You can see the full project collection on Behance, or visit Román’s website.

Everything Ecstatic, unfolded.

Unfolded again, but rotated.

Here is the David Carson Nine Inch Nails art for comparison:

Here is the front and back together:

Both albums have some interesting and strange cropping with photos and images. Four Tet’s has so much congestion though, it’s pretty easy to find yourself more attracted to the Nine Inch Nail’s cover.

I think Four Tet perfected their image cropping, arrangement and off-beat typography in Everything Ecstatic’s second version. The design style is the same, but much more mature—All the extra and unnecessary elements have been removed:

Going to the absolute extreme, here is an MIA cover. It’s definitely anti-design. Unlike Four Tet and NIN, the design has no visual appeal or interest. It just looks like something crapped together by a secretary. Breaking the rules of design is great, but what have you really accomplished when your piece is painful to look at?

I had already burned out on Internet Explorer and gone to Firefox, which I was never completely happy with. It seemed like a better version of Internet Explorer: it rendered pages better and was definitely faster, but many aspects of it were the same, namely the enormous amount of pixel real estate it took at the top of the screen.

That was the primary thing that brought me to Chrome: There was no application title bar at the top of the screen, which immediately made the whole experience seem cleaner and roomier. Next, the most important elements, the tabs, were at the top. I’m much more interested in what page I’m on than the words File, Edit, etc, which I rarely use. Those top links are straight out of the old days: Firefox copied them over seemingly without questioning if they should be there or not. Chrome did much better by reorganizing them and combining them into one drop button on the right hand side of the screen.

I also liked how each tab was touted as it’s own process, meaning that if one tab crashed, it wouldn’t bring down the whole browser. I’ll talk about that a bit more in a minute.

Looking back over the last 2ish years, there are some things about Chrome that really bother me. They’re big issues and I’m surprised they havn’t been fixed yet.

1. It is a myth that one crashed tab doesn’t bring down the whole browser, separate process or not.
   Google Chrome crashes on me at least once every other day. Funny enough, this crash is often caused by Google’s Gmail: either the attach file function or the chat sidebar widget. When it happens, I get a popup that Flash Shockwave has crashed, and it knocks out Flash functions in all tabs along with sometimes crashing the entire browser.  Other times, the entire browser just crashes with little explanation as to why. I can’t remember a time when a tab froze and I was able to close it while continuing with the rest.
2. Chrome often fails to load images or the entire stylesheet, and I have to hit refresh two or three times for them to work.
3. Chrome doesn’t seem to recognize RSS feeds.
   I’m really tired of seeing images like these:
   
   Is it too much to ask that Chrome recognize them, as other browsers do? I know Google doesn’t really like RSS that much, even though they have a decent reader app, and RSS’s future isn’t quite clear, but this is just sloppy.
4. Chrome is extremely forgetful when it comes to remembering passwords that you check “Remember” on.
   Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but Chrome seems to be the most forgetful browser I’ve ever used. Some websites I continually find myself checking “Remember Me.” It’s gotten to the point that I automatically open certain websites in Firefox or Internet Explorer because I know those browsers will remember the password.

I like Chrome, though I wonder how long I’ll be able to continue tolerating these issues. Did I miss anything?

Update: Here is a screenshot of the Gmail “Attach File” bug crashing Chrome in Windows 7 (not just 1 tab, the whole thing).

It isn’t a mystery that Urban Outfitters has a cheeky sense of humor… And that’s really all you can say about this recent effort, a sale graphic for their online store.

This is a god-awful and funny display of anti-design. I say it’s funny because usually when a designer delves into anti-design they (often) perform it so well that it looks like well designed crap.

This doesn’t look like well designed crap, it just IS crap. I imagine they probably used MS Paint to make it rather than Photoshop or Illustrator, and they’ve repeated the word “Sale” four times: in blue on the left and right; in white, with one letter on each side; and in blue again, written backwards really small in the middle.

There are 2 pieces of ‘furniture’: 2 blue lines on the left that don’t really seem to serve a purpose.

I don’t know why I’m talking about this, but I’m sure the designers at UO’s office had a good laugh about it.

Black Square, 1913 by Kazimir Malevich

In an earlier post I made about non-objective art, the idea of monochrome paintings came up. These paintings are just what their name implies: paintings made with one color, usually in a solid form.

Art they art? I think what is more important than that question is “What exactly are they?”

First, you should understand that these monochromatic paintings are exercises or expressions made by artists who usually go in many other areas. For an example, view the artist of this piece’s work (View the gallery at the bottom of Malevich’s wikipedia entry): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimir_Malevich

Next, we often forget when looking at art in any form (musical or otherwise) that there is often a sense of humor involved in things. If, for example, you were a famous lyricist and everything you wrote was examined under a microsope: Every word, every line.. every imaginable intent gathered and analyzed. You might get so sick of it you would write some silly lyrics to throw everyone off and call it I Am the Walrus (as the urban legend goes, regardless of whether or not it is true). There is no reason listening to this goo goo ga joob and asking “Is this art?! Is this music?!”

