Yo. We’re having a graphics design gallery show, and I am one of the curators. In this context “curator” does not mean what you think it means, but that notwithstanding, it’s going to be a blast, and I am doing all that I can to assure this putative blastedness comes to fruition. This is the email I sent:

A PSEUDO-LINEAR AMALGAM

of work by GRADUATE-LEVEL members

of the GRAPHIC DESIGN PROGRAM,

on view at the SOL KOFFLER GALLERY

at the RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN,

from OCTOBER 19th through NOVEMBER 4th,

with an OPENING RECEPTION

to inaugurate things properly

at 7:00 PM on OCTOBER 18th.



Your presence at the reception is HUMBLY REQUESTED.

We will, of course, furnish WINE and CHEESE,

and many of the DESIGNERS THEMSELVES

will available for SCINTILLATING CONVERSATION.

… I would add that the wine and cheese is free, and that the Sol Koffler gallery is to be found at 169 Weybossett street in Providence, and you should fucking be there.

The whole thing is pushing my typical sleep-lite school schedule to the absolute max, so more after the fact. Fuck yes!

-fish

Yeah so it’s that time, again. Here we go:

Good:

• Moved to Greenpoint for the summer. Down the street from last summers’ sublet… I’m basically at the corner of Driggs and Leonard.
• A ton of my highly esteemed colleagues are either in the general region, or are converging on it shortly, which is unbeatable.
• Executive Decision wrapped things up quite fucking nicely in PVD, I think. Kevin and Isaac traded off DJ sets par excellence and rocked everyone until the cops came at around four. I think I may have pushed the practical limits of what I can get away with in my house, partywise, but that won’t stop me, I should think. Indeeeeeed.
• King-size bed in my summer spot!
• Girl talk remix of “Let’s Call It Off” by Peter Bjorn and John on repeat
• Thee Bang Gang Deejays remix of “Ice Cream” by New Young Pony Club on repeat
• Mylo remix of “No More Conversations” by Freeform Five on repeat
• Breakbot remix of “Let There Be Light” by Justice on repeat
• Pretty much anything else linked to and/or mixed in by the Acid Girls (who are not girls, incedentally; and plus their music is so awesome I am not even going to mention the kerning on the logo like the twerp that I am)
• It was kind of hillarious how my finger was a topic of discussion at the last round of parties before everyone left for the summer (see “ugly”, below). Everyone was all like, “I heard about your finger!” and “How’s your finger doing?” … no matter the circumstances, those are funny sentences, amirite??
• Got an alarm clock with an ipod dock. Waking up to a mix entitled “Loud Noises” by the aforementioned Acid Girls is pretty unbeatable.
• This is shocking, totally: I got a book on semiotics that I actually love. Like not just “don’t dislike”, “would think twice before burning”, or any of these kind of qualifiers I’d normally apply to books on semiotics. I fucking love it. Mainly it’s because the guy writing it actually seems to hate semiotics as much as I do, or at least the prevalent strain of semantic nonsense that passes for “semiotic theory”. I maybe will go into why it’s awesome if I see you in person, but I certainly won’t defile the internet with any more verbose tripe on the subject, but so yeah, there you go. I’m not ashamed. Fuck yes.
• Generally, my summer reading stack is pretty awesome, I would say.
• Before coming down here, I was up late in the studio with a friend of mine, and we threw the I Ching. I had never done this before. I must say it was absolutely terrifying how punctilious my prognostication was. It wasn’t mystical or nonsensical, it was just straight-up pragmatic in a frighteningly accurate way. I mean, I get it… you surrender your editorial urge to a stochastic operation, and instead use the result as a template for what you already understood, yeah yeah yeah. It was still eerie. Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime, after I get done raving about the semiotics book, when I see you. Right. Ok. Trust me on all this. Yes.
• Air conditioning
• Upgraded AirPort to 802.11n draft version; it’s very nice and shiny, with blinking lights.
• Freelance work that isn’t hell
• Doing portfolio and all that stuff, for real. This is actually fun and not torture, for some reason.
• Might be able to talk Mr. Vit into a permanent thing over at SpeakUp, which would be super fucking fantastic, I’d say. I will have to go out to his Park Slope house and bring his new baby a bib, or some sort of apropos newborn-baby-type gift, to be nice. Right? Right.
• McCarren pool is still free! Rock music, hipster chicks on a slip’n’slide, and Brooklyn Lager at 12 noon. Well hey.

