I first came across a great blog post the other day on David Airey’s site that highlighted the recent interview Debbie Millman, president of AIGA, did for No! Spec.  After seeing the post on David’s site I decided to read the whole interview of Debbie and her take on spec work “speculative work”. Like many other top talents in this industry she is strongly against it.  The interview is really informative and she states the obvious reasons and her personal take on why people should not do spec work.  Some of the reasoing is other professions such as doctors would never even consider spec work but in the design indusry somone is always willing to work for less or for free in hopes of winning a pitch or bid and in doing so it’s harming the industry standards.

The next day I just happened to come across another topic on spec work and this one was by Eric Karjaluoto and his disgust at Tim Ferriss for his recent book cover contest.  For those who do not have time to read the whole post, in a quick summary Tim who is known mainly for having a well publicized book through his social media efforts recently held a design competition in search of someone to design his next book cover, awarding the winner a holy lump sum of $250.00 for their efforts.  This did not come across well for Eric and in his post he does a great job of breaking down his reasons behind his shredding of Tim. 

After reading these couple of posts on spec work it got me thinking from all point of views on this subject.  For one, I am against spec work as well, it takes most designers a good amount of time and effort when preparing for a project or commissioned proposal or pitch.  Like with any other craft it takes years of practice and experience for a good designer to get where they are and to do something for free in hopes of winning the project makes designers seem pretty disposable and possibly desperate for work. I can see how this not only brings down industry standards but also harms the whole industry.  I have to admit while I am guilty of doing spec work in the past (only 1, in my younger days) I have entered a few competitions or created something for submissions. In the past I never really considered this as spec work, since most of the contest there is no money involved from the beginning and is mainly for exposure.  Also with some of these submissions you can enter work you already created so you are not necessarily spending a great amount of time particularly for the contest. Thinking back on it now, could this possible be another way of spec work just reworded or phrased differently? I’m not sure but I have a feeling it’s leaning in that direction. 

The other day I found out that MoMA will be having an exhibition starting in November 22, 2009 running until April 26, 2010 (My Birthday) featuring the works of visionary master Tim Burton.  This will be a must see exhibit for me and I’m sure many others as well.  The works will include pieces from his early childhood to present and will be conveyed through a variety of mediums including drawings, paintings, storyboards, digital formats, props, costumes and the list goes on.  Many unseen works will be shown as well as non-movie art work that he has done throughout his career.  Be sure to save the date as this will be one show that you will not want to miss.

One of my daily visited sites Design Taxi has revamped their website after six years.  Although the new site is just in beta release I can tell it’s going to be very promising.  The new clean look and well laid out content should be well received by many people and is a huge upgrade from their old look.  Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to be featured on their site along with a couple other designers from New York as part of their Travel Album. 

White Lies - Death

White Lies - To Lose My Life

London based band, the White Lies recently released their new album titled “To Lose My Life”.  When I first heard this album I knew it was going to be good, the lead off song “Death” sets the tone with dark mysterious sounds topped with the vocals of a somewhat 80’s sounding band although at times reminiscing The Editors. The whole album flows almost together flawlessly except there is one live song that was recorded with low sound quality and every time I get to that part I have to turn the volume a few notches up and then back down for the next songs. I wish they would have put that song at the end of the album but nonetheless it does not really effect the well put together songs of the White Lies. 

Just My Type is an awesome free font site created by Jakob Nylund.  Unlike many other free font sites around the web, the fonts featured on this site are superb and very well designed.  All fonts are downloadable .ai files and currently there are 8 quality fonts awaiting your use.

I came across this interesting set of photos of an abandoned theme park that looked really fascinating.  I always enjoyed taking photos or looking at photos of run down places so this definitely caught my attention.  All the writing however is in Chinese so I have no idea where these are taken at and by whom.  There is quite a bit of photos however just scroll to the bottom and click on the left and right button to go back and forth.

