “What I Have Lived For,” the pro­logue to his Auto­bi­og­ra­phy, vol. I p. 4

Year of living productively and some recent work

It’s the begin­ning of a new year for me! It is both the Lunar Year and my per­sonal new year, that is to say it’s my birth­day. This seems like a good time to redidi­cate myself to artis­tic and per­sonal renewal. So here goes.

A cover for the short story Strip­ping the Zip­per by H.E. Roulo

In this spirit, I’ll share a few things I’ve been work­ing on in my long hia­tus from blog­ging. This is a cover for the  mature hor­ror story “Strip­ping the Zip­per” by the great H.E. Roulo. I think the cover worked out fairly well, I enjoy adding organic tex­tures to vec­tor images. It gives the unnat­ural geom­e­try of Bézier curves, lines and points a life, or in this case of death, the it would not oth­er­wise  have.

As a side note, today marks the begin­ning of the Lunar New Year, or as it is known by some the Chi­nese New Year. But more than just the Chi­nese cel­e­brate the new year on this date. Lest we not for get the Viet­namese for whom this year is not Year of the Rab­bit, as is found on fine restau­rant place­ments every­where, but year of the cat. So as they say in Viet­nam… Chuc Mung Nam Moi or Happy New Year! Best wishes for one and all…

Happy Groundhogs Day!

Happy Ground­hogs Day! Looks like we’ll have an early spring, if super­sti­tions be believed. In honor of that I’d like to offer a lit­tle graph­i­cal goodie! You can down­load my Free Twit­ter Back­grounds for Illus­tra­tor and Photoshop.

These free tem­plates for your own use, pass along the link if you like them. The tem­plates for Pho­to­shop and Illus­tra­tor with guides and are in the three most com­mon browser sizes (800x600, 1024x768 & 1280x1024), though the 800x600 might be a bit use­less, but you might as well have the com­plete set. These were cre­ated in the CS3, if any­one is inter­ested I can save down the Illus­tra­tor ver­sion to an ear­lier version.

Down­load the files here.

By the way,  you can fol­low me on Twit­ter.