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Mirror. Now with Vitamin C.

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

I have a window display case here at work and it had been up for two years with the same art. I got tired of staring at it every day, and the elements were getting dusty, etc. So starting in January, I began making all new stuff for the case. I pulled some pre-existing work from my past, but I incorporated new pieces as well. I made that mirror last time, this one:

And everyone was so excited!!! because they could check their hair and/or makeup in the hallway, so I felt obligated to make another mirror for them this time as well. This time I went with a sunburst using Diet Coke cans, Stop-n-Shop Diet Orange Soda cans (they have a great pattern on them), and Fanta cans. It’s a big hit. Here’s what the window looks like in its entirety:

And here’s the mirror.

You can’t appreciate it because it’s being lit by frosted fluorescent tubes, but in sunlight or incandescent light the cans shine in the most charming way.

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Scales and feathers and sparkles, oh my.

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

I don’t normally talk about fashion here because, frankly, I don’t normally care. I think 98% of fashion is boring. Oh, are dumb-looking scarves in this season? Great. That’s swell. I will continue to wear the same things I do every single day that I’ve worn for the last fifteen years (black stretchy pants, black t-shirt, black trouser socks, black shoes). But I happened to see an article on Emma Watson who is being featured in Vogue this month. I think she’s a classy broad so I clicked the link and lo and behold! Fashion awesomeness! Check it out.

In the first picture, she’s wearing pantyhose encrusted with rhinestones and other whatnot. While that would be unpleasant (I like to cross my legs and the rhinestones would be all kinds of digging into my leg meat) it looks fabu. And in the second picture – oh, I can’t even describe my glee. Plastic fish scales over a ombre-dyed base fabric, the scales being held in place with little rivet-things, and then a feathered collar to top it off? WANT. Which gets us to the point of why I wear the most mundane-looking clothing imaginable. In high school, I used to care a great deal about fashion. I pored over magazines trying to copy the looks I liked. Unfortunately for everyone around me, the looks I liked were never tasteful pantsuits or sweaters. They were always the plastic-fishscales-rhinestone-pantyhose variety of garb. So I would trundle off to high school wearing the most inane garments and wonder why people would make fun of me. At some point I realized two things: one, no one was ever going to take me seriously if I kept dressing in this way, and two: you have to be very thin and very tall to pull off a great many of the looks I was emulating, and I am neither. So I decided to simplify things I would just pare my clothing down to the easiest things I could think of and focus my attentions elsewhere. You’ll never go wrong with a classic watch as an accessory. But if your watch has been damaged, it may still be fixed by a watch service expert.

I won’t lie though: sometimes I miss dressing like an extra in Cirque du Soleil.

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A bunch of stuff.

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

1. I’ve seen some neat things in my travels around the city recently. Bryant Park is getting its annual overhaul (plants go here, skate rink goes into storage, lawn gets rolled out, etc.) In the area where they keep the lawn mowers and rakes, I noticed that it is guarded by a similiar owl to the one that hangs out at the Herald Square park near my job. Here’s the owl guarding my park at work:

And here’s the owl guarding the fertilizer and lawn chairs.

He’s right at eye level. I have ignored the bible’s teachings and thought about stealing this guy many a time. However, I suspect that he is bronze and therefore very heavy, and also getting arrested and going to Riker’s Island for attempted owl theft, then getting shoved in a cell with someone who has a stellar collection of human heads in their fridge, that does not appeal to me. So Mr. Owl gets to stay there…for now.

2. There’s a store on my route to work called Zara and they have these rad chrome ants in their window display. They’re big and they’re shiny and they’re awesome.

3. There’s this ad on the Metro-North for The Weather Channel that is just awful. First of all, the wording is ridiculous.

Here are the words on the ad:

At the Weather Channel,
we’re delivering more than just the weather.
We’re connecting people with their passions.
The ultimate-lifestyle-media brand,
on tv, online and on mobile…
connect here.

Okay, first of all, no. You can try to get all deep and whatnot, but you’re just there to tell me if it rains. That’s it. Sometimes the people in advertising take themselves waaaaaay to seriously. Yes rain? No rain? That’s is all there is. Stop it.

