Defined:

"Graphic design is an archaic description of the current practice of design. When design simply involved issues of form, it was graphic design. When the designer was responsible for both the form and content of messages, it became communication design. Today, the designer is responsible for communicating complex messages clearly, considering the form and content of a message and also the context in which the message is received by audiences over time. We consider this experience design. Design is the intermediary between information and understanding; its role is to make the complex clear and useful. Great design does this in a way that elevates the spirit."

-Ric Grefe, Executive Director, AIGA, New York.

I myself consider myself a "Communication Designer" but when I say that most people look at me wierd, so I say "Graphic Designer" they still are confused but atleast they have heard of that term before. Then I still ahve to explain what exactly I do.

Basically I design communication in whatever format that maybe ie logos, brochures, direct mailers, magazines, websites, advertisements...

Movie Review: Shooter

A short synopsis of the movie for those of you who have been living under a rock, Mark Wahlberg is a retired sniper from the US military that get's recruited to help find a shooter who is going to attempt to assasinate the president from shooting him a mile or more away. The FBI ends up attempting to frame Marky-Mark Wahlberg for the shooting, but he amazingly slips away and is on the run through the rest of the movie.

If you can get passed a few pointless slow motion shots, and Danny Glovers highly annoying wisper voice, you should be able to enjoy a really good action packed, big explosion, the bad guy get's it in the end movie.

Marky-Mark delivered some decent one liners, but the best part of the movie for me, is the fact that Marky-Mark was able to stay calm cool and composed in any situation without his "Funky Bunch." Despite a few cliche aspects of this movie in the beginning of the story, it's always enjoyable, atleast for me, to see a movie with one of those heroic characters that is able to squeeze his way out of any situation with only a few scrapes and maybe a couple gun shots to the leg or shoulder.

Creature of Habit

Hannah always gets into these routines, and once one starts it's almost impossible to stop. A few that I can remember in the past have been having to obsessively compulsively take every single toy in site to bed with her as she was leaving the room, going outside to play everyday when dad gets home from work (still happening,) after taking a bath you have to let her keep the towel and she walks around rapped up in it, also DAD has to carry her for a undertermined allotment of time as she is wrapped in the towel and has her head slung back looking at the world upside down as I spin her around in circles.

Well unfortunately I wasn't able to recall very many of her past "things" but onto what I really brought you here to read, so her two NEW routines are:

1.) She has to eat dinner sitting on my lap, which also in tells eating off my plate where she feeds me the first couple of bites, I suppose to test it out, because after that she takes all the bites herself. If she spills any food off the fork and onto her she freaks out until I get it off her as well.

2.) Every morning for some strange reason I have to pick her up and carry her everywhere I go throughout the house as I get ready until we get outside or to the car to take me to work. Also if she wakes up and I am not in the house she freaks out...

Even when we go outside to play the same exact thing happens, I even try to change things up a bit, but she WONT let me, she like freaks out, and stands there and looks at me and says, "Come on! Come on!"

What happens is when we go outside she has to have her toy Cadillac Escalade with a few toys that she will either hold in her hand or tell me to, "Take this!" When she forgets her truck, she quickly remembers soon after she leaves the door, and has to turn around and run back inside and get it. Then she rolls herself down the walkway to the play ground where there are three steps to get down, so she gets off the truck, I grab it and carry it down the stairs as she walks down the steps. Then I have to carry the truck across the play area to the other side where their is a sidewalk. I set the truck down and she gets on, and then I have to follow her as she strolls her way all the way down to the end of the sidewalk, across this small metal gutter cover thingy, that makes an interesting noise as she rolls over it, which she enjoys so she rolls over it a few times gets off the truck and then begins to jump on this metal cover thingy so she can hear the thump, and if the noise itself wasn't enough she makes her own mocking noise as she jumps, and I also have to do it with her. When I don't she runs over grabs my hand and pulls me over there almost forcing me to accompany her. After that I have to carry her truck up this sidewalk to the front of the pool, and the back entrance to the front office. There she enjoys picking flowers and running around in the patio area, getting up on the benches and trying to hide from me in the bushes. Then she returns to her truck and we roll down this sidewalk where she always gets off at the exact same spot, tells me to, "Take this!" meaning her truck and I carry it following her as she walks around the basketball court, and around the complex until I can finally convince her it is time to go back inside.

