Clearly, I’ve been stinking at posting new thoughts and images lately. And then it struck me… exploit the artistic labor of my child. Brilliance!
And so here is Ben’s latest creation from school…
I know, it’s rocking your world, and so I’ll just end here to give you space for reflection.
Everyone was all hyped up about the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah show last week, for naught. If you ask me, the show to catch was Brandon Butler, Portastatic, and John Vanderslice at the Black Cat. Fantastic.
You can look over a larger set of my photos from the night here.
With all the photos and talk of Disney, socializing, and whatnot, things were getting beyond chipper. Nothing wrong with that, but without further adieu let’s balance things off with some more PoMo (that’s academic hipster shorthand for postmodern) sensibilities…
americana
one way, the 7 eleven way
Yes, Wedding Crashers is hilarious. Yes, it’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Yes, go see it.
Yes, it doesn’t officially open till Friday. Yes, I saw it tonight at a special screening. Yes, a special screening with special people: Tony Kornheiser was in line in front of me, along with rumors of a Bush family member and the like, though I don’t think that makes sense with their current travels. Yes, I am a rock star.
And yes, I’m so totally trying to glom coolness from where I happened to be and who happened to also be there. Yes, that is pathetic. Yes, it’s not me being cool that got me in, it’s from having cool friends. Yes, they are rockstars. Yes, I’m calling them rockstars partly because of where they got me into. Yes, that too is pathetic. But yes, they’re very good eggs and great folk who I’d consider rockstars even without the cool perks. Yes, really.
Yes, there were burly security people at the door with metal detectors and no tolerance or humor about trying to bring in my digital camera or picture phone. Yes, that means no photos. Yes, it’s very surreal to watch a film while a security guy with nightvision goggles is standing at the front of the theater, scoping you and everyone else out.
Yes there’s a scene both lewd and hilarious enough to rival that scene in There’s Something About Mary. Yes, there’s wildly funny subtle stuff too. Yes, it’s set in DC and MD. Yes, the lead characters are mediators (Yes!). Yes, they really should have had a “mediators do it till everyone is satisfied” sticker show up somewhere.
So yes, go see it.
Yes, that’s the end of this.
Except yes, this was partially inspired by remembering the first book I read when I moved away for college as an undergrad: Fuck, Yes!: A Guide to the Happy Acceptance of Everything.
The practicum in conflict resolution course that I’m wrapping up included a group presentation assignment that yielded predictable results: lots of bad powerpoint presentations, and this coming from a group of otherwise really great students.
The deep critique of this is that power point presentations often represent lazy thinking, with a litany of bulleted lists that offer limited information because of screen dimensions and no relationships beteween the concepts represented with the flat list format. Edward Tufte covers these angles in his essay on the cognitive style of powerpoint.
But even at the superficial aesthetic level, the powerpoint presentations lack creativity and any evidence that good design was ever seriously considered or valued in their creation. There’s a mix-mash of templates and clip art that everyone has seen already and that have no discernable relationship with the topic being discussed. It’s “gosh, this is fast and looks kind of ok” as design ethos.
Now ideally, good design should be a core competency in general education, but it isn’t, and so we stumble along in a cruddily-designed world. Bad presentations, bad signage, bad living and working spaces, bad voting ballets, you name it.
Thankfully, in the multi-discpiplinary “unit 1″ course at GMU’s New Century College (which it looks like I’ll be on the teaching team for again in the Fall), design gets to be a topic. So while students do create powerpoint presentations, they are also taught and evaluated on the quality of design in those presentations. There’s only so much you can cover in a small section on presentation design, but it’s amazing to see just how much better presentations get when you simply rule out using pre-done templates and clip-art. Suddenly the layout choices are made with some attention and thought, and illiustrations and photographs actually made for the presentation are a much better and supportive fit (go figure).
And in that spirit of created design is better than design by Microsoft template (’cause really, does it seem to you like M$ really has much competency around good design?), here’s an idea: make your own color-palette. And when you need some inspiration, get ideas from photographs, because mother nature whoops Microsoft when it comes to creativity and excellent choices for complementary and contrasting colors.
Here’s how: Open Photoshop (or similar paint program) and pull up an image you like and that you think fiits the mood–color-wise–that you want to set for your presentation. Use the eye dropper tool and you can quickly sample the colors you like from the image and make a color-palette of them. Alternatively, just pixelate the image: filter -> pixelate -> mosaic and then adjust the size of the blocks up till you get the sample of colors that fits your need.
For example, this image…
yielded this nice muted, earth-tone color-palette…
Credit to YourTotalSite for the tip on using the mosaic filter.
I thought I should include at least one image of the new Strathmore Music Center that actually does some justice to the building. The shot yesterday just had it in the background.
Capital Weather is predicting 6-10″ of snow tomorrow. As a result, I’ve posted a snow photo challenge for the the DC-area flickr group.
Powered by WordPress
