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Random Musings V

Don — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:44:38 +0000

Fairey Mural

How am I only now hearing about this? What is wrong with my artsy friends that live/work in Manhattan not cluing me in to the controversy surrounding this. You’re all on probation until I find a more reliable group. Sheesh…

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STOP SprintFreeMsg

If you’re as sick as I am of receiving “SprintFreeMsg” SMS advertisements on your phone, it’s actually quite easy to remove yourself from their list. Simply text STOP, in all caps, back to the solicitor (2222) and you’ll receive a notification that you’re removed from their spam lists (Note: I’m not certain why the messages appear out of order on my phone, but my reply was sent before their response). Now, I cannot assure you that this simple action won’t automatically add you to a host of other spam lists, as unsubscribing from certain newsletters online may do, but I can ensure that you won’t receive ads from Sprint anymore.

It’s curious that a company that already gets $100 from me each month is interested in making MORE money by sending ads to my phone. When did corporate reputability slip this low and is there any way to revert to the days when they cared about your happiness?

Random Musings IV

Don — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:50:42 +0000

The Hotel Inntel

Take a look at the above design of The Hotel Inntel in Zaandam, The Netherlands, by Wilfried van Winden of WAM Architecten. There are also a ton of other images on the original poster‘s site.

The town center of Zaandam is being revamped by Sjoerd Soeters to be brought back to its rich heritage — historical street layouts are being renewed and the dull and impersonal town center is being revitalized with a new hotel — one that incorporates the historical stylistic features of Zaanse Schans village.

The hotel, which opened back in March, is a striking building to say the least. The design has generated quite a bit of attention from international media. Comprising 160 rooms, a pool, and wellness center, the 12-story hotel has already had hundreds of guests. Designer Wilfried van Winden envisioned a place in which guests could feel at home, even when away from home. Therefore, the hotel has been designed to look like stacked houses, resembling a range of residences from a notary’s manse to a worker’s cottage. In fact there are about 70 little houses in four shades of Zaanse Schans green. Particularly eye-catching is the “The Blue House,” inspired by the eponymous artwork that Claude Monet painted in Zaandam in 1871.

Google Commemorates Mucha

Anyone that knows me knows that I’m a big fan of Alphonse Mucha. So when I saw that Google was commemorating the late father of Art Nouveau’s 150th birthday, I had to spend part of my afternoon revisiting why I love his work so much.

From Fortune Magazine:

Alphonse Maria Mucha (24 July 1860 – 14 July 1939), a Czech Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist was known for his distinct style and his images of women. His work has widely influenced modern art in a wide range of fields. His designs were influential to Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, designers who, in the 1960s, created posters for rockbands like Pink Floyd. His work also influenced artist Paul Harvey whose subjects have included Madonna and Charles Saatchi amongst others. Czech out the Alphonse Mucha foundation gallery for much more of his work.

Random Musings III

Don — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:31:55 +0000

Sir, this area is just for waiting

After just having returned from a month researching my family in Italy (we were able to trace our family back to 1200 when previously we couldn’t get past 1860), I noticed the prevalence of the green man over The States’ preference for the red word “Exit”. But I also saw a number of signs that I felt were funny. Here’s one for the “waiting area” of an airport. In a place where iconography is especially important due to so many international speakers around, I initially thought this was a sign for the bathroom.

And this seat is reserved for mutilated people

OSCommerce Image-resizing Error

This is from an excerpt of an email that Mike, our tech lead, sent to a client. And while it’s a little dry, I thought it might help others who are experiencing the same issue. [d]online’s most visited pages are the ones that reference issues and errors with code (“Flash Cookies“, “Use Direct Mode“, “Best Practices to Keep your Inbox, Voicemail and Mailbox Free of Spam“) and informational resource pages (“Flash File Uploader“, “NT Blogs List“).

I didn’t see any particular fix posted at any of the links that were coming up [from a Google search], but it seems like the function that OSC[ommerce] used to use for resizing has stopped working (perhaps due to changes in server configuration, perhaps simply due to code deprecation).Anyhow, if you want the technical details, read on. If not, you can simply be comforted in the fact that it seems to be working without issue, now.

The code: \admin\includes\functions > html_output.php

if (!file_exists($filename_small) || filemtime($src) > filemtime($filename_small)) {copy($src, $filename_small); exec("mogrify +profile \"*\" -filter Lanczos -quality 75 -geometry " . $width . " \"" . $filename_small ."\"");

// this reduces the file size of the original image

exec(" mogrify -geometry x400 -quality 75 +profile \"*\" $src"); }

Those shell exec requests to ImageMagick are being ignored. I’m using GDLib now to do the resizing, simply changing the above statements to:

if (!file_exists($filename_small) || filemtime($src) > filemtime($filename_small)) { copy($src, $filename_small); resampimagejpg($width, $height, $src, $filename_small, 1); }

And adding a simple image resizing function to the bottom of the script — one that we had written a while ago for a photo gallery tool:

I realize both the native OSC code and the new function are both comparing sides of the image to decide which length to prefer in the resize. This isn’t likely to have any loss in efficiency, and it could be helpful if we are to make changes to this in the future, simply to keep it intact for the time being. You should know that the new server will need to have GDLib installed, or this function, too, may fail.

5-year-old Actors in NYC

Lastly, I’m looking for 5-year-old male actors in the NYC area that are interested in acting in a series of viral videos for the promotion of a new book that’s coming out this September. The videos will probably feature the actor doodling scenes from the book on a sheet of paper while humming and will only show the actor’s hands. As such, girls may also be considered. Write us here, if interested.

Random Musings II

Don — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:05:16 +0000

Due to the great success of Random Musings I (and I mean that facetiously), I’ve decided to continue through with a second one. I realize that ultimately, that turns [d]online into a tumblr, but I’ve never been one to adhere to a strict format and still feel myself wanting to get verbose sometime.

The Unmovable Peeve

Weirdly, one of my biggest typographical pet peeves is when someone confuses stationary/stationery. I think it bugs me the most because as a designer, it’s quite prevalent in my competition’s portfolios. After four years of randomly buying lottery tickets just to casually bug the employees of the Davis Stationery Store in Hoboken, they finally updated their sign. Should I bother telling them about “tobbaco”?

The Bird is the Word

When it comes to children’s literary criticism, the Bird truly is the definitive word. My friend, also a Kalamazoo native, was just written up in Forbes! How cool is that?

Alex’s Meats

This is wrong on so many levels. But it calls to mind the possibly apocryphal story where Gerber baby food wasn’t selling well in a non-English speaking nation. It turned out that the natives were used to deciphering product contents based on images of the product on the label. To their astonishment, the baby food only started moving after the product designer Gerber swapped the cherubic disembodied baby head with illustrations of carrots and peas.

So what am I to assume is packaged inside these?

jQuery 25

A few weeks ago DesignM.ag published a collection of jQuery plugins for working with forms. While those plug-ins were very useful, there are times where I would rather learn how to code the solution myself rather than simply using a plug-in. There are a number of quality tutorials available for working with jQuery and forms. DesignM.ag featured 25 of them:

25 jQuery Plug-ins for Working with Forms
25 jQuery Tutorials for Creating Forms

Random Musings I

Don — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:50:25 +0000

Over the last few weeks, at odd hours, I was thinking of a few things that I couldn’t quite categorize into a blog post, but wanted to get out of my head. SO I think 2010 will be the year that I begin a subcategory of Miscellaneous called Math.Random(). These will probably contain design-related thoughts, questions and micro-rants, as well as images of products, signage and brands that I felt were worth mentioning, but not weighty enough to merit their own post. Get a Tumblr, I’m sure you’re saying. And, you’re probably right. I have a Posterous account as well as a FFFFound and Dropular account, but I just can’t see myself committing enough time to using them regularly. I’m sure, others find them useful, but to me, it’s just one more thing. Y’know? Anyway, on with it.

Verb, Inc.

I’ve noticed companies that have names that can also be verbs using slogans/taglines that work well with the company name—almost as though they’re playfully creating sentences to increase customer recognition, retention and repetition. I had a whole list in my head, but the ol’ cracker barrel ain’t what it used to be and so I can only remember two now. If the Garmurs are reading this—or anyone else that enjoys researching puns and witticisms—consider this a challenge.
1. Sprint^® Ahead.
2. Chase^® What Matters.

Any others you can come up with?

Smokey the Unbearable

I saw this product tag on the shelves at A&P and tried to imagine what the product might be. The name, alone, probably strikes fear in the hearts of Californians and might rouse Smoky himself from deep hibernation to bearclaw smack some branding guy out of his Herman Miller Aeron chair. What exactly were they thinking when they came up with the name for this? Sadly, the product was missing (as it’s probably seasonal), but I did manage to find their site.

That’s Not a Lot to ASC

If you haven’t yet played with ASCIIMEO, the cool little site that turns all Vimeo videos to ASCII text, you really need to spend some time there. The first time I saw it, the 12-year-old BBS-lover in me nearly jumped out of my skin like the guy from Montezuma’s Revenge.

That’s enough randomness for today.