Desktop Wallpaper Project: 2

This is number two in the series. Also 1280 x 800. If this ends up being too small for some of those fancy high resolution monitors i’ll have to rethink my entire worldview. Get meandyou!

Desktop Wallpaper Project: 1

I’d like to do some graphical designs in the form of desktop wallpaper. They’ll be 1280 x 800, which is a decent resolution and should fit most of yer standard widescreen monitors. The goal is to promote the blog and do some design work, which i suppose is still my first love after all these years. So here’s #1. Enjoy!

Wisconsin: Design Like You Mean It

I’ve been hesitant to jump into the icy waters of criticism re: the new branding for the department of tourism. But today i saw a facebook group dedicated to hating on it, so i figured i’d add my voice.

Ask my friend Nick about how critical i often am of his design work, and he might say “quite.” Nick is a great designer. So when i see something as ugly as the new logo (and the website of the agency that designed it) it enrages me. “Hey,” i think “Nick could have designed a way better logo!”

Issues like how much it cost the taxpayers and the slogan itself are merely the sideshow. The main attraction in this carnival of sadness is the logo. As a designer i can tell you without a hint of remorse that everything about it is offensive. Fonts, graphics, alignment, colors, whitespace. Imagine with me a conversation between the agency and the client.

Client: Can you find an uglier font? We were really hoping for something outdated. Maybe customized in an inconsistent way? It doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to say “Wisconsin.”

Agency: Well, my 12-year old son created this version for a school project…

Client: Perfect!

When the dept. of tourism rebranded their public website a couple years ago, it was handled by Hanson Dodge. [Disclaimer: I worked for Hanson Dodge briefly in 2007.] The difference between a great agency handling branding and “nice try” is pretty obvious. Colors, fonts, layout, navigation… all the hallmarks of thoughtful design are present in this site.

I’d hate to spend more money to come up with something new, so i’ll live with it. After all, just how important is branding to a state? I think wisconsin’s draw is the land and the people, and you don’t need a logo to communicate that.

Other resources:

• Brand New (logo criticism)
• Journal Sentinel

Milwaukee Zine Fest

Aside from the obvious, what do lesbian riotgrrrls, sci-fi fanbois, and street preachers have in common? If you guessed “underground distribution of self-published work of minority interest with a circulation of 5,000 or less”, you’re right. The zine (pronounced “zeen”) apparently dates back at least to Thomas Paine, and probably as far back as the printing press. If you had something to say and a cheap way to mass-produce it, zines were the way to go. Arguably blogs have replaced zines today (isn’t a blog just a 21st century e-zine?), but there’s nothing like getting a photocopied 4-page pamphlet espousing views so far outside the mainstream they facilitate this type of communication in the first place.

The Midwest Zine Collective is hosting the first ever Milwaukee Zine Fest from July 18-20 at the UWM Library. Looks like bands, seminars, workshops and all the smudged paper rants you could hope for. To learn more about zines try the Zine History pages, with lots of actual scans of olde-tyme zines.