Why have President Obama and tainted superstar golfer indorser Tiger Woods been spliced together?
This photoshopped photo of Tiger Woods in the Oval Office with President Obama is meant to conjure the fallen stature of both public figures. Obama is labeled as the 2009 Peace Prize Winner and the caption for Woods reads 2009 Piece Prize Winner. Congrats to the photoshop artist for the comic timing of the layout — having the vision to put Tiger on the right for the punch line. Having the good common sense to know that people in the U.S. of A. read (those who read) left to right. Not to dampen the creativity here, but the image seems to be associating the ethical quandaries of the quagmire in Afghanistan with the morality dialogue manifested by the Tiger Woods transgressions. Certainly two notions that are not close at all on the ethical spectrum.
More Tiger Woods Affairs:
Transgression, Transgression Top Google Trends from Tiger Woods Affair Apology
19.20.21: 19 cities in the world with 20 million people in the 21st Century.
The mission of 19.20.21 is a multi-year, multimedia inititiative to collect, organize and better understand population’s effect regarding urban and business planning and its impact on consumers around the world. This 5+ year initiative will deliver results via 5 channels: web (including mobile), television (broadcast and cable), print (magazines, books and atlases), exhibits and seminars (virtual and onsite). This project will include 10 worldwide partners.
Four letter dot com site by Entourage Star Adrien Grenier goes live: SHFT.com
The Domains is tracking the recent history of LLLL.com domains being deployed by major players like Microsoft with Bing, AOL with JSYK and the hilarity that ensued around NBC Universal’s purchase of SyFy.com for a quarter million dollars (seems the original owner of SyFy felt ripped off). Today its Adrien Grenier, star of the HBO series Entourage (he plays Vince) who is also a bit of an eco-celeb which is what SHFT.com is all about.
Out With the Old: The Problems with the Big City Pictures Favicon Design
The old Big City Pictures favicon was pretty much slapped together and in desperate need of a refresh. It was basically the bcp logo sliced down to a square, cropping the design at the edges, with the word mark removed from the cross streets. The fat, tall cross street just looked blank and empty and the business of the logo detailing didn’t translate well at all when scaled down to micro-mini favicon proportions.
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In With the New: Refreshing the bigcitypix favicon image
Graphic designer Johanna Abzug who also recently did the holiday styling for big city’s logo took on the task of cleaning up and revamping the bcp favicon. She and George Spyros used the old e-mail digital workflow to get the job done. George doodled off a back-of-the-envelope sketch to get the ball rolling.
December 15, 2009 3:02:40 PM EST
George Spyros: BCP ICON / FAVICON
Maybe the 2nd one that looks like window panes or the 3rd that has the depth. Main idea is to make symmetrical and square.
Once we have it, we’ll have the 2D art and then treat that like an iPhone App icon with gloss.
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Creative Work
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Mashable is reporting that the future off iTunes may be on the web. Apple recently acquired web-based music service Lala which allows users to stream their song media from a single location in the cloud. We agree that this would be great to be able to access one’s tunes from a mobile device, web browser, et al, however just because Lala charges as little as 10 cents per tune does not mean Apple intends to follow suit. The gravy could simply be in leveraging Lala’s preexisting architecture and brand rather than using the property to reinvent the price model that iTunes, to the dismay of the recording industry, has already unhinged once before.
What’s the difference between these two pictures?
An invitation to a fundraiser for the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) cordially invites folks to a pre-holiday swap meet. The invite graphic on the website features “photocopied” text from a dictionary with a definition “swap meet n. An informal gathering for the barter or sale of used articles or handicrafts.” Underneath are kitschy images of items that might be brought and traded at such an event: shoes, antique chair, coo coo clock, woven picnic basket, a pistol — hold it, a gun? And next to that is a dart board, but with the barrel of the revolver pointed toward it, the iconography can unconsciously suggest taking aim at a target.
We wouldn’t have noticed this splice except that the invite from the email we received has removed the gun and target in favor of a glass, crystal decanter or perfume bottle of some sort as well as an abacus and pepper grinder.
We guess the thinking was that no one wants to receive a gun in their email, er, blast. We can just hear the creative notes and discussion around this:
A: we don’t want people showing up with a gun!
B: it’s not to be taken literally, it’s kitschy…
A: better safe than sorry, we’re a government-funded arts organization.
Ah, the creative process.
The traffic geniuses over at Huffington Post ride a Google Trends Wave
Because Tiger Woods used the word “Transgression” in his apology, HuffPo asks “Should people read more?” One thing is clear, website Traffic Tzars should heed the example led by the number one ranked Technocrati blog on the internet and incorporate trending keywords into posts about trending keywords. Also, one should blaze inroads into the Twitter community by calling up a pull-quote from a Twitterer who let’s us know that they already knew what the word “transgression” meant. In terms of traffic-crafting, the HuffPosters prove themselves yet again to be number one with reason.
Here’s the Woods apology from his website:
I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart.
While Huffington Post may have rerouted the secret illiterates Googling behind the thin cover of Google anonymity through the uber-blog first, at the end of the link road does come the knowledge which these literacy seekers seek as Huff proved handy links to the definition of TRANSGRESSIONS and TRANSGRESSION.
Splicelicious on the other hand if simply and flagrantly attempting to glom onto a piece of the magically wordy Huff traffic pie. There. We said it.
Dec 1, 2009, at 9:55 AM
Johanna Wolff Abzug: is any of these an improvement?
(psd attachment)
i totally get what you’re looking for, but as you said i think the size is limiting
Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 10:39 AM
George Spyros: I agree the size of the on-site logo is limiting. You want to try the tweaks on the 550px version for the card? That’s the only place the changes would show up. thx
Dec 1, 2009, at 11:56 AM
Johanna: how’s this?
December 1, 2009 12:22:38 PM EST
Looking good thanks.
Here are some touch ups with notes below. Thanks for hanging in there through my attention to small details : )
1) sheered on an angle, as opposed to rounded
2) same as above and separated from the cross street line
3) same as #1, might need more of a sheered angle toward this direction / to the right. But maybe ok-ish as I have it. lemme know your thoughts
4) tightened the outer part of loop a bit; removed some thickness and it was seeming to be artifacting a bit due to limited pixels available for resolution
December 1, 2009 12:55:22 PM EST
Johanna: aint no thang
how is this?
i like the ends at those angles
December 1, 2009 1:11:38 PM EST
George: Sold ! I’ll use that jpg as the card.
Here’s the final on black for the on-site logo:
November 24, 2009 1:00:32 PM EST
Johanna Wolff Abzug: i have attached another bow!
so holiday card = on white, buildings low opacity except for gift building, and a happy holidays that doesnt compete with bcp type?
November 24, 2009 3:08:06 PM EST
George Spyros okay, great. I posted that to the site. Please generate a logo.gif file from your original as I just busted one out form the jpeg you sent.
right on the card. I lessened the opacity for the entire logo except for the hero building, but please take a look at: the opacity levels, perhaps the type should remain brighter of at full opacity. For Happy Holidays I like it on the lower right where I roughed it in. Here’s my thinking: I see the bow, oh it’s a building that’s tied in a bow; cute; hey this is Big City Pictures, my eye is completing its diagonal scan reading from upper left to lower right and I see myself being wished Happy Holidays.
November 24, 2009 8:25:23 PM EST
Johanna: have attached 4 screenshots and 1 gif version of site logo
what do you think for placement/composition?
also what kind of type did you have in mind for the card — what i have here is just my handwriting; most script fonts to me can be boring because htey repeat too obviously. i like bello pro on your site but it may be too heavy for this.
November 25, 2009 5:02:07 PM EST
George: Hey there — so I don’t think we need Happy Holidays. Will be in body of the email. I think change stroke to same color as the ribbon and put it where black stroke is now at 550 wide. So only one stroke. Or make outer stroke the the same light blue (DAE9F1) as the background to text below? Double stroke in crimson? Or just use dark blue (007EA2) for all strokes? Or medium blue (6BACC9)?
Anyhoo, resize comp accordingly for bottom bounding since bottom Happy Holiday text is now gone in postcard. Generate a file I can upload at proper dimensions to mail chimp.
