Serviceburo

Some of you may not have come of age prior to the rise of the WWW, so you may not remember the days when zines ruled the street-level media world. There were even a couple of years where I myself used to publish one. Zines, according to the old definition, were magazine-style publications pasted up by hand and usually produced on photocopiers. When I was in high school, zines were often the only avenue we had for finding out about “scenes” in other areas of the country. I can remember making the 30 mile pilgrimage to the old Moon Mystique store in Iowa City to pick up the newest copy of Cometbus.

Originally known as “fanzines”, this type of publication originated in the early 80’s punk scene as part of the network of tape traders, punk houses and bands that defined the underground scene of that decade.

That said, I think that it can be said that blogs have become the successors to this sort of independent micro-media. They fill that same niche of allowing the individual to express their viewpoint or agenda in a larger environment. The only real difference is that they are produced electronically, but the principle is the same. I operate this blog with the Wordpress software platform which is open source software, the “photocopier” of the 21st century.

So what do you think?

I’d already noticed this one in the store, but my lazy ass rarely carries my camera with me any more so I was beaten to the punch by the always inspiring Scott Hansen over at ISO50 who posted this shot of the newly redesigned Pepsi Co. branding scheme.

I’ve spent much of my adult life skulking around whenever I’m sucking down one of these delightful brown nectars, hoping that no one would notice the horror of the label, as Pepsi has had some of the worst product design schemes that I have ever seen. However, it would seem that someone with some pull over there has finally seen fit to make a design that is clean, efficient and attractive. Hopefully this will bode well for the rest of the soda industry to follow suit?

So yeah, you may have noticed that for the last week or so the site has been down.  For some still unknown reason, the server that I had been hosting the site on for the last few years decided to shit all over itself.  My long suffering tech support guy spent much time banging his head against the wall trying to fix it, but to no avail.  In the end we opted for switching it to a different host, and viola, here we are again.

I’m still in the middle of fixing the things that went pear-shaped during the move, for the most part, things are working okay, but the gallery widget that I use is still not functioning correctly, so the Photos and Galleries pages are a no go for the time being.  Hopefully this will get worked out in the next couple of days.  Either way, a partially functioning site is far more desirable than no site at all.

During my hiatus, I took a little time to set up an Etsy store to work on selling off some of my backstock of SB merchandise.  Stop by and take a look or just click on one of the thumbnails on the right side of the page.

In actual art related news, I have a show coming up at the Red & Black Cafe here in Portland during the month of April.  Naturally I’m pretty excited about that, but it does mean putting my nose to the grindstone and cranking out some new pieces.  I’ve decided to do a tribute series to cycling heroes from the 50’s through 70’s featuring such old skool badasses as Eddy Merckx, Felice Gimondi, Jacques Anquetil and Fausto Coppi. Below you’ll find a WIP of the first piece, an homage of sorts to Shephard Fairey’s Obama poster featuring a shot of Merckx from ‘71.

I’ve had a shift of position on the design world recently. I happened to pay a visit to tDR recently, a site which was once a really big influence in my work and almost had a seizure ala Japanese kids VS Pokemon. It occured to me that what a professor of mine used to call “photoshop sauce” has become the norm stylistically. This was compounded by the fact that I am guilty of it as well. Few things that are called “graphic design” are really that at all. When was the last time that any of the graphic designers out there developed something that was truly functional?

In Europe, designers work on currency, postage, development of public signage as well as other projects which centered around the idea of visual communication, not just how far you can twist something and still have it legible. Why is it that every self-proclaimed designer that I run across anymore is just slapping things together? I think it’s time to really reconsider the different nature of design versus normal visual arts, in design the intent of creation is completely different from a painting or drawing. Design performs functions. As such, I think that it’s time anyone wanting to call themselves a GD (myself included) needs to recommit to the idea of creating art through the combination of grace and functionality that makes good design much more than the sum of it’s parts. And enough with the grafitti fonts already.

I would very much like to ride this bike, but I think that I would have to lug along an extra chainring and chain for that thing if I were to be attacking any real descents.

So there’s a nice little war going on at the moment between BSNYC and a newcomer to the scene The Awful Truth. The Snob was mentioned quite unfavorably in a post by T.A.T., and in usual fashion posted a retort and link in response. As you can imagine, the RTMS has a posse and as such The Awful Truth’s comments board was bombarded with attacks that just made the attackers look stupid. Anyway, the whole thing is rather schoolyard ridiculous and funny.

In actual bike relating postings, I’ve recently rebuilt the front end of the fixie with a new 700c Cro-Mo fork. The old one was a 27″ and not properly spaced for the hub that I was running. As such it was beginning to get a bit creaky and I wasn’t feeling too safe riding that bike anymore. Putting a fork with shorter blades dropped the front end down ever so slightly and makes the steering noticably twitchier. She’s got a lot more of a track-bike feel to her now.

In Arab culture, throwing your shoe at someone or sitting in a manner that makes the soles of your shoes visible to someone else is considered a grave insult. Too bad W had good enough reflexes to duck just in time.

Here’s an even better version:

I found the following photostream by alphanumeric whilst bandying about the internets last evening. He’s got an excellent collection of mid to late 20th century European graphic design. There are definite advantages in having proximity to this sort of thing as his gallery demonstrates. If I had a collection like his, I imagine I would never be starved for ideas.

Here’s a couple of examples of the stuff he’s got:

I owe you thanks, my fictitious audience, for your patience.  The photos page is up and I see no reason why I can’t have this thing redirected straight to sb.net within the next couple of days.    All that’s left is to interface it with the store and update a couple of ancillary sites. Then on to bigger and better.  And hopefully updating the page on a regular basis.

I’ve figured out a way to hack my photo gallery program to operate on a wordpress “page” versus just a regular post.  As such, I’ve been organizing old work into gallery streams on said page.

Take a look.

Otherwise, not much else, I’ve started a new poster series tonight, i’ll post wips when I have them.