Bad:

• I miss my mom.
• Not done with miserable stuff yet. After school I will have to sell my mom’s house, and other such things… it will not stop anytime soon. As I told a friend of mine recently: it’s going to break my heart, many times over, and I can see it all coming the same way you can see storms coming in the midwest. Yeah.
• I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: when you are sad, Apple Computer’s music products have the uncanny ability to sense it, and they like to exacerbate things by shuffling up the most heartwrenching music in your library.
• In a word: girls.
• I’m going to miss my friends so so so much. Half the GD grads on their way out were the kids I started here with, and they are awesome. I fucking love them; thank god a mess of them are coming to New York. It will not be the same without them in any way, nonono.
• I need to freak out. I have been repressing the swell of emotions I had after my mom died, and I need to freak out and deal with it. That’s never pleasant, but it is necessary… I hope I do it right. Basically.
• Have to finish some work up from school, cuz I missed so much stuff last semester.
• Apartment is misgraded quite steeply; one end of the computer desk is notably lower down than the other. I’d bring a level in here to check it, but it [the level] would just laugh.
• Had to order DSL cuz all the wireless around here is locked up, and I need me some internet for real. I thought I could go the rest of my life without touching another RJ-11 plug… I was wrong. So so wrong.

Ugly:

• There appeared to be a mammoth stock of DVDs in the apartment I’m subletting. The day I got here, I was classically hung over, on top of the typical exhaustion from an interstate move, and so I got all comfy on the couch, with ice cream and juice from the bodega on the end-table, and a pile of what I thought were MOVIES I could WATCH. But no. The cases are all empty… presumably, my subletee took them to Argentina, which is where she went. C’est la guerre. Blech.
• Last Friday, back in Providence, I was driving the car that my dear associate Hannah lent me while she’s on the west coast. Hannah took a glass-blowing class last Wintersession, and she made this sculptural piece that involved very long strands of thin glass, maybe 1/8” in diameter, max. We had used the car to move this piece to the studio about three days prior to this Friday in question. I bring this up because on that Friday, I was heading to the dry cleaners’, or somesuch, and I casually went to flick some dirt off the passenger seat while at a stoplight. When I pulled my hand back I saw that my right ring finger had a three-inch long piece of 1/8”-diameter glass going RIGHT THROUGH THE TIP OF IT. I have been telling people that it looked like an olive in a martini… usually they don’t really wince until I throw that detail into the story. It really did, though, really, except with blood, and it was my finger and not an olive. Basically I freaked out and pulled off the road. My friends were awesome; they drove the car back for me and picked me up at the hospital, which I was taken to in an ambulance. So. If you see me and my finger is all bandaged up, that’s what happened. Yes.
• Also glass-related: I dropped a beer bottle in my kitchen this morning while barefoot. I didn’t suffer any further lacerations, or anything, but cleaning it up was (as the header denotes) fucking ugly.
• Saw two cockroaches in the bathroom already. Blech. WHYYYY??!?
• Sometimes you just don’t know what to say to someone, despite having a list of roughly 10 jillion things you want to express to them.
• The subway is already hotter than the core of the sun; I have had to start carrying around extra shirts already, so when I go to meetings and whatnot I won’t look like some sort of uncouth neanderthal ogre.

We had final crits for Reinfurt’s studio yesterday. I will tell you: I have seen some serious nonsense at crits, in my day. Up at iEAR, people would go through the most absurd shit to avoid confronting the truth about their work. Ditto RISD, of course. But yesterday’s bullshit was super fucking unprecedented, in like every way. I am not going to go into it, really; it’d end up being a bunch of “and he was like … and so we were all like …” type of stuff, but I will in fact offer the following images as proof of the utter histrionic catastrophe that it was.

Figure 1. Rob Giampetro hitting a fucking piñata with a broom handle.

Figure 2. Isaac being all like “WHAT THE FUCK??”

Figure 3. Me being all like “WHAT THE FUCK??”

Figure 4. Bethany Johns being all like “WHAT THE FUCK??”, Sesame Street style.

… so yeah. Most of it wasn’t quite as ridiculous, but that ending there took some serious cake, I’d say. Blaaaaagh. This is why people so frequently roll their eyes when uttering the phrase “graduate school”, isn’t it? It really is, really, like for reals. Yes.

But yes. Things are wrapping up nicely, here. For example, our MFA graduate show opened up the other night. Considering they’re having it in the Providence convention center this year (vs. the RISD museum, which is being renovated or somesuch), I’m pleased to say it actually kind of works. Usually this show consists primarily of the second-rate crapola that people have lying around their studios after their big final crits or final shows, or what have you, but in this case people pulled it together and rocked out. Also, the show itself was well-considered enough to work at the rather massive “convention center” scale, which was, like, a pleasant suprise. Indeeeeed. Breanne has pictures up, too. Yes.

Anyway. Now I’m in New York. Going to look at sublets… if you have a sublet that I could rent from you for june/july/august, and involves NO ROOMMATES and preferably is in Greenpoint, then by all means, lemme at it. Otherwise yeah, wish me luck, and I’ll meet you at the Shake Shack in two weeks for lunch. Fuck yes!

-fish

PS. Even more on SpeakUp / WDC, this time on intellectual property and ripping people off. Fun times. Yes!

YO MY WALL IS UP!! Come to the fucking mason building and SEE!!!! I’m very happy with this shit. I know you’re not supposed to like your own shit, but I am taking an exception this time, and liking it. Yeah!

Also I have a new article up on SpeakUp and Writing Design Criticism. Do tell me what you think if you have some time to waste. Because I love you, and your opinion is paramount. Indeeeeed yes!

Anyway that’s it for now. I will be unbroke in about two hours so talk to you after I buy some food and eat it. Until then.

-fish

Hi. Still trying to unfuck my brain. Doing some work, at my dad’s house on Cape Cod. There was a totally awesome wifi signal for the first two days, but they must have smelled my thirst for internet from afar, cuz it got completely turned off right when my gmail inbox filled up for the first time, which screwed up my fone. This whole sequence of events was actually kind of awesome, cuz it made me throw myself in the ocean, which was cold enough to make me feel as though I was being burned alive.

Can’t deal with people, just yet… at least not in large numbers. One on one, one on two, okay sure fine. More than that and I start to act wack, a mode in which I would prefer not to operate. I do love you, though, I should add. I love you more than ever before. I just can’t think straight, is what it is. Yes.

But it’s nice to work, again. My dad’s house is not at all equipped for graphics design, so it has been a total MacGuyver adventure. I have done the following things in order to get shit done:

• disassembled three floor lamps and cobbled the components together for a photo shoot that thankfully did not burn the place down
• ripped up a rag and used it to tie off garbage bags which were wrapped around ungrounded extension cords and dragged through puddles
• drove across most of cape cod to go to a fucking mall, to get yet another USB cable, cuz I forgot mine
• smashed an epson magenta ink cartridge with a hammer, to get pictures of splatters
• concocted just the right mix of ketchup and balsamic vinegar to spill down a sheet of paper, in leu of ink
• chopped several ballpoint pens in half with a cleaver, before I figured out the ketchup/vinegar trick
• chopped up a forsythia (see above) but did not kill it

…. I can rightly claim to have done other nutso shit, but that’s the top of the design-related list. Now I’m going to try to write some shit. Writing is what I thought would be the easiest to kickstart, but — suprise, suprise — it’s the hardest. So. In leu of anything decent, here’s most of an email I sent to David Reinfurt, in which I explain what the deal is wi the the whole cavalcade of ripoffs. Mr. Reinfurt is teaching a studio I’m in this semester, and he is awesome. Yes.

We haven’t talked in a month or so (egads!) but so let me fill you in on what my intentions are in this project. It’s a large project, parts of which fulfill the requirements for some of my other classes. What I have been doing is producing a series of posters wherein I rip someone off. The attached zipfile contains several examples; they range from established designers, to more obscure practitioners, to well-known artists who work with type. The idea is simple: I choose a piece of work by one of these people and replicate it as faithfully as possible from scratch. That is to say, I don’t just open up their JPGs and fuck with them. But I substitute the text “I AM TOTALLY RIPPING YOU OFF” for their words. You’ll note that in some cases I have added ancillary text, when either the nature of the off-ripping or the target of the ripoff demands it.

This is an object lesson in intellectual property and the rather contentious and ill-resolved idea that one can “own” an idea. This has been a hot-button issue in software (e.g. open-source, DRM, proprietary interoperation protocols, etc) as well as elsewhere in all fields related to cultural production… if you have not already read the attached essay by Jonathan Lethem, it’s a good read on the topic (amusingly, I would have simply linked that article on harpers’ website, but they made the whole thing “available to subscribers only”, sort of proving my point, in a way).

The manner it relates to our class is in what I am doing with this stuff. In the “art world”, recent innovations have forced the uptake of intellectual property pragma that relates to some of the nonsense with software. It is one thing to make a masterwork painting that is a completely unique physical object; it is quite another to make a digital piece of “art”, using the same production tools as designers, film-makers, et al, and then artificially limit the works’ distribution by only producing a limited number of, say, DVDs, or digital prints.

Works like these rely on constructs like “certificates of authenticity”, which are analagous to software license certificates and the like. In theory, you can make infinite copies of the data that comprises the Ubuntu open-source operating system, or of Microsoft Windows, or of Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster Cycle”. Duplicating the latter two, however, is illegal, even though both of these things have been produced with the same sort of toolchains that enable distribution of an unlimited scope (they’re both bits and bytes, at the end of the day, after all). Intrestingly, “certificates of authenticity” serve as a currency of sorts… an apt comparison as art collection is often compared to a futures market.

It is a touchier subject with artists and designers. In the attached article by Simon Doonan, he humorously details a situation that arose where the artist Jack Pierson claimed eminent domain, as it were, over Doonan’s aesthetic. Pierson tried to suggest that he had some sort of exclusive right to use found junk signage in his artwork. This argument implies that Pierson’s identity as an artist was solely based on style and technique.

My response to this mess is to rip a wide range of people off, and tell them about it. My poster series thus far includes Karel Martens, Jenny Holzer, Laura Dapito, Wim Crouwel, Ed Ruschia, John Baldessari, Experimental Jet Set, and Erika Nishizato, among others. I have already been given clearance to hang these posters in the Mason lobby, and they’ll be up there for 2 weeks starting around the first. Here is the current plan for the wall:

http://objectsinspaceandtime.com/~/fish/_for_david/_masonwall_mockup03.pdf

The distribution aspect of the project is such: I will also mail a copy of each of these posters to the person who has been ripped off. Enclosed will be in intellectual property receipt, and a complaint form, replete with an obnoxiously impersonal cover letter. I designed the receipts to mimic the simple laser-print transaction receipts from the local 7-11 (see the attachment ipreceipts.pdf for some examples) and I have printed them out at the right size, taking care to rip the bottom edge of the page so they appear as authentic as possible. (to that end, I have a friend in digital media who has several actual receipt printers that I can get access to, so that’ll appear as real as possible).

How people react, both to the posters as displayed in an “art gallery” style context and to having their own work egregiously aped, will draw forth my currency design. I see the project as a dipstick, with which I might assess peoples’ prevailing sentiments on intellectual property issues in design. I have already sent out a few posters, and I will do another round.

But so. As I mentioned, I am in a rather poor mental state, these days. (it took me about four days to write this). I think I need to be away from class for a little while. I am planning to go down to my dad’s house on cape cod for a few days. I’ll bring my laptop and work there, but I need peace and solitude. If I stay here I fear I won’t be able to get out of bed, most days.

What I would like to do is to finish this project up, and work with you individually to design my currency. I really don’t want to ask for this this kind of “special treatment”, quite frankly. Most everyone has offered me an opinion on what I should do, and they all range from “jump back into your work!” to “take all the time that you need!”… personally, I hate to claim any sort of extenuating circumstances for myself. I want to ultimately be treated like anyone else. But I must take exception in this case. I am fine one minute, and a mess the next.

Please let me know if this is agreeable, or what I might clarify. I hope you’re well. Thanks for reading.

Whooooo. Yeah so I just put up my review of the Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Triennial up on Writing Design Criticism. I’m of the opinion, as are others, that the Triennial was rather wack. I mean, did anyone like it? All my designer friends have had rather unkind words for it thus far. Maybe those of you who are not all-encompassing design nerds? Do let me know, because I am curious.

I wanted to get into all sorts of other shit in the article, like about how it’s kind of odd that COMA did the book and the identity for the show AND were featured in it. That’s odd, amirite?? I mean, COMA is fantastic, really… they came up here for a visiting designers’ workshop last spring, and they were the guest critics for the thesis reviews, and they’re excellent critics and designers and all that, BUT… WTF?? I would like to know WTF. And also the heavily preemptively defensive tone the curators seem to be taking is also quite something. HRMMMM, INDEEEED!!

But I do recall hearing some guy on the radio, circa the year 2000, defending the Millenium Dome. This dome was the temporary home for a monstrous, all-singing, all-dancing show about humans and how generally awesome they are and will be in the future, which ran through the year 2000. People generally hated it, even when on drugs, and it’s pretty much been written off as a failure since. But so the guy on the radio was talking about how gigantic expos such as that are typically received poorly in their time, but remembered fondly, and that such would be the case with the dome.

After reading that Guardian precis, I dunno about the dome, but the radio guy’s thesis sounds rather believable… it’s easy to be like, “last triennial was SOO much better.” I myself can’t weigh in on that, as it’s the first I’ve been to, but hey yeah. Do let me know what you think, indeed.

But so yeah. Trying to finish all open writing projects, now. Got a few more. Some are typical grad-school pre-thesis nonsense, some are for my own shits and giggles, and some are bits I hope to actually get into print sometime in the possible future. That, I think, would be very nice. Even Jacek, from 2+3D, was like “yeah, it’d probably benefit your career to have something published in English,” and I agree with that… to which I would add “… and also in actual print and not on some sort of blog.” Indeed.

I do love me some blog, though, although I still find “blog” to be one of the most repulsive neologisms ever crafted. I’ve been writing blather on the web for about 10 years now, and the practice has thoroughly fucked up my editing techniques. In the case of that Triennial article, for example, I wrote the first draft in Word. I cleaned up my grammar and whatnot, and then moved it into InDesign, where I simultaneously typeset the article, wrote the footnotes, placed images, and re-edited the fucking text. After that, I went through the whole thing again in Movable Type. It is the act of publishing the stuff online, though, that lets me see the real gaping horrid errors. I’ll fix like one error, rebuild the whole page, and then look at it anew, and with each pass I’ll find all the stuff that eluded me when editing in any other program. I think the scrutiny comes from when I originally had an “online journal”, which I updated in Emacs over dialup; in such an environment, retyping and reediting is a royal fucking problem.

Not that my shit don’t stank, or nothin’. I am sure the piece is far from perfect. But hey.

Another thing I should mention is that I have been nerding out so thoroughly these days, to the point where my social life is basically done. It’s quite sad. Now that there’s more light in the day, though, I’ve had it with such nonsense. So you (yes YOU) should call me up and buy me drinks. I promise you all types of entertaining conversation and observations, really. In fact, there’s a party here at Mason (yes, the studio, but it’s the best I can do right now) this friday after Open Studios. You come by there, that’d be an excellent start. Yes. Word. Allrite. Talksoon.

Yeah!

-fish

What follows is a rather annoying essay I had to write for grad seminar, in which I “reflected” on a presentation I gave on my influences vis-a-vis my work. Please excuse the rampant pretense. Yes.

There are a great many things in this world that pique my interest. Of those that fall under the general aegis of my practice and work, I’d say it’s pretty easy to draw a line down the middle of them. On one side, there are the things that I love because something about them speaks directly to my persona.

Figure 1. Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Room, synchronized light bulbs and mirrors, 1965.

Yayoi Kusama’s monumental works, through which she sought (nay, seeks; she’s still a practicing artist) to defray the constant crackle of her neurological problems, inform my process in a way that naturally goes beyond mere formalism. Her work offers a viewport into the war she fights with her own errant brain on a daily basis. As such, it serves as an example of how such a force can be channeled, rather than pacified or otherwise “cured”, into art. I see things like that and I think, aha yes, I could do that.

Figure 2. James Turrell, Live Oak Friends Meeting House, light installation, 2000.

James Turrell, on the other hand, produces work that is austere in presentation, punctilious in process, and clear in intent. My hands aren’t steady enough to make the things he makes, and my mind lacks the zennish clarity one needs to conceive of these things in the first place. I’m attracted to the work, because it offers something I need. Turrell himself, however, is not someone I particularly identify with: we have little in common in most aspects. I’m sure that if we were stuck next to one another on a plane and forced to converse for a time, we’d wind up pissy and uncommunicative long before landing. (Not that that would ever happen; he’s most likely flying first class these days, whereas I’m stuck in coach.)

Figure 3. Karel Maartens, Counterprint, experimental monoprint, 2004.

Unsurprisingly, those few characters who straddle that line are among the most compelling: Karel Maartens, for example, is a supreme master of printing processes and data visualization. However, he does not allow these highly technical and systematized facets of process to rule his work; he still finds value in irregular metal junk, as the monoprints in his “counterprint” monograph wonderfully illustrate. His work multiplexes the calclulated and calming qualities I find attractive with the ragged human aspects I can identify with.

Figure 4. Maya Lin, Topologies, variable installation, 1997.

Ditto Maya Lin: In her Topologies show, she had meticulously and mathematically CNC-routed slabs of wood happily intermixed with prints she made by inking fragments of glass. The stochastic and the inductive were both bent into form by her vision.

This, I think, is what I aspire to do: I would like to harness the edge of my constructed systems. The points at which these constructs break down is frequently where the most fascinatingly unexpected situations can arise. In edge-cases like these, these break-down points frequently serve as on-ramps, as it were; they are where the humanity of the maker can break through the mask of the system to greet those on the outside.

You know, like this:

Figure 5. Unknown Artist, Longcat vs. Tacgnol, apocalyptic cat vision, 2007.

See, back when I wanted to do the double whammy of an architecture degree and a law degree, people would always be like, WTF?? To which I would respond, “Architecture is written in law. Like building codes and whatnot? And I like code, because I’m a geek, and so.” And still, the quizzical expressions of doubt would remain unabated. But look: Andrés Duany suggests suspending code in New Orleans, so that reconstruction can, you know, actually happen for reals. And this one Wes Janz has fantastically illustrated how most of the once-prosperous United States is now a complete hole, due initially to economic factors but now held in place by fucked legal situations.

