but I’m not the only one who is irritated with this grotesque display of commodification though. The subtly cynical tone of the LA Times article is one we can all appreciate:

The spring runways were an art fest with Marc Jacobs collaborating with Richard Prince on bags at Louis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabbana hand-painting tulle ball gowns, and Michael Kors taking inspiration from Van Gogh. And now, at last, the trend has arrived at the mall.

Like many of you, my idealistic notions of art prevents the existence of a Gap Chuck Close t-shirt from leaving anything shy of a bad taste in my mouth. It’s the sad reality of the commercial art world today. The avant-garde is so quickly swallowed up by the corporate machine, we rarely have time to see an artist mature anymore before they are propelled by the forces of the market into a state of being the next big art star…Of course, these folks have been art stars since the 1980’s so it’s not like they just recently fell into the fashion world. This just merely serves as a reminder to us that the corporate giants at the center of late capitalism are at the very core of art patronage.

Some Brief Slanty Background:

The corporate takeover of funding for the arts, though gradual, began to pick up momentum in the 1990s when The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), once the largest supporter of the arts in the US, came under scrutiny for supporting “morally objectionable” works. According to Wikipedia:

In 1996, Congress cut the NEA funding to US$99.5 million (almost in half) as a result of pressure from conservative groups, including the American Family Association, who criticized the agency for using tax dollars to fund highly controversial artists such as Robert Clark Young, Barbara Degenevieve, Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, and the so-called “NEA Four.”

As our country becomes increasingly more conservative, and the moral majority dictates more and more of what can be done with government funding, the art world has had little choice but to embrace corporate sponsorship.

Some of the most prestigious collections around are held by the likes of Gap, Inc. and London advertising baron Charles Saatchi. Museum exhibitions are commonly funded by corporate sponsors, whose logos adorn banners and printed materials.

And one of the largest financial supporters of the arts in the United States is Altria Group, the umbrella company that owns Phillip Morris, Inc. - yes, THAT Altria Group - the largest manufacturer of tobacco in the world and one of the largest producers of alcohol. So Piss Christ is bad and cigarette money is okay? Yes, the conservatives are a moral bunch indeed….

The Cost of Selling Out

Artists have always had to be resourceful to make ends meet, and selling out is certainly nothing new. I don’t mean to belittle these artists for taking advantage of this opportunity to make a buck. None of us is above wanting to make money, and anyone who says otherwise is foolish. My problem with Gap t-shirts donning artists’ works and Takashi Murakami handbags is not the trending of individual artists’ works as fashion commodities, but rather the implications this has on the art world at large.

The commodification of contemporary art stars is problematic to the notion of cultural production, as it neutralizes the avant-garde, and muddies the contextual value of art production. So I urge you with caution to remember that the same machine that makes artists into commodities, also has the capacity to make impotent the meaning behind their works.

Some Further Related Reading:

Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention since the 1980s by Chin-Tao Wu

Idiosyncratic Identities: Artists at the End of the Avant-Garde (Contemporary Artists & Their Critics) by Donald Kuspit

The Dialectic of Decadence: Between Advance and Decline in Art (Asthetics Today) by Donald Kuspit

Art Criticism(Volume 21, Number 2) : Administrativism and Its Discontents by Mark Van Proyen

“The Myth of Criticism in the 1980s,” by Howard Singerman

I didn’t make it to opening night on Friday May 16th - I was just getting over a nasty case of bronchitis, so the swarming crowds seemed a bit daunting - but I did check it out on Saturday afternoon, when the space was a bit less packed with bodies.

Some highlights from this years MFA Exhibition:

Robert Jackson Harrington’s insane sculptural installation - I love the futility of the piece because this elaborate contraption doesn’t do anything at all (as far as I can tell).

An impressive painting by Rives Granade

I can’t remember the name of this artist, but I did like this hell of a wall configuration with video monitors playing footage of 3d body innards. Maybe it’s because I’m a computer geek myself, but the body as an electronic network is utterly appealing.

Will Barclift’s performance (image scanned from the artist’s postcard) - Will presented a video of the performance at the exhibition. Also, as a side note, this treadmill featured here is actually mine. I left it at my old roommate when I moved 2 years ago.

There were a lot more great pieces in the show, but I was limited to the images I took on my iPhone that turned out , and those that I could scan from postcards I was compelled to pick up. I guess you’ll just have to go there and look yourself if you want to see more.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, the show is open daily from 11am-5pm until Saturday, May 24th at Herbst Pavilion in the Fort Mason Center. I highly recommend checking it out if you get the chance.

However, I’m not really posting this video because I had a burning itch to say something intelligent about viral marketing or postmodern cynicism - I’m just a Tom Waits fan and my friend Adam sent me a link. I thought it was worth sharing with you, so I stuck it on my blog.

So, without further adieu…

There’s no denying it: the economy has gotten shitty. While we over at Object Adjective seem to be going strong, landing contracts and continuing business as usual, you can hardly surf the news feeds on the web without reading one article or another about how unemployment rates have risen to claim over 232,000 jobs since the new year, making this the largest recession since 2003. Unemployment rates at the time of this post are a whopping 5.1% and continuing to climb. It’s a bit scary for all of us here in the US of A, even with the prospect of getting that stupid tool out of the White House.

But the reason I am writing this is not so much to gripe about economics in general as it is to promote a good friend of mine who has lost her design job to the current recession.

Her name is Vara Pappas and she is a hell of a print designer and a damn good fashion photographer as well. This past Monday she received notice that she was being downsized by her company due to a lack of incoming work. They ensured her that she would be awarded 2 weeks of severance pay, but this is hardly a treat when you live in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the US. She needs to find a job that will give her the opportunity to do what she does exceptionally well, and fast.

So, if you’re hiring a print designer, or you know someone who is, check out her website.

Note: She’s also willing to take freelance projects for the time being as well until she finds something more permanent, so don’t miss out on the opportunity to work with her.

While browsing around various design sites, I came across a rather positive review on The DieLine of the latest packaging design from the San Francisco cleaning product company, Method.

Le Scrub and Lil’ Bowl Blu mark the company’s entrance into “deep cleaning” products and round out their line of bathroom products.

While I agree that there is a sleek and modern loveliness to these bathroom cleaning products, I at once had to snicker at the bare naked fact that the two depicted in the image above look very referential to a butt and an indeterminate colorectal organ shape.

The Tub Scrub product is probably the most hysterical as all I can see when I look at it is what appears to be an abstraction of a set of ass cheeks clenching a sponge. I can’t possibly be alone in this sentiment. And while the toilet bowl cleaner is more of a traditional shape for this sort of cleaning product, it’s smooth gentle curves are less “Clorox toilet bowl cleaner” and more digestive organ.

Of course, asses and bathrooms kind of go together, so maybe Method’s packaging design was deliberate…but probably not. I can’t picture a bunch of ad and design guys sitting around deciding to make their clients’ products look this anal…but what do I know? I’m a web designer, so my expertise seldom crosses into dealing with consumer products.

Of course this happens in web and print design as well. We’ve all designed something that was phallic, or contained a prominent undesirable shape of some sort. If you’re lucky someone catches it before you submit it to the client, or worse, release it into the world for all to giggle at….

A few weeks back, along with many others in the development community, I wrote in response to Microsoft’s announcement that IE8 would implement version targeting, a means of back-dating a site so that it doesn’t break with new releases of the browser.

While my views expressed in Version Targeting: Defaulting to the Past to Spite the Future? were primarily favorable of the new technique, I expressed my concerns with Microsoft’s decision that IE8 and all other browsers to come would default to rendering as if it were the previous release of the browser if the meta tag, which looks like this:

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=x;FF=x;OtherUA=x” />

was omitted, rather than in the current up to date standards mode. Perhaps the pressure of the masses in the standards community, Microsoft has caved and agreed that the default rendering engine of IE8 will now favor standards compliance rather than giving precedence to the fear of breakage. To quote their March 3rd press release:

Microsoft Corp. is now configuring the settings in Internet Explorer 8, the upcoming version of its browser, to render content — by default — using methods that give top priority to Web standards interoperability.

While their official position is that they have reoriented their company focus away from proprietary winner-take-all competitiveness and toward interoperability, a lot of us (those not so trusting), posit that they most likely just couldn’t stand up to the pressure coming from those aligned with the web standards movement.

Honestly, it doesn’t really matter what contributed most to their decision. Either way you look at it, progressive support for standards is a good thing. In the end, with IE8 now in public beta, it seems the IE team is finally looking forward like the rest of us, instead of shoving their proverbial heads up their own asses. Standards will be supported by default.

This week has brought an exciting new development in my life: I got accepted to the Studio Residency Program at Root Division, a nonprofit arts organization here in San Francisco’s Mission District. A few weeks ago, due to the urgings of friend and artist Deric Carner, I made the decision to apply to the program.

After speaking to the director on the phone about the application process, I quickly slapped together my portfolio, resume and finished updating my art portfolio website. That same afternoon I crossed my fingers and dropped off a folder containing evidence of my fine arts career to date. Anyway, to make a short story shorter, I interviewed and received notification 2 days ago that I got in. So I am officially going to have a studio space! I can barely contain myself, I’m so elated.

The program over at Root Division is great - you get a studio space at a much lower than market rent, and in exchange you just have to spend a few hours a month doing some sort of service for the organization. You can help with any number of things ranging from teaching community art classes to hanging exhibitions in their gallery space. In my case, they might also have me help out a bit with their website, since, as you know, this is my “thing.” I definitely consider the opportunity to be involved with the organization and spend some of my free time helping them out to be a perk rather than a burden.

As a studio resident, you also get the opportunity to show your work in their gallery, curate art exhibitions, and just be around the other studio artists in the program. Having gotten out of graduate school over 2 years ago, it’ll be great to interact with other working artists again on a day to day basis and be a part of the dialog.

So in addition to working full time on web design and development and running our company, I will be painting again and making other forms of art. It’s been a while since I’ve had a space to carry out my more involved art projects. I can’t wait to get started.

You know the scenario: you land on a website for Business X and beneath the logo is a banner that fades from a slogan over a flat color to a pair of suits shaking hands with big ear-to-ear grins. Nothing says “corporate cliche” like bad stock photography. Sigh.

We all know how cheesy this is. And yet clients still ask for it and so many designers still succumb to the pressure to create that corporate stock look. It doesn’t have to go down like that. As the designer, you have the ability to just say “no” to bad stock photography and corporate clip art. A little creativity, and you can create a web presence for your client that will actually set their company apart from the boring template web design look. It just takes a little extra push, and a desire to get beyond.

We’re so used to seeing the same stock photos on everyone’s site - I’m convinced that there are only 100 people who pose for stock photography, but they are featured on probably 200,000 homepages each, working on a laptop, sitting at a conference table, talking on a mobile phone. Everyone knows they don’t work at this company because you’ve seen the same people on dozens of sites the same day. Doesn’t it make more sense to do something to set your client’s company apart a bit? Maybe create something a bit more personal and original?

Make it Custom or Don’t Bother

I’ve always been a fan of the Ellis Labs solution to the company homepage. The illustration of the founders looking geeky in their lab coats with beakers makes for an amusing and stylish sense of humor about themselves. Friendly and cheeky, it makes you feel like you know these guys, and doing business with them and supporting their products comes natural. They’re the geeks next door, and you dig ‘em. At least I do.

Another site that makes great use of graphic illustrations to set themselves apart from the competition is YoDiv (otherwise known as You Design They Develop) - most outsourcing firms have really bad faux corporate looking sites, but these guys have the right idea - They are marketing their services to designers after all…

Investing is Simple (IIS) has a great homepage graphic that sets them appart from the usual investment website - I think investment and banking sites use more crappy stock photos and corpo clip art than anyone usually. I’m not sure pink was the best color choice, but the graphic definitely adds a spark to investing, an activity most people think is about as exciting as watching grass grow.

As of late, Jeremy and I have been working on some pretty neat illustrations for a variety of websites, including an online poster art contest for STD awareness.

As well as our sweet-toothed logo for our new side project Popwit, an online arts and culture magazine we’re working toward launching in teh next month or two:

(note: we’ll be looking for contributors in the areas of art, sound, architecture and design, but I’ll make a formal announcement later on when we’re nearing public launch).

Anyway, my point is simply please, for the love of God (or whatever greater power you believe in) - DON’T MAKE ANY MORE WEBSITES THAT LOOK LIKE THEY CAME AS PART OF THE CORPORATE STARTER KIT. This is not a way for the client to come off as conservative and business-like, it’s a way to look cheap, dated and unprofessional. It’s up to you to tell them this - to give them something better for their money. Illustration is only one component - original photography, custom icons, product demos, typography and graphic treatments can all play nicely together to create a visually distinct web presence.

Additional Inspiration

Can’t get your creative juices flowing? (ew…I hate that analogy…sorry) - Anyway, here are some illustrators’ sites I dig. Maybe they’ll inspire you as they have me:

The Alamo Basement - Kelly Korvec’s illustration portfolio.

Kev Adamson - An interesting mix of hand drawn and digital illustration

Kun-Sung Chung - Digital Illustrator’s portfolio

Alberto Cerriteno - Digital Artist

If you have any other illustrators you like or illustration inspiration resources, feel free to add them into the comments section (yes, it’s okay to link yourself as an inspiration resource - if you’re good I would love to see your stuff).

The past week has been a whirlwind of events, with art as the focus. For the last year since starting our design business Object Adjective, I’ve been more or less out of the art scene - always dabbling on the periphery but not as involved as I once was. And while I love working in web design and development, it used to be that the practice of artmaking informed my design, my code, and vice versa. Continuing to work as an artist and stay engaged in the art and music scenes is important to me, and this past few days has served as a reminder.

A Little Bit Edwardian

Last Friday night was the Edwardian Ball - this year themed World’s Faire. Set at the Great American Music Hall, the gold leafed ornate detail of the old theater was the perfect backdrop for a night riddled with corsetry fashion shows, Edward Gorey inspired poetics and visuals, diverse Edwardian inspired music, art exhibits, and acrobatic performances.

Jeremy, Mici, August and I decked out in our turn of the century best, snapped a few pics at my apartment, and headed out to enjoy a night of music, art, and performance. The event was spectacular - with so much to see and do. (more…)

The topic of version targeting has been all the rage the last 2 days, following Aaron Gustafson’s article for A List Apart and Eric Meyer’s companion piece. IE8 has not only passed the Acid2 test, but in this release it will be taking a new direction on version control, allowing us developers to, rather than rely on the DOCTYPE declaration to attempt to keep our sites in rendered intact, asign a meta element with the browser versions for which the site was coded and tested against. This meta element would look like this:

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=8″ />

Of course, in theory, if all browsers adopt version targeting, you would be able to enter content=”IE=8, ff=2.1, saf=3.0;” so all browsers would perform as though it was the day you coded it.

The logic Microsoft uses to explain their reasoning for going this route in IE8’s development makes perfect sense:

We realized that “Don’t Break the Web” should really be translated to “Don’t change what developers expect IE to do for current pages that are already deployed.”

The benefit, of course, is that if you code and test in IE6, you state this in the meta element or HTTP header, and the browser “pretends” to be IE6 and renders the site accordingly, behaving as the back version of the rendering engine would have. Great. So your code is locked in time, and no matter how many versions of a browser come after, your site will not break. It’ll look the same forever.

However, if you omit the meta http-equivalent, the browser just acts as the backdated version - so IE 8 will act like 7 and render the page using the IE7 rendering engine instead of defaulting to the current standards mode. (more…)

The timeliness of this documentary is perfect, and not only because helvetica reached it’s 50th birthday in 2007. As the film points out, we’ve entered into a period in history where the tools of design are accessible to the public and social networking sites like Myspace allow the user to create their own designed pages as a means of fabricating their own identity. Since everyone has become an amateur designer, what better time to cast an eye on the most prevalent font in the world? (more…)

Most girls get sick of their ‘look’ and dye their hair or update their wardrobe. I redesign my blog. My wardrobe is a lost cause, and it’s impossible to dye over black hair. Sorry but blond is just not an option right now.

While I’ll miss the cute header with the bird drawing, it was time for a change. Maybe I’ll bring it back out for Blog Action Day 2008. Or maybe once I’ve gotten enough specimen, I’ll create anEndlessArray’s design graveyard, archiving all of the old designs (there have been 4 so far). For now, RIP little bird. You’ll be missed.

Hope you dig the new crest theme :)

While the travel is always a chore, it is nice to spend that time with my family and friends back in good old Buffalo, NY. Everything is pretty much exactly how I left it, give or take a few new restaurants and shops. And for some reason, no matter how many rings I put on my tree, I’m still a kid when I go home. And kids at Christmas get presents. Mine this year was an iPhone. Sure I wrote that silly post iPhone Accessory: iPressOn Nails back in August, but never had the gaul to chuck my Verizon contract and go get one of my very own. So my Dad did the deed for me (with a bit of seeding on my part).

And so now, I’m back in San Francisco already neck deep in designing and developing everything from Facebook Apps to brochure sites. It’s been a week since my return and still, I’m living out of a suitcase with stacks of unopened snail mail and invoices and estimates to write. But it’s nice to be home. And even if I’m not unpacked yet, 2008 has so far brought me great pleasure in syncing my desktop to my phone.

Cheers to everyone in 2008!

Sure, it’s cute - its faux notebook look and the fudged bic pen drawings of tickets and planes and stars are just….um…adorable….but obviously the designer didn’t have a broad demographic of travelers in mind. While a design like this would certainly be appropriate for a t-shirt company that distributes to Urban Outfitters, I’m not sure it’s the best communication design for an instructional sub-site of a major (albeit discount) airline.

I have never flown Southwest before. While I’m sure it will be fine (as in I probably won’t plummet to my untimely death over the Rockies), a boarding procedure site decorated in this juvenile manner threatens to wreck my confidence long before I ever board the damn plane. All I can say is I hope my boarding pass doesn’t look like this:

If it does, I’ll probably head on over to one of the other airline ticket desks and inquire about flying standby…..

The user can travel throughout many sites, and many pages within one site, quickly and in innumerable ways. This infinite possibility on the part of user interaction is the very core of what makes web design different. There is no one path, and we cannot assume that every user has the same end objective. One must accommodate the meandering tourist as well as the user who has a purpose. Designing a website is about creating a visually meaningful way for the user to navigate to the desired content, browse, meander. And thus our approach to communication design must accommodate a user who has no inherent reason to stick around.

A web designer is not here to decorate the page, but rather to orchestrate the user’s actions. He or she is the architect that designs this structure and the content it holds with the purpose of making it not only accessible for many types of foot traffic, but comprehensible to the end user. (more…)