Has Into the Music been taking liberties with ladies?

Lady Liberty called. She wants her hat back.

My favorite Winnipeg public art - '10

1. The giving tree (intersection of Corydon and Harrow)

2. The poll pole (Osborne Village)

Stick the green sticker on the place you like, stick the red sticker on the place you don't. That's one for Corydon and one for the airport, respectively. 

3. The curious pole (The Children's Museum, The Forks)

When is a pole not just a pole? When someone writes "penis" on it!

4. The evil bike rack (Broadway near Hargrave)

5. The skeletal dog (Club Regent)

Pirates of the Caribbean called - they want their dog back.

6. The Jetsons Walkway (Convention Centre to City Place)

7. The Bailey's stained-glass window

8. The Cable in Joint sidewalk flare (all around town)

9. Art you can see through (Hotel Fort Garry walkway)

10. The Bubbler of Princess St. (or is that the princess of Bubbler St.?)

A kiss may be grand, but apps are a blogger's best friend

Feeddler RSS Feed: Blogaway, blogaway - I will follow!

Appy blogging!

These are apps (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) that I recommend to bloggers everywhere, especially novice bloggers like, say, the ones operating the new blogs on the CreComm Blog Network (click through the link and look for "Class of 2012" in the column on the right side of the page).

My colleague Melanie Lee Lockhart does the same here and here.

My picks:

• BlogPress – $2.99 - mobile blogging from your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch.

• WordPress – Free! - same deal, but for WordPress blogs.

• FeeddlerRSS or any RSS feed app – $1.99 - you sign in with your Google account, and it becomes easier to read all of the blogs you follow whenever they get updated. It’s how I can read 150 students' blog posts a week.

• Box.net or Dropbox –Free! - to help you store information and files for later.

• Dragon Dictation – Free! - converts your words to copy. Insanely accurate!

• Instapaper – Free! - syncs stuff you see on the Web to your mobile device, where you can “read it later.” The digital scissors for your online newspapers.

• Evernote – Free! - a great notetaking and ideas app.

• Echofon, Twitter, TweetDeck, Twitterrific – and more! – Free! - to publicize your blog and post messages on Twitter. All of the first-year CreComm students will be up and running on Twitter by the end of next week. You really only need one of these apps, but Twitterholics might want all of them.

• LinkedIn – Free! - Facebook for professionals. You can sync it to Twitter and your blog.

• AudioBoo – Free! - post podcasts and audio messages to Twitter, and embed them on your blog. Perfect for radio junkies.

• Facebook – Free! - you’re on the website, right? I'm not - "it's complicated." Why not download the app to make it easier to post and follow updates?

• News apps – mostly free! - stay up to date with the Globe & Mail, the New York Times, BBC, Telegraph, Huffington Post, NPR, PressReader, Fluent News and Winnipeg Headlines – a dude who steals from the Free Press, the Sun, and CJOB and gives to the poor: us!

• Apps related to your blog topic – just do a search of the app store to see who else is talking about your topic. Download the apps and follow them to become an expert on the topic.

• PR and Ad apps – mostly free! - Gallup News, the White House, Advertising Age, Consumer Reports, Dexigner, Whack Pack, Ragan News, AdFeed, PR Newswire, Seth Godin, Wallpaper*…

Did I miss any? If so, post 'em in comments.

Is Limbo the Casablanca of video games?

Limbo: this could be the beginning of a higher monthly Xbox bill.

The video game of the future owes a little something to the Hollywood of yesteryear.

The game is Limbo - available for download on Xbox Live Arcade.

How interesting that at a time when Hollywood looks to 3D to get people back into movie theatres, Limbo looks to 2D and black and white to get them to stay at home.

Achieving a 90 on Metacritic ("Universal Acclaim!"), at it's heart, Limbo is a puzzle game in which you pilot the silhouette of a young boy through a grainy, foggy forest of booby traps and dead bodies in search of a missing sister.

