10 Items Or Fewer

This is my last blog post of the year. No…don’t cry. It’s ok. A new year begins in two weeks. I’ll be back. But until then, let’s take a short look at some important grammar lessons we’ve learned this semester.

Don’t dangle your participles…

Leaking gas, I turned off the stove.

…or your friends might think that you’re leaking gas.

A passive voice eliminates responsibilities.

My sister was hit with a water balloon.

What? I didn’t say that I threw it…

A sentence feels awkward if it isn’t in a parallel format.

Class taught me to be a better writer, designer, and how to create a blog.

These little lessons may seem simple, but they make all the difference and I’m happy to have had the grammar refresher.

I will miss my PBDS 601 classmates and teachers. However, I probably won’t miss our freezing cold classroom and that creepy painting of a female Jerry Springer look-a-like.

Happy Holidays!

It's Magnetidezed

Tide seems to be a never ending source for unique ad campaigns. This interactive campaign borrows the magnetic properties from that old childhood favorite toy Hairy Gary and allows the reader to "remove" the stain from the shirt by dragging the magnetized tide swatch across the page. Clever and effective. Ketchup stain? No problem!

Coffee spill? No worries.

Ink leak? Easy.

Cracked an egg on yourself? Who does that? But either way, Tide will save the day.

Yuletide Cheer

Bonnalogos

As the weather gets colder and colder, I yearn for summer more and more. I miss the easiness of slipping on a sundress and a pair of flip flops, the warmth of the sun on my back as I lay on the beach and the smell of sea salt in my hair. Most of all, I miss my favorite place in the world - Bonnaroo.

Bonnaroo's logo changes every year, but the concept stays the same. The logo has always contained the signature three rings and the words "bonnaroo" "music" and "festival". The main font has barely changed, however the word "arts" was added into the equation in 2005. In 2006, the three rings merged with the word bonnaroo and have stayed that way ever since. My favorite logo is from 2008. Something about the combination of those colors makes me really happy. The 2011 logo hasn't been released yet, but I really hope it's nothing like last years. I wasn't too crazy about the drippy look.

Happy Winter

Two weeks ago, while getting my car tuned up, the technician told me that I should get new tires before any winter weather comes or else "I will die".

This morning I woke up to what looked to be just a slight dusting of snow. Knowing the current/worthless state of my tires, I thought it best not to drive anywhere (even though I needed to print my project). Two hours later when I took my dogs for their afternoon walk, I saw sea vehicles including two tractor trailers, a school bus and a handfull of 4-wheel-drive trucks and cars all stuck in the 50 foot stretch of street outside of my house. Good thing Kinko's is 24/7.

Show and Tell Whatever You Want: Produce Map

I found this interesting infographic showing the types of seasonal produce available in each region of the United States during the month of November. This infographic ties into the one I posted a few weeks ago and is put together in a really neat way. The darker the word, the more popular and in-season the produce and vice-versa.

Anthropologie, Translated As A Southern Gothic Novella

Dodai Stewart found the June Anthropologie catalog to look more like a "Southern Gothic novel come to life, compete with dilapidated porches, lonesome shores and shoes fit for hardscrabble dusty roads", so she wrote a clever little story to go along with the pictures. Click here to check it out.

Copy Cat

While browsing the book section at Target, I noticed all three of these books on the “best sellers” shelf. What is it about the image of a mysterious jean-clad female figure holding the hand/shoulder of a child while mid-walk that says “perfect book cover”? I’m not sure either. But whatever it is, it’s working.

Chinese Food on Christmas

Here's a seasonally appropriate video for this week's show and tell post. It was shot in Baltimore by my friend Justin Beckenheimer and it stars another friend and ex-band member, Brandon Walker. It's hard not to love this clever Adam Sandler-esque song, but the video makes you love it even more (not to mention, I have a couple of cameos). Enjoy!

InfoGraphics

This poorly designed infographic is trying to use the top parts of the flagpoles to display the data, but because there is no axis for comparison, we are forced to read the labels. The labels are not placed in a way that correlates to the curve of the flagpoles, but we are lead to believe otherwise. All we end up taking away from this infographic (if we’re lucky) is what some of the state flags look like. I had no idea that West Virginia’s state flag had so much white space.

Leon is a restaurant that changes its menu based upon the seasonality of natural ingredients. With the mindset that nature doesn’t intend for us to eat out of season ingredients, Leon has created this seasonality chart to help people visualize the times when most certain ingredients are at their best. This information could have been placed into a boxy chart that is hard to follow, but Leon has made it into an interesting visual that grabbed my attention immediately and is easy for me to understand.

Save The Words!