DaDa was an artistic movement that sought to satirize and desconstruct every conceivable art form. But more often than not, there was a great intelligence or philosophy behind what they did. It was basically what we call “trolling,” but the trolls were really good.

What is painting? Painting is applying gobs of color onto a flat surface in certain forms. Sometimes they form the illusion of a person, sometimes they form no illusion at all. Is one more valuable than the other? That gets me back to my original point about non-objective art. Why are these gobs of color representing a person better than those gobs that aren’t? Shouldn’t I be more concerned with which gobs look more interesting? Furthermore, I’m often not interested in seeing these gobs arranged in a way that imitates real life. I see real life every time I open my eyes. Over and over and over and over again. Plus, we have cameras now so why do I need a “photo-realistic” portrait. I can take a photo. (“Photo-realistic” being an illusion in itself).

If you were to keep placing gobs of paint on the surface over and over, you could continue applying paint to the surface until form absolutely broke down. Since paint reflects light, painting blue means that red and green are ‘trapped,’ while blue reflects. Therefore, if you didn’t stop applying your gobs, eventually your surface would “trap” all colors and be black. And there you have it.

In this, you can have a philosophical question of “When do we stop?” If you apply no paint at all, you have a white surface. If you apply all paint, it is black. Therefore, the philosophy of the occupation of painting would necessitate that at some point someone would try both.

I often use this with clients in graphic design who want to add more more more to their composition. Black is purity of positive space. Negative space is the area of paper that has no elements. Positive space is the area that contains elements. I tell them that to add nothing at all would create a perfectly white design, and to add everything in the world would make a design that is perfectly black. The good designer finds the perfect balance between negative and positive.. however, there is no reason, as a practitioner, to not have fun with the two absolute extremes.

There can be further philosophical ideas. A black square can symbolize nothingness, death and emptiness. The very black square painting you view on this page was exhibited above the artist’s tomb at his funeral. What does that tell you? If I were to paint you a picture of pure nothingness, and showed it by depicting a perfectly black square, would that be any less “correct” than a scene showing 3 starving peasants sitting at a table with an empty milk bottle and a plate with no food? The black square could be the essence of nothingness, the peasant scene could be a symptom of nothingness. The peasant scene would be a narrative leading to nothingness, the black painting would be nothingness as a concept or ideal with no narrative.

Rodchenko once exhibited 3 paintings, each of the primary colors, in order to make a statement: Painting is Dead. Those canvases weren’t exactly great works of artistic ability.. They were a statement, and a much more powerful statement than simply standing on a podium and saying, “Excuse me, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to inform you of something: Painting is Dead.”

I mentioned earlier that artists have a sense of humor too. There can be every range of snark or humor involved in these pieces. “The Germans love me so much, I bet I could sign a canvas and hang it in the gallery and they would buy it.” We make that same statement “He did nothing, just signed the canvas!” But look at you, you’re in complete agreement with the artist! And what if you’re Babe Ruth, and you do nothing but use pen and ink to sign a white sphere with stitching, and that sphere suddenly becomes worth a million dollars (after some years). What determines an object’s value?

There are so many different concepts and reasons artists do these types of work. But this isn’t all the art in the world, this is one very small subset. It’s also usually just a small subset of the work of the artist you’re looking at. Take it for what it’s “worth.” (ha)

Also, the next time you’re at a gallery and you view hundreds of multi colored paintings showing every type of God, Saint, Crucifixion, love, lust, fairy tale, still life and everything in between.. then suddenly find yourself staring at none of this, but instead an enormous canvas that is pure black.. staring into absolute nothingness, with nothing to interpret and nothing to consider, you may find the piece has more value than you thought.

De Kooning's 'Excavation'

There’s this funny thing in the lay person’s understanding of art, where they look at abstract or non objective work and say, “Hmm. I could do that,” and then move on. In many ways, they are missing the idea that, like an orchestral piece with no lyrics, this painting is not an attempt to show a portrait or a sunset, in the same way that a symphony is not trying to recreate the sounds of a forest. It is, at one point, an exercise in the arrangement of color and form, and at a higher level, an exercise in meditation. Meditation both on the part of the artist and the viewer: The idea that you can lose yourself in pure form and color and simply “Exist” for a few moments with absolute purposelessness.

And this purposelessness is not, what we English speakers think of as “without direction/ambition” or lazy.. it is purposelessness in the same way that a river has no clear mind or purpose.. it simply exists as it is.

