Initials are so BS

You know what really put me over the edge? Driving to work, I’m on the not so nice side of town.  One morning I had to stop and get some coffee at a Starbucks along the way, and across the street there’s a McDonalds.  I looked over at just the right time to see this guy getting into his rusted, dented, minivan…  He looked like a strung out Chris Elliot wearing sweat shorts, a zip up hoodie not zipped…  And…  A CK shirt.

It’s been something that’s been growing for awhile, but it really came out in the recent trip to Vegas when seeing everyone and their supposed fashion accessories.  CK – LV – MK – D & G

You know what I’m talking about?  You may not care, and it’s not that big a deal.  I would just think that after a point someone would figure out that these fashion designers are relying too heavily on unoriginal things.

I’ve tried to think about where this may have come from, and I guess Chanel – but that was more of a logotype and not a literal initial since one of the C’s is a horizontal reflection.  But after that? I can’t think of another major fashion initial coming along until CK…  Then recently it’s just gotten out of freakin’ control.

I’m not sure who was next…  Louis Vuitton…  Dolce & Gabbana…  Some other fashion people…  I don’t really care.

While the CK incident may have pushed me over the blogging edge, it was Michael Kors that pushed me over the initial edge.  I’ve only seen a few things here and there, and i never thought much about them.  But when I went into the Kors store in Vegas, so much had this really bad MK logo that really, really annoyed me.  It rubbed me in completely the wrong way.  Now when I hear his name, I have an initial bad thought because of poor style choice and unoriginality.

Having a logo consisting of initials is one thing, but overusing it on many products not only devalues your brand, but your long term name in a field that is supposed to value innovation, quality, and originality.

So yeah.  Yet another post that really has no audience and is quite inconsequential…  So be it.

Illustrator hijinx

I just went back and did some more exploration within Illustrator utilizing stepped color relationships and transparency blending. This was brought on by Andy Gilmore reminding me of some things I had done in the past. So I set out and was able to reproduce this in vector in not much time at all…

But anyway, that’s that… And now I’ll go and do some real work.

Will it Blend?

While waiting around for content at work, I’ve been doing some exploration into an open source 3D program called Blender. I know that if I was serious about 3D in my career, I shouldn’t be learning this program. However it’s all good since it’s just to give the program a go-around and get back to working in a 3D environment.

This is just a meaningless little thing I did in illustrator many moons ago imported into a 3D environment with a little bit of light and camera manipulation.

Who knows if I’ll have any more time to do this kind of thing in the near future, but I hope so.

WallMart’s Final Solution

I saw a reference to a story in another favorite site (Consumerist.com) that made me look back a few months. Apparently WalMart has been selling a t-shirt with a odd logo of a skull and “Since 1978″ below it. What they didn’t realize was that the insignia used in WWII for the Nazi 3rd SS Division Totenkopf.

I guess they apologized for it and stated that it would be removed from all stores. But supposedly it’s still available 10 weeks after the fact.

This definitely ranks in the annuls of “stupidest moments of graphic design” in my opinion – and all at the unknowing hands of WalMart.