Graphic Designer Dominance

It took Radio thirty four years to reach an audience of fifty million, television did it in thirteen. The Internet had fifty million users in less than four years, and now there are over a billion websites online.

And then there were blogs. The vast majority of websites are written by amateurs, using programs written en mass that are no more complicated than a Myspace page. Thus the question arises, who is watching what, and how do you innovate when just getting by is seemingly good enough? Does it make any sense for Matt Drudge to invest time, energy or money in a flash site when he’s getting more hits than CNN and MSNBC combined?

Unlimited democracy, it seems, breeds mediocrity. Alex Cox said, that “film was the revolutionary medium of the twentieth century, and it can not be the same for the twenty first.” While we still exist in the infancy of this new century it is difficult to reconcile that our media saturation will soon capitulate to a growing necessity among individuals to separate themselves and their talents from the sheep at the slaughter.

The film makers of the next fifty years will be ground breaking graphic designers, who will manipulate the amorphous concepts that we now understand as “the web” in order to express new dimensions of technology.

EBIZ online magazine wrote up the top ten flash-sites of 2010, and although the list might be simple, if all you do is glance at the shiny graphics then you are just a pawn in the game. All ten of these sites, (and wonderwall, which they didn’t mention) are connected to brands/people who/which are changing their industries terrestrially, is matt drudge really doing that?

So next time you wanna find something other than porn online, peep the list, and think about how your gonna be buying your kids creativity via their Skype account.

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/best-flash-sites

Vic Reznik

Books Ain’t Dead!

 

Whoever says publishing is dead hasn’t been watching enough TV. Good old fashioned books are alive and well these days…thanks to television. Book source material has always been major fodder for the big screen, (and is regularly Oscar-worthy at that, some of us have always maintained that adaptations are the last bastion of intellectualism in Hollywood, but that’s another story…) but now TV producers and networks are getting in on the word, literally.

 

Teenage girls aren’t the only ones getting their pages turned, major literary royalty has been seeing deals, including Pat Conroy, and a host of young, acclaimed authors. The commercial potential of multiple platforms for author’s stories are a huge driver of the book market.

 

Books publishing rights are often sold simultaneously with film or TV rights, and the latter’s potential can be a boon to an author’s chances of making their work a big seller.

 

As it stands now, there is no Emmy category for adapted material, but that could easily change.

 

Maybe the way to get more people to enjoy reading…is to get more people to enjoy their television.

-Katherine Myers

http://www.deadline.com/2010/09/abc-lands-darren-star-dramedy-in-one-of-paul-lees-first-major-development-moves/

http://www.deadline.com/2010/09/abc-hot-on-my-formerly-hot-life-memoir/

http://www.deadline.com/2010/09/prince-of-tides-series-in-the-works-at-abc/

Photographer KC Ortiz

KC Ortiz’s focal length is distant, converging on often forgotten cultures, and grimy conditions in places Sally Struthers would call payday.

 

He’s an incredible example of believing in your own talent against all odds.

 

Growing up Ortiz was subjected to gang-infested poverty in Chicago, and by twenty one he was serving a five year sentence in federal prison.

 

Ortiz’s collected experiences have given life to a career oddly built by this adversity; the resourcefulness of poverty, the patience of prison, the humility of fear, the excitement of the unknown.  These attributes have converged into a style that is visually arresting and socially conscious.

 

The Juxtapoz feature profiling his immersion into a Hmong rebel camp in Laos is on newsstands now, you can click below for a snapshot of the interview.
http://www.juxtapoz.com/Features/kc-ortiz-on-jail-photography-and-fear

 

Vic Reznik

Authentic Fashion

The poet Jean Cocteau once said, “Style is a simple way of saying complicated things”, and as I watch contractors unscrew the tents on 62nd street I feel like there is something very complicated going on. The pendulum of design that swings between function and luxury often creates a chasm between those who need and those want.

 

That is why these Diane Von Furstenberg hospital gowns being produced for the Cleveland Clinic are so interesting to me.

 

A high end fashion designer takes a job to design the least attractive, least properly functioning clothing imaginable. Finding a challenge in recreating the banal and plebeian (see Last Train Home) is often worth more than the flash in the bottle because it’s more universal, it transcends.

 

The shoe company Palladium (a Brand I’ve been sporting for a minute) recently dropped a doc called Detroit Lives, in which Johnny Knoxville, yeah that Johnny Knoxville, tours a city on the brink of collapse, and imagines it as an emblem of the resilient American spirit that it embodies. The doc brings home the idea that art can galvanize and uplift, that beauty in the face of demolition, destruction and despondence can create perseverance. ’nuff respect to both!