At the same time, philosopher Alan Watts made a great point about the mechanics of the statement “Hmmm, I can do that,” something I’ve been trying to show people for years. But here it is perfectly stated.

“There was a great Zen monk who lived shortly after 1000 AD who had a very perculiar way of painting. He had long hair, and he’d get very drunk on rice wine, and he’d soak his hair in ink and slosh it all over the paper. Then he would do a rorshack test on it and decide what kind of landscape it actually was, and then put in the finishing touches. And suddenly, out of this apparent mess, a great landscape would be evoked. But the whole art of the thing lay in putting in the finishing touches.

Also, there’s a very curious thing. If a person who is untrained in painting makes a mess with a brush it’s liable to be just a mess. Whereas if a person who has the feeling of painting in them for a long time, and they make a mess with a brush, or just do anything, it looks interesting. And that’s why if you try to copy the best people in modern abstract, non-objective painting, you find it very difficult to do. Because there is more to spontenaity than just caprice and disorder.”

Caprice is “a sudden, impulsive, and seemingly unmotivated notion or action.” So the next time you see a non-objective piece, try to look at it without thinking of form. Try to lose yourself in shape and color as if you were meditating. And if you think you can “Do that,” I whole-heartedly challenge you to try.

I keep hearing these second hand stories of design professors giving students these doom and gloom forecasts of the job market, and I just don’t get it. We now live in a world where absolutely everything is designed for every level of business and organization, where many of us get daily “where the hell is my website/logo/etc” emails, whilst sending out “Need a little more time!” messages. Yet academia has students convinced the market out there is flat. That it doesn’t have a voracious appetite for design that many of us struggle to meet. It isn’t flat. There’s more to do than can be done.

This contest will be Republicans (represented by right-wing PACs) vs Democrats (represented by left-wing PACs). Good luck!

On the Right:

SarahPAC

The website layout for SarahPAC, October 2010.

Featuring not much except some about information, FAQs, and contact information, Palin’s site is rather shallow (hehe). On the plus side, the layout is clean, and the photo of Palin slightly breaks the grid, adding a bit of visual interest and drawing the eye to look at her confident, friendly pose. The email sign up box and buttons are slick, though the button gradients are a bit rigid. The brown texture in the body background is too Photoshoppy, I would recommend using an actual scanned texture instead.

Typography: 4/10
Composition: 5.5/10
Depth of Content: 2/10
Buttons and Banners: 6/10

Total: 17.5/40

Republican Main Street Partnership PAC

The Republican Main Street Partnership PAC, October 2010

Pretty much everything that can go wrong in a design has gone wrong here: Early 1990′s design and typography, a super-saturated color scheme, double hyphens instead of em dashes, bright yellow highlighted calls to action, nasty type beveling and drop shadows, huge paragraph indents (combined with extra line spaces), and more.

Typography: 1/10
Composition: 1/10
Depth of Content: 4/10
Buttons and Banners: 1/10

Total: 7/40

Move America Forward

Move America Forward, October 2010

The martial theme here is too heavy handed: Even if the organization has a Soldier-Centered approach, we want the audience to visualize supporting the troops’ life, interests, health and well being, not think that they’re donating money to buy machine-guns and artillery shells. The large, embedded Facebook widget is always a no-no, the mini-banners in the sidebar are all different styles, making the page feel like it is covered with advertising. The 9/11 banner at the top features weak type and illustration, and the white glow on the outside of the content box is way too heavy-handed. The Twitter feed on the left sidebar is too thin on the column-width, rendering the text unreadable. Also, the header and branding is turning into a graphic stew. Depth of content, featuring lots of sections, the (poorly implemented) Facebook and Twitter information, etc, is good.

Typography: 3/10
Composition: 4/10
Depth of Content: 7/10
Buttons and Banners: 4/10

Total: 18/40

Huck PAC

HuckPAC, October 2010

Ahhh Mr. Huckabee, you never cease to surprise us: This is today’s first passing design! The Kevin Spacey doppelganger has a weak, rushed logo, but the “Contribute” drop down gray box breaks the grid nicely, calling an appropriate amount of attention to itself and giving the right side of the header some actual content. The main navigation buttons look decent, and have a nice effect on rollover. The Featured Item banner features clean typography, information graphics, and photography, and the social media buttons are large, trendy, and gray (converting them to gray means their varied color schemes don’t compete with the site’s overall design).

Typography: 8.25/10
Composition: 8.75/10
Depth of Content: 7/10
Buttons and Banners: 8.5/10

Total: 32.5/40

CPAC

CPAC, October 2010

Conservative.org’s CPAC section is mixed. The large constitution image as the body background has a cool look to it, though it starts to busy the design too much, calling attention away from the content area. Lowering the opacity on that significantly would probably help. The logo is clean, though un-concepted, and the navigation buttons, though minimal, aren’t working. Despite these issues, the overall skin feels relatively clean, especially compared to some of the other examples here. However, once we get into the content area, everything falls apart: centered type blocks, overuse of italics, HTML default blue links with underlines, pixelated social media icons with awkward spacing, a messy banner, blue ribbons made to look 3D when nothing else on the page implies dimension and lots and lots of underlining.

