Live, Raw and Hilarious – Feel The Steel! This show was a photographer’s dream. I interviewd frontman Michael Starr for the Station Casinos Blog recently. What a kick in the pants. Great show, too. Let’s wish them luck landing a show on Comedy Central. I’d watch it. Well, I’d Tivo it. Links to the 2-part interview are below the flickr slideshow below.
Browsing Posts in Humor
What year is it again?
Like Peter Griffin once said so eloquently on Family Guy: “You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?”
Phone books.
Does anyone else think it’s monumentally hypocritical that this giant yellow PLASTIC bag with recycling logos all over it contains a heavy block of paper that will never see the light of day is back on your doorstep?
Dear Yellowbook:
Wanna save some money? Make your product-of-yesteryear OPT-IN, instead of OPT-OUT. I have opted out of every one of these darn things for the last few years, and I keep getting them from Sprint, Embarq, CenturyLink, Yellowbook, etc. Seemingly every month or two! Do you really think that guy you’re paying more minimum than minimum wage gives a crap if I opted out of this travesty? Doubt it. He just wants his beer money and to get on with the weekend, I’d guess. He probably doesn’t care about the karma of slaughtering acres and acres of woodland for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Apparently, neither do you.
Thanks,
The people of 2010
P.S. Whatever smoke you’re blowing up your advertisers butts about impressions… Yeah, probably also not so good in the karma dept.
Click here to OPT yourself OUT of Yellowbook, like I just did.
Of course they are. But there’s a few no-brainers I want to shed some light on that can help your company save some money and evolve your 12 point piece of paper into a conversation piece, instead of something someone writes notes on.
1. Retail & sales contacts need cards. Back of the house staff don’t. Save yourself some dough and make a company card for those who don’t need a lot of them.
2. Don’t use a template that came with Microsoft Word/Publisher, etc. There’s a reason nobody uses clip art anymore. It’s garbage. Usually these are the wrong resolution, the wrong color mode, and incompatible with any professional software your printer can work with. Pay for a real designer who knows what it means to build a cohesive brand identity for your company.
3. Don’t have cheap cards. If you do, I fully expect you to show up to your next business meeting in sweatpants and a torn, stained white shirt, because you clearly don’t value first impressions.
4. Websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, eLance, etc. won’t kill the business card industry. Why? Not everyone has bump (or an iPhone, for that matter), and what are you going to give people at mixers, bars and golf courses?
Want some cards designed? Email me, maybe I can help.
Be smart about Social Networking. It’s a concept that some people aren’t familiar with.
Go where your clients are. i.e. if they’re on Facebook, be on Facebook. Don’t just “keep up with the Joneses” – find new, innovative ways to utilize these social tools. Be creative! Don’t just have a MySpace page for your business just to have one. I used MySpace to find models for photo sessions, Facebook to invite people to events, Twitter to tell someone your plane is delayed. (Side note: I used to think “who gives a shit if you’re stuck in traffic or going to lunch?” when I saw someone’s tweet. Now I get it. Hey – Social Media is all opt-in, after all).
Old-School businesspeople are up in arms (it seems) about “Is it making you money?” You will never see a dollar = time ROI from Social Media. It’s ridiculous to expect one. Just as it’s ridiculous to expect every person who sees your billboard to buy your product. It’s different in that you can engage your clientele like a billboard never could – so engage. Or get the hell off Facebook and concentrate on updating your company website or design some new business cards or something. Lots of creatives use Social Networking in brilliant ways (proofs, feedback, events, tips, etc.)
Oh, and it’s FREE.
*Part of this post was originally content from my comment on this blog post by FreelanceSwitch. FreelanceSwitch is The Undisputed Heavyweight Champion Resource for Freelancers. If you don’t subscribe, you should. Go there now. Thank me later.