Did you know that words are an endangered species? Just like giant pandas and black rhinos are slowly disappearing from our Earth, words are slowing disappearing from our vocabularies. The Oxford English Dictionary has already dropped thousands of words, and it is up to you to save the rest. Go to www.savethewords.org and adopt a word. You will be given the definition of your word and an example of it used properly in a sentence. Then it is up to you to use your word as much as you can. Write it on your hand. Use it as a pet name. Tattoo it on your face. Let your word replace your current Facebook name. Do whatever you can to save it from extinction. Don't let the extinction of words pessundate your abundant vocabulary, spread the word.

My adopted word

I pessundated the confetti party when I x-ed out the box.

Stop Motion Animation

Project four has me thinking about a video I saw a few years ago for the song "Her Morning Elegance" by Oren Lavie. While this piece is more of a music video and less of a narrative, it is still really interesting and well done. Check it out below.

Should Saturdays Really Be Sundays?

I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but every single Saturday of the semester has been beautiful. It doesn't matter what the rest of the week has been like or will be, Saturday is always sunny and warm. Take a look at this week's forecast, for example.

I have come to the conclusion that it could tornado on Thursday, blizzard on Friday, but come Saturday the sun will be shining and the world will be still just in time for six hours of class inside of a building set to an automatic 30 degrees.

Oops! Packaging With A Story

The name of this playful wine is derived from a true story based on the Carmenère/Merlot grape mixup. "Following the migration of the Old World vineyards to the New World in the 1800's, the Carmenere grape was taken to and successfully grown in Chile. As Chilean Merlot became successful as a New World Wine it was discovered that the Carmenere grape had become mixed with the Merlot grape. The grapes were finally correctly identified, the 'big mistake' rectified and 'the lost grape of Bordeaux' rediscovered."

In addition to the cute headline, the rest of the label tells a shortened version of how Oops came to be. Their slogan "some mistakes were meant to happen" turns instance from negative to positive and makes light of the situation.

Wit-tea Packaging

Drinking tea is nothing new. In fact, tea is one of the world's oldest beverages, making it that much harder to market in new and exciting ways. Tea is one of the products I considered re-packaging for project five, but have decided against. However, when I googled "clever tea packaging", I did find some share-worthy ways that other people are marketing tea around the world. I present to you: Clever Teasigns (a series of pictures of cleverly designed tea)

Hanger Tea

OrigamTea

RoyalTea

StripTeas

DemocraTea

CigaretTea

SprouTea

DaredevilTea

T bag

Ticket Fail

Last night, a co-worker of mine asked if anyone wanted free tickets to a show. As soon as I saw them, I snatched them from her hand and said "I need those!". Little did she know, these tickets will go no farther than my scanner. I needed them because I felt obligated to share the with the world (aka our class) the most horrifyingly designed tickets EVER. If you are even able to figure out what this ticket is for, I applaud you. Let's take a closer look at this headache, shall we? I don't even know where to begin. Every time I try counting the number of fonts used, I lose track. Did you notice the stretched photo right next to the squashed photo? What about that skewed sports clipart image in the bottom left corner? Or maybe you noticed the overlapping text or the random capitalization of words. I could go on for a while, but I am seriously feeling nauseous. I kind of want to delete this from my blog now.

Narrative

My show and tell item for this week relates to my last post. I love "One Big Happy" comic strips and I found one that pokes fun at the use of photoshop for retouching images.

I love this because One Big Happy reminds me of my childhood and I will always adore it, but also because I'm usually interested in anything that involves photoshop and humor.

One Big Happy Bat Mitzvah

The Sunday mornings of my childhood were marked by pancakes and comics. As my dad sipped his coffee, I’d fumble through the sea of black and white paper until I spotted the few colorful pages that brightened my day. I used to read my least favorite comic strips first and save “One Big Happy” for the very end. My ability to relate to the character Ruthie and her hilariously naive view of the world made One Big Happy my favorite of the funnies. Unbeknownst to me, my Godfather knew One Big Happy’s cartoonist, Rick Detorie. Rick was so flattered by my love for his work that he drew me into one of his comics. The comic was published in the paper and the framed original (Wite-Out®marks and all) was presented to me as a gift for my 13^th birthday. Best. Bat Mitzvah. Ever.

Handmade Fonts

Handmadefont.com is a really awesome website that features a vast amount of incredibly unique fonts. The designs are created using everyday (and some not so everyday) materials. Handmade Font offers letters made up of almost anything, from caviar to beard hair. I've pulled out some of my favorites, but they are all so creative.

Scarf

Glaze

Sofa

Toast

Zipper

Paperclip

Chocolate