If I were still an architecture student, I would use this stuff as a starting point for a thorough investigation of the International Building Code, and the cultural and economic normativities that lurk within. I can’t find the fucking link but a few days ago, I saw some article that offhandedly attributed the nature of all the new glass-box condo construction in Vancouver to a specific code exception about the tower’s core and egress stairways and that sort of thing. But I’m a graphic designer, so it’s in your court… All you architecture nerds better drop the bullshit archibabble and subscribe to Harvard Law Review if you know what’s good for you. Fuck yeah.

Blech. So MCAD was great. I saw lots of good shit and also got blisters on my hands from ripping staples out of a wall. We had a raging party in a luxury hotel room, too. All very good. Listened to Jose Gonzales and Girl Talk freakout mixes on loop. It was cold, but not unbearable. Need a real break, tho. Not sure what is going to go on for “spring break”, but you can bet considerable money on the fact that it will be AWESOME.

Also, in case you were curious, OFR was not so great. Or at least, it could have rocked considerably harder, most definately. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, because it would be much easier for me to say “it was awesome”, so that you would feel bad about missing THE EVENT OF THE SEASON and show up for sure at the next jammy jam. But no, rest assured that whatever you did then was an excellent use of your time, indeed.

Now I’m back in the studio. Because that’s what I do, right? It would appear to be the case. OK. Yes. Love you. Right.

-fish

Blech, I’m sick. People were coughing and hacking all last week up in the studio, so I should have seen that shit coming. Smoking 10 metric tons of cigarettes did not help, but what was I supposed to do? There was no better way to commune with my studiomates new and old. So I don’t regret it. I am cramming claratin and vitamins and yerba mate and lots of other healthy shit down my throat, to compensate, and it’s sort of working.

Taught my first “computer class” today. Not only do I get to be the studio-wide tech support monkey, but I also get to teach undergrads how to use adobe CS and whatnot. I got the “advanced” section, too, which actually means about 33% of them are actuallly “advanced”, 33% sort of know some shit, and the remaining portion are, erm, “not advanced”. or thereabouts. We shall see how that goes… 10am monday mornings, fuck yeah.

It sucked, too, cuz I was having all sorts of fantastic dreams, like where I crashed my helicopter in the Venetian canal and then had to break into an airport and sell my highly advanced techno-umbrella for a secret boarding pass, shit like that. Maybe that was just the benadryl fucking with me but hey.

Anyway. As promised, more shit from the past:

Big poster map remix of Italo Calvino’s A Sign In Space.

BABYMAN 2000.

My bookshelf as of last January.

… OK yeah. Now to make a “mind map” for tomorrow, FUN!! Indeeeeeed.

-fish

Due to my hillarious academic loop-de-loops, I have to do another “first-year review” next thursday. For the most part, this is retarded, cuz I’ve been here two years, and if they didn’t want me around I would certainly know it by now. But it’s also kind of cool, cuz I get to exhume all sorts of old work and parade around the few interesting chestnuts. Like this timeline concept map thing I made for a process book:

Click for the whole shebang. Taken from this document.

… I think I’ll post more random shit over the next few days, whilst I sift through it all. Why not?? Hey hey.

In other news, this is what we’re doing over here, cuz school hasn’t really started and we’re all a bunch of alcoholics, it would seem. Indeed. So yeah more crap soon! Yeah.

-fish

• if you don’t already have them, buy the following things:
  • big fucking cutting mat
  • olfa L-1 (do not bother with any other pussy olfa blades)
  • x-acto and box of 100 spare blades
  • C-THRU ASE36 metal ruler
  • some leadholders and soft leads
  • silkscreeening stuff (if only to just leave around your house and impress undergrads of the opposite gender)
  • “elements of typographical style”, bringhurst (make sure to carry it in your bag for like a week so it’s all abused-looking)
  • epson 1280 and a continuous ink system
  • bone folder
  • a vanity domain and web hosting


• do not bother buying:
  • a scanner (the school has plenty)
  • “life style”, bruce mau (I mean please)


• never ever ever EVER buy software. there is always some geek in the studio who will priate it and install it for you, if you buy him/her coffee or cigarettes or what have you.


