I never understood it. My father, he loves commercials. He would actually turn up commercials and listen carefully. He’s not an ad man, a designer, or a copywriter; he’s just a guy who loves commercials. While writing this essay, I finally asked him why he liked commercials. He told me, “advertisements on television are most of the time more creative than the programming its paying for” and although as a creative person I loved to hear that, things are not that simple nowadays.

My generation is much different than my fathers; we don’t crank up commercials, happily watch, and listen. Things have changed. My generation doesn’t buy into big established brands or trust what we hear. We grew up bombarded by advertisements, our systems have become immune, and our advertisement DNA has evolved. We are a judgmental group towards brands. We choose the microbrewery over the Molson, or the Skype over the Bell. It’s not to say we reject all big brands, but we are certainly a generation in revolt.

A great example of how my generation thinks is their response to the Toronto Blue Jays logo change. From 1977-1996 the Toronto Blue Jays managed to maintain (with minor tweaks) the same classic logo. But in 2002, after a massive losing streak, the franchise decided to go with a new sleek look to gain back an audience. What was most interesting about the change was what happened with the old logo. I began to notice atypical people sporting the old logo in un-sports like settings. Whether in the pages of Vice Magazine, on the floor of the dance cave, or on the cover of a hip-hop mix tape, this logo was suddenly “hip” after being trashed. Is it a truly great design that my generation sincerely misses? Or is it popular due to its rejection? Either way it has nothing to do with baseball. It is circumstances like these that will determine the future of advertising.

Although my generation is become immune to everyday advertising and rejecting big brand influence, I still think there’s hope for those who reject advertising. We can make advertising enjoyable, effective, and on strategy for
our evolved generation. How will we do it?

Every time I listen to phrazes for the young, I cant help but think of this video; an album preview/teaser from director Warren Fu. The album, phrazes for the young, is a deep space – post earth apocalyptic future synth attack set in the mid eighties – today. A must hear for anyone who needs something completely new in their lives. I’ve seen a lot of really great motion design in the past couple years that have really inspired me, such as anything from kansas based agency MK12, the krunk work of GMUNK, or even a lot of the little snippets between MTV trash but nothing has inspired me more as an aspiring motion designer than this video. Why?

I started to deeply analyze why I like it from start to finish and came up to a pretty quick conclusion. Sure it’s got some really neat and simple techniques, carried out in a retro encyclopedia style, but its not that. Although I really digged the wicked transitions like the black hole to hurricane, heart to south america, or river of brakelights to lava; but again, thats not why I love this video. The reason I love this video is because every time I listen to this album I imagine images similar to the video. Its an absolutely incredible album, so for Julian Casablancas and Warren Fu to create this video before the release was brilliant because it really helped portray the vision of the album. I think listeners and reviewers could have easily taken this album the wrong way, so the video is a marketing tool to help steer people in the right visual direction. All in all, great motion design and art direction, amazing music, and brilliant marketing.

I’m a strong believer in the concept that design styles are constantly cycling. One of the best ways for great designs to stand out from the crowd is to be different; so you can do something wild and new which hasn’t been done, or revert back to an older design style on the revive. I found these old magazine layouts in a book that was donated to our studio and was inspired by the krunk old layouts. Wouldn’t layouts such as the ones below completely stand out in a magazine? I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if we someday revert back to hand drawing magazine ads in this old style to get your attention.

The Art Direction in 2001: A Space Odyssey is out of this world – wanted to post some of my favorite scenes. These screenshots are proof that successful design & art direction will stand the test of time. I’m calling it; most appropriate use of Futura to date.

I had the amazing opportunity to go to this years FITC 10 conference (flash in the can) in Toronto. I saw a lot of amazing shit, learned what new technology is around the corner, and met some awesome/dweeby people.

One speaker really resinated with me, James White/Signal Noise. A really talented designer/illustrator who has focused his skills on poster design. At one point in his really entertaining presentation, he went over his favourite movie posters and how hollywood movie posters have changed – for the worst.

One poster he showcased was the 1982 poster by John Alvin for ET. We’ve all seen this poster, and sure its kinda cool lookin’. I may not put it on my wall but there’s a lot of really solid design principles in the poster that as a designer make it kinda hot; contrast, negative space, balance, and motion. As designers, we’re constantly lining things up, centering them, and keeping things balanced. So if I designed this poster, as James White said, “I would have just put that kid on the bike right in the middle of the moon”. This would have lined it up perfectly right above the ET copy at the bottom, balanced the poster, and probably would have looked pretty harmonious and gone to print. But what makes this poster really special, and solidifies the concept of motion in print design, is the off centre kid on bike. We expect the kid to cross the centre of the moon at some point, so to put him down & to the left; creates direction. This direction is also related to the trees, and how those were laid out on the poster.

A lot of print designs direct your eye top left, to bottom right. This is what we’re used to, as this is how we read. The ET poster on the other hand really directs your eye all over the place, and kinda messes with you. I cant help but looking top right for some reason. I know I’m getting wayyy too far out on this piece but I certainly learned a lot from James White. He really got me to look deeper into a simple design and analyze the principles within. I’ve always been a true believer in design principles, and have always had a really hard time capturing direction in a design piece. This is a great example.

http://blog.signalnoise.com/

www.sdesign.ca

Wow. A new blog. Now what? Am I really a good enough writer, or interesting enough dude to pull this off? Probably not, but its about time I get post all important thoughts before the weak burlap sack I call my memory engulfs them.

It seems appropriate to do my first blog on my new website, which just so happens to have launched today. Straight up; it was about time for a new website. I really loved the simplicity of my old site, but needed something a little more flashy for people who don’t dig or recognize simple, clean, utilitarian design. I decided to go with a primary coloured look I have been using off the web to tie things back together and develop myself as a brand. Four pages, three colours, one grey. I wanted to fill the browser with as much content as possible to really lose the webpage feel and bring you somewhere else. I wanted the website to feel like a program or application which displays my design work. After many many concepts I came up with the designs for each page and how I wanted the thing to look. I searched for different jquery effects and plugins, and came up with an idea of how I wanted the thing to function.

I then brought my man Brett Alton into the game. Brett’s a wickedly talented programmer, all around web design guy and stand up gent. It was great to work with a programmer who didn’t fully engulf himself in code, but was able to look critically at design, typography and usability. Certainly a guy to call up when shit gets over your head. Brett was able to take my designs and turn them into a fully functioning website. The absolute greatest thing Brett was able to do was add in a jquery page transition effect which really transformed the website to something beyond html and gave it that sparkling flash look. All in all we came up with something I believe we are both very proud of.

But what about my SDESIGN logo. I gotta be honest, i’ve taken a lot of flack for that logo the past couple years. Sure it’s gone through a few changes over time, but the concept has stayed the same. Its about time I explain my thinking. Its the word sdesign, with a missing ‘s’ in design. But the ‘s’ is not missing at all, it has just been moved over to the front of the word to create the word sdesign as minimalist as possible, mirroring my personal design principles. The logo is not about style or looks; its about taking what you already have and reorganizing it in a more efficient way. I don’t want to take ownership of the letter ‘s’, I just want to be part of design.

The logo has a lot of bi-products that come along with the design. It doesn’t read fast and fluently; you need to take a double take to really read it and I’m thrilled about that. Also, the difference in opinions, or controversy if you could call it that, is not a bad sell to get people to remember. Great designer, shitty logo. Whatever you think about it, Im alright with the logo… I think… Thanks for reading my first blog post. Im gonna try and keep it less personal from here on out and post things that inspire me and will certainly inspire you. As an artist, designer, creative person, human, or all of the above.

www.sdesign.ca