Digicams and the Internet Will Eat Your Job

The advent of the electronic and digital world has unleashed several waves of "creative destruction" on the creative communities across the globe. Perhaps the first to feel the devastating effects of the new technologies were typesetters, who were forced to abandon their metal type casting machines for increasingly sophisticated electronic and digital equipment; by the time I entered art school in 1979 "photolettering" was reasonably well-established and metal type was even by then rapidly disappearing. Unfortunately for typesetters, the changes were only beginning; the invention and development of the desktop computer pioneered by Apple led to "desktop publishing," which was the death knell for the typsetting industry as a whole.

Unfortunately for graphic designers, photographers, and illustrators, it's easy to come to the conclusion that the typesetter's fate awaits us as well. The development of the internet and the high-megapixel digital camera has unleashed another wave of technologically-driven "creative destruction."

As this frankly depressing article in the L.A. Times by James Rainey details, it's not an easy time to be someone working in the commercial realm of the visual arts.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-onthemedia22-2010jan22,0,4822231.column

The future of genetic engineering?

These are some of the more haunting and creepy sculptures I've seen in quite a while. The artist must have a great arrangement with some taxidermists, or she spends as much time hunting as she does sculpting.

http://www.kateclark.com/index.html

Genetic engineering and its effects have been a staple of science fiction going back to H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau, and many contemporary science fiction novels extrapolate a future in which the extremes of bioengineering hinted at in Clark's sculpture are commonplace in human culture.

I'd rather be a hawk than a goat.

Who's renting what Netflix movie in Chicago?

Check out (ha ha) this wonderful NY Times interactive map showing Netflix title rentals organized by neighborhood in 12 cities. Some titles with distinct patterns are Mad Men, Obsessed and Last Chance Harvey.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/10/nyregion/20100110-netflix-map.html

This is interactive design (javascript in this case) at its highest level: it's meant to inform, not simply dazzle.

It appears that the Meryl Streep Fan Club in Chicago is a pretty small group.

Arches National Park, Utah.

So maybe you're wondering what in the heck Arches National Park has to do with graphic design? Not a dang thing.