Good Morning Internet

I over­heard this while I was out for lunch a few days ago. I’m cer­tain he wasn’t jok­ing. And I felt bad for him.

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Maybe it was bet­ter when I wasn’t draw­ing because this is the kind of non­sense I come up with.

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This morn­ing, I woke up after a really great and very detailed dream in which the Jim Hen­son Com­pany released a series of art prints, each one a sim­ple por­trait of a Mup­pet or Sesame Street char­ac­ter. I remem­ber one in par­tic­u­lar that fea­tured Ker­mit seated on a plain wooden stool against a black back­ground. I was so ready to buy it, and was so dis­ap­pointed when it turned out to be a dream.

It was a beau­ti­ful series of sophisticated-looking prints geared toward adults. My favorite part was the tagline they used (which, tech­ni­cally, since it was my dream, I wrote): “The char­ac­ters who helped you grow into who you are.”

I woke up smil­ing, and now I want the Jim Hen­son Com­pany to make these! I know I’m not the only one who would pur­chase and frame a series of ele­gant prints based on these beloved child­hood characters.

Here’s Alex Ross’s Super Grover poster from a few years back to give you a ball­park idea of what these dream posters looked like.

Yeah, I know it’s kind of dorky. But don’t tell me that doesn’t warm your heart! Who’s with me on this? Do prints like this (besides the hard-to-find Alex Ross print) exist? If not, does any­body out there know some­one who works for the Hen­son Com­pany? They can use this idea for free. I just want it to hap­pen! (But if they want to hire me as a copy­writer, I cer­tainly wouldn’t say no.)

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Mon­day, March 15, 2010

Visual note-taking, or the method of tak­ing notes in a more illus­tra­tive, comic book style, is some­thing I’ve always done in one form or another, but mostly with­out real­iz­ing it. I’ve been scolded in meet­ings and classes for “doo­dling” when, in fact, I was actu­ally tak­ing notes. Until this ses­sion, I had no idea that some peo­ple were doing this for a liv­ing. The pan­elists each take casual in-meeting noes and cre­ate art, and they showed us how they do it.

Dave Gray, Austin Kleon, Mike Rohde, and Sunni Brown are all very tal­ented visual note-takers and artists, and I highly rec­om­mend check­ing out each of their sites.

After show­ing some gor­geous, fun exam­ples, the pan­elists ran us through a num­ber of draw­ing tuto­ri­als. Sim­ple stick fig­ures, a wide array of expres­sions from sim­ple lines, shad­ows, bul­lets, lines, frames, con­nec­tors, and let­ter­ing tech­niques were all cov­ered. Small pocket note­books (like the one pic­tured above) were handed out before the ses­sion so every­one could draw along. It felt like a really fun art class.

Not only was it fun, but it turned out to be one of the most worth­while ses­sions for me. I’d been tak­ing notes at most ses­sions up to that point, but the qual­ity of my notes really improved after this healthy dose of inspi­ra­tion. I ended up hav­ing a lot more fun with my note-taking, and I think that helped me cap­ture a more valu­able infor­ma­tion. In fact, most of these SXSW recap blog posts are writ­ten from notes I took using visual note-taking tech­niques I learned (or re-learned) in this session.

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Sat­ur­day, March 13, 2010

It’s not easy to describe Ze Frank to some­one unfa­mil­iar with his work. Most famously, a few years ago he posted a short video five days a week for an entire year. It was funny, thought­ful, and often included great songs he wrote and recorded. He sim­ply called it the show and it was a big hit. If you don’t know about it, I sug­gest a trip over to the Internet’s social stud­ies class­room, Wikipedia.

After the show, Ze moved to Los Ange­les, wrote a TV pilot, wrote a movie, tried to land act­ing gigs, and has found him­self explor­ing a vari­ety of his own cre­ative projects and exper­i­ments, much like he did in his pre–show days.

The ses­sion was billed as “liv­ing a cre­ative lifestyle”. I was hop­ing for a lit­tle more prac­ti­cal advice on how to pur­sue cre­ative projects that mat­ter while simul­ta­ne­ously find­ing ways to pay the bills. But instead, the inter­view, led by Scott Kirsner, evolved quickly into a dis­cus­sion about find­ing emo­tional value in the dig­i­tal con­nec­tions peo­ple make through social media.

Ze shared some heart­felt and really great sto­ries about peo­ple find­ing those con­nec­tions, and reviewed some high­lights from recent projects to illus­trate his points. He reached out to peo­ple that emailed him with prob­lems. He enlisted Twit­ter fol­low­ers to record vocal parts for a vir­tual cho­rus in a new song. He took over a woman’s Face­book account for a week (with her per­mis­sion) as a bit of a social experiment.

It was cer­tainly inter­est­ing, even though it quickly strayed from the topic of “liv­ing a dig­i­tal lifestyle”. But per­haps that was kind of the point. In order to really live a cre­ative lifestyle, there aren’t any firm rules. You sort of have to feel it out for your­self, take chances, and find what works as you make con­nec­tions with other people.

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Photo by Daniel Morrison

Over the past few years, I’ve got­ten into col­lect­ing screen prints and gig posters. There are some really tal­ented artists cre­at­ing art prints, usu­ally avail­able in lim­ited num­bers, and they’re gen­er­ally really cheap. Framed and hung on the walls, they def­i­nitely make my apart­ment feel classier.

One of the things I’m really look­ing for­ward to see­ing at SXSW is Flat­stock 24 at SXSW Music next week, spon­sored by the Amer­i­can Poster Insti­tute. Not only will a bunch of my favorite artists be show­cas­ing their work, but I’m sure I’ll dis­cover some new ones, too. Thank good­ness I still have plenty of empty space on my apart­ment walls.

There are some fan­tas­tic blogs that keep me up-to-date with the lat­est prints. My cur­rent go-to is OMG Posters!, a great place to learn about what’s out there these days.

I can’t believe I’m leav­ing for Austin in four days!

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