Blog:

14/05/2008

Someone buy me iamfresh.com :P

An informal one: Well, I’m aware I haven’t trod in this old boot of a blog for well over two months now, but I’m not dead. In fact I’m very alive and bopping for anyone wondering why I’ve been rather illusive recently; abusing my inbox. If you’ve dropped a fat one in my Thunderbird over the past few weeks, I will get around to replying above and beyond the urgencies. Stay primed!

Other brief news: I’ve been informed I’m humbly featured in this month’s Web Designer Magazine (Issue 144 I think?), although I haven’t seen it myself yet. I’ll get around to the customary smug centrefold and post it on the new 'folio site I have tipping the 98% finished mark - it's really quite lush even if I do say so myself :) Also some very fresh print work coming off the inkers later this week.

While you’re staying primed go back to YT and waste some more of your day.

10/03/2008

David Bray aka Bonesy

Resisting the temptation to post about music-related stuff on an almost daily basis in this blog is an ongoing chore; after all it's hard to recall any artist that hasn't been influenced by sounds somewhere down the line. Illustrator: Bray is probably most famous in underground circles for his artwork on the Various Production (now simply called Various in a patently clever attempt to thwart us piracy fiends) LP; 'The World Is Gone' - still one of the albums of 2006 in my opinion.

It’s easy for Bray’s work to prompt discussion. His drawings are impromptu and slightly perverted to say the least, often containing indecent, yet lustful, women in alarming situations with animals and beasts: beastialic you could say, if the word existed. His capture of the female form is undoubtedly stunning to the point of erotic.

Working out of his own fetishes Bray typically cites the American bondage illustrator Eric Stanton, Anne Jones, and strangely, but aptly, Pee-Wee Herman as influences. Check this video interview; posted around this time last year whilst Brays work was being exhibited at Stolen Space, as well as Recoatdesign.

See more of his images here, here, and on his website. Big up Recoat for the images!

06/02/2008

Diggin' *Skaffa's Ren & Stimpy'idge....................

Having a keen eye sure saves lots of cash on not buying Computer Arts (even though they beat me to it last month... just). On par with Tilt with a posca; Skaffa, hailing from NR Amsterdam, Holland, crafts dope graf-inspired pop-art characters. Click on some stuff below for eye candification:

Doobies, Xbox and clean lines - that's the life. Check his Flickr, and whyspace?

21/01/2008

Emotion [Project]ion

Introducing the big one; my final year project:

Emotions and internal fulfilment are at the heart of everything we do as humans. The last I heard Darwin was proposing the same theory. Whether our actions are non-egocentric (helping others) or purely for our own conscious benefit, we're all looking to enhance our emotional engagement in things. Films, television, and music are obvious ways of indulging our mood.

Imagine you could search for emotional experiences on the net. Emotion Projection seeks to make this happen. By using Robert Plutchik's emotional classification wheel the project aims to map emotions to film titles, enabling users to chose movies based on how they'd like to feel; the mood they'd like to exact, and the emotions they'd like to elicit.

If you fancy a really interesting read (bypass the business s**t), then check out this project proposal.

Emotionprojection.org – keep your emotions peeled!

01/01/2008

Mixed-media frenzy

As the poet Langston Hughes once said: 'My motto as I live and learn is; dig and be dug in return'. The importance of showing appreciation for other peoples creative art is IMPORTANT. Praise someone this year and make a point of showing your appreciation of another person's talent; be it music, art, design, photography, 3D or video. My personal new year's resolution is to let every artist, designer and musician I value know how great their stuff is.

And on that note I kick of 2008 with a flurry of mixed media artists I think are utterly sick - and they know about it too!

Petya Savova

I discovered Petya's work through the Flickr contacts list of a friend of mine (whose work has also been a big inspiration to me over the years). I don't know what's happnin' in Bulgaria at the moment, but it the sky definitely isn't a limit.

Check petya's Flickr out here or her portfolio profile here.

Will Barras

Will is part of the infamous, Bristol-based, Scrawl Collective, which coincidently houses two more of my favourite UK illustrators; Mr Jago and panda yoghurt. Will currently draws and directs for Bermuda Shorts, a cornerstone of London's animation and video production studios. Making wicked use of masking effects and acrylic washes he really smacked it with the Ghost LP work in my opinion.

Hit up Will's 'folio here.

Antony Micallef

RebelArt posted some of Micallef's stuff in September 2007. Since bookmarking the articleit then I've only just got around to checking his website out properly - wow. Regardless, I'm far behind the times. Micallef has been captivating spectators since before 2000.

Very powerful politically driven iconography principally based around consumerism impelled by perhaps the best examples of mixed media I've seen all year. Heavily inspired by his travels in Japan; the shit J-pop, brand lambasting, and astralally fluffy colours he seemingly dominates the celebrities galleries with Brad Pitt, Jude Law and REM front man Michael Stipe all refutably among collectors.

