I love work.

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I love work.  I love working.  Lately, work has been challenging, exciting, and has involved lots of creativity.  And the more I work, the happier I am.  The more I create, the more creative I feel.  The more challenged I feel, the harder I work to meet the challenge.  And the harder I work, the harder I play.  And that has its own benefits and drawbacks… but ultimately, it just serves to keep me focused.

I’m working as a designer and social media consultant for a recently founded new media consulting firm in Topeka. 

Our theory was like this: If you can’t find a job you like, why not create one?

Helvetica

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It has been a long time since I’ve been so captivated by a documentary – but I watched Helvetica with a few friends last night, and I think I could probably quote parts of it now. I loved it.

Rarely, as a designer, do I get to be immersed in content created by someone else that is relevant to what I thoroughly love and do everyday, but this was exactly that.  A movie about type and design, and a broader discussion of design as an important part of life.

One of my favorite parts of the film (other than the “For Crystal Meth, call Christine” sign) was the clash between modernists like Wim Crouwel and Massimo Vignelli, postmodernists like David Carson, and then younger, more contemporary designers like Lars Müller.  I feel a lot like Müller when I design – I know the “rules” that the modernists set and the postmodernists broke - and I know the reasons for each – but I design by my own set of rules and motives.

Remember when GeoCities was the bomb?

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A friend of mine made a great comment on twitter recently:

Sifting through my old journal entries has caused me to realize that I was basically intolerable until I had the age 15 years and 5 months.

And it reminded me to check out some of my old web sites and poetry that I host on GeoCities.  I’ve had http://www.geocities.com/kfgd since probably 1999 (when I was 13).  I made some really creative web sites, and it’s interesting to see what conventions I used.

I loved image rollovers. And I’m still pretty proud of this design.

And I stacked images all the time.  I don’t even remember how this works any more.

I figured out that huge graphics on the page look awesome, even if the mouseovers aren’t great or perfect.  And I may again use radioactivewriting as a brand – so let this be the copyright.

I made a nice opening page for the local neighborhood organization, but the internal pages are set in Courier and nearly impossible to read due to a heavy background. Blech!

I was also really weird.  I had an e-mail penpal in Iowa with whom I wrote a story about marshmallows that lived under a Wal-Mart and revolted against humans.  But my flame graphics are sweet – and a little ironic, considering one of the terrible crimes agains marshmallows is turning them into s’mores.  I don’t think the flames were on purpose, though.  Be sure to check out the ‘book’ page, where you can find the actual text of the story, and see the accompanying photo illustrations.  Pretty sure my dad helped me dye those marshmallows brown. Gross.

I also wrote lots of poetry from that time until I was about 18 or so, when I started writing songs for guitar.  I found some great excerpts:

You can’t expect me to bring home the bacon
If I’m always doing the cooking
Because I buy the drinks, the dinner, the tickets
And I don’t give a damn who’s looking

(Part of a poem I wrote when my girlfriend at the time refused to ever pay for dinner we went out to eat in public!)

“L is for the big word Love,
You’re the Big Bird I’m dreaming of”
Belted Oscar from the depths of his can

“And nine is for the times I cry
Each night that I can’t hold you tight”
Sang Big Bird, from far stage left

The two continued, harmonizing
Cameras rolling, just too surprising
100,000 eyes unblinking

“We’ll be together, no matter the norms,
Our eyes are open, now open yours,
Love should never be concealed”

They walked together, embraced each other
And turning away from facing each other,
They held hands and addressed the TV audience

“We’ve loved each other since Episode One,
And until last month, it was always fun,
But sharing’s best for everyone

“That’s why we’ve come to you today
We must do this, we have to say
We love each other and it’s staying that way”

(And this one is about a romance between Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird. But it has a nice message! I think I wrote this one three years ago.)

It’s nice to look back once in a while.  And hey, I guess that’s what blogs are for, too.

I'm DONE with the mural!

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Wahoo! It feels great to have finished what was, for me, such a large project.  Both in physical size and ambition, this mural was a pretty big deal.  800 square feet of peach-colored base coat (twice over), 15 two-color globes that are all almost four feet across, 13 different colors of paint.  Whew.

Thanks to everyone who helped me through the whole process: Steve; Jane at Mainline Printing in Topeka; Jon at Boyda for Congress; ICI Dulux Paints on Baltimore in downtown KC; Lamb Chops; Martha, Karen, Zoraida, Andrew, Heather, and Joy at JVSKC (mural site);  Natasha at CFCA, and finally, Mom and Pop.  Thanks additionally to other friends and family who were encouraging along the way.  I could not have done it alone!

I hope, in the future, that I may be able to find my way into more projects like this one – it was a real challenge for me to think like a painter and a designer at once.  I’m not a painter by nature, and had only made a handful of stencils before this project – none of which were quite so big.  It was fun to be called an artist whenever I visited the mural site at JVS.

In other news, I have been working for Nancy Boyda’s campaign, and I will be essentially unemployed after this week.  If you’re looking to commission a diversely talented photographer, designer, sewer, or mural artist – please let me know.  I’m a creative person, so I’m not limited to just those fields. I could use the work!

Progress! Real, actual progress!

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I painted five globes on the East-facing mural wall yesterday.  You may have seen my live twitter updates as I updated the photos to my flickr account.

My stencil setup worked!

The process:

  1. Print out globe outlines on transparencies.
  2. Project globes onto wall.
  3. Trace globes with sharpie onto 15 mil plastic sheeting.
  4. Cut out land masses, leaving “bridges” in the material for strength.
  5. Fold up plastic sheeting and drive to site.
  6. At stencil site, spray plain circles that will serve as oceans.
  7. Unfold stencils, affix into place with tape and spray adhesive – very effective for smaller, detailed cuts.
  8. Spray paint!