Here’s a preview with the mock-up I made from from your file:
November 25, 2009 5:47:45 PM EST
Johanna: i like a dark blue stroke!
have attached a gif and jpg at 550 wide
ps. i got invited to google wave and i’m gonna send you an invite because i think it could be helpful for working!
Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 12:54 PM
George: Yeah, I heard some cool things about Wave. thanks.
Hey, I found this and thought it was a good reference for the type of line. Ryan Hughes refers to this as “ligne claire” at about 13 minutes into the video:
http://www.bigcitypix.com/bcp9
also for some context, but this is too original cartoony; I think Ryan is talking more about the lines formed by the shapes of color.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire
The creative process continues via remote workflow…
And now for the second pass at the creatives.
November 23, 2009 8:25:16 AM EST
George Spyros: They’re just for reference. One of the points being that your sketch may not be that far off : )
November 23, 2009 8:41:53 AM EST
From George, Subject: another bow example from Apple black friday sale
Nov 23, 2009, at 8:58 AM, EST
Johanna: Any of these bows work?
November 23, 2009 9:29:26 AM EST
George: Layer 4 looking good. Let’s please try shrinking down the size of the bow and the ends of the ribbon to stay within completely the top of the roof OR just more within that main roof to minimize the amount of overlap with other lines in the design. So the loop on the left isn’t filled in with the darker line and area on the side of the second building. So that the end of the ribbon on the right doesn’t overlap the part of the ribbon going down the right side of the hero building. BTW I can see how you’re using the bow loop on the left to let us see the horizontal part of the ribbon on the rooftop that disappears next to the 2nd building, so I understand how shrinking the bow will need to address this and may cause some probs. Let’s just take a look. It’s close. thanks.
Now, all that said, on the white version for the card, the opacity shift in the other buildings may help this.
November 24, 2009 1:00:32 PM EST
George: My notes. See the numbers on the attached comps.
1. I like this detail on the end of the ribbon, the shape of it
2. we can keep the bow smaller, like within the roof, similar to what you did in your initial sketch
3. I like seeing the left part of the horizontal part of the ribbon-tie
29% of our time is spent on the web and gets 8% of ad dollars. Newspapers get 8% of our time and 20% of ad dollars.
This is the ESCP Europe stop motion! More than 300 ESCP Europe students have worked together to express the values and spirit of ESCP Europe in a fun, imaginative and entertaining way. Key figures: 316 actors, 658 tee-shirts, 9m2 of cardboard, 4198 photos, 123m of gaffer tape for 3645 markers. To bring you face to face with their world, no need for words, the stop motion says it all. Share this link with your network! /// Plus de 300 étudiants d’ESCP Europe se mobilisent pour partager de façon ludique, originale et inattendue les valeurs et l’état d’esprit ESCP Europe. Les étudiants utilisent la technique du “stop motion” pour nous plonger dans leur univers résolument humain. Quelques chiffres : 316 figurants, 658 t-shirts, 9m2 de carton plume, 4 198 photos, 125m de gaffer pour 3 645 repères marqués.
As anyone who works with video content on the web knows, it’s hard to draw search traffic. Because search bots crawl for text, or “metadata,” or in other words “words,” video is un-crawlable in and of itself as the data is not made up of meaningful information for search algorithms to parse. While some companies are working on a technical solution for this, say by using voice-recognition to turn the video’s audio into keywords, nothing yet is available along these lines. Furthermore, once it is, what about those videos that don’t have spoken word in them?
Google Chrome web browser comes to the Mac. WATCH this well done video to get an overview of Chrome’s features and promises.
Home Crisis Investigation
We don’t want to give the hook in this bit away, but let’s just say that The Daily Show’s John Oliver has double to fun at the expense of a one (er, two) Mr. Timothy Geithner. The set-up is deft leading up to jaw-dropping jump ball from which the hilarious satire to ensue. [...]
Splicelicious video shows how to create hoax about a hoax
All’s fair in love and editing, well, not really when you care about a little thing known as The Truth. Bart Sibrel has made a cottage industry of exposing the NASA lunar landings as frauds. He even went so far as to confront second man-on-the-moon [...]