Second, that lady’s face is TERRIFYING. If you look long enough, it looks like she has a deformed mouth with two rows of teeth, like a freakin’ shark. Also, could she open her mouth a little wider? What is she doing, trying out for The Mummy movie? Here, look for yourself:

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I don’t know what you’re doing right now…

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

…but you need to be reading this website.

http://27bslash6.com/

I love this man. He’s a designer with some serious snarky snark. I only wish I had the steel gonads to write the responses he does. Here are my favorites:

http://27bslash6.com/missy.html

http://27bslash6.com/easter.html

http://27bslash6.com/p2p2.html

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Jessica and the not-particularly-great 24 hours.

Friday, May 13th, 2011

I’m not having a stellar time over here in Jessicaville. One of the things that have gone wrong in the last 24 hours: My entrails and I are having differences of opinions. I would like them to work, they would like to take a hiatus from their appointed tasks and re-watch all of seasons of The West Wing. Hopefully we can come to a reconciliation at some point. Until then it means I have to eat things like gruel and porridge, basically things that look like clinical depression in a bowl. I grow weary of weak tea.

I had a very pleasant yesterday, when I gave my very first lecture to a group of librarians on simple design techniques. They were not mean to me and had good questions, it was all lovely. I got home where my computer was in sleep mode. I wiggled the mouse and tapped the spacebar and wiggled the mouse and tapped the spacebar and…nothing. So I shut it down, gave it ten seconds and turned it back on again, where it promptly went into sleep mode and could not be roused. I then looked around for seven dwarves because clearly I’m sharing my home with Sleeping Beauty (B’doom CHING! I’m funny!). I called Cricket and informed him of my woes, so after work he came over and took the side off my Tower of Power, tinkered around in there, and sadly informed my that my hard drive has Teh Computer Deaths. So until my new hard drive arrives in a week, I have a sculptural element in the corner of my bedroom. The screen, it taunts me with its blackness. “I could play music or surf the web, buuuuuuuuut I don’t think I will. Neener neener.”

Finally, I came back to work today to hear a tale that chills me to the very core. Here is the story as told to me. Upstairs, an employee came into their office to find a poopy smell and two hefty piles of crap on the floor. I was like, WTF?!?? I mean, I’ve seen the rats outside the building and they are big, but really? When the employee called office services, they found out that we have bedbug-sniffing dogs that come through here, and one of them must have just let it all out in the office. All my co-workers were like, Oh isn’t that just a hoot? NO. IT IS NOT A HOOT. I don’t want to have to deal with that kind of thing, EVER. If I wanted a job where large animals took dumps in my workplace, I would have become a park ranger. I am not a park ranger. I am a graphic designer. NO LARGE DOGS CRAPPING IN MY OFFICE.

Also, allergies.

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Retouching. I can has it – sort of.

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

My job needed some nice-ish pictures of Heineken bottles for a project we’re working on, so I went and picked up a six-pack and photographed them in a variety of positions (“Okay, lean a little in, nice, smile a bit, good…”) in a conference room while my co-worker held up a large white piece of paper behind them. When I finished, I realized that unretouched photos, even ones of bottles, look, well, not great. So I spent the five hours makin’ ’em look purty. Take into account that I don’t really know how to retouch things, so I was making it up as I went along.

First of all, retouching is really hard. Every time you fix something, you notice something else that doesn’t look right. It’s an ouroboros of annoying. The main problem I came across (aside from having to edit out dirt flecks and light flares for what seemed like forever) is that Heineken’s bottle is darkish green and their beer is tea-colored. However, they like to give the impression that their bottle is bright green and their beer is golden and lit from the inside with a heavenly light, like an angel accidentally dropped a halo into it. I’m not going to get that effect taking photos in a conference room with natural light. So I did the best I could lightening and greening-up the beer, while not modifying the label or the cap, which didn’t need greening. I reiterate, a colossal pain in the patoot. Mad props to my retouching friends who do this for a living. My hat goes off to you.

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Art.

