Dressed In Value is a graphic design studio in Louisville, Kentucky.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Our local news­pa­per reports that Dr. Seuss’ lawyers are demand­ing our city halt plans to use any part of How the Grinch Stole Christ­mas in our city’s hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tion this year, which included a spot for kids called LouWhoVille, with real life char­ac­ters from the book. 

“It appears these lawyers’ hearts are two sizes too small,” Mayor Jerry Abram­son said in a news release.

…

“The three words that best describe this legal action are as fol­lows, and I quote, ‘Stink, Stank, Stunk!’ ” said Jim Wood, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the con­ven­tion bureau.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Among things I inter­act with on a daily basis are: a blue com­pass; a stamp with a bird on it; a purple duck; a round thing with a flame on it; a jar of ink with a pen next to it; a desk­top flip-​calendar; a sil­hou­ette of a ninja kick­ing the air; a pic­ture of a sunset behind a palm tree; a yellow and blue-​ish purple truck; a green leaf; a series of col­ored squares with dif­fer­ent let­ters on them; etc.

These are all com­puter icons for dif­fer­ent soft­ware appli­ca­tions I use on my Mac. Each of these things mean some­thing to me, and maybe some of them for you, too. What’s inter­est­ing to think about is how easy it is for us to put trust in these images.

For exam­ple, I approach the purple duck trusting that he will tell me if anyone else is online that I might want to talk to, and he will also tell others that I am online. 

The ninja takes me to a place where I have been col­lect­ing things. All sorts of things. Quotes. Archives of web­sites. Serial num­bers. Codes and pass­words. PDFs.

And so forth …

Friday, November 21, 2008

Since there’s been so much inter­est lately to find a defin­i­tive answer to whether graphic design is or isn’t art, I thought I’d share this text I just came across. It comes from Bryan Magee’s The Story of Phi­los­o­phy, in the intro­duc­tion (or, invi­ta­tion to phi­los­o­phy). 

The cre­ative artist, like the philoso­pher, is fully com­mit­ted to a truth-​seeking activ­ity, trying to see below the sur­face of things and acquire a deeper under­stand­ing of human expe­ri­ence; how­ever, he pub­lishes, or pub­licly presents, his insights in a dif­fer­ent form from the philoso­pher, a form that relies on direct per­cep­tion and intu­ition rather than on ratio­nal argument.

…

It is essen­tial to real­ize that phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence, and art are not at odds with one another. They have much more in common than appears at first sight. In fact, as we shall see in this book, it was out of phi­los­o­phy that sci­ence was born. It is the same world that phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence, and art are all explor­ing. All three con­front the mys­tery of the world’s exis­tence and our exis­tence as human beings, and try to achieve a deeper

…

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Thanks to Max­imus for send­ing this to me. It appears that I have com­pletely mis­un­der­stood the value of the Social Inter­nets. This NYTimes.com article explains everything:

Good news for wor­ried par­ents: All those hours their teenagers spend social­iz­ing on the Inter­net are not a bad thing, accord­ing to a new study by the MacArthur Foundation.

“It may look as though kids are wast­ing a lot of time hang­ing out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or send­ing instant mes­sages,” said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, “Living and Learn­ing With New Media.” “But their par­tic­i­pa­tion is giving them the tech­no­log­i­cal skills and lit­er­acy they need to suc­ceed in the con­tem­po­rary world. They’re learn­ing how to get along with others, how to manage a public iden­tity, how to create a home page.”

Yes. These things are very impor­tant. I like these suc­cess sto­ries in particular:

In a sit­u­a­tion famil­iar to many par­ents, the study describes two 17-year-olds, dating for more than a year, who wake up and log on to their com­put­ers between taking show­ers and doing their hair, talk on their cell­phones as they travel to school, exchange text messages through the school day, then get together

…

Thursday, November 20, 2008

This is amaz­ing! Via Broken Sidewalk.