And best of all he's UK born and bred! All this and no street art background - amazing.

Get your hands on Antony Micallef ed.2 here and ONLY here for 25 bones. Bless his 'folio here or lash some cash.

Luciole Loong

Breathtaking digital/watercolour drawings. See for yourself here. Mixing up textures with salt and sponges makes for dope stuff.

11/12/2007

Zeitguised: WOW

Go here and see for yourself. Courtesy of zeitguised.com, bequeathing Funkstorung a promo video for their track 'the zoo' in 2004.

You have to take your hat off don't you; conceptually and technically amazing stuff. so much great stuff c o m i n g out of Germany at present.

02/12/2007

The 800px rebirth

Just like a botched colonic irrigation, this post has remained constipated for a while now. A year or so ago I never thought I would be saying this, let alone writing it. It was about the same time I stopped bothering to include users of 800x600 pixel screen resolutions in design briefs. Arghk I'd herald; 'if they're using a screen res' that small they can't possibly be *interested* in design and photography etc etc blah blah. WRONG!

Since upgrading my panel over the summer I've started to browse the Web, increasingly, in two browsers, side-by-side, vertically tiled. This usage has even been tried and tested with applications; coding and previewing, chatting and watching (TV), even pixeling and vectoring now that CS3 have brought in collapsing docks and toolbars.

Another such occasion when vertical tiling is extremely useful (for convenience and time saving) is Flickr slideshows (on 'fast' setting of course). You can literally cover hundreds of photos in a matter of minutes providing you have a decent connection. It increases the productivity of concept generation substantially.

It's also becoming increasingly 'normal' to have to resize an elastic layout to avoid reading lines of text that continue past the typically accepted 65 characters in length. Take this cheerfully illustrated page for example. It takes me half the time to span the lines, and content overall, when viewed through a window sized at 800x600px.

It's also interesting to see how Microsoft has crafted the word set-up in the new office 2007 suite, with pages now fluidly taking up horizontal space as well as vertical.

Perhaps I just need that extra two inches for dual 1024x... stardom? I'd love to know how you are tiling the rules with your set-up.

10/11/2007

Chihuly: garden of glass

I discovered Dale Chihuly this morning...

One of the things that initially crossed my mind was how one individual could accomplish this amount of work? In fact he doesn't; choosing only to conceive and direct projects since losing vision in one eye and the ability to percept depth as a result, in a car accident during the 1970s.

This guy has been completely rinsed photo-wise, for very obvious reasons, but I've lovingly hand sprung a crop of cream here, here and here. God knows how m$ch one of his chandeliers goes for.

'Garden of glass' exhibition runs at Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania through until February 2008. However it looks like he's due another UK visit soon though, after exhibiting at Kew Gardens way back in 2005. Watch this space...

04/11/2007

Propa, wifout the ganda

'Our policy, our philosophy - to be honest about what we do best, and to be honest about what we could do for a client. Not just be advertising twats.'

Most advertising is wack, but this group of people ain't. Roll forward fifty years and look at leanmeanfightingmachine's innovative promotional video for themselves here. Give a nod to Chris Morris while you're at it though.

23/10/2007

Rollin' on chromium.

I spent the money I should have spent on a new web host on building this over the summer. So that's why ldexterldesign was down this week. No point in fabricating elaborate stories about these things now is there.

If you tried to view this site, client sites, or contact me between Monday 15th and 23rd November at the usual addresses please try again. ldexterldesign, and client sites, are now rollin' on dedicated Streamline Hosting with reseller packages available. So if you're interested in a fresh web host for your piece get in touch for an unbelievably good server spec/price quote.

If all clients would like to make their way to the most expensive eatery in town - I think dinner is on me :S

Updates:

02/01/2008

I retract my endorsement of Streamline Hosting for the following reasons:

No IMAP email support.
A native email client so poor and bug-ridden that it made me look up Thunderbird (I haven't looked to see if it has improved within the past six months though - god knows what my clients think of the old, reliable, interface and functionality I must to refer them to).
They will fleece you at all costs (excuse the pun).
A tip: read ALL their terms and conditions as they will generally include some type of con or nonsensical hidden incurred cost in them which you will encounter somewhere down the line.
No Adobe ColdFusion support and no sign of it coming either (if you don't use the server side technology then obviously don't worry about this one).

19/10/2007

Buff Monster

I'm a big fan of pink (my friends will corroborate this :/) and although I'll tell anyone right now I think the new pink is black, I've been admiring Buff Monster from afar for a while now.

