being quite cultural.

I have been very cultural this past week. Let me brag... I was at the Dance Ensemble performance and throughly impressed last night. A friend from home and now a freshman at Drex, Stephanie, is in the ensemble and I had never been to her recitals during high school. I got the Facebook invite to go, so why not.

Not only was she unbelievable, so was the entire ensemble- the music, costumes, and even the lights. The choreography ranged from historically-based dances to tribal dance to more modern hip-hop.

(Drexel has a Dance major and minor within the AW College of Media Arts & Design.)

Happy Birthday to me.

I am 20 today! I celebrated with my family a bit at home before I came back to school last week, and I told my mom that, "20 is half the way to 40."

Today I had a busy day of classes and in between classes I gave tours for the Admissions event. I was wished many happy birthday's thanks to the creation of Facebook. I had an hour break for dinner and then went to the big event of the evening- Eric's Magic Show. Eric is not only a friend, fellow Ambassador, and full-time student, he is a professional magician. He put on an unbelievable show. It was college humored, and just as cool to watch as it was as my 5th birthday party.

I of course was picked as a volunteer because I was obnoxiously shouting over the small crowd of 15 of my friends, "Its my birthday!" Eric knew it was my private magic show, or so I thought, so I was chosen for one trick, just as the majority of the crowd was. My big birthday celebrations with be over this long weekend.

Post-its at the airport.

I flew back through PHL and was super excited to be away from home #1 and back to back to home #2. I was impressed with the exhibits the airport had on display.

M. Ho, a philadelphian artist, who created the installation completely out of Post-Its. I first saw the light yellow, growing landscape and then recognized the simplicity of the sticky Post-Its notes that were placed purposefully into the pattern.

Most passengers at the airport walked right by. But I was in the mood to be back at school, back to designing, and looking for inspiration.

My classes this term are going to be good this term, starting Monday...
Visual Communication II: Logo design and branding
Computer Imaging III: Intro to web design
Typography II: Spacing and specializing type, while creating compositions
Multimedia: Materials: Design based wood-shop
Photography II: Advanced digital photography and editing

The stuntman.

Action City is brought to life as part of a marketing campaign for the men's line of Rexona, an international brand for antiperspirants.

The stuntman is a hit as hard-as-you-can, beat-em-up "game," which is part of Action City, the ultimate experience of being in "the most dangerous city in the world." (Loosely translated by me from their site.) Basically you get to drag and throw the stuntman across the alley, through windows, into an old car, or anything else you can find in the interactive alley. Just check it out.

The website for Rexona for Men for the Mexican market is also interesting flash and format for the deodorant's website, but in español. I should see if American deodorants have as interactive of sites as other countries?

Updating the masses.

I have been having the winter break. Not doing much. I am glad I am not traveling, as I have important things to accomplish at home. I sleep late and most days do not need to have a cell phone alarm wake me. Also, I have caught up on about half the movies on my must-see movie list and I have been doing some researching for my co-op.

I will call it light research as I am easily distracted into hours of it. I fall in love with so many firms and designers' sites I come across. Whether it is an illustrator in the UK or a deisgn firm in LA, I just keep adding them as favorites. My co-op is not until spring/summer next year, but I want to do it big. I plan to travel and live somewhere so I met with the co-o abroad advisor this year to see if that option could work. There are many possibilities and even grants for going abroad. So my self-directed homework for break is just to limit my search. I am going to do an independent search for companies, which may not already have a relationship with the Drexel co-op office, alongside the co-op selection process through Drexel.

I found such a great resource. The AIGA Design Archives are the perfect tool. I can flip through the designs in the "(2007) 365: AIGA Year in Design 28" book and easily check out the creator's location and other work. I adore the retro feeling of the physical book cover and method of printing for this book cover design for "What Is the What" by Dave Eggers. My dad had it in his must-read books on his nightstand, and I noticed it just a day ago. Coincidence and great taste.





















And Merry Christmas to all you celebrators.

Midwest is best.

No, this is not some t-shirt they sold at Urban Outfitters.
Ok, well maybe it was...

But Mike Perry owns this .com.

As a designer in Brooklyn, he is proud of his heritage. He grew up in Kansas and finds all those states between the coasts important. He himself is pretty important, as a lot of his past work was familiar. Ever wonder who designed many of those Urban Outfitter catalogues? Logo for the School at Columbia? MTVs feel? He did. His illustrations are appropriate for the subject matter and audience. It is easy to recognize the detail and thought put into the playