04 21 2005: as many of you may know, i’m a former member of thirst (1995 to 2000). much of my older work is now available in emotion as promotion: a book of thirst. grab a copy at amazon. thirst principal, rick v, is possibly one of the most passionate designers of the 1990’s. this is a fantastic look at the studio he built.

-pk

04 17 2005: so i’m such a reprehensible jackass that i can’t even be bothered to point out when a close friend relaunches his own site, and therefore announces a major career shift. man, what a jerk, right?

le sigh.

jesse ewing owns and operates inkleaf studio from creston, ohio. his work is some of my favorite—i’ve commissioned him for two projects now. the first, an image of wonkette’s ana marie cox for her own site, is beautiful. here’s a sneak peek of su’s development. the second, an illustration of a character design for gizmodo, was nothing short of spectacular.

jesse’s voice is quintissentially american. his work is gracious and hardworking, a little sad, and casts a loving eye onto the common, the everyday, and the pastoral.

if you have the opportunity to commission him, i highly recommend his work. he works for the joy of his craft and will bring your work to life in ways you never expected.

-pk

04 11 2005: so ten bucks says you can’t guess, based on this link, which website su and i are designing and building right now.

-pk

04 06 2005: we just designed sploid for gawker media. we’re way too tired to talk about it. just enjoy, people. just enjoy.

-pk

04 06 2005: everyday art is a new project from automatic art and design which creates a new celebrity artist every hour. it’s as simple as uploading your work.

does this sort of thing have precedent, outside of your mom’s refrigerator? absolutely. the abolition/expansion of celebrity is soemthing several artists are working with. for instance, house of diehl did exactly this at fashion week 2005 in bryant park with their instant couture project.

this abolishes traditional notions of celebrity by removing the press corps and media from the celebrity’s construction. it is an expansion of celebrity by allowing virtually anyone to become one, and therefore more accurately showing the star’s position within the context of the rest of us. 

everydayart’s proprietor, our friend chaz, says he is interested in expanding this project beyond the web and into a desktop gallery powered by the site.

-pk

04 06 2005: with sploid, launching today, we’re moving away from a traditional weblog format. it’s huge news, helmed by ken layne and choire sicha.

-pk

04 02 2005: i was wondering about the nature of the person driven to design. it seems—based upon watching folks around me—that we’re a creepy breed. obsessive-compulsive and control-driven to one degree or another, every single one of us. i think there’s a real spectrum of minds at work there. my guess is that those of us who are more compulsive tend towards emotional translation of information: pattern, color, style. the decorative, emotional end of things. those of us who are more obsessive tend towards the “library” end of design—the designer who considers themselves to be a rational communicator rather than an emotional expresser of information. a cataloguer.

i kind of remember laurie and scott makela’s partnership being a good example of that sort of spectrum. laurie’s work seemed very formal, and scott’s was just everywhere. the two together made a ton of sense.

wonder if there’s any ground to that line of thought. i’m not interested in defining design as either communication or emotion—that argument gets shitty every time, and all it really does is polarize people. i believe that both are valid trains of thought, and that both can be utilized by the same person without any real soul-sacrificing action going on. i am, however, interested in the emotionally-charged rift that continually crops up (and always has) around the two notions.

i’m also totally talking out of my ass. i haven’t done any real research on it yet—i want to see if i can find any psychologists who’ve been into the subject. just jotting down some things that keep occurring to me.

-pk