I read an outstanding article on Rob Hahn’s blog today telling us why social media might be all hype. It was excellent. Please feel free to go read it and come back here when you finish. On the same note: while attending Blogworld Expo last week, I attended more than one course focused on trying to make sense out of this phenomenon – is social media a fad, a.k.a “all hype?” Or, is it legit. Is there a return on investment – and how do we profit? After a few weeks of swimming in social media, I wanted to share my conclusion: It’s not all hype. It’s just an over-analyzed, tech-driven revolution.
Social media’s popularity has grown side by side with society’s intolerance for bullshitters. We want to trust authority, but we just can’t. Its high time for a revolution in reliable messaging.
I don’t need to tell you how badly Americans have been bullshitted into this current economic depression. You already work harder than ever for less return. You pay more taxes than ever, and have very little influence on anything remotely democratic through “trusted” traditional arenas. (Election recount, anyone?). So we use our computers and social media as our collective voice. Obama won the last Presidential election in large part by trusting a young visionary who took a leave of absence from his other job – at Facebook. (Brilliant, in my humble opinion). Sarah Palin’s doing it now, too, so says Mr Hahn’s blog post. John McCain has 1.5 Million Twitter followers! Read that again. It’s kind of funny to see an old war vet politician tweeting. Still, that’s one beauty of social media – everyone’s finally created equal.
Social sites are shifting retail like crazy because consumers don’t want crap! We prefer quality, but we don’t trust advertising bullshitters because we don’t have much money and we need to stretch our dollar (due to the afore-mentioned political bullshitters), so we read User-Generated Content (UGC) like product reviews and ratings. There’s bullshitters there, too – but for some reason, it’s more genuine, as a whole, to read these reviews. (There’s numbers to prove this stuff if you want them, go to YouTube and Search “socialnomics.”)
These are a couple examples of the allure of SM and how it drives technology. There’s countless others: newspapers, magazines, sports, renting movies, real estate, the classified ads, ordering a pizza, porn (the pioneers, probably) and the ten o’clock news.
Middlemen are an endangered species because of social media. They’re synonymous with bullshitters, to me, in most cases. Middlemen get in the way, they can filter the truth, add cost, and frankly, they just slow us down.
The new consumer wants it now, and if you tell us that we can’t have it now – we’ll control-alt-delete your ass and find a way to get it directly and immediately. It = everything.
In summary, there’s no way in hell this is all hype.
Special thanks to Ryan Weber from Radiant Photography for sharing this video developed by Scofield Editorial. It’s painfully relevant in 2009. I couldn’t have demonstrated this practice any better. It’s basically robbery, and it happens to creatives all the time.
I gathered my mail tonight and saw that my annual AIGA | Aquent Survey of Design Salaries 2009 arrived. I rolled my eyes and thought to myself, “Great, just what Las Vegas creatives need: a reminder of how much money everyone left with a job in our profession is making.” From my involvement in a various creative organizations here in Sin City, I can tell you that we have a pretty bitter bunch here “in times like these,” since the design, print and advertising industries have been dragged through the mud over the last year and most are still wallowing in it, collecting unemployment checks, bidding against craigslist, or packing their boxes and moving back to wherever they came from in hopes for a new start. (I read today that the Venetian & Palazzo laid off 200 more employees – in the last 3 days).
You might be able to tell, but since I first saw one, back in 1998-ish, I haven’t been a big fan of this Design Survey.* But check this out: I’m going to recommend that every creative who reads this gets their hands on this publication. The first 15 pages of this document are freakin’ priceless. Kudos to each of the ten senior creatives who share their advice on what the heck creatives should be doing right now. Some are very Dad-like: “Adjust your expenses,” “Be stingy with your money,” and “Be broadly talented” – but some are absolutely brilliant! There’s something relevant to everyone in each essay. To my dismay, more than one said “hunker down” – which has replaced “times like these” as my new most hated catch phrase. It’s so G.W. Bush.
* Look, AIGA and Aquent, it’s nothing personal, it’s just that the cities I have resided in over the last decade are not fairly represented in the survey – Cheyenne, Denver and Las Vegas. These were or are currently lumped into vague “Mountain and Pacific” categories. This survey, our organizations and publications all do their best to impersonate the antiquated Electoral College. Huh, you say? That is, they ignore and discredit creatives from small cities and rural areas. Anyone can tell you that salaries in Las Vegas don’t resemble the same positions in L.A., San Francisco or Seattle. Never has, never will. I will urge my local AIGA chapter to push for better representation for the 2010 survey. Let me know if you need names & numbers.
You can see some of these in the Black Diamond Digital portfolio galleries, but recently, there have been a few inquiries into what type of products I shoot, and how they turn out, so here are some recent samples for your viewing enjoyment.
Give me a call to set up a product session anytime.
Let’s face it, there are tons of really, really great uses for the typeface Comic Sans. OK, make that two. Snackers convenience stores, and The Simpsons. Everyone else: RESIST the urge to emulate every secretary with a PC and an itch to be creative and/or witty and just stay away!
Today I discovered a really interesting article by Emily Steel from the Wall Street Journal about the typographer who created Comic Sans. “Vincent Connare designed the ubiquitous, bubbly Comic Sans typeface, but he sympathizes with the world-wide movement to ban it.”
Thankfully, the guy has a sense of humor. Check out the article in the Wall Street Journal. And please – I beg you – don’t use it. Just don’t. While you’re at it, you may want to steer clear of Copperplate Gothic and Papyrus, too. You run the very serious risk of finding yourself wearing flannel, sportin’ a mullet, or rockin’ some Oakley frogskins with a walkman in tow. It’s just not worth it.
Special thanks to the creatives who joined us at last night’s DIALOGUE event at our studio. We had a great turnout, and unbelieveably great conversations. I got tremendously positive feedback from several of you! Here are just a few topics that were covered, in no particular order…
1. Social media pros/cons – facebook, twitter, myspace, etc. – Special thanks to Hernan (The Construct Creative), whose impromptu Twitter intro was really cool. You should be on their payroll, Hernan. Nice job. We talked about the launch of R+W-live.com for their new “siteless site” that takes advantage of real-time social networking under the skin of their own site. Pretty cool concept.
2. Spec work and crowdsourcing – I’m pretty passionate about this topic, and I talked to some creatives who are participating in some of the online spec sites. I can see their point, but I still think it’s ruining the graphic design industry, and the PR behind the sites peddling spec work is nauseating.
3. Membership Organizations – pros/cons. Some big fans, some not so much. I’m an AIGA member, and I fielded several questions that I’ll have to forward to the local board of directors, because I’m unable to answer any of them. AdFed was not represented last night, but the Addy Awards are coming up in a couple weeks, and it was discussed. IABC had some folks there, and we talked about the several Bronze Quill Awards Victor and the gang at eurie recently earned. Congratulations to the gang across the hall for that. Las Vegas Graphics Group and a few other Meetup groups and Yahoo User Groups were strongly represented, and brought some great folks. UNLV’s SAGA students came by, and it was a great pleasure for me to speak with some of the near-grads who are the future of our industry. I’ll be looking at some of their portfolios in the coming weeks.
4. Myself, Krystal Hosmer (Spark Creative) and Martin Lapid (Pixel Pusher Media) plugged our upcoming UNLV Continuing Education Classes coming up this summer, and we were all glad to see that they all got considerable interest. More details on that next week.
5. Lots of buzz about who’s hiring and who’s laying off creatives.
6. Awesome impromptu showcase by the Rowlands from S2 and their insanely awesome fine art duplication services using 8×10 photography and high-end inkjet processing. Very impressive!
7. Third Thursday is coming up in Henderson. Thanks to photographer Nicky Watts for representing – and for bringing by some killer sweets!
8. Many of us felt that the event was a success, so much of the later part of the evening was spent discussing what’s next for the DIALOGUE events. Nothing is set yet, but I’ll be posting details on this blog and via Twitter. We’re going to build off the momentum and keep the “dialogue” going.
The plan was to connect, talk some shop and to fuel the fire of area creatives. I think collectively, we did that. Those who attended last night have my sincere thanks for being a part of a pretty special evening.
Thank you,
Nate
