sneak peek Sept

Here’s a little sneak peek at the beginnings of what I’m working on for the LifeChurch.tv September message series.

The idea hasn’t even been pitched yet, so here’s hoping it makes it through…

What if a corporation designed the stop sign?

I usually try not to post something that’s already as visible as this (it was on Today’s Big Thing a few days ago), but this was just waaaaay too brilliant to pass up.

This goes back a little more to my days in the corporate world, but I think anyone that’s ever designed for a client will appreciate it.

The only thing that would have driven it home for me is if the client decided, at the end, to go back to the designer’s original idea – and then acted like they thought of it.

inspiration in the summer rut

Does anyone else seem to hit a creative low around this time of year?

Part of it stems, I think, from the vacation season. I’ve been gone. Most of the creative team has been gone. We haven’t all been together cranking stuff out, making up games to play in the hallway, and just generally making each other laugh much lately.

So, I thought I’d pass along a few randomly selected sources that I visit time and time again to find inspiration:

ImaginaryForces – movie title sequences & trailers, commercials, etc
NationalTelevision – some crazy-cool animation/compositing
Scott Hansen (Iso50) – designer that nails “retro”
Nando Costa/Nervo.tv – design for print and motion
Gawker Artists – a collection of artists with various styles

and then there’s always designiskinky.net and fffound

What are some sources that you use?

“The End of the World” or “Death by Robots”

I’m constantly amazed – and a little frightened – by advances in robots and artificial intelligence technology, like these two:
Honda’s Asimo
The Android Receptionist (by far the creepiest thing I’ve seen)

Each time I see one, I can’t help but think, “Don’t these people ever watch the movies?” You know, the ones where our robots kill everyone? Well, apparently they do, because this one is just ridiculous:
Robot Suit Hal

Notice two things:
1) The company that made it is called Cyberdyne (as in Cyberdyne/Skynet from “Terminator”)
2) They named it HAL (yep, just like in “2001″)

They named their efforts after the two most famous helpful-robots-turned-cause-of-our-extinction scenarios in movie history.

They’re not even trying to disguise the fact that they’re going to kill us all.

Pixar

As if I didn’t already love Pixar enough…check out this story.

Evidently, a girl posted a video of herself crying at the Wall-E trailer a while back (okay, so I don’t get that part either, but that’s not the point), and it gained some attention, most notably the attention of the animators at Pixar. They were so appreciative of her video that they invited her to the staff-only wrap party for the movie.

Here’s her story.

(fyi – “Presto,” the animated short that precedes Wall-E, is now available on iTunes!)

Why you should be using iGoogle

This is by no means breaking news, but I’m finding more and more people who don’t know anything about it. So, let me just take a second to tell you why I think you should be using iGoogle as your browser’s home page.

iGoogle is just Google’s way of letting you put all of your favorite information directly on your internet browser’s start page so you don’t have to get it all from multiple locations. Just sign in with your gmail account or create a new one. Here’s why it’s great:

Reason 1: Google Reader.
Google Reader is an RSS reader, which basically just means this:
Every time I post something to my blog, you can see it immediately. Case closed. Sign up now.

Ok, maybe that’s not much of a reason, but you know all those blogs/sites that your friends or family members or favorite bands/celebrities/directors/companies/magazines have? Every new post will appear right on your home page as a clickable headline, so you don’t have to try to remember to check in (and miss 6 months of posts before you remember).

Reason 2: Gmail Inbox
This was the first thing that made me start using iGoogle, and – even though I don’t actually have it on my page anymore – it’s awesome. Every new email will show up on your home page as a link. Don’t worry about missing an email, because you’ll see it when you log on to search for that video clip or kill a few hours browsing strangers’ myspace/facebook pics (my wife does this, I totally don’t get it).

Reason 3: the Add-Ons
This is where it REALLY gets cool. TONS of apps are created specifically to bring your favorite stuff to iGoogle, so you can go crazy with customization. You can add things like YouTube videos, Twitter, weather, movie times, news ,comics, even Pac-Man.

Here’s what my page looks like:

click to see image

It might seem a little overwhelming at first, but you can have it as clean or as cluttered as you want.

The bottom line: it saves a ton of time and keeps you up to date. Give it a shot.

30

Today I am officially old. Time to trade in all my ripped up jeans and Chucks for Dockers and loafers.

Here are a few things that were happening when I was born, 30 years ago:

Grease and Animal House were being released in theaters. Star Wars was still new.
The Blues Brothers had just made their 1st appearance on Sat Night Live.
The Bee Gees dominated the charts with Saturday Night Fever.
Space Invaders launched a craze for computer video games.
Average Cost of new house = $54,800.00
Average Income per year = $17,000.00
Average Monthly Rent = $260.00
Cost of a gallon of Gas = $0.63 (this one hurts)

And….commercials were awesome: