THE DAILY MONSTER

HAPPY HOLIDAY WEEKEND

Good evening. There are still a few minutes left in this 4th of July, and I just stumbled on this YouTube clip that I thought you should see. It's just gorgeous in every way, starting with the way the original audio came to be, to the way it's executed. I wish I could animate the monsters like that. (The poster frame is unfortunately generated, and no indication of content. It's entirely kid friendly, if that's a consideration.)

I hope you're all set for a beautiful, mellow holiday weekend!
I hope you know that 344 LOVES YOU

MONSTER 200 IS COMING...

Good morning. Monster 200 is all cued up for you.
All I need is approval from the Revver Gods
and it's going live. I won't go to sleep until that happens.
Why? Because 344 LOVES YOU

A COOL WORKSHOP IN NEW YORK

Good evening. Monster 154 will make its entrance in a few hours, but I just found out about a cool workshop in New York and thought I'd tell you about it. Three of my favorite designers --- Paul Sahre, James Victore and Jan Wilker --- are leading a one week workshop at the NY Art Directors Club in July. They put up a cool website about it here. They're putting the cap at 40 students and they expect to have people from all over attending. I did a workshop like this with Tomato back in the summer of 2001, and it was one of the best weeks of my life. If you're a design student or a pro at a crossroads, this could be a really cool experience. Check it out.

SUSTAINABILITY 101 (ART CENTER EDITION)

Good afternoon. How are you? The new Weekly Monster is in the works, but until that's ready, let me share a recent piece of mail with you. Yesterday afternoon I received a 6x9" postcard from Art Center College of Design, my alma mater --- a school that I love truly, madly, deeply. Here is the front of the card:

OK... not that exciting, but alright.
Design leadership. You got it.
Hit me with your message, school!

The message is... there will be a message! Soon!

Now... again... I love Art Center. My three years at the school gave me all kinds of excellent tools to make a life in design. I know a lot of the people currently involved in running the place. Even though they might not all agree which way the school should go, they all work with honest enthusiasm and dedication to give the students the best experience possible.

As a corporate entity the school also likes to talk a good game about environmental sustainability, about greening up. In fact, they're laudably doing so on their home page right now. So it's more than a little irksome to receive this non-announcement card in the mail. How many thousands of these cards went out to the alumni mailing list? How much energy was wasted on a card that says and does absolutely nothing?

Pay careful attention to my mailbox? Why sure! I was going to just take the next two weeks worth of mail and chuck it in the trash unopened. But now that I've received the heads up, I'll certainly keep my eyes open. I mean... for crying out loud. At the very least, give me a web link to go to. Or a phone number to call and inquire. Anything! Something to make this mailing something other than a complete waste.

I know it's a small thing --- a tiny misstep by an otherwise excellent school --- but if you're "leading the world in design" small things matter, and many small things add up to a big thing. (Also, there are pedantic cranks out there who like to blog about stuff.)

A good friend of mine works as a print rep. He is environmentally conscious, as is the printer he works for---which is one of the reasons I love them. He frequently teaches seminars on print production, sometimes with a focus on sustainability. When he talks about it, he acknowledges that all the soy ink and recycled paper in the world don't make printing a green activity. So the rule is this: Think about what you're printing. Maybe the correct answer is to send out an e-mail instead, or to build a mini-site. Save your printing dollars for the things that really need to be on paper. And when you do, put the information in a format people will want to keep. An object doesn't become waste until somebody stops using it.

I'm going to stop using this postcard now.

Bitching and moaning aside, you do know---don't you?---that 344 LOVES YOU

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Addendum---Today's Mail: Two wrist pads,
sent in two separate 22x15x5 boxes. Good times!

WINGS OVER AMERICA

Good morning. I just got back from my trip to Minneapolis. I had an excellent time meeting all the designers that came to my little presentation at Target. Target has a corporate dress code, and I have to say it works for me! This was far and away the most stylish audience I've ever had the chance to address. As much as I love Los Angeles, I will always prefer a crisp tie/sweater combination over an untucked shirt, and a pair of sleek boots over the ever-present, ever-dreadful flip-flops of my chosen home. (Mind you, it was also pretty damn cold in Minneapolis, so there are some obvious pros and cons.) Look... all I'm saying is, I had a great trip, and the designers at Target are one good-looking bunch.