So far, so business as usual: foggy, puzzle, sister, blah blah.

However, Limbo seems to have tapped into something deeper, so that it exists not only to operate as "a game," but also to make us think, contemplate, discuss, and feel, like we do with cinema and - gulp - art.

What better way to answer Roger "video games can never be art" Ebert, or at least budge him toward finally seeing the light?

But don't take it from me: I haven't actually played the game!

A smattering of reviews

1. Giant Bomb:

"Limbo is a game some people will shortly be referring to as not just a great game but an accomplishment. The game is a joy to behold in every aspect. Limbo has a transportive quality that's hard to articulate.

"It so expertly realizes both its internal gameplay logic and its prevailing aesthetic that it almost creates a sort of reverie as you play. The game is a masterpiece."

2. Joystiq:

"I keep coming back to Edvard Munch. I've always been fascinated with Munch, an artist most famous for painting The Scream. It's his other works, however, that tend to stick with me, particularly his Madonna. As a work of art, Munch presents the viewer with seemingly disparate imagery, at once both alluring and disquieting. It's dark, a little disturbing, and yet it's also engaging and beautiful. That's Limbo."

3. Destructoid

"Limbo is as close to perfect at what it does as a game can get. It's artistic without being pompous, difficult without being cheap, and violent without being gratuitous. It gets everything just right, and while the adventure will only take dedicated players a few hours to beat, the memory of the game will remain for much, much longer, and many players won't stop at beating the game just once."

4. The Escapist

"Limbo is genius. Freaky, weird genius. Disturbing, uncomfortable genius."

Black-and-white world

What's cool about Limbo is that by placing the action in a black-and-white world, it imbues video games with a past that they never had; ever see game consoles from the 1940s for sale on eBay? Me neither.

The first thing that occurred to me when I saw the online videos for the game is, "A black-and- white video game? Has that been done?"

Of course it has, but not recently. That I know of.

Having just finished playing Splinter Cell: Conviction, I know that the screen goes black and white when you're hiding in a shadow, and other games have incorporated black-and-white elements into their stories, but if you want full-on black and white, I think you've got to go back to a handful of early arcade games from the 80s:

• Pong
• Asteroids
• Gran Trak 10
• Rebound
• Breakout
• Sea Wolf
• Atari Basketball - featuring two players: black and white!
  

Am I forgetting any?

Each of these games is charming in its own way, but none would likely ever be uttered in the same breath as Casablanca. See?


Is Limbo the first?

Xbox live virgin

So, if this game is so great, why haven't I played it?

Up until now, I've never bothered with Xbox Live. I'm a single-player, hide-in-the-shadows-and-kill-computer-generated-villains lone gunman, tried and true.

But if this game is as great as everyone says it is, maybe it's time for me to bite the bullet and get my free "silver membership" to Xbox Live.

What say you?

Have you played Limbo? Is it worth the trouble figuring out how to plug my Ethernet cable into a connector on another floor?

Or am I fooling myself into thinking that this game will do for me what Casablanca did for me? (Which is: provide me with a lifetime of catchphrases! Ha, ha!). Or would I be better off to figure out how to, say, knit or garden?

Post your comments here, or send me an email if you prefer. In the spirit of online collaboration, I will do whatever my peeps tell me to do.

Don't leave me in Limbo!



Update: got an offer to see the game in action! Will report back if I ever stop playing the game.

Me draw pretty one day: my favorite iPad design apps

Only Glow Draw can bring my art to life the way I envision it in my mind.

As I writer, I'm quite the typography expert: I love every font, as long as it's Times New Roman.

That hasn't stopped me from trying out my design skills using some of the very cool (and cheap) apps on the iPad.

Sure, there are some high-falutin' design and draw apps out there for the big bucks - witness the OmniGraffle app for the low, low price of $49.99.

