A brand new year. Another opportunity to fix things and to make things better.
An opportunity to change your life, your surroundings, your view.
Or, another opportunity to completely fuck things up.
Either way, the choice is yours.
Happy New Year!
Camera: iPhone 4s / Color corrected in Photoshop CS5
There's nothing better than a giant bowl of Pho on a cold day. This is from Pho Palace in Northeast Philadelphia. The Far Northeast is not known for its diverse food scene and up until recently there was no place to go in this area for food like this. Pho Palace and a few others that have just opened are thankfully filling that gap.
Camera: iPhone 4s / Post processing: Snapseed App
I was greeted by this error message at the parking kiosk at Headhouse Square in Philadelphia recently. Welcome to Philly!
This morning I stopped by the brand new Giant supermarket located at Grant Ave. and Roosevelt Blvd. in Northeast Philadelphia. The store is clean, gorgeous and well-stocked. On the perimeter of the store (where space allows, like near the customer service desk and cafe) they have historical photos of Philly mounted on the wall. being a Philadelphia history buff, I took special notice of these signs, but one in particular caught my eye. It was an aerial shot of the sports stadiums in South Philly. Once you see one of the photos, you can pretty much tell right away what era the photo was taken. This particular shot had the Vet, The Spectrum and JFK Stadium still standing, which means the photo was taken anywhere between 1970 and 1992.
Except the photo caption mounted on the frame said, "Tri-Stadium Sports Complex, 1966". I've never heard anyone refer to that area as the "Tri-stadium Sports Complex", but that's not the most glaring thing wrong about it. The Spectrum wasn't in operation until the Fall of 1967, and Veteran's Stadium wasn't open until April, 1971.
My guess is the photo reproductions were produced by an out-of-town firm and no one took a close look, or even worse, they were made by a clueless local and approved by an equally clueless manager. Still, it's a nice photo capturing a lost era of Philly sports history. From the 70's.
plymouth-shutdown-1969
Yesterday this little beauty landed in my inbox courtesy of my old buddy John Skidmore. It's the front panel of a 1969 slot racing set called Shutdown! Plymouth Super Stock Racing Set. It was sold by Republic and manufactured by the Tool and Manufacturing Co. in LA.(An all-American product!) These sets were only sold at dealerships, so they're a pretty rare find.
What's not to love about this box illustration? Given that it was made in '68, we see the psychedelic poster style influence and big typography that was common in the day. It's even got the Road Runner character in one of the cars. Plymouth licensed the Road Runner character in the late 60's to early 70's for their advertising and for the emblems and styling of the classic Road Runner car.
I love this box cover, and since I was a big slot racing fan in my youth, I wanted to learn more about the set. The first thing I found was this video that shows the unboxing of a vintage set. I'm blown away by the level of detail this set has. Since the set was featuring Plymouth branding, the cars themselves were perfect in every detail. What really got me was the level of design in the supporting print materials. Unfortunately, we don't get to see the set run, but I can understand why – this set has all the original packaging, including the poly envelopes and car decals, full intact.
PLYMOUTH_SHUTDOWN_1969_SLOT_CAR_-2
plymouth shutdown car detail
I couldn't find any of these for sale on eBay, but I'm told these can go as high as $400 (a mint set was up for bid at $725, but we're not sure if it sold at that price). I did uncover an ad for the set that appeared in Life magazine on November 8, 1968. Just $14.95!
shutdown life magazine 11-68
http://youtu.be/WB8WjlgiHxs&w=600&h=400 An odd commercial for Vifon Tu Quoy Ramen Noodle soup. An older, very lazy man in his pajamas, sitting in a hammock asks his daughter when the hell is lunch going to be ready. She purses her lips and says, “Here, old man, here's some fried fucking noodles in a sodium bomb. Enjoy your heart attack, you bastard."
Then, the woman's husband comes in and they make love next to his lifeless body.
Ok, I made that last part up.
We're in the home stretch of the Summer of 2011.
It's been hot as hell's door hinge here in Philadelphia. Many days spent indoors (thankfully) air-conditioned.