I failed to take any pictures while I was on the ground, but I got a few nice wing shots for my collection. I thought I'd share my favorites. I also took a few minutes of film of the landing and taxiing at LAX. I love the little tractor that zooms alongside the plane for a while. On the original file you can actually hear that the camera picked up the music from my headphones. Which makes me think that I must've had it on at a pretty obnoxious level. Somebody I used to know a long time ago told me that there's always one asshole on the boat. "If you look around and you can't find the asshole, then you're it." And so it is. If you were sitting next to me on the plane --- 09-E, 08-F, 10-F --- I really apologize. I had no idea. And still 344 LOVES YOU

You can click on the images for a bigger view. These plane shots make nice desktop pictures

MONSTERS IN PUGET SOUND

Good afternoon. While more monster surprises are bubbling, I thought I'd show you a few photos from my trip to Seattle. I spent five days with the creative team at Starbucks as part of their creative retreat. I told them a little bit about what I do and led them in a fun monster workshop. They're a great group and they came up with brilliant stuff, both in my session and across the board. It was a pleasure to meet them.

As part of my talk I also gave a monster demonstration. I drew a monster before their very eyes, live and in full effect. Which I had never done before, so I was drawing with my fingers crossed. Especially since I suddenly found myself in front of an 18x24 drawing pad (vs my usual 8.5x11 sheets.) I'm a little bit scared of large formats, so I thought "OK. Let's see how this goes." But you can always count on the monsters to come through when they're really needed. Presenting the biggest monster yet:

I really like the way that one came out. The large format let me change my mind about the final shape a few times in the process, and that's fun. So... keep your eyes peeled for future large format creatures.

Until then, here are a few snapshots:

Beautiful Orcas Island:

Puget Sound and the SAM Olympic Sculpture Park:

Mount St. Helens, I presume:

Mount Unknown:

On the way home, just before we touched down in Burbank, we descended through a few separate banks of clouds. Looking out the window I noticed our shadow on the lower layer, ringed by a perfect little rainbow that followed us for quite a few minutes. As you can see from the Orcas Island photos, nature is such a showoff sometimes --- a bit of a slut for attention, really --- but I enjoyed the subtlety of this one.

You can see more photos right here.

This concludes our test of the emergency broadcast system. We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming. 344 LOVES YOU

WHAT'S NEXT?

Good morning. How are you? How was your weekend?

Yesterday was my birthday and I decided to give myself a gift: I finished the book portion of the impending multimedia extravaganza that is 100 DAYS OF MONSTERS. I worked until 4.30am to adjust all the little details that were in need of adjustment, pressed print, and went to bed, exhausted but proud. When I woke up, I went through the stack of pages. I saw the monsters and they were good.

Here are a few pictures from today's season finale:

As you can see, the pages---original (front) and revised (back)---are held together by big, beautiful elephant clips. After I mentioned a shortage in the binder clip department a few days ago, longtime monster friend Sam Berkes sent a surprise care package. Thank you, Sam!

Of course, when I reviewed the printouts, I did see a few systemic kerning issues that needed further action. On top of that, a few problems had emerged overnight. As I flattened all the monster images I noticed that the scans were a little bit too soft for me. (I like my monsters crisp.) So I batch processed the files with a smart sharpen effect. This worked out great, except that the sharpening also beefed up the dust particles on some of the scans, making them quite visible in some instances. So today I got to clean the dust off of about 20 monsters. With a 6 pixel healing brush. Fun, fun, fun!

Did I mention the missing markers yet? The printer needs my files broken up into 20MB chunks that are then reassembled in an InDesign Book file. With guidance from Grace the Art Director this worked out swimmingly. Except for images of markers I have bleeding off the edges of some of the spreads. For some reason, InDesign decided that markers on the far left edge of the left page belonged on the far right edge of the following right page. I didn't notice this until late this afternoon---after I had deleted all the errand marker images that had popped up in the file. "Where are all these extra marker files coming from? Sheesh! Delete--delete--delete!" So I had to go back to the master file, retrieve the little buggers, and restore them to their proper place.

What have we learned from all this? Books are fractal. There are always more fiddly bits to tend to. For all the time I spent on this book already, I could easily spend as much again to make decisions about an even more intricate level of details. Every change you make opens up the possibility of having to make that change consistent throughout the book. (Kerning the dates differently comes to mind, for example.) In the end, it comes down to making a decision: Are the changes making the product perceptibly better? Or have you gone to grouping the angels on the head of a pin by wingspan?

Where did I draw the line? I don't know. Is it the perfect book? Of course not. But I think it's a fun book, and an honest, loving attempt to represent a living website on the printed page.

Don't let the griping about all the work fool you, either. This is what I do, and I love it. Life is messy, confusing, and doesn't always yield to our desires, no matter how hard we work to make it so. By contrast, design (even more so than illustration) is reliable. It's an entirely artificial construct that rewards concentrated effort. The more work you put in, the more beauty comes out. Where else do you get that kind of return on investment?

As it is, I've already signed on to design a new photo book for the brilliant Jona Frank. I'm cooking up two new skunk works books with a friend, and a third of my own. I'm still determined to put out the Upstairs Neighbors book somehow. And a new poster is forming in my head. (Help!) In the meantime, Kenn and Tim are still working on the DVD. And then there's the joy of color proofing. But it's all getting there. I wish I could show the whole thing to you now, but we'll both have to wait until the end of February.

As far as the page files, I packed them up and showed them the door at five minutes to midnight, paused on my porch to throw a handful of POP-ITS snappers to exorcise the nasty ghosts of my last year, and walked to the FedEx drop box at my local post office.

This part is done.

Now it's on to what's next.

A few things for your calendar:

Please save the date: The weekend of March 1st/2nd will be my 34.4th birthday. This is within days of the book's release, and a mere month and 6 days before the 10th anniversary of the 344 Empire. I think all of that calls for a party of some sort, don't you? We'll have to figure out a way to celebrate. Please stay tuned.

More immediately, the first Daily Monster-enabled Halloween is coming up. What should we do to mark the occasion? Let me know what you'd like to see. The request lines are open!

Lastly, November 19th marks the first anniversary of the Daily Monsters. We'll have to think of some fun things to celebrate that one, too. If you have any thoughts on that one, please let me know.

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Right now, it's so very much time for bed. I hope you'll have a great day. And, man.. you gotta know that 344 LOVES YOU

A RUSSELL DAVIES MINUTE

Good afternoon. I'm not in the habit of recycling posts from other blogs, but Russell just put one up that is so right on the money, and fits somewhat with my post from earlier today. So I can't resist. Please take a look at what he and Stephen Fry have to say on the subject of making things better than they have to be.

I'm going back to my kerning now, because 344 LOVES YOU

HUMMINGBIRDS

Good morning. This has nothing to do with anything, but I just remembered a series of little movie loops I made of the hummingbirds on my porch a few years ago. Turns out they're still hidden away on my site. Looking at them now, they're actually quite lovely. I must've had a good day. Take a look if you like. It'll get you into a weekend mood. And it'll certainly remind you that 344 LOVES YOU

NO SPOILER: I HAVE SEEN THE SIMPSONS MOVIE AND IT IS GOOD

Good morning. Just to let you know, I went to see the Simpsons Movie at midnight. Considering the build-up, I'm happy to report that I liked it. I laughed a lot, and even got a little misty at one point. (Which happens to me a lot these days, but hey... ) Considering that they had to go up against the Greatest Highlight Reel of All Time, they did a remarkable job. Lots of really funny stuff in the movie. I'd happily watch it again.

One of the bigger challenges seems to have been how to scale up the line weight of the characters for the big screen. For my taste, the lines could have been a bit beefier, but it might have become too dense over 88 minutes.

Overall, I was entirely satisfied. My one complaint: I wish there had been more Apu. I'm still waiting for somebody to bring to the big screen Apu's story of an idealistic young Hindu, pushed too far by convenience store bandits "Take Your Hands Off My Jerky, Turkey!" Until that red carpet premiere you can always click on the following link to my all-time favorite Apu episode and know that 344 LOVES YOU

Incidentally, the Simpsons Movie website has a nifty feature that lets you Simpsonize yourself. Look for the "Create Avatar" tab on the top left.