It's old hat, but good talent never ceases. South-central LA-based graffiti artist Buff Monster reppin', not baby pink but specifically florescent, pink throughout his work. Influenced by fast music, porno, metal music and ice-cream; his work initially came in the mid-90s in the form of flattened paint tins. These days he's more into interior design:

Buff Monster site here. Image droplets from here (I wish I travelled more), here and some dude on Flickr.

21/09/2007

spankin' london police.

it's been a while coming is an understatement, but london police released their new site earlier this week.

go here now.

19/09/2007

why developing with IE7 installed is like eating a mango without a toothpick spare.

so i was in my kitchen this morning eating mango for breakfast and it dawned on me that it surely must be the most difficult foodstuff to eat without it getting stuck between your teeth; above lamb and corn-cobs. as i reached for the empty toothpick jar i recalled the same feeling i'd had a few weeks prior - finishing developing a site and realizing i couldn't emulate it in IE6 in order to complete the burdensome 'hack-up' required for ultimate browser interoperability. some people have two machines, two OS's, two cars, two wives handy - i don't.

to date most clients still ask for their websites to look 'right' in IE6, which in my book means pixel-perfection across ALL modern browsers AND IE6. this is fair enough, i'm still more than aware most of the internet is using the out-dated mess of a browser that is IE6 and i'm a believer in progressive enhancement. personally if i were to redesign ldexterldesign tomorrow (i have a few proofs in the pipeline as i write this 1 | 2 | 3 | 4, as it's been coming for a while) i wouldn't really give IE6 a second thought [i'll come to the point where i contradict myself in a moment] just as long as all the content was viewable and wasn't relying on fancy javascript to navigate core content.

ok, so accounting for IE6 is no biggy; develop in a good browser, firefox for instance, and then cover your backside with various fixes and hacks. andy budd provides a whole chapter on the subject of 'hacks and filters' in an excellent advanced CSS book i've just finished. now here lies the problem - viewing in IE6 with IE7 installed. to cut a long story short you can't - natively.

there are two initial options available:

use a screen capture tool such as browsershots or browsercam to preview your pages - not ideal as it sometimes takes up to thirty minutes to generate a screenshot, which is just damn right frustrating if all you want to do is tweak.
run a standalone IE6 - evolt offers a number of out of the box MS browsers, which is great, the only downside being you won't be able to run conditional comments unless you tamper with the registry (major gripe being my first choice of hack out of the tin) as sir manfred staudinger kindly covers in an article published late in 2006 entitled; 'taming your multiple IE installs'

i have since read about mike cherim's 'IE6 alternative', which involves installing a replica IE6 browser in the guise of AOL explorer (rather you than me). for the time being there appears to be only one answer - [que the contradiction] keep IE6 installed. with IE7 introducing compliant standards (i sound like a washing powder advert from the 50's now) you can be sure it'll look more promptu than not checking your pages in IE6.

well way to go MS, it looks like i'm back to the knife drawer for a solution to this one.

if anyone else has any personal tips on overcoming this problem please get in touch. i'll post updates to this post if any insightful knowledge surfaces.

04/09/2007

Cooliris

if there's one firefox browser add-in you should install this side of christmas make sure it's this one.

first there was the convenience and functionality of tabbed browsing (mozilla applause). now comes stacked browsing - 'previews your links without clicking or leaving your current page!' - the claims are not unfounded.

at the time of writing this every potential improvement i'd jotted down within the past week has been implemented, including activating download links from inside the cooliris window and integration with the firefox download statusbar add-in.

however it would still be nice to see:

the ability to refresh (F5) the page from inside the cooliris window.
recognition of url's ending in '/'.

all these gripes are minor issues though. if you're still not sold on the idea at this point then check out the youTube lazorial here or head straight to cooliris.com for the install download and previews.

22/06/2007

sick s**t by daim & tilt.

work from german-based diam. exhibiting his distinct high-quality, depthy, throw-ups:

http://www.daimgallery.com/

http://www.myspace.com/daim_art

toulouse bubble-graffer; tilt. famous more recently for his (now hard to find) 'fetish bubble girls' book, exhibiting markered-up, semi-naked, women from around the globe.

http://www.graffitilt.com/

thanking: photos nicked from here and here.

16/06/2007

FUTURA/PARLA expos

miamediarts reports on the press release of an exhibition to hit london from july 6th featuring two of my favourite contemporary artists; José Parlá and futura. view some previous posts here and here.

José Parlá tag mix

july 6th-28th 2007, elms lesters painting rooms

(nearest tube: tottenham court road)

opening hours: tues-sat, 12-6pm

free admission

16/06/2007

flying dogs.

music video made by paris based pleix for electro artist; vitalic. stumbled upon via geneviêve gauckler's 'folio.

the track is 'poney part 1' from the ok cowboy lp (2005). look the video up here.