I wouldn't know what to do with so powerful a design tool, so I shop in the Giant Tiger section of the app store for cool and useful design apps like these (most of these links open in the Apple page; just select iTunes to view and download them in the iTunes store):

1. TypeDrawing

Larsen New Roman.

For the typography fetishist in your office!

With TypeDrawing, you choose your font and color, type out some keywords, and draw your typography-based artwork and wallpaper with your finger, on blank backgrounds or atop photos.

2. Glow Draw

Step one: you draw stuff. Step two: it glows.

As my incredible Star Wars art at the top of this post shows, any art that glows is, by definition, great. If only Da Vinci would've had this technology, can you imagine how awesome the Mona Lisa could've been?

Oh, well: sucks to be him.

3. Adobe Ideas


Ostensibly a "digital sketchbook for designers," I use this app as a whiteboard.

In class this year, I'll see if I can connect the iPad to the digital projector and use this app as a portable, environmentally friendly replacement for the actual whiteboard - preventing my once-a-year "indelible marker on a classroom whiteboard" trick.

4. Dexigner


This app could be the future of industry associations and clubs: a virtual meeting place for design-based news updates, events and exhibits, and competitions.

Even better is the designer directory you can search using an "around me" feature, which shows that Frantic Films and June Derksen are the only two design-based entities and people in Winnipeg. D'oh: register yourself today!

This free app is really under the radar, but is a must for anyone who works in art, design, architecture or the communications biz - or who has an interest in all of the above.

5. Getty Images

Search and share over 24 million Getty Images, hundreds of thousands of which are royalty free or available for licensing. Great search, save, and share interface.

6. Evernote

My brain is like a sieve.

Though sometimes it's easier to just forget, Evernote lets you remember all of the stuff that happens in your life, whether you want to or not: notes, ideas, photos, websites, recordings, synchronized with tags across your iPad, laptop, iPhone, and online.

Perfect uses: multimedia diary, grocery list, classroom notes.

7 - 9. Storage apps: PDF Comrade, Box.net, Dropbox

These apps three are meant for thee.

One of the big questions I get when people see my iPad for the first time is, "Can I save and look at my big files on it?"

Can you ever.

Of these three, great storage services, probably the best is Dropbox, only because you can install it on your computer, drop files into it, and - presto - they appear on your iPad one second later. It's Ripley's, I'll tell ya.

PDF Comrade is solely for PDFs, while Box.net and Dropbox are for virtually every kind of file, including audio and video.

10. Phaidon Design Classics

The most expensive and awesome app for last - Phaidon Design Classics will run you back $20, but I justify it by considering it to be an interactive coffee-table book (the future of the Independent Professional Project, lemme tell ya).

"This authoritative and meticulously researched collection charts the story of product design over the past 200 years. It was years in the making and was compiled via rigorous selection process by an international panel of design-world insiders, including architects, critics, curators, product designers, auctioneers, and historians."

Quite possibly the smoothest, most gorgeous iPad app around. As beautifully designed as its subjects:


***

P.S. A big thanks to Policyfrog for pointing out this link about using iPads in universities.

My favorite comic-book author and Letterman guest dies at 70

Dave and Harvey crash Live at Five with Roker and Cafferty.

It was a bad week for Cleveland: LeBron James moved to the heat and the Heat, and native son George Steinbrenner went to that big Yankee Stadium in the sky.

But, even worse, my favorite Cleveland underground comic writer, Letterman guest, and curmudgeon - Harvey Pekar - died from cancer at age 70.

American Splendor

In 1976, Pekar started writing comic books based on his life and job as a file clerk at the Cleveland VA Medical Center.

Pekar's American Splendor comics - the title is ironic! - are about working-class Cleveland and Pekar's mundane, regular-guy life: his paranoia, anger at the world, and himself.

I bought Pekar's comics as they came out at (the now-closed) Schinders in Minneapolis - one more reason to drive to the big city! - but for most people, the collection American Splendor: the Life and Times of Harvey Pekar is a good place to find out what's so great about the guy.