The other day Heather decided to follow us outside, and Hannah began to do this "routine" of hers, and Heather wasn't wanting to follow her, and Hannah snapped, went coo-coo for coa-coa puffs frustrated Heather to the point that she decided to go inside, and then me and Hannah did our Thang! and everything was as the cool kids would say, Cooler than a polar bears toe nails! (or maybe thats just what I say?)

Other than that, Heather and I both have been doing a bit of cleaning up with our computers, which for Heather means she is having to back up two years worth of photos of Hannah and deleting them off of her 40 GB hard drive that is almost obsolete in the world of computers these days. Especially since she is using like 30 GB's of space as of right now with pictures and music...

Movie Review: Summer 07, vol. I

Reno 911 Miami:
Basically if you enjoy the TV show then you are going to enjoy the movie. It's pretty much a two hour long episode uncut & uncensered.

Come Early Morning:
Stars Ashley Judd, who plays a depressed (I call it borderline psycho.) girl living in a small town in the South. She spends her free time getting drunk and having one night stands, then come early morning, she wakes up gets dressed and tries to sneak out and never talks to the guys again, until she meets a new guy where she attempts to do the same thing, and is persuaded to actually try to get to know him, when all the supposed pain her father's infedelity caused her in life has also reulted in her having commitment and trust issues, and she gets down right psychotic.

Their is hardly a scene that she doesn't have a beer bottle in her hand. So what appeared to be your average everyday love story chick-flick ends in a disapointing mess of unresolved issues, and only hinting at happier times in her future. Feel free to miss this one all together since you probably didn't even know it existed in the first place.

Catch and Release:
This movie stared Jennifer Garner, and the basis of the movie is her fiance died coming home from his bachelor party, after his death he begins to find out all of the secreats he was keeping from her, while doing so she falls in love with his best friend (one of them.) The movie made me lauph a few times, and it even ended well, meaning it resolved all the issues, or concerns, and everything but ONE thing is answered. The movie is a bit slow at parts, and the love story is a bit awkward, and unrealistic, well thats the best I can do at summing it up atleast. To put it simply the story itself was a bit shakey, however the soundtrack is spectacular, the only problem is the cinemotagraphy didn't quite live up or match the music very well.

I will say that the movie was worth watching, and it left me with happy thoughts and feelings, so that is good right?

Breach:
Ending on a good note. this movie was really intresting, and a bit disturbing concidering it is based on true events. The movie is about the greatest security breach in US history, where an FBI agent has been leaking info to Russia since the end of the cold war, and it wasn't until 2001 that they finally caught him and brought him down. The only disapointment was that they never really tell you why he sold out the country. It's definetly a movie worth declaring a Blockbuster Night for...

I always find it funny that the movies I dislike often times are the ones I have most to talk about. I just want you to know the real reason behind that, is because I don't want to ruin the good movies, now the bad ones i want to give out a solid warning so if you do watch it anyways you definetly can't say I didn't tell you so...

Off Season

Another great NBA season, as well as basketball as a whole came to an end last night as Ginobali took over the game last night and not too mention a key steal by Timmy, and multiple rebounds in crunch time. Some how despite Timmy solid and consistant play throughout the finals and the play-offs as a whole, Tony Parker was awarded the Finals MVP award for leading his team in scoring and leading the league in dribbling and dribbling, and dribbling until he can finally create his own shot. Timmy I'm sorry the league frowns upon consistancy, and smiles upon ill advised shooting, and accesive dribbling and holding the ball.

We can now look back at some great moments in sports that occured throughout the college basketball scene, and the entire 82 game NBA season. Kobe may not of went off for 80+ again, but he did have a long span of 50+ games in a row. Let's not forget about some really great performances by my man Gilbert Arenas. Steve Nash had yet another stellar MVP deserving season, Amare Staudamire is back, killing fools in the paint. The bulls are back in the building, Detroit blew yet another opportunity, Miami choked themselves through the entire season, and an embarrassing showing in the play-offs.