Friday, March 18th, 2011

Last weekend I saw the move Exit Through The Gift Shop and I feel a need to talk about it. First of all, it’s an excellent documentary. It got great reviews and is well-worth watching, and it’s streaming right now on Netflix, so go see it. That being said, I was infuriated by the last third or so of it. Here’s the basic plot summary (don’t read this next paragraph if you want the film to be a surprise):

There are street artists. No one has ever documented their actions. There is a crazy French vintage-clothing-store-owner named Thierry (Terry) living in Los Angeles who is obsessed with videotaping everything. His cousin is Space Invader, a well-known street artist. Thierry films his actions and is introduced to other street artists, including Shepherd Fairey. Shepherd introduces Thierry to Bansky, the most famous street artist ever. Other stuff happens. In order to edit Thierry’s heaps of footage of both Banksy and other street artists into a film without Thierry being involved, Bansky tells Thierry to make some art and have a small show, basically to get him out of Bansky’s hair. Here’s where I start to fill with rage. Thierry, who has no artistic training or skill or experience, rents a gigantic building in L.A. and hires a massive staff to make his “art”. He is clearly crazy, his artwork is utter pointless crap, but he understands hype, so he hypes the hell out of his show. When his show opens, tons of people show up, people who are desperate to be “cool”, Thierry sells all his crap art and rakes in a million dollars. Jessica bursts into flames. The end.

Here’s the deal, people. Artists aren’t the people who come up with the ideas, okay? We all come up with ideas, all the time. Good ones, dumb ones, weird ones, etc. “What if blah blah was a blah blah blah?” The artists are the people who pluck ideas, theirs or others, out of the ether and make them into something we can see and touch and feel. They are inspired by something and the make something in the hopes that you will feel the same way they do about that thing. I’ll give you an example from my own life. I worked with a guy named Jd at BBDO, and he mentioned to me that every time he went to a new job, shortly after he started everyone else was fired, a whole new staff was hired and everything started anew. Apparently this seemed to happen every time he switched jobs. It was a joke with him and his friends that he was like Kali, the Hindu God of Destruction and Rebirth. I thought that was a funny idea, so I made a ink drawing of him as Kali.

I did not have the idea. I heard it, I liked it, I executed it. Who’s the artist in this situation, Jd or me? So when you (and when I say “you”, I mean you, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst) hire a big ole staff and you wander in and say, “Wouldn’t it be cool to cover a skull with diamonds?” or “I think a giant sculpture of a balloon animal would be neat,” and then you leave the building while your staff actually makes the thing and you touch nothing, but then you go and take credit for all the work, that doesn’t make you an artist. That makes you a hype machine. Your staff is the artist. And I hate you.

By the way, I love the skull covered with diamonds and the giant balloon dog. That’s not the point.

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I made a thing.

Monday, March 14th, 2011

We here at Publicis New York have a window case that is two feet high and nineteen feet long, and living in it presently is a timeline of the company. It’s been the same timeline in the same design for at least three years now, and my boss (the CMO) has grown weary of it. He asked me to redesign it, so I promptly starting rummaging through my research books. A while back I saw an article called “Cutthroat Capitalism” in Wired Magazine and I thought it was a terrific marriage of positive and negative space, so I cut it out and put it in my book.

I wanted little ornate headers and footers to incorporate into the document. I remembered B. had recently sent me a link to the calligraphy on the bottoms of maps that was fascinating, so I looked at that as well.

So, combining some of the elements from both of those documents, I spent three days redesigning the timeline. The beginning part looks like this:

Here are some details where you can really see the things I pulled from my research.

Some of the pictures given to me were really low-res and pixelated, so I converted them into art. Like the radio announcer guy, I made him into stripes where the thickness depended on the amount of light and dark, and then for the bus, I traced it in Illustrator and made decisions about what I wanted knocked out and what I wanted solid. See, solutions to problems. When God gives you lemons (or low-res images), you make lemonade (or graphic icons). We’ll see if my boss likes it and I can continue on in this style.

Addendum: Alas, it was shot down. Too “wacky and dark”. But I don’t care. After shrieking into a pillow, I decided I’m going to keep working on it and add it into my portfolio. Always with the lemons / lemonade thing, I am.

