Graphic Design geekery - 1/0 Letterpress on Crane Lettra 220 lb stock.

If you're not into the design details, just know that it's super thick stock and all the information has a slight indentation because it was pressed into the paper.

It's by far the nicest card I've had, and it was a little pricey, but not compared to all other comparable services I've been able to find.

I've got a similar card in mind for another long term client I have, so we'll see after I get their impression on this card.

Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and The Firebird amazing pieces, and the actor portraying Igor intrigues me.  It's Mads Mikkelsen, from Quantum of Solace fame.  He's a wonderful actor otherwise, but not much else is really widely known to at least moderate movie geeks.

But anyway, the trailer had something for less than a second that really made me do a double take.  Right around the 1:15 mark, there's an illumination of a beautiful window.  This window not only beautiful, but its design impacted me many years ago.  I have an Art Nouveau book detailing examples of that style in terms of architecture and interiors throughout Europe.  This one particular piece hit me hard enough that I decided to jump into learning Adobe Illustrator, which I didn't know much of at the time to see if I could reproduce parts of the design a la vector (and that was pre-live-trace for all those in the know).

The window was crafted by Auguste Perret in the 1911-1913 range.  It's located in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.  I've never seen it in person, but this reminded me that I should make a point of it next time I'm in Paris.

Not sure if this is enough for me to see this in the theater, but it probably wouldn't show here anyway.  I will get it on the Netflix at the very least, hopefully in Blu-Ray.  It was just interesting to see an obscure image from a formative period in my design past unexpectedly pop up in a trailer like that.

I decided to put the camera to work and play the alphabet game around my office.

I've got every letter form the standard English alphabet, and they are each taken from a product name/design/packaging, brand name, or entertainment title that was readily apparent in the room I'm typing this in.

I wonder how many of them anyone can get right. Since I've been looking at this for while, I can't fathom how easy or hard this is at the moment. I know a few are from left field, but it was hard finding the J...  That and I've got a few fun things around me...

The X maybe the hardest to guess as it's something that belongs to my wife and is a promotional item...

Anyway, just want to put it out there for no good reason.

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.

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.

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.

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.