03/06/2007

DIE YOUNG collection.

belio magazine, the spanish art-book publisher, are kicking off their new die young series of 15cm x 14cm, full colour, books by featuring work by san, btoy, and satone. cheap prices too. get 'em while you can.

press release pdf here.

03/06/2007

copyright arms race.

'the internet is not inherently liberating. the internet is liberating because people have used it for liberation.' - a quote from Cory Doctorow; novelist, blogger, co-editor at boing boing, and noteworthy science fiction writer, during an authors@google talk filmed late last month.

a proponent of liberalizing copyright laws; doctorow sees copyright neutrality (similar in vein to the creative commons in which there is a clear division between cultural and commercial publishing arenas) as one of a number of possible solutions to the arms race-esque outlook on delimiting creativity from disseminating naturally. this is inclusive of DRM - a hot topic recently within film and music distribution circles.

it's easy to revel in the fact when you're not interested in making money from the internet, but anyone who still fails to recognise the fact that money is disseminated through skills and implementation foresight, and not through the concentration of assets and proprietary productivity, needs to wake up.

ever since access to information and the acquisition of data became freely available in the 90s through file share it's been patently obvious that censorship and copyright laws had to either go ballistic and reach a saturation point, which they have done, or become harmonious with authorship, which they now will. it would be plainly cliché to raise google's business model here and it doesn't seem coincidental that doctorow is speaking at a google conference either.

the frustrated over-educated and under-skilled neurotics who get het up over copyright infringement are the same bureaucrats who exploit the reactionary, anti-liberal, notion of what online freedom of expression stands for. ever still; the creators create and the exploiters exploit.

doctorow's hour-long talk is well worth the watch: here via gammablog.

23/05/2007

ruffage III

latest instalment on the ruffage front. come get funked up in leeds on june 6th.

being the eager youth i am, i haven't bothered to wait until after it comes back from the printers to post. check out the work page here.

16/05/2007

DARZACQ bangface.

no, nothing to do with the birth of neo-rave. following on from the william hundley post (08/03/2007) comes one of an array of wicked projects in a similar vein by denis darzacq entitled 'la chute' (2006).

the very real free-form photos, taken in the parisian suburbs, catch (no chance) athletic parkour-esque youths hurtling toward the ground from various story windows.

visit his galleries here. stolen from itsnicethat.com.

Updates:

29/10/2007

i've had this bookmarked for ages: rebelart posted on similar outlandish action portrait photography, except with rocks by sue huang and fernando sanchez. see some of the yucca valley collection portraits here and here respectively.

15/05/2007

SOPRANO

even if you're not feeling the nonchalant rhymes and sweet diphthongs of french rap artists, i'm sure you'll appreciate the subtle art direction in this music video by soprano for his track 'la columbe'.

view the video here or click above.

14/05/2007

SLICKS

heavy work from the multi-talented: slicks. part of a number of graffiti crews in LA during the late 80s and throughout the 90s; a large proportion of his work is cartoonist-inspired. his 'folio boasts a high contingent of graffiti inspired letterforms and some massive colours.

he's responsible for forming various clothing lines including 3rd rail, fuct, and shaolin during recent years and also combines his talents with dissizit.

check out a time-lapse mural piece created by slicks and dissizit, i caught a few weeks back via hyperbeast.

view slicks website here.

29/04/2007

SFAUSTINA

wicked fine graff/illustration by sfaustina via bloodwarsmagazine. download the quarterly .pdf's here or view some of his art on his site here.

Updates:

31/12/2007

check his sold work here.

26/04/2007

CS3 preview.

with adobe creative studio 3 on the horizon brand new school have combined motion tracking and AS generative scripting to create this composite mural.

view the video here. big up cpluv for the origin.

25/04/2007

ADHEMAS relash.

fresh work up from brazilian designer adhemas batista. 'folio site here. heads up lounge72.

if you rate the psychedelic expressive stuff check out some gorgeous work by evgeny kiselev and edvard scott - both among a wealth of art exhibitionism held here from may 6th in london.

24/04/2007

CREAKTIF

i've been a fan of this 4-piece design studio, based in france, for a while now after stopping by their rad site at creaktif.com. who says you have to get stickers made or a paint cap blotted to stay 'in' these days.

see more prints with some rough english translations here or visit the creaktif.com print section.

16/04/2007

ruffage III.

managed to slip some print work into my 'busy' schedule last week. see all the sprouting details on the ruffage II work page.

15/04/2007

emma-dalzell.co.uk

my first fully fledged CMS went live tonight in the deserving alter ego of emma-dalzell.co.uk; showcasing some great photography from a good friend of mine.

visit emma's site here or see some screenshots in the work section here.