We curse these days. I'd rather be out and about and my dog would rather go for a run than sit looking wistfully out the window all day.
But, it beats shoveling snow.
August 2011 graphic: A quick type study done in Illustrator August font: Air (modified) 2011 Font: Avant Gard EF Medium
Summertime always brings random thunderstorms and crazy, angry skies. I happened to see this in the sky as I walked out of a local store last week. Shot with an iPhone 3GS using the Camera+ app and the Clarity filter.
”The Wisdom of the Llama", the misunderstood genius of Carl Spackler.
Illustration by N.C. Winters.
Next Animation TV (those folks who do the strange news animations, like Bin Laden Was a Sex machine), ask the question, "Is Philadelphia The Crappiest City?" The animation is so twisted and bizarre you have to laugh. As one YouTube commenter said, the only thing they got right was how bad Geno's Steaks really are. http://youtu.be/W4fTLmeIIuQ&w=640&h=440
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to YouTube, out comes Norwiegian insta-pop singer Tonje Langeteig. The song is just plain awful. The video looks like it was shot on a Thursday afternoon with a cheap handheld and with whoever they could find that wasn't too embarrassed to appear in it. I'm not sure how songs like this get made, but I think it goes something like this:
Tonje: "I waan to be pop seenger. I waaan to make moosik veedyo"
Husband: (roll eyes) "Here you go, honey. Go play and leave Daddy alone."
This song will haunt your dreams and penetrate your soul.
Bonus Round: A Mashup of Tonje and Rebecca.
(I never knew until now how really bad the Rebecca Black video was, since I could never stomach a full viewing.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQkx6WAbHrs&w=600&h=400
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UFc1pr2yUU&w=600&h=400
McCann Worldgroup is one of the world's largest advertising agency networks in the world, doing work for all types of brands and products. Agencies just don't do 'advertising' anymore (sorry, Don Draper), they're involved in everything from interactive, tv, print and that 'social media' thing.
To show how multi-disciplinary they are, they decided to pile a bunch of icons, like clouds (it's in the cloud, man!) email, phone, RSS feed symbol, and kitty cats and assembled them to form the MW.
Frankly, the multi-colored monstrosity is the stuff that gives print designers nightmares, and at small sizes just looks...fuzzy. Oh, and there's other versions, like ones made of leaves, flowers, fire and $100 bills (OK, I made the last one up).
Anybody remember the Aol rebranding? Yeah, thought not.
The dumbest idea in the world, or just another fake viral video.'Defriending' must be quite painful. Either way, the tattoo artist is kinda hot. Just sayin'...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApOWWb7Mqdo&w=600&h=400
UPDATE: It's a fake:
Rotterdam tattoo artist Dex Moelker eventually came clean on the Telegraaf website, admitting the tattoo and video is an advertising stunt.
'It is a try out tattoo, a transfer, that washes off in a couple of days,' Moelker, who has a tattoo shop in Rotterdam, told the paper. It took a couple of hours to apply the transfer not the 30 hours the video claimed to produce the real tattoo.
Can't anyone commit to anything anymore? At least we still have people like this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L3eeC2lJZs&w=600&h=400 I couldn't love these people more even if I tried:
We do not tolerate people that talk or text in the theater. In fact, before every film, we have several warnings on screen to prevent such happenings. Occasionally, someone doesn't follow the rules, and we do, in fact, kick their asses out of our theater. This video is an actual voicemail from a woman that was kicked out of one of our Austin theaters. Thanks, anonymous woman, for being awesome.
It's a perfectly calibrated recipe for maximum personal achievement.The Swanson Pyramid made me the man I am today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIZ4ckmd9-I&w=600&h=400
Berlin-based illustrator Christopher Niemann speaks at Creative Mornings/New York, describing his work process and the ups and downs of living life as an illustrator.
My favorite slide from the talk, as Christopher describes how he spends his day:
Christopher's work appears in the New Yorker. Below is an animated illustration for the iPad edition of the magazine.