Typography: 2/10
Composition: 3/10
Depth of Content: 5/10
Buttons and Banners: 1/10

Total: 11/40

On the Left:

ActBlue

ActBlue, October 2010

ActBlue acted very blue on this layout… Way too blue. The main content background blue is way too saturated for comfortable reading, and has a variety of blue text shades on top of it. Icons are in different shades of blue also. The main navigation buttons are undesigned and underlined, the important numbers, pull quotes and calls to action are placed seemingly at random with no attention paid to typography. Typos, like not capitalizing words at the beginnings of article titles, are very distracting. Awkward background texture (tight horizontal lines).

Typography: 2/10
Composition: 2/10
Depth of Content: 4/10
Buttons and Banners: 1/10

Total: 9/40

Democratic Advancement PAC

Democratic Advancement PAC, October 2010

Featuring this contest’s most awkward header font/logo (see how it absolutely falls apart when PAC is capitalized?) and an almost-literal mile of text content, DAPAC’s site is simple but uninviting. The text column is way too wide for comfortable reading, and, like I said, really, really long, with no graphics, icons or any other feature to break it up. I would be surprised if anyone has ever read this column of text from start to finish (the page is too long to include on this site, if you want to see it in all its glory, go to their page).

Typography: 1/10
Composition: 1/10
Depth of Content: 5/10
Buttons and Banners: 1/10

Total: 8/40

HillPAC

HillPAC, October 2010

It appears Hillary’s designers got started on the right path, but this website never fully materialized. Maybe because there’s an issue with money (the site simply asks you to contribute to her leftover presidential campaign debt, which I would hardly call a PAC)?

Typography: 5/10
Composition: 6/10
Depth of Content: 0/10
Buttons and Banners: 4/10

Total: 15/40

MoveOn.org

MoveOn, October 2010

With all their celebrity endorsements, and their front and center role in the new American culture war, I assumed MoveOn would have a slick, badda-bing-badda-boom website, but no dice. It isn’t horrible, but there are lots of areas that need attention. To get started: A larger header with much more to contrast it from the content area, a logo (instead of just blue, italic sans-serif) and strong, elegant typography in the content area and sidebar.

Typography: 3/10
Composition: 3.5/10
Depth of Content: 7/10
Buttons and Banners: 4/10

Total: 17.5/40

Results!

Republicans: 86/200 or 43% of the vote.
Democrats: 49.5/160 or 30.93% of the vote.

Overall winner (and this was a pretty easy call): Mike Huckabee.

I’m really surprised, given Obama’s incredible web campaign and gorgeous sites, that so many other Democratic groups have marginalized or ignored good design. Obviously, the Republicans have too in most cases, and may have even lost if: 1)  Huckabee hadn’t come through with a moderately good site, and 2) MoveOn put some of that money into building a site that would encourage sharing, viral messages, and return visitors.

And that truly is the lesson to be learned here: When you show visitors that your house is in order, that you can present a good public face, you can make your information easy to navigate, accessible and pleasurable (not painful!) to view, you show them that you know how to spend the money that they’re giving you. Not only that, but they are encouraged to return, encouraged to show others the site and are better able to spread your message since they spend more time absorbing it.

See any design pointers, or know of other PAC sites I missed that could’ve swayed this election? Let me know!

The “Template will kill design” argument is old and laughable. Most companies, organizations and corporations, when they aren’t failing or going out of business, have money to spend. When you have $100,000, or even $10,000, to spend on marketing, you spend it on something custom and exciting… Not a $49 template. Those cheap templates are used primarily by “I’ve got an idea for a business!” people that aren’t really committed to their ideas.

I also keep trying to push the idea that it isn’t about “Web Design.” A designer who refers to herself as a Web Designer is like a Graphic Designer that refers to himself as a Brochure Designer. The World Wide Web is one application that utilizes the Internet. Those that call themselves Web Designers should be able to design almost any type of interface for almost any digital medium.

In fact, I don’t even like Graphic Designer. I prefer to call myself a Designer. What do you need? I’ll design it: Logo, Website, iPhone app interface, board game, Xbox 360 game interface, Poster, CD, book.. anything. We are living in a world where Everything is Designed. Everything.

Regardless of the specific application, the need for all things to be designed is only going to increase. The key to being a designer in this world is just that: be a Designer. If you apply yourself to one application you will rise and fade along with it.

Flip through those.. that is what an America with no welfare and social programs would look like.