Always on the radio...

Tackiness is not a tactic

Everybody, at some point in their life, will need to advertise something. Whether you're trying to get rid of mom's antique toilet paper holder at a garage sale or starting your own toilet paper holder business, you'll need to advertise in some fashion.

So I want you to know this, lock it away in your mind for future use, one day it will be important: Starbursts of any kind are the single tackiest thing to happen to advertising - ever.

If you are a hometown auctioneer or a used car salesman go ahead and use starbursts, no one respects your advertising any way. If you're anyone else, I don't care if you sell hardware on ebay, don't use starbursts!

Any time that you consider advertising something I was you to complete this exercise.

1. Decide who your target market is.
2. Look at advertisements also aimed at your target market.
3. Notice the lack of starbursts in all well known brand name advertisements.
4. Steal everything you like.

Particular things to look for:
* Color schemes (are they bold? cheery? monochromatic?)
* Fonts (what is the serif to sans serif ratio in the ad? In what context are italics used? How are the fonts spaced?)
* Wording (concise? flowery? personal?)
* Illustrations (simple or elaborate? photographs or drawings? bold or subtle?)
* What stands out (did this ad catch your eye because of the vibrant colors or because of the funky artwork?)


Finally, help make the world a better place by mentioning the tackiness of starbursts to your friends, family, and coworkers.

Tuesday is the new Monday

I can't even tell you how bored I am. I've wasted as much time as humanly possible. I've desgined all the ads in my in-box; I even took more time than usual in a mostly futile attempt to combine Amish advertising with modern designing. I've mentally gone over how much my portfolio sucks and what I need to do beef it up. And now I'm contemplating what kind of illustrations/clip art I could create.

Plus, I'm super tired. Yesterday I was super tired and I had a 5-hour energy drink and that helped quite a bit, but today I didn't have one because I thought I had energy. But I don't and I'm dying.

So, what should I draw? If you see this and it's past five, don't worry...Tuesday happens every week, I'll use it sometime.

Nothing to Say

Back in the day when christian radio was the only radio (i.e. highschool), Andrew Peterson had his one and only hit, Nothing to Say. And even though I dislike mornings on principle, whenever I'm driving to work and the sun's rising and lighting everything up - it makes me think of that song.

It's the only redeeming thing about mornings, really. You don't get that kind of lighting any other time of day. Monet used to paint pictures, not for the object in the picture, but for the way the light reflected off of it. As a child I found this deeply dissapointing. I'm not sure I can explain why, it just seemed like a betrayal of one's subject matter. But morning driving always makes me feel like Monet had it exactly right.
.

(part of Monet's Rouen Cathedral series)

Nerd Art

For some reason when I have very little work to do, I have a whole lot of trouble focusing on it.

So I was browsing the internet and found Molecular Muse. Etsy was featuring her Dopamine necklace for valentines day.

That's right kids, it's a pendant in the shape of a dopamine molecule.

And, if it so happens that your sweetie isn't nerd enough to appreciate this necklace there are a wide variety of molecular designs to give to the nerds you love.

There's the Serotonin necklace, for your emo friend you want to just shut up and smile.

M

A wine decanter with a design related to the ethanol molecule, since the ethanol molecule is found in alcoholic beverages and no one would be confused and think it related to a modern fuel source.

Chocolate - theobromine molecule - earrings, for people you'd like to dissapoint by not buying $40 of actual chocolate.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

And, of course, much more. All expensive. All arriving in a recycled green box and with a little diagram of your molecule.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Something borrowed, something blue...

My friend, Alice (Lindsay), is getting married in a couple months and I'm designing her invites as quickly as I conceivably can. I've scoured the web for sample wedding invitations so that I know what is appropriate, traditional, and of-the-moment.

Today an advertiser put in their annual wedding supply advertisement. For no apparent reason they wanted a wedding border. Borders are wrong. I don't care how many are provided for you in Microsoft Publisher, they are morally repugnant. Fortunately there is no such thing as a wedding border, at least not at my place of employment. Turns out, we don't have much in the way of wedding clip art at all. So this time I had to conduct a photo search of brides and grooms so I could appropriately decorate the ad. We'll see how it goes, I gathered from my boss that Amish weddings are not like traditional American weddings, but I've never seen an Amish wedding....so traditional American it is.

I've spent the past three days entirely immersed in wedding land and I've got 20 days of invitation designing/printing to go. Wish me luck.

A week and a half of vacation is to die for.

I ended up driving back on New Year's Eve, I stayed at my parents an extra day and went geocaching with my sisters. It was a pretty pathetic attempt.

I "helped" with a youth group New Year's party at church - which means I chatted with some of the kids and joined in the mass grimace when Josh got a tooth knocked out through his upper lip. I left at 11:30 because the snow was getting bad.

On New Years I went shopping with Robin and her sister, Cheryl, to find a dress for graduation/senior banquet. We talked her in to two.

Now I'm back at work with a little space heater under my desk to fend off hypothermia - and I don't even mind. The holiday was just that satisfying.