Pekar's graphic novel, Our Cancer Year, is his best self-contained work, chronicling his harrowing and depressing battle with cancer. To this day, I'm haunted by the panel where Pekar drops the groceries in the snow and can't pick them up - the sheer helplessness of it all.

For all of his self-disparagement, Pekar had a lot of success, the pinnacle of which was the great, Sundance-winning film American Splendor, starring Paul Giamatti as our anti-hero:


"Every American city is depressing in its own way."

Pekar also showed up in two of my all-time favorite Canadian documentaries, ridiculously unavailable online, the video store, or maybe anywhere - Vinyl and I, Curmudgeon. Pekar was an avid collector of jazz records and grumpy, which explains his appearance in both.

The Letterman years

Pekar first came to my attention in the 80s in his handful of appearances on Late Night with David Letterman, which are notable for Pekar's subversive rants - altogether missing from late-night talk shows today.

This one got Pekar banned from Late Night "for life." In the pre-September 11 world, Pekar made Letterman pray out loud for "a terrorist:"



The life ban didn't last long: Pekar appeared on Letterman's Late Show twice after his Late Night outburst, again accusing Letterman of being a shill for the man and having contempt for his audience.

Pekar told the LA Times:

"On some of the shows, I was doing a deliberate self-parody, and now there's a lot of people that think I'm some sort of maniac, you know? I'd rather be liked than thought of as a crazy man, but with Letterman, I've been in a situation where you either lay down and let him insult you or you do something about it. Most people keep their mouth shut and let him dump on them. I don't wanna do that."

Comic books, talk shows, and Cleveland will never be the same:

You call yourself a student? What kind?

There are five kinds of students in this world and, sorry Breakfast Club, they're not brain, athlete, basket case, jock, and princess.



In my Certificate in Adult Education class last year (and every year, just like Groundhog Day!) we learned that we could classify all students into five, basic stereotypes.

On one hand, it's nice to believe that sometimes a student doesn't like you because he or she doesn't like any teacher - on the other, it's a little depressing to consider that, no matter what you do as a teacher or student, success and failure may be predestined.

To simplify: sometimes it feels like we teachers are just standing around watching students achieve or not achieve what they would do anyway, like Lord of the Flies with a chaperone.

At some point, you have to wonder whether your primary role as a teacher is to "help those who help themselves," "help those who don't help themselves," "help those who want your help," or "help those who don't want your help."

It's human nature to do the first, but a good teacher at least attempts to reach out to and retain every student. But if you want to get to the heart of where classroom issues start, maybe having an understanding of these five student "typologies" - and knowing which one you are - is where to begin:

1. Success Students
These students are:

• Task oriented.
• Successful.
• Cooperative.
• Accepting of challenging and difficult questions and assignments more quickly and more often.
• Well behaved.
• Comfortable with their role.
• Liked by instructors.

Better known as: "The valedictorian!"


2. Social Students
These students are:

• People oriented.
• Able to achieve, but value friendships more.
• Often assigned easier tasks or questions.
• Sometimes off on their answers.
• Popular, and have lots of friends.
• Disliked by some teachers.

Better known as: "Can you crank it down a notch?"


3. Dependent Students
These students are:

• Always seeking instructor support, direction, and help.
• Usually responsible for a majority of demands on instructor time.
• Comfortable offering ideas, but they may be off.
• Lower-level achievers.
• Sometimes ostracized by peers.
• Sometimes the source of instructor concern.

Better known as: "You again?"


4. Alienated Students
These students are:

• Often from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Often reluctant learners.
• Prone to rejecting everything the classroom stands for.
• Openly hostile and "troublemakers."
• Often withdrawn, and may be ignored by instructors and peers.
• Often rejected by instructors as "unteachable."

Better known as: "Troublemaker!"