11/04/2007

IMAGINARY FOUNDATION

clothing and artwork from the imaginary foundation:

i was first introduced to prints by the swiss organisation (currently based in san francisco) last year via some work by nik ainley. the group's ethos pushes positive, compelling, catch-phrases and quotes; combined with inspiring intelligent imagery.

check out more designs here, here and info on the company's dadaist drive.

10/04/2007

ReFILL laserDecks.

snooped upon via the rinzen design studio: comes a selection of skateboard decks laser routed with designs and blueprints from a global cartel - the first of its kind - including kofieOne, fafi, and several other 'well known' creativists.

visit the refill seven site here or the impressive Flickr gallery here.

05/04/2007

suspension.

vapour, smoke, gas, mist, steam - whatever you wanna call it - a few weeks back i saw a video entitled; 'irregular flow' made by 4khz, however i thought it was just too good to post on here, besides it was already getting loads of traffic elsewhere.

possibly inspiring these photos, which were posted on tuxboard earlier on this week.

there's something about randomness that really hooks me. god bless pollock.

Updates:

16/04/2007

if you rate the smoke effects, a day after i made the original post this was posted on amazingfiltered.blogspot.com documenting some of photographer: mehmet ozgur's smoke works.

25/03/2007

BONOM

still fresh. view the stop motion here.

visit the bonom image pool on Flickr here.

25/03/2007

RAI ESCALÉ

following on from the facial distortions of gus fink (16/01/2007); surrealist collage artist rai escalé sculpts pretty abhorrent incarnations himself, overlooking conventional white canvas for a more dynamic existing print surface.

recent pieces cite inspiration from slovakian: miloš koptaks' 'erased heads' selection of work from between 2002-5, which by the by don't fall short of fourth-degree burns victims.

visit escalés' website here and/or blog here for more artwork.

08/03/2007

the jump project.

courtesy of the petal of the Web that is wooster; comes a selection of photos by william hundley.

visit his website here or Flickr here.

04/03/2007

José Parlá expos.

i posted an entry last year (10/12/2006) evidencing the frenzied, but wholly harmonistic, work of José Parlá; the brooklyn-based/miami born 'contemporary palimpsest'.

yesterday cool hunting featured a film short, produced by ami kealoha, documenting parlá, who talks about his influences and inspirations - citing marcel duchamp and cy twombly - and shares nurture theories on how his work style has evolved since the 1980s.

view the video here.

03/03/2007

vhils & target short.

i spoke briefly about how much vhils' work spoke to me in a recent post (23/01/2007).

this week juxtapoz featured some shots and footage of a recent vhils exhibition install taking it to another level. check out some of his handiwork below...

... and at veracortes gallery here.

01/03/2007

GRAF = unity

friends and i have been visiting this place on and off for the past few years; located on cardigan road in leeds, UK. a few days ago i heard it's soon to be demolished, most likely for more student flats (we don't need any more of these). i managed to get a few snaps, probably for the final time.

apart from being home to many deserving squatters the building's interior is extensively adorned with colourful tags and throw-ups.

i'd give it two years after development completion and the place will be in the same state, just without the creativity, peace, and quiet. but hey the council (who seem incapable of collecting my recycling bins) will see marked profits.

24/02/2007

freaky plants.

an excellent example of CGI kindly put my way by a good friend of mine. view video here.

fans of this should check out the french film; microcosmos: le peuple de l'herbe from 1996 too.

12/02/2007

PAWEL FABJANSKI

polish photographer pawel fabjanski features in this months destructed.info. check out his sick photos here.

... and an insightful interview with the man himself here courtesy of pixelsurgeon.

11/02/2007

not just a pretty typeface.

taken from dos logos (müller, 2004):

los logos (2002) & dos logos (2004) by roland müller

'let us assume that designer X introduces a very high proportion of his own identity into his work. he thinks that's quite normal, it's part of the way he sees himself and is something that can also be called a professional ethos - even though that sounds somewhat old-fashioned. but the client perhaps does not see it like that, and demands an identity for his brand. thier professional association could well come to an end.

designer Y chooses the opposite strategy. he is far more (perhaps too) reticent. he behaves as neutrally as possible, because for him the highest priority is the best possible solution for the client (best possible from the client's point of view). and so where necessary he is prepared to make aesthetic compromises. here too the client could react negatively. in his opinion the logo embodies his corporate strategy. but he misses what he calls a "creative kick". their professional association could well come to an end.

but clients also pursue a variety of strategies. so there is a perfectly realistic scenario whereby designer X is confirmed in his approach: at the point where the client wants to participate in the designer's identity and communicate it to his clients. (comparisons can be a little lame, but why does an anonymous department store pep up its fabrics with a known fashion designer's label?)

