kylegilbert

This video isn’t exactly going to make your day happier (especially if you’re trying to sell a house, like me), but it’s a very nice visualization of what has happened with sub-prime mortgages.

Brands are powerful things.  They give us images and symbols  that help us to connect with ideas and things.  Still, over time, they must change.  Sometimes the changes are subtle, and other times a complete overhaul is necessary.

Here is a very cool visual catalog of the changes to the Hersheys wrapper over the past hundred years.  Their brand is certainly effective; just looking at these pixels is making me hungry.

A few months ago I mentioned the adventures of my brother-in-law, Nathan, who was living in a dry-docked boat.  We’ll the Great Gorilla is at it again.  This time, he’s trying to score a job on an island.  For his application, he submitted the 60-second video below.  It’s hilariously funny.

In case you’re interested, he’s posted additional info on his blog.

“The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating – in work, in play, in love.  The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation.  To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.”

- Anne Morriss,  A Starbucks customer from New York City.
(From “The Way I See It – #76)

This is so cool!  At $200 K, it’s a bit expensive, but I’m hoping that the price will eventually come down and one of my friends will buy one. 

As a freelancer, blogger, and the person responsible for Faith Promise’s websites and outreach, a good portion of my time each week in and out of the office is spent coming up with creative ideas or implementing creative thoughts.  I’m also surrounded by other people (like our graphic artist, my Pastor, and others who teach) who are faced with creative deadlines on a weekly and daily basis.  Because of this, the whole concept of creative routines is very interesting to me.

While I do not endorse the content of his writing, I found this quote by Stephen King to be very fascinating:

There are certain things I do if I sit down to write,” he said. “I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning,” he explained. “I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon.  (entire quote)

It’s an interesting way of putting things, and it makes me consider what things around me each day contribute to or hinder my creative thought process.  Surely my messy desk, full inbox, and constant drone of Twitter aren’t helping things.  It makes me want to fight for more order and stillness in my life.

One of my favorite things on earth is a wonderful sport called disc golf.  It’s kind of like normal golf – you play on a course, usually with 18 tees, and you have similar rules.  The difference is that you throw frisbees (putters, medium range, and distance discs) into a disc basket, and it’s free (other than the discs).

I love being outside, walking the course, hanging out with friends, getting competitive, and occasionally throwing a good shot. I even threw a hole-in-one once.  It was great!  Keri was even there to see it happen.

I haven’t played once since moving to Tennessee, but I know there’s a course about 10 minutes from my house.  It keeps calling my name.  Drawing me to itself.

Chris, our Facilities Director, showed me this video this morning.

If this video is any indicator, this is going to be a great week.  Wow, I’m speechless!

We have entered into a very interesting time in the history of the world.  Not only do we have to be discerning about what we hear and read, but now we also have to be skeptical about what we see.  The world has changed, and seeing is definitely not believing.

Just to illustrate, take a look at these images that I automatically generated on the internet.  I didn’t retouch the images at all.

Very cool, but crazy.

Of all the things I get to do as a website and graphic designer, one of my favorite tasks is working on logo design and branding.  I love working with companies to figure out how to represent their business in a small scalable image.

I recently completed a logo design for a translations business called TIN.  The graphic below shows the three major stages of the logo.  It started as a round speech bubble with the text on the inside.  After chewing on that for a while and thinking through how it would work on a website, on letterhead, and on business cards,  I decided to make it more sleek, remove the text from the inside (partly because of legibility in small applications – as you see here), and point the inside speech bubble in the opposite direction (like a back and forth conversation).  In the third round of design, I closed off the crescent shape and reversed the direction each of the bubbles was pointing (to help with eye flow when used in the top left of a website).

I think it turned out very nice.