• if you do smoke, smoke kamel red lights, because the box will impress your fellow graphic designers without fail.


• do not say “I’m interested in architecture”. you will sound like an idiot. if you are actually interested in architecture, just quietly take the drafting class they offer at the BEB in the fall and don’t talk about it till after. the class will probably kick your ass all over town, but a) you’ll get your fill of architecture type nonsense and b) drafting, if you don’t already have the skill, is incrediby valuable for typography and type design. be prepared not to sleep every thursday night.


• in fact, be prepared to do 1 all-nighter a week, until the last three weeks of the semester, in which case sleep is pretty much catch as catch can. (it could be worse, you could actually *be* in architecture, in which case forget about sleep in any meaningful way really).


• learn how to bind a fucking book. you will have to make at least one book per class, pretty much. most often these are “process books”. designing a process book is easy: pick your favorite grid from “grid systems” and dump everything from the semester into it. if you bind it nicely, tho, you might be able to bump your final grade up a notch (if you care about such things) cuz the process book will often be the only thing the teacher has to assess you on when grades are due.


• I would admonish you to learn to embellish your speech with intelligent sounding nonsense at this point, but I fear you will learn to do that on your own to a fantastic extent.


• read non-design books and go see movies. if you don’t, you will become some sort of raving academic sycophant, or worse, an AIGA member.


• if you have interesting skills from before you were a grad, don’t talk about them. keep them hidden deep inside and then bust them out for a project w/o telling anyone. trust me, it will be awesome. plus if any of those skills are computer-related, keeping them inside will effectively prevent everyone from considering you the de facto “tech support” go-to person. I hate that shit.


• go to new york all the time. even if you’re some kind of fanatical burrito-eating west coaster, go to new york whenever you can afford it. new york has:
  • awesomer design shit and museums than providence
  • places to buy awesome design shit (talas, kate’s, spoonbills etc)
  • better cheese
  • infinitely better bars and music
  • drugs


• … the apex of the new york thing will happen at some point during your first semester, when you realize everyone in your class is dating someone who lives in brooklyn, and you will have a strange moment some hungover sunday morning when you are walking down the street in green point looking for eggs and you see all your fucking classmates doing the same thing.


• conversely, don’t bother with boston. boston is for dorks. trust me.


• get a good-looking winter coat. providence can get stupidly cold.


• if you have a choice between doing something explicitly “digital” (code, flash, web shit etc) and something “analog” (bookbinding, printmaking, etc) I would say go analog. you can learn flash any fucking time you want, with just a laptop and google, but how often are you going to run across a letterpress studio with a polymer-plate machine?? I mean, who the fuck do you think you are, anyway???


• one thing about crits is: at almost every crit there is a winner and a loser. if you don’t like competition and you think we should all just get along and collaborate and all that, well hey. but the truth is that there is almost always someone who is way out front of everyone else in the crit, be it in terms of content, concept, execution, whatever. it’s not always fair. some people “win” by just producing way more than anyone else and not editing their shit down. everyone else in the class, besides the “winner”, will be at more or less the same level, except the “loser”. this person maybe didn’t understand the project, or they technically fucked up their work somehow, or maybe they’re just an imbecile.
  
  the arc of most classes has this same pattern, typically with the person who “wins” the most crits “winning” the class. it seems to be like RISD de rigeur to give one person an A, the rest B’s, and one person a C or F in like every class. I don’t know if all the teachers got together and decided this one day, or if the situation just happened to converge on that pattern, but there it is.
  
  if you know in your heart that you are a good designer, you won’t care about “winning” or “losing”, but it can be quite fun and stimulating to engage in hearty interclass competition, and it makes you think about your work in a different way. you’re all still friends at the end of the day, and you all still go for beers at the end of the week… “losers” get gossiped about, and “winners” get secretly lauded, but that’s the extent of things really.