Sunday, April 20, 2008
Campaigns and Strawberries
I found this in the bottom of my bag the other day from the last round of political campaigns in Alachua county. It is definitely the strangest non sequiter I have ever seen in a political mailer:
I could not find a single reference to strawberries anywhere else in the mailer - mainly statements on the candidate's record. In doesn't help that semantically the phrase reminds me of Darth Vader saying "I find your lack of faith...disturbing."
Now the image of Vader enjoying a bowl of chocolate-covered strawberries...that would sell me on a candidate!
Labels: Graphic Design, Politics
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Monday, April 07, 2008
The True Story of Mr. Roboto
Kilroy was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war. He worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet.Kilroy would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark.
Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.
One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then that he realized what had been going on.
The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his checkmark on each job he inspected, but added KILROY WAS HERE in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message.
Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks.
Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them.
As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced. His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific. Before the war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long haul to Berlin and Tokyo.
To the unfortunate troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that some jerk named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.
Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arch De Triumphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.)
And as the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for the coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo! In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference.
The first person inside was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?" ...
Labels: And Know You Know...The Rest of the Story, Graphic Design, History
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Friday, March 28, 2008
Saying No to a Client
I passed on a rather large and lucrative long-term third party contract today. A polling and marketing agency wanted to hire us to work on political pieces for the general election.The problem was they wanted us to create and write copy for Republican candidates. Knowing how close this election will be, I can recognize that the pieces will have to be very persuasive, and will probably need to go on all-out attack. I knew I couldn't put my heart into it, and that they deserved to have a designer who can. So I passed.
It felt really good.
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Thursday, February 28, 2008
When Creative Suite Attacks
What happens when the good doctor Vector Frankenstein loses control of his creation? Pixel Armageddon, that's what.You'll never look at a Flash timeline the same way again. See it here and here.
Labels: Graphic Design, Sheer Awesome
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Thursday, February 21, 2008
Puttin' on the Ritz!
Kristin and I won a Silver Addy at this years local Advertising Federation awards cermony. We went all out for the twenties theme - I tried hard to look like Gary Cooper, with all white tux and tails, and Kristin channeled Clara Bow with a period jewlery, a bob cut, and a pillbox hat. Union Design & Photo was recognized for our campaign work for Books Open the World, including website, annual report, and logo and stationery.Labels: Graphic Design, Sheer Awesome
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Saturday, January 19, 2008
Vector Magic
Stanford has created an amazing tool called Vector Magic. Vector Magic converts bitmap images to vector images, through a Flash interface. Stanford's logarithm is amazing - it produces nearly perfect line artwork 100% of the time. For anyone out there who has tried to use the Live Trace feature in Illustrator, know that this is better by a factor of 1000 - it can take even the most finicky woodcut illustration and produce a perfect vector in almost no time flat.My coworker on campus now swears by it - she does a lot of illustration work by hand, and it has proved invaluable to her in transferring that work for department posters. Go over and give it a try - it's not often that you get to see the way the trick is done.
Unless you are friends with Val Valentino or Mitch Pileggi, that is.
Labels: Fun on the Web, Graphic Design, Sheer Awesome, Spot the Pop Culture Reference
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