Wedding Invitations

My brother got married last weekend (congrats guys!). The family and I went to Chicago to witness the nuptials and had a great time with the happy couple and other family. The invitation and details about the wedding were delivered (and updated) via a blog site that they set up. It was very unique and creative -- fitting for two that met at a science camp.

I came across another site recently that has some other examples of creative wedding invitations. My own wedding invitations were much more along the traditional lines, but each of them, traditional or creative contemporary, offer the couple a way to share their special day with those that they love. We're glad we were included in the Chicago festivities! :-)

A picture is worth a thousand, well...

Your corporate identity, as expressed by your logo, can say a lot about you. Are you high-tech, or low-tech? What services do you offer? What are your strengths? What should someone remember about your organization? Are you a multinational conglomerate, or a small, home-town mom and pop shop? Do you sell books, or smoothies? That's an awful lot to accomplish with just a few pixels.

Graphic Design Blog has found several companies that have managed to create something that speaks volumes about their companies. There are creative logos that you'll recognize, but see in a new way from now on, and a few much less popular ones that that will make you think.

dot-a-dot

I recently came across an article at WeeWonderfuls that describes an "artistic endeavor" that I used to partake in. Essentially, you drop a pencil or marker tip first onto blank paper in random places. Then you go back and connect the dots to form an enclosed shape. The you let your imagination run wild and turn that shape into something - a dragon, a bird, a witch, a monster, anything you can imaging - by adding other details like eyes, feet, mouth, etc. You end up with a wonderful Dr. Seussical creation. Give it a try next time you're bored and need to let some of your creativity spill out.

Hint: use a felt tip instead of a pencil if you do it in meetings as the pencil tends to be a little too loud hitting the table :-) Lesson learned.

More unusual business cards

I'm not sure what it is about business cards that I find interesting, but I've always been drawn to interesting or unusual business cards. I even used to collect them for a while. Maybe it's my dream that one day I will have a job cool enough to warrant such an art piece, or maybe I'm envious of the creativity of the nameplate. Apparently, I'm not the only one who finds these fascinating. I've posted several collections here and here before, but Odd Stuff Magazine came up with quite a few I hadn't seen before. Take a gander...

PS. Have a cool business card of your own? Let me know!

Trompe L'oeil

If a garage door sticky is too simple for you. Maybe you can hire John Pugh instead...

3D murals painted on the sides of buildings by
Trompe L'oeil (trick-of-the-eye) artist John Pugh
Main Street , Los Gatos , California . Even the woman peering into the ruin is part of the mural.
Taylor Hall, California State University , Chico , California . The Doric-style columns are actually nothing but paint.
Honolulu , Hawaii . This mural took two months of studio work to plan and another six months to execute with the help of 11 other artists. Featured are Queen Liliuokalani, the last monarch of the Hawaiian Islands , and Duke Kahanamoku, the ultimate father of surfing.
This mural at the Cafe Trompe L'oeil, San Jose , California , is entitled "Art Imitating Life Imitating Art Imitating Life". This customer doesn't leave at closing time (she's part of the painting - hard to believe).

Twenty-nine Palms, California . "Valentine" the bull and a patient buzzard are waiting for the artist to awake (again - they are all part of the art)!

'Bay in a Bottle', Santa Cruz , California . The passer-by is part of the mural.

Looks like a nice spot to rest your weary feet on a sidewalk in front of the Sarasota County Health Center, Florida.

"Slowin' Down to Take a Look" in Winslow , Arizona .

Included, of course, is "a girl, my lord, in a flat bed Ford slowin' down to take a look at me."

Outsider

My oldest son (10) had some issues the other day and instead of being able to play outside after school with his siblings, he had to stay inside. While he was "trapped" in his room he decided to write a poem. This is the result:

Outsider

Wet, mushy, and covered in snow

Greens and browns cover the ground

And balls scattered all around

Not 2, not 4, not 6, but 12

Houses in the background

The clouds are light, fluffy and clear

I see kids out in their yards

as they play with cheer

The basketball hoops stand alone

Because everyone's everywhere but home

The birds flutter and flap

From tree to tree

O, I wish how I could be like them

Nice and free

The sun shines and casts dark shadows

The swings creek in the wind

As I watch I see the melted snow

Flood the grass

It reminds me of the rice fields

As clear as glass

I stare, stare, and stare out my window

And all I see is

Outside.

Purse Snatcher Strap

I know, as does every parent, that my kids are very smart and will go far in life. In fact, I'm counting on it. Someone will have to pay for me in my old age.

I hadn't really thought about how early my oldest son had started showing his brilliance until the other day, though. Yes, he started reading early, walking early, talking early, etc, etc, etc, yada, yada, yada, but I didn't realize how inventive and smart he was at such an early age.

For quite a number of years, when my wife goes shopping and uses a cart, she takes her purse and actually buckles it into the "child seat" in the cart. I don't think it's because she got in the habit of strapping the kids in and just kept with the flow. She is a creature of habit, but I don't think she would carry it that far.

She told me the story awhile ago, but it didn't stick (or I didn't have a blog at the time to use to brag). Apparently, when my oldest son, then two years old, was out shopping with my wife and step-mom, he used to take the second seat belt and strap my wife's purse into the cart. He might have been amusing himself and his ability to be so in control, but when my wife went to remove her purse -- "WAIT! Why is my purse buckled into the cart! Hey, wait a minute. That would keep someone from walking by and taking my purse while I'm not paying close enough attention. Cool idea, son. Thanks." She locks her purse into the cart every time she goes shopping now.