these scenarios quite deliberately present opposing positions to highlight the conflict potential a designer can be confronted with. this potential tends to be even greater in economically difficult times. in daily practice, a mixture of designer X's and designer Y's strategy should make sense from case to case, because it is pragmatic. but one thing is certain: a marked sense of optimism in dealing with clients is a career killer in the long term. a designer who adapts too much can never develop his own pictorial language - and so will not acquire a profile as a designer, will not have an identity of his own. and this is a fatal disadvantage when looking for new business.' - (müller, 2004)

09/02/2007

putting embed to bed.

whenever i see flash in web pages these days my next port of call is W3C's validator. literally 95%+ of the time the document is invalid.

it's not a hard task to google for ten minutes and educate yourself. i did the very same thing when i built this site (by now you should have noticed there's a .swf on this page somewhere).

a list apart posted an article on the subject of sensibly integrating flash into your XHTML today.

seen as the article neglected to include information on which DOM it was targeting and having noticed none of the scripting demonstrations in the article mirrored the adaptation on this page, i set about a little experiment assuming a strict 1.0 model.

however, let me first issue a word of warning; if you are using the default 'insert > flash' interface in dreamweaver (the latest: version 8) it will insert invalid code into your document from scratch. my experiment revealed no less than seven errors for that one object alone.

try the following code snippets for yourself:

example one (default dreamweaver 8 insert, invalid - 7 errors):

<object classid="INSERT CLASSID HERE" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,19,0" width="INSERT WIDTH HERE" height="INSERT HEIGHT HERE" title="title">
    <param name="movie" value="INSERT FILE NAME HERE.swf" />
    <param name="quality" value="high" />
    <embed src="INSERT FILE NAME HERE.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="INSERT WIDTH HERE" height="INSERT HEIGHT HERE"></embed>
  </object>

example two (using depreciated 'embed' element instead of 'object' element, supported by all major browsers, but not W3C compliant):

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="INSERT FILE NAME HERE.swf" width="INSERT WIDTH HERE" height="INSERT HEIGHT HERE" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" /></embed>

example three (standards compliant, non-browser specific, but won't work in IE7):

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="INSERT FILE NAME HERE.swf" width="INSERT WIDTH HERE" height="INSERT HEIGHT HERE">
  </object>

example four (works only in IE, so a no go unless you intend to use conditional comments, which i don't recommend personally):

<object classid="INSERT CLASSID HERE" width="INSERT WIDTH HERE" height="INSERT HEIGHT HERE">
    <param name="movie" value="INSERT FILE NAME HERE.swf" />
  </object>

alternatively, use this example and rest assured in the knowledge your page displays validly in all the latest browsers:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="INSERT FILE NAME HERE.swf" width="INSERT WIDTH HERE" height="INSERT HEIGHT HERE">
    <param name="movie" value="INSERT FILE NAME HERE.swf" />
  </object>

and in a flash, the issue is resolved.

08/02/2007

defcaed.

you know that feeling when something is just too good it makes you wanna cry? view video here.

in case you're wondering the same thing, the soundtrack is by graham newcombe. produced by lovely productions.

Updates:

26/03/2007

youtue ain't all that. high res version posted on graham newcombe's site here.

07/02/2007

shock tactics.

the guardian newspaper published a very apt feature article by aida edemariam last week (01.02.2007) on shock advertising; headed 'a shocking way to hook the public'. i've taken the liberty of photoing the feature here (10.6mb) in case you care to read it.

a summary of the article centres on the way modern advertising has began to resort to controversy to grab attention. this comes directly after seeing wooster reporting the contentious 'nike the ripper' image last week (see below).

the poster, produced by sputnikk on the streets of munich for a culture jamming event (see more here), shows an active young woman adorning the nike logo much to the disgust of some viewers citing intrinsic allegations of 'violence against women'.

my views on this are pretty transparent. obviously there are rights and then there are RIGHTS - unjust low pay, poor and/or dangerous welfare, abusive conditions and discrimination are all things i take pretty seriously. i don't have the time to branch off into politics, welfare or counselling work (i'd probably be pretty shit at consoling some poor soul), so, instead, i strive to design positive intelligent messages that either make people think or are (hopefully) remotely visually appealing in order to take someone's brain away from the stink of everyday life.

artefacts that make you think have the likelihood of being controversial because they stem away from 2-dimensional reason - that's what makes them interesting. i don't know much about how the ASA works, but i intend to find out.

violence towards women wasn't the first way i interpreted the 'nike the ripper' poster. although it did occur to me, i saw past it because it's not the in the style. associating meaningful portrayal with street art has become normal for want of a better word. i feel appealing to the less neurotic, more liberal, among us is something the jamming artivist movement has probably embraced - no regulations, freedom of expression, crap sinks, positive resonance floats. a bit like a decent search engine really.

i see de-branding and subvertising and many of the other attributes of culture jamming and guerrilla communications as the offspring of ambient media (putting emboss type on egg shells and stuff like that). conventional advertising routes count for nothing now through my eyes. they are uninteresting, uninspiring, void of any intelligence. i even know they are there, so don't bother looking anymore. some may look upon this as being close minded and i know it's awfully cliché to say it, but come on; 'once bitten, twice shy'.

people are looking elsewhere, consciously or not, at advertising. i f**king hate the stuff *generic statement obviously*, although i appreciate it when someone has thought outside the box. it adds a little integrity to their work. compare it to walking somewhere instead of taking the car - it's refreshing. you see things you wouldn't have seen had you been cooped up and you see them in a new light. apply that to advertising and you have something even the most hardened spectator appreciates.

stuff in life is controversial. it doesn't mean people won't want to look at it.

05/02/2007

ruffage.

may the reign of minimal design commense. watch this space...

23/01/2007

VHILS

portuguese artist vhils (aka alexandre farto):

wooster 1 | 2 and juxtapoz beat me to it once again. some of his stuff reminds me of chuck anderson's highly rainbow'fide forms.

21/01/2007

oh, yo, no that's flashy!

i'm glad someone brought this topic up. i actually thought the whole flash vs web standards thing had been and gone, apparently not though. *note to self: never hold back from blogging... anything*

emil stenström, who's blog is definitely worth bookmarking btw not only for his web interests but his sick juggling videos (that's inspiration there), brings into question the relevance of flash in today's web environment.

i remember when i first started becoming engaged in the Web. it must have been around 4/5 years ago now that i first started surfing the Web whilst at school. keywords such as 'rotten' and 'steakandcheese' were heartily pounded into yahoo (the, then, choice of search engine) on a daily basis - any content we weren't supposed to be looking at. within the next year i had got my first home pc, an internet connection, and started to develop my own, unrestricted, view of the Web. soon the landscape of the net had become all too familiar and every now and then i would come across a site that stood above the rest visually, a bump in the terrain you might say. a sound here, a moving image there - i was soon to discover the flash revolution.

admittedly, looking back, flash was one of the major reasons i decided to explore the undercurrents of publishing for the Web. once i had an understanding of HTML (how the hell i managed that with frontpage installed i'll never know) and had decided javascript was far too syntaxy for my ability; i opened the flash app.

now after using the platform for almost 3 years i'd almost stopped using the word flash altogether and started adopting the term 'actionscript'. see, the reason why i decided to stop using flash for full-fledged web applications is because YOU NEED TO BE F**KING GOOD AT IT TO SUCEED! these days when i think flash i think screenvader.com, yugop.com, stardust.com, and dontclick.it to name a few. if i'm honest actionscript scares me a lot. it can really show you up in an online environment. the only implementation of it i think which still holds weight, if you're anything but shit hot at it, is keeping it simple. in any case the majority of the time it's stuff you can do outside of actionscript; maintaining accessibility, indexing, update'ability and usability (you simply have to be hedonistic with actionscript to achieve this in my opinion).

in a way i guess i'm jumping on the bandwagon. personally i don't think flash has any place on the Web for the majority of developers today. it's a speciality and has lost this accolade in recent years because of its ease of use for the beginner - they teach it as a starter environment on my university course. it's reputation has been tarnished by poor implementation.

i shouldn't bad mouth it though. i feel the flash environment and it's ability to illustrate a dynamic visualisation of OOP is a really amazing tool to educate the concepts underlying OOP. i spent two years with C++ and python, but it was only until i had objects instead of numbers in front of me that i started to grasp the principles.

today the advancements in CSS, sIFR, jQuery and script.aculo.us libraries make use of actionscript almost redundant. video streaming and music players are the only utilities i can't think of off the top of my head where flash can't be beaten.

these days flash just seems like too much hard work. chuck it at a beginner web designer though and he'll have plenty of fun.

might i add, coincidently, that actionscript.org is down as i end this entry (GMT 17:32)... oops! that's support for you.

Updates:

10/02/2007

melbourne based jonathan nicol's article; 'flash's weaknesses: then and now' examines flash's ability/inability to deliver in 2007, using mark angeletti's 2003 'flash vs CSS/HTML which will you choose?' feature as a contrasting backbone.

16/01/2007

GUS FINK

i stumbled upon some fine artwork by gus fink this afternoon. residing in atlanta, US, and considered part of the 'outsider art movement', his paintings and drawings struck me as being particularly interesting. so i bought a print.

an article published by mark givens raises some topical subjects including his views on contemporary art and the people that create/partake in it now.