Addendum to the previous addendum: It’s back! The head person likes it! She wants a deep red background, but other than that, I’m good! Hurrah!

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London, Part 8 (and done).

Monday, February 28th, 2011

Let’s look the leftover photos I have from the London trip.

Cricket and I were walking past the Millennium Bridge and we happened on this weird neat-o fountain. It looked like a ship with all kinds of wacky alchemy stuff attached to it. My favorite part was the figure in the back who looked like a giant-nosed Napoleon with an umbrella on his head.

St. Martin-in-the-Fields (real name) Church is one of the best churches you could have the pleasure of visiting. They turned their crypt into into a lovely tea room with stellar cafeteria-style food service (like lamb shank and roasted root vegetables, yummers) and you only feel slightly horribly guilty for enjoying tasty snakkies on top of the graves of people. You can also do bronze rubbings and listen to different kinds of live music. Cricket and I took the time to go up into the actual church-area and I was surprised at what I found. Their main window is clear glass, and in the center is a milky-white-stained-glass egg that is lit by special lights, so it looks like it is glowing. I think that is genius. Instead of having the whole bible story mapped out, they left a little to the imagination. And darn it if it doesn’t look ethereal.

London has a Chinatown, much like most other cities do. Theirs is much smaller than the one in New York. And they have a wall dragon as you walk in.

The lanterns are a really nice touch.

And their pharmacist has this great poster in the window. The tank illustration gave us the giggles.

We visited two major stores: Harrods and Hamleys. Harrods is one of the most famous department stores in the world, and I must say it is fancy. If you do go there, make a point to go to the food court. Holy Moses, it is glorious. They have every kind of food from anywhere in the world. It was mind-blowing. For example, here is a photo of a section of their terrines. Terrines are basically patés or finely ground meatloaves. With such a vast selection of gourmet items, the store relies on high-quality storage solutions to maintain freshness and ensure an organized shopping experience.

And that’s just one little corner of the magic. Another cool thing about Harrods are the 11,000 lights on the exterior.

Hamleys is a very old and very large toy store. Here is the lowdown on the floors:

5th floor: Boys — Action figures, vehicles, and an open cafe.
4th floor: Hobbies — Model kits, remote-controlled vehicles, model railways, Scalextric, etc.
3rd floor: Girls — Dolls, Arts & Crafts, Hello Kitty, Dress-up, etc.
2nd floor: Preschool — Toys for young children.
1st floor: Games — Board games, science, jigsaws; also a Build-A-Bear Workshop and Sweet Shop.
Ground floor: Soft toys — a wide variety of stuffed animals, and also a Marvin’s Magic section.
Basement: Interactive — Lego, construction toys, Red 5, novelties and GAME (retailer).

I don’t really care one way or the other about toys or games, but I did geek out really hard when I got to (wait for it) the Harry Potter Wand Store section.

Every wand for any character from the film. So exciting! It made me believe, just for a moment, that there’s a train that could take me to Hogwarts.

Now, everyone says the British are more elegant and reserved and classy, and I am inclined to agree, based on the fact that they made an opera of (not making this up) Anna-Nicole Smith’s life. Really. And it’s at the Royal Opera House, not some avant-garde experimental theater space. That’s pretty wild. (It got great reviews, by the way. I would have tried to see it, but it opened after I left.)

Two final random shots: One, an old ship with a terrified-looking deer as the figurehead which I found really funny for some reason.

And a men’s store’s spring window display. The smallest figure is spinning while only wearing underpants. You can almost hear him saying, “Whee! I’m nakee!”

That’s it. That’s my trip to London. If anyone has any questions or queries, feel free to contact me. I have 300 other photos that I did not share here which I would be happy to show you.

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London, Part 2.

Sunday, February 20th, 2011

And we’re back! So, London. Let’s start with the Tower of London. First of all, that’s a misnomer. There’s a bunch of towers in a walled area. It should be called the Towers of London. Plural. It feels good to get that off my back.