OK, so maybe my wife deserves the credit. But my son certainly receives a co-author on the idea. And it sounds cooler to say my 2-year-old came up with the idea :-)

Home Page 2.0

A number of web pages have undergone some updating over the last few years. Cooler, more high-tech graphics. Drag and Drop features. Stir in a little bit of AJAX, some RSS, a bit of tweeting and call it good. Not so for the folks over at advertising agency BooneOakley. Instead, they decided to completely rethink and re-image the corporate web page...AS A YOUTUBE VIDEO!

This is by far the most innovative, think outside the box, attention grabbing thing I've seen in a while.

A wise friend reminded me recently...

Keep in mind that you don't have to do different things. You just have to do things differently.

Stop wasting it!

As Americans we've been a consumer nation. We're extremely affluent as a nation when compared to other nations. As such, we've become a little sloppy in our conservation of resources. Some of that's finally changing as people adjust to massive layoffs, the cost of gasoline and everything else rising, an invigorated Green movement, and more and better education about what we're leaving behind for our next generations.

One thing that we're still working on preserving is human mind power. As the UNCF states in its slogan, "The mind is a terrible thing to waste." Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University must agree because they saw a lot of that mind power being wasted on necessary, but some might say frivolous, CAPTCHA responses. CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. In plain English, it's those pesky little distorted letters or words that a lot of web sites put up for you to type in before you can get to where you want to go, or do what you want to do. They're really hard for computers intent on spamming sites to understand and reply to, but, for the most part, easy for true humans to interpret.

Carnegie Mellon had a large collection of images that looked just like CAPTCHAs. Problem was, they were not computer generated, but rather text from old and decaying books they were trying to preserve by digitally scanning and converting to text. So, in a classic academic move, they made a game out of it and released it to the public for assistance (remind me of the Google Image Labeler project). Another great example of crowdsourcing -- getting a bunch of random people to do the work normally reserved for an employee.

You can read the full article on how they enlisted major Internet players to utilize their "CAPTCHA" images to do what computer scanners could not effectively do in this arstechnica article.

Those academics are really pretty smart after all... :-)

Fontasy

I'm no doctor, but sometimes my handwriting is just as bad. I'm strong enough to admit my weaknesses, that's why I type everything I can instead (auto correct and spell check is a handy side benefit). My creativity comes in the mental arena, solving problems, out of the box thinking, etc, not the physical side of things like building, drawing, designing, etc. If I was more adept at that side of the arts, I might fancy a site like the FontStruct site at FontShop. That site allows you to build an entire font from scratch, online, for free! Let your right brain go while and get a little crazy, or simply express your own personal style. The site is full of powerful tools, some of which are demonstrated int eh video below. Make your own characters, pictures, etc and assign them to standard keyboard letters. Once done, save your font as a normal True Type font and use it to show the world how creative you are.

When a simple "Wash me" isn't enough

We used to have a little ceramic "plaque" hanging in our house that said something like "You can touch the dust, but please don't write in it." It was recognition that our house isn't always the cleanest, but it had that "you don't have to rub it in" humor attached to it. That wall hanging has come down for now as my wife is in painting mode, but if it was still hanging you wouldn't be able to see it anyway because of the dust from the paint prep work... :-) It'll all get vacuumed up and look great in the end.

Steve Wade, on the other hand, seems to like a little dust. No, make that a LOT of dust. This guy doesn't just tell you to get a car wash, he creates works of art in the dust! Useloos has an incredible gallery of his dust artistry. You can his full gallery at his Dirty Car Art web site.

3D Chalk Artists

If you have email, I'm sure that you've seen the chalk artistry of Julian Beever. Word of his absolutely incredible 3d artistry has spread via a viral campaign for quite a while. The Web Urbanist had a post the other day that listed several artists with a similar style. These chalk artists have to have something in them to be able to create something so amazing...that lasts only a short while until the next rain. Kinda like building a sand castle at low tide.

This video shows how Julian works his magic!

Post it!

When I worked at my last assignment, someone decided that the deal on Post-It notes was too good of a deal to pass up. We had HUNDREDS of packs of Post-Its in the supply room -- all shapes and sizes and colors!

I kinda liked it, but I was never as creative as these guys have been in their use of Post-Its...

Are you insane?

So often, when someone thinks outside of the societal norm, they are labeled "difficult," "troubled," or even in extreme cases, "insane." In the business world, these people are labeled as "risky." When someone thinks outside of the box, it's often though of the same way... Until they convince people to see their side of things. And then they're thought of as "revolutionary," "ahead of their time," and "visionary."

I once saw an ad, or clip of some kind about a young boy whose class was coloring pictures. His teacher walked up to each student and nodded in approval as she saw each student with the obligatory green-leaves tree, blue sky, green grass and yellow sun drawing. Then she came to another student who had chosen colors of his own liking to paint his picture. Pink sky, purple leaves, blue sun, and other non-traditional colors made up his palette. I don't remember his rationale as he explained it to his disapproving teacher, but I remember it being pretty profound for a 5ish-year-old. This video reminded me of the same...