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

チョコレート

I've been thinking a lot about packaging since receiving project 5. I'm more aware of the typography and color choices used for labels,wrappers and boxes than I have ever been. While browsing the internet for some inspiration, I came across a website devoted to beautiful and expressive package designs. My favorite design comes from Tokyo's 100% Chocolate Cafe, which offers over 56 different types of chocolate including cheese and black pepper. I love their combination of colors and use of strong typography.

"They offer 56 different types of solid, square chocolate. Numbers 1-22 are single-bean chocolate. Each chocolate is made of cacao from one country. Numbers 23 & 24 are bitter chocolate with small pieces of cacao beans. Numbers 24 to 28 are variations of sweetener – one uses brown sugar, another one uses honey, etc. Numbers 26 to 36 are the variations of milk. Numbers 37 to 51 are the variations of flavors including fruits and herbs, and Numbers 52 to 54 are the healthy choices. Numbers 55 and 56 are the early blends of Japan’s longseller chocolate."

I'm Feeling Lucky!

One of my favorite things to do when I'm bored is type combinations of words into google and press "I'm feeling lucky". I am always curious to see what interesting things google is going to present. Tonight I typed in two of my favorite things - color and design - and was taken to an awesome website called (appropriately) Color Scheme Designer. It is almost like an online version of the color index that we bought for class. I think I played on this website for about 20 minutes, fascinated by the endless color combinations before I realized that I should blog about it.

Oy, there's a bumblebee on my squeegee!

I like these words because I like the way they sound when they leave my lips. I like other words because of their meanings or how they make me feel when I say them, but this list is purely comprised of words that are fun for me to say.

Call To Action

I like this call to action because it is simple and concise. Putting rabbit ears on other animals is a clever way to capture the audience's attention. After you've moved on from the image and read "It's not just rabbits who multiply like rabbits", you are told to spay and neuter your pets to help stop overpopulation. It is clear in just a few words what they want you to do, who wants you to do this, and why this is important. There is also a website you can visit to find out more information.

A Different Type of Map

The designers at Axis Maps spend hundreds of hours manually placing each individual piece of type to create these one of a kind typographic city maps. Each map uses nothing but type and accurately depicts every part of the city from streets and highways to parks and physical features. As of now, there is no Baltimore map, but I have put in a request for one so hopefully there will be soon.

Sweet 'N Low...Budget?

I forget who brought this ad into class, but I have not forgotten how terrible everyone thought it was. I stumbled upon an article about it which claims that the Sweet 'N Low brand was trying to go retro with "hopes to broaden its demographic beyond 45-year-old-plus women".The article says "to look forward, Mother (the New York company responsible for the ads) glances back, creating illustrations culled from 1960s and '70s flower power and psychedelia." I am not exactly sure how incorporating psychedelic illustrations are going to target the younger generation, but even if it could, I'm having trouble finding the psychedelic in this ad.

When I did some more research on Sweet 'N Low's new look, I found the rest of the campaign. The related ads feel a bit more 1960's, however I am still not a fan. I think there are much better ways to market products to younger consumers than using cartoons and semi-psychedelic images.

Creative Business Cards

For a short period of time I worked at dental conventions convincing dentists and their staff to buy audio books that offer a "fun way" to gain continuing education units. I'm boring myself just thinking about this job, but it was at one of these conventions that I received one of the most clever business cards. It was a floss card - a very thin business card-sized pouch containing 12 feet of dental floss and the logo of a dentist's office. About the same depth as two stacked credit cards, my floss card hasn't left my wallet since I got it. I find myself pulling it out often (like when I'm on a date and order broccoli).

I have always loved clever business cards, especially when they use unconventional materials that pertain to the business. This website has a great collection. Below are some of my favorites.