The weather was really, really good. I know! I was surprised as well. It made hearing all about the various horrible tortures and beheadings so much more pleasant. There also was a nice view of the strange London skyline. That building in front there is called The Gherkin.

The Tower of London is famous for housing The Crown Jewels. Sooooo pretty. This was one of my favorite moments of the trip. I showed Cricket the magical, magical shiny hats and asked him which was his favorite. He informed me that he really liked the door. Yep, the big giant steel door. Some of the finest jewels in the world were directly in front of him, and Cricket was digging the enormous steel bolts on the door. DUDE, BIG SHINY ROCKS! THE BIGGEST AND SHINIEST! THEY DON’T GET BIGGER! OR SHINIER! Fine, go look at the door. Sigh.

They also had a lovely collection of suits of armor. Here is Henry the Eighth’s.

Everybody assumes that the big bulbous codpiece is due to Henry being really, umm, gifted. I read somewhere that it’s actually because he had The Syph and anything touching his junk was really ouchy, so there was a lot of padding in there to keep Mr. Happy from bumping into anything hard, like a big metal suit of armor.

I also learned about Edward the First. He reigned from 1272 to 1307. He was 6’2″, which nowadays is pretty tall, but can you imagine in 1270? It must have been like being surrounded by Oompa-Loompas all the time. Anyway, it got him his nickname Longshanks and they had to build him a special bed because his whole lower half would hang off all the pre-existing beds.

Cricket was really excited about this gun. Once he explained it to me, so was I.

I might screw this description up a little, so please forgive me, I know close to nothing about firearms. Back in the day, you fired a shot and then you had to do this whole procedure with the powder and the musket ball and the flamey stick, it was a slow and tedious process. If you look closely, this gun has two barrels – and two firing mechanisms. You could fire one, and then quickly fire the other.

This was awesome. You know, if you went somewhere in the United States and they had a vermin problem, they would shut down until the problem was taken care of. In the Tower of London, they have signs like this.

How freakin’ great is that? “Keep a lookout for my friends and family!” And an adorable Quentin Blake drawing! It makes the spread of pestilence so cute. Sadly, I saw no rats. Disappointing.

I did see ravens, though. The other thing the Tower of London is famous for is the ravens. Ravens are really, really large crows. Really large. Like small turkeys. I, of course, am obsessed with them. There are presently six of them living in the Tower, and I made friends with the green-anklet one. Here is a picture of Green-Anklet hanging out near my feet.

And here he is sitting on a cannon and saying, “Blaaaaah!!”.

If you are planning on visiting the Tower of London, you should know there are a million stairs. And not just normal stairs, oh no. Awful 15th century stairs, all weird heights and jinky angles and tight spaces. My calves were tender for two days after. Now, anyone who knows me knows I am about as far from an athlete as it gets, so chances are this won’t be as much of a problem for you, but still. Lots and lots of awkward stairs. Up, down, spiral – it’s like a stair fetishist’s dream come true. Just so you know.

Now, signs. Crickets loves a good foreign sign. Since he has brought it to my attention, I am now aware of signs. Here are a few.

I am very immature.

Tee hee hee. Also:

Snort. Giggle.

This was my favorite sign. It was often all by itself, so I had no idea what it was referring to. This was the conversation that went on in my mind when I saw it.

“DON’T DO IT!”

“Huh? Do what?”

“AT ANY TIME!!”

“I…I don’t know what-”

“JUST DON’T DO IT!!!”

“Okay…I’ll try not to?”

“NEVER!! NEVER DO IT! EVER!!”

And then The Mad Hatter and the March Hare tried to shove the Dormouse in the teapot.

At my job, the proofreaders often have a difficult time with documents that come from the UK, because even though we speak the same language, some of the grammar and punctuation rules are different. For example, they use commas way less frequently. There was this sign in the bathroom:

And Cricket had to listen to me yell,

“Guests are reminded to take care when standing or walking on wet surfaces. For additional safety COMMA! non-slip rubber mats are available in the bathroom and also from Housekeeping. Moisten the base of the bath first COMMA! then place the mat in the bath.”

Dating a Grammar Nazi is fun.

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