 

-Vic Reznik

Life’s Unbelievable Value

DDB UK launched a marvelous digital campaign for Volkswagen as part of its “Unbelievable Value” series.

The website features a model village populated by miniature inhabitants comparing the price of a car with the price of other daily goods consumed over one’s lifetime.

You can log onto the site and calculate how much your living costs are and share with your friends on the Facebook.

Aside from triggering the good, warm childhood memories of the game of “Life,” it aims to highlight their cars as good value for money.

Another very clever and attractive way to engage the consumer indirectly.

Check it:

www.truelifecosts.com

-Ashlye Vaughan

Film Directors Get Fashionable

A recent article in Slate Magazine, Why is David Lynch Pimping This Handbag? and PSFK’s previewing Frank Miller’s Gucci commercial that will premiere got me thinking about the growing trend of five star directors and major fashion houses coming together to make short-films. 

The Slate article debates – what are these… films?  Commercials, short-films, advertising films, mini-films?  No matter how you slice it – these have been going on for quite some time.  For example, David Lynch directed Benecio Del Toro and Heather Graham (he’s aged/she hasn’t) in 1988 for Calvin Klein’s Obsession. 

 

 

Why do we watch these films?  What’s there importance?  Are they important?   As Sasha Watson said in her article we watch because of the vagaries of these projects. 

Vagary – an erratic, unpredictable, or extravagant manifestation, action, or notion

Very well put Sasha. 

That – it seems – is art.  Even if the art is intended for us to consider the brand and their products – it’s still enough to make us see life within a new context and that is what art is supposed to do.  The other truth beneath the surface is perhaps major film directors need the work from fashion houses more than ever before and fashion houses need to diversify their brand platform so they invest in some high-profile visual stimulation.  A little of both perhaps?

Enjoy Lagerfeld’s Chanel short-film where everyone from Coco, Bardot, and other famous fashion legends/luminaries in the background and the foreground as Lagerfled pays homage to the 70s and beyond.

 

@MitchKapler

Ghetto Film School and The New York Times

Check out this amazing article about the Ghetto Film School. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/movies/06ghetto.html?_r=2

 

The H&H/GFS Partnership teachs these students about the media industry and trains them to help them get internships and jobs.

 

Come to tonight’s meeting to learn more about what you can do to be involved.

 

SWIFT
8pm, Tuesday, September 7
34 E 4th Street
We’ll stake out a place in the back

H&H/GFS Partnership – Info Meeting – September 7th

H&H/GFS Partnership is a collaboration between the two organizations that involves teaching Industry curriculum, a mentoring program of GFS Fellows with H&H Members, the H&H Intern Workbook, and promoting GFS internship candidates to top media companies. 

 

H&H members teach a variety of different subjects – from film distribution and networking to putting a reel together and resumes/cover letters. 

 

One of the key components of the program is the mentoring program between H&H members and GFS Fellows

 

Our members become one of the first professional contacts for a lot of these students and helps them navigate their way into internships and increased industry knowledge.  The program has a defined and small time commitment. 

 

We are holding an informational session on September 7th to discuss the program for anyone interested in learning more about being a mentor.   

 

SWIFT
8pm, Tuesday, September 7
34 E 4th Street
We’ll stake out a place in the back
http://www.swiftnycbar.com/

Please fill out this interest form and submit by Monday, September 6. 

 

If you have any questions feel free to send an email to myself or sasha.silver@gmail.com, subject “H&H/GFS Partnership”

 

Interesting Things – 8.31

  

 

Be afraid, be kinda afraid

 

Dattoo

The Dattoo would be a printable tattoo that users would wear for a day and then wash off. This tattoo could be used just like a cell phone or a computer, with users being able to communicate and identify each other with their Dattoos. Five years ago, Frog Design founder Hartmut Esslinger envisioned a technology that “could influence notions of community, identity, and connectivity with minimal impact on the physical environment.” Today, the company is close to making this a reality.

http://www.gizmag.com/datto-concept-from-frog-design/15944/

 

GazeHawk

The GazeHawk eye-tracking service was created to help companies see which areas of their sites were getting the most attention. Finding a number of participants to view the website, the GazeHawk eye-tracking service then sends these results back to the requesting company. With this information, companies can then optimize for the ads which get the most stares and then generate methods to profit accordingly.

http://www.gazehawk.com/

 

Neuromarketing

What people say and what they think is not always the same, and new developments in the world of neuromarketing hope to lessen the gap between those two divides. The goal of neuromarketing is to extract “hidden information” directly from people’s brains by not asking questions at all, but by recording responses at a deep subconscious level with the aid of an electroencephalograph (EEG) machine.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727721.300-mindreading-marketers-have-ways-of-making-you-buy.html