14/01/2007

KORALIE art.

french artist, grafist, and illustrator. check her work here, otherwise get freaky with google. big up to the collective at wooster !

10/12/2006

José Parlá

paintings by José Parlá...

08/12/2006

hiDef, DPI, SVG and all that shizzle.

while hunting around for an efficient way of implementing client-side screen res' detection i stumbled upon an article, over at 456 berea street concerning how high res display systems are developing both from a hardware and software perspective.

the article, should you care to follow it up, entitled; 'safari brings high resolution to the Web' also brings into question the way modern browsers cater for hardware monitors that display higher than the conventional 96dpi - the reality is... they don't! not yet anyway.

it's funny, i'm as keen as the next designer to lash out £500 on a new HD display, not only to embellish my design vanity, but also give me the excuse to stop downloading shitty divX's and embrace hi-def, but when i realise i can't really do all that much with it (and knowing when i can they'll cost £200 less) my interest is a little more subdued.

it was interesting to see tonight how firefox and IE7 both render up text sizing - firefox scaling only text, while conversely IE7 scales the whole page, including imagery - see examples below or try it yourself (ctrl+(+or-)):

IE7 - normal (100%)

IE7 - increased (100%+)

FF2 - normal (100%)

FF2 - increased (100%+)

and so the question of 'who is more prepared for HD web browsing?' surfaces. well, a great thread posted on the surfin's safari blog by dave hyatt to the tune of (yes that old chestnut) 'CSS units' does imply a logical argument for IE7 being the more proficient browser by stating;

'the zooming, done well, doesn’t hurt your web site or disrupt its layout in any way.'

...but come on, who actually wants to look at a webpage where the imagery is blown up to equivocal eBoy -like proportions - not me anyway. oh, and a tip to any CSS beginner while i'm on the subject; coding to support text sizing does no end of help at improving liquid layout mastery.

enter SVGor scalable vector graphics to anyone who hasn't spent a few hours in a vector-based app' worth its muster in the last 6 months. now from what i remember i was really excited about SVG when i first came across it, but only from all the vector vs pixel benefit perspectives - load time, scalability, and the current trend fascination with using sleek vector graphics (i think this is finally wearing off now).

i equated, and still do to an extent (not knowing THAT much about it), SVG to hard coding vector imagery in actionscript, rather than using the flash UI to draw simple circles for instance. after weighing up the time it would take to learn to draw veritable shapes in SVG i thought to myself; 'i'm strolling too far up the developers garden path here' and dismissed the idea, opting to continue with an interface and static work.

since then it seems SVG has come on leaps and bounds with support from major business (adobe, canon, hp, ibm, kodak, ms, nokia, sun micro). as use in mobile applications continues to grow rapidly, where download speeds and viewing displays are at a premium, i'd put my money on SVG becoming hot property, especially when integration with XML and CSS3 become standard.

highdef and highdpi.com domains will definitely be seeing some more action in the next year, that's for sure.

06/12/2006

sign of the times.

i came across an intriguingly dark torso this evening, created entirely from ny times cuttings. the piece, put together by nick georgiou over at my human computer blogspot, was exhibited on the streets of nyc.

reminiscent of the nurses in the recent silent hill (2006) film i think you'll agree?

02/12/2006

povertyRound.

the bbc's newsround release a series of animated stories highlighting the problem of child poverty in the UK.

'we only had two mattresses and a bed. we wet the bed then... we had to sleep on the same mattress every night. we had mould on our feet... was goin'a school stinkin' of wee. i didn't know what a toothbrush was either.'

i used to know children at school who wandered round stinkin' of piss and i was one of the people who took the piss. everyone was a kid. everyone knew other kids who had problems.

using real kids voices was a really bright decision.

19/11/2006

the buzz(word) of web 3.0

may i draw your attention to an article i read on slashdot today entitled; 'can the Web survive v3.0'. now at first the term filled me with dread, after all the majority of people are only just grasping the importance of web standards, let alone comprehending the ai this mythical new layer of the Web promises.

a recent experiment over at etre, headed 'IE7: were they ready?', highlighted the problems the net as a whole incurred as a result of the introduction of IE7. thirteen of the top 100 FTSE company sites felt the bitter effects of IE7's new render engine, exposing both minor and major formatting floors. floors that invariably wouldn't have existed had the use of standards been a priority.

i still can't decide who i think dictates these x.0 platforms, the apps or the marketing people (i say marketing people inclusive of the blogging sphere). surely the term x.0 should come after a technology boundary has been reached, not before? to me it's just rather illogical. it's like saying the Web encompasses something it doesn't... but might... soon.

to quote a soul position rhyme; "9-5 i teach computers to be clever, so they can replace you and do your job better". someone, somewhere, is showing rather more artificial intelligence than is needed i feel.