I recently worked on a series of mini-games through Kastner & Partners for 2K Sports baseball game, The Bigs 2.  The game was already developed for all major gaming consoles but they wanted to create some online games so I had the pleasure to work on the game for a Facebook app, 2 variations of the widget that allows users to play the game on your website and also the actual mini-game that you can play at 2K Sports. Since the online games are a little different than the actual game, the whole interface, menu, loading screen, landing page, scoring and some parts of the background had to be recreated.

The font above was created by two photographers and a pro race pilot. The process of creating this font was really creative, be sure to check out the video as well.

Phoenix - Lisztomania

Phoenix - Fences

Phoenix - Rome

Phoenix’s third and latest album release “Wolfgang Amadeus” is arguable the bands best album by far.  Their previous albums each had one or two hits on them but their latest album shows the full potential of this band as nearly all the songs are memorable and great.  The bands pop/dance sounds is definitely making it’s way to many retail stores playlist around New York and I’m sure in many other states as well especially if there is a Urban Outfitters around.  None the less I recommend this album to anyone who is into this type of music. 

Over the weekend I finally got a chance to go check out the High Line.  I didn’t get too walk the whole thing or spend too much time there but I plan on returning soon to take more photos of the actual park itself.  The day I went I guess there was a festival going on and so there were tons of people and a huge line just to walk up the stairs into the park, which on a normal day would probably have no line.  Anyways since people flooded the the paths and gardens I decided to take photos of the surrounding buildings and scenery.  Some more photos can be seen on my flickr. 

The past couple weeks have been pretty hectic and busy to say the least, I recently finished 2 projects and now am juggling three more.  In between all the madness I managed to get some free time to work on a personal illustration which I haven’t had a chance to do in some time.  I originally came up with the idea for this piece based off the elements: land, earth, wind and water, and from there it sort of took it’s own direction.  I hope to make some more in the upcoming weeks perhaps a series of something, also check back soon I should have some new work updated as well as soon as I get the ‘ok’ from the clients.

Thanks to the people over at Adobe for selecting mtvmusic.com as their Site Of The Day today, this was a great project to work on and I would also like to thank the people over at MTV for the opportunity. 

Last week the world was sadden when news broke out about the sudden death of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.  Michael was one of the most creative, inspirational and influential artist to ever live and to lose someone with such a great talent is a loss to everyone.  To help keep a small memory of such an untouchable legacy, design studio Group94 created their own tribute to the King himself, “Eternal Moonwalk”.  This site leads off with Jackson doing the moonwalk followed by numerous videos that users have uploaded to the site of themselves attempting the moonwalk thus resulting in a continuous eternal moonwalk. 

Jacques Tati is a French filmmaker who’s new site recently wonFWA site of the day.  I have seen more and more hand made / crafted sites and designs lately but this one is one of the better ones out there. A lot of thought and effort goes into creating something like this and the best part is you can take a look at the making of Jacques Tati’s site. 

I will be out of town for a couple days so have a great 4th of July everyone and be safe.

Dating back to the time I was still in school and throughout my career, like many, I constantly found myself reading up on the current news in my industry to try stay on top of things and to remain relevant.  One of my main sources was reading through design related magazines such as Print, Computer Arts, Computer Projects, Communication Arts, How Magazine, and the list goes on.  I understand the hard economic times everyone is going through these days and that people have to do what is necessary to keep moving forward but one thing I have noticed that is making me think twice about making a purchase is the rise in price of design magazines.  Some of the main publications have increased their prices in 2009 quite significantly compared to last year while the content and amount of material for each magazine seems to remain the same if not even trimmed down a bit.  I purchased one of my favorite magazines, “Communication Arts” back in 2008 and paid $16 for the Interactive Annual and today I noticed this yearly issue was on sale again but for the price of $24.  “Print” is another well known magazine that has increased the price from about $12 an issue now up to $19.  While these prices are still affordable for some, for others I think paying almost $20 for a magazine that has not increased it’s content is starting to get a little costly.  Some magazines such as New York Times and Computer Arts have tried ways to save money for the consumer by slicing the overall width and height a couple inches thus saving a little bit on print production and keeping the prices relatively the same.  I know it’s not easy for all publications to do this and for some it’s much harder than others but I personally think an $8 increase per issue without some added content or additional value is making it a very hard purchase to make.