As for College we can look forward to what was a young but talented North Carolina team to return next year ready to make a strong run at bringing home another title. Some great young players will be leaving and entering the draft, some of which should ignore the hype and stay another year, but wont, let's just hope they don't end up like Marcus Pfizer (who was supposed to be the man in the NBA.) or Stomile Swift, (who is still a HUGE disapointment.) Jonathan Bender, (where is he?) Kwame Brown (there still may be a very small amount of hope left for his career.)

MOVIES:
Now is the time where I go on a blockbuster safari to fill the void in my chest. So stay tuned for variouse movie reviews throughout the summer and into the early fall.

The Breakdown

Well if you are a graphic designer, web designer, or the likes there has been a lot going on lately, I'm a bit late to chime in on any of it at all, havent really had much time to actually sit down and gather my thoughts, but I'll do my best to give a quick breakdown...

BAD LOGO
Well if there was ever a way to throw away $500,000.00 this is it my friends. When this logo hit the public's eyes everyone ripped it apart, it even made Good Morning America, and I read about 5-6 blog entries about it, after that I just quit looking. I'm speaking of the 2012 London Olympic's logo that the 80's threw up and took $500,000.00 dollars to the bank for. To read up on the amazing logo click here.

GREAT INTERVIEW
From the talented folks at SmashLAB's blog Ideas On Ideas is an interview with Erik Spiekermann a very talented Graphic Designer, anyone starting their own business or running their own design business can definetly benefit from the insites he gives.

The Interview

WWDC 2007
This is THE confrence for designers, this is the confrence where Steve Job's gives his presentation of all the new things about to come out. This confrence didn't fail to deliver a handful of goodies, with Leopard (the new operating system for MAC.) coming out right around the corner, he gave out a few sneak peaks at some of the new features for MAC's new operating system, as well as apple redesigning their entire website. Also I'm sure most people have already seen the comercials but the iphone hits stores June 29th. Not to mention Safari is now available for Windows, so all you windows users out their feel free to follow this link and download a much better and faster browser for your internet pleasures.

Download Safari

Sizza

Heather pulled into the parking space and quickly explained, "I'll just jump out and get it."

In the back of th car a big voice exclaimed, "SIZZA! SIZZA!"

As I looked back I saw the cutest little girl in the whole wide world pointing her finger vigorously forward. I think she was a bit excited to say the least.

However this story gets a bit more entertaining.

You see the essence of Shane is very weird, and most of the aspects that make me who I am are flat out strange and don't always make much sense, at least to the average Joe taking his average steps through life’s journey. So in the essence of Shane lies a few quirks some of which are, when ordering a drink from a restaurant he always asks for no ice, and when purchasing a fountain drink as well, wearing basketball shorts underneath his clothing at all times, & ordering a hamburger dry (without ketchup, mustard, mayo, or any other sauces.)

The one we are here to talk about today deals with this thing called "SIZZA." You see we arrived home with our Sizza and breadsticks in toe, and sat down at our small table and began to eat. My official routine is to pick off all the cheese and toppings and eat it separately, then I eat the pizza, as in the bread and the sauce with the cooked in flavors of the cheese and whatever other toppings came along. So if you glance over at Hannah while she is eating her Sizza, she is doing the EXACT same thing as her father....

How hilarious is that, well some of you may lauph, but as for me I hold my head up in pride, that my daughter is not only beautiful like her mother, but she got her astounding smarts from her father, thus meaning she knows how to eat Sizza the RIGHT way.

Redesign

Over the weekend, I put in quite a bit of time at the home computer and redesigned my personal site, now I just need to gather up some of my newer work and update that portion of the site as well. So you can be looking for that hopefully sometime this month.

Anyways to anyone who reads this humble blog of mine, please bounce over to my site and leave me some comments here letting me know what you think.

My Website.

I would like to invite you to excercise your brutal honesty with all feedback please!

Fortune Cookie