5. Phantom Students
These students are:

• Seldom seen or heard.
• Shy.
• Average performers.
• Sometimes independent.
• Reluctant to volunteer ideas.
• Reluctant to participate.
• Prone to being forgotten by instructors and peers, who may be completely indifferent to them.

Better known as: "Who?"

***

Which are you? Not sure which I am, but if you have some easy questions for me to knock out, I can get on with socializing.

By the way, all of the incredible art in this blog was drawn by me using the Brushes app, just like that recent New Yorker cover - not that Brushes wants me to brag about it.

Screw you, record sleeves! A not-so-fond farewell to lousy music packaging

Yeah, what Esquivel said. Or whistled.

I've been on a real musical sentimental journey recently; why, just witness my fond recollection of 45 RPM label designs here.

No more! As of today, everything must go, starting with one of the music-related things I'm least sentimental about: the end of wasteful and just plain boneheaded music packaging.

If we can accept that Napster, free downloads, and iTunes killed the album - or at least the concept of paying for it - by turning it into something intangible, we can also accept that they may have saved us from these all-too-tangible - and terrible - "innovations:"

1. Bar codes

Commerce - literally - over art.

2. The unremovable "protective tape" across the top of the CD

Pity he'll never hear it.

3. The superfluous cardboard CD cover that hides the same CD cover beneath it

Surprise! Err, no.

4. The longbox CD package

Best Value = double the cardboard!

5. The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink CD package

I see no CD here.

6. Digipaks and jewel cases

A most classy waste of cardboard and plastic!

7. Endless compilations featuring the same music

Shoplifters of the world: unite and take over!

8. Endless reissues, remasters, and box sets

Stereo or mono? Like anyone can tell the difference.

9. "Special" odd-sized CDs

Tattoo You has more music, vertically speaking.

10. The CD sleeve that not only protects, but traps the CD, so you can't remove it without amputating your hand

Amputated hand not pictured.

What's in your junk drawer?

Is it rude to show your drawers in public?

What's in your drawer?

I came across a cool idea today on Rob Walker's MURKETING website. It's the art of Paho Mann, who photographs people's junk drawers and medicine cabinets under the banner of "high-concept art."

I'd probably leave it at that, being the uncultured boor that I am, but Mann explains:

"My work explores the persistent mark of individuality in a culture that brands, packages, and relentlessly promotes conformity. Even among those who attempt to fit into society, there is an amazing wealth of information each individual reveals in near-privacy, spaces such as junk-drawers and medicine cabinets."

"The near-private nature of these spaces force the viewer to contend with the natural desire of humans to collect, categorize, and by doing so, manage to give clues about their personality and identity."

If that's true, then what does that say about my junk drawer, above?

In the picture of it, above, you can clearly see:

• Two CDs, one featuring my stand-up publicity photos (oh, God), and the other a CD-ROM to accompany "Advertising & Promotion" textbook (circa 2005 - they still made CD-ROMs then?!).

• The Tiffany & Co. Conan O'Brien keychain I got when I left the show (in the blue box, of course).

• My button collection, including "Take Off" (Bob and Doug!), E.T., Tears for Fears, smiley face, Bullwinkle For President, I heart London, and Mork and Mindy.
  

• Nerf darts.

• A box of Parker pens from an ex-girlfriend's dad, engraved with my name, and a second box of pens, engraved with my late stepdad's name.
  

• An old wallet containing an old Costco and KLM frequent-flier card.

• A Post-it note with the key lines from Nizlopi's JCB on it.

• A soft cloth for glasses.

• A King's Head membership, back from when you needed one.

• Coasters.

• A memory stick.

• The wooden handle to the drawer itself.

Clearly, I'm an egotistical, sentimental, alcoholic prankster who likes to have clean glasses. Any questions?

Hurtin' for a blog idea? Well, what's in your drawer, then?

Find the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo

I'd like to ship an invisible arrow to Tuscon.

This is one of the great optical illusions: find the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo.

Whenever I used to give this problem to my graphic design students, at least a few thought that I was seeing things, or that I shouldn't read so much into an accidental pairing of letters that, for some reason, kinda looks like an arrow.

But a graphic design accident rarely, if ever, happens. Logos are huge business - just ask Pepsi, which paid $1 million to Arnell for coming up with its updated logo. Arnell famously justified it in this 27-page document called "Breathtaking Design Strategy:"

Pepsi Breathtaking Design Strategy

The document impressively - or is that laughingly? - chronicles over 5,000 years of design to establish Pepsi's blueprint for the brand. By the time they get to "gravitational pull," you might begin to doubt your own sanity.

But, there's no doubt that something like an arrow wouldn't show up in a logo by mistake.

Which is why I was happy to come across thesneeze.com's 2004 interview with the designer of the FedEx logo himself, Lindon Leader of Leader Creative.

In the interview, he talks about realizing that the letters could create an arrow, manipulating the font to encourage the arrow, and why it's so subtle in the finished design:

"The power of the hidden arrow is simply that it is a hidden bonus. It is a positive-reverse optical kind of thing: either you see it or you don't. Importantly, not getting the punch line by not seeing the arrow does not reduce the impact of the logo's essential communication."

"The power of the logo and the FedEx marketing supporting the logo is strong enough to convey clearly FedEx brand positioning. On the other hand, if you do see the arrow, or someone points it out to you, you won't forget it."

So, consider this to be mission accomplished.

Give up? It's right here:

Your advertising is in my art!

Is it art or advertising?

That question has plagued mankind since the beginning of time, even before Andy Warhol painted 32 Campbell's Soup cans in 1962 - one painting for every flavor that Campbell's offered at the time.

Warhol also painted portraits of Coca-Cola bottles, which he explained by saying:

"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too.

"A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the president knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."

Winnipeg is a mosaic, why not Jack Daniel's?

I thought about the old "art versus commerce" debate this morning when I had coffee with Winnipeg artist, Dimitry Melman Komar, perhaps best known for his City of Winnipeg logo and coat of arms mosaics at City Hall and the Sugar Mountain jelly bean mural at The Forks (download the pdf here).

Dimitry is an interesting guy; he was born in Moscow and immigrated to Canada at age 18, where he studied art history and design at the University of Manitoba. He also trained in France, and learned about mosaics in Italy, Spain, and Morocco.

When he creates a mosaic, he does so with painstaking detail, creating each one the only way it can be created: one piece at a time. It is, without a doubt, art.

Flipping through his portfolio, I couldn't help but notice the above Jack Daniel's mosaic among the art, which he did as a private commission for a client. Interesting that the person could've commissioned a mosaic of a loved one, a pet, an original work of art - anything! - and he (it's gotta be a guy) chose Jack Daniel's.

Now that's brand loyalty. And art!

Should more ads be art?

If more people - advertisers and the target audiences who buy their products - thought of campaigns as "installations" and we created them the way that Dimitry creates mosaics, we might not mind the advertising clutter as much as we do now.

However, it's also true that advertising has a job to do - sell, sell, sell! - and there are those who say that once it becomes too much about "art" and not enough about "selling" that it's time to quit your job in advertising and become a painter.

But where's the money in that?

There's nothing wrong with subtlety, depth, and resonance. The problem is that it's hard for an ad agency to justify "art" to a client, who - go figure - may not see the need to forgo short-term sales for long-term positive effects on the soul.

Actually, it would be nice to have both. I'm sure that there's a sweet spot that exists somewhere between, "God, that's dumb," and "too hip for the room." The Beatles proved that it exists, but maybe there's a reason that precious few other bands ever have.

The best solution may be to just sign up for some of Dimitry's mosaic workshops, which include "snacks, wine, and music in a supportive, nurturing, and fun environment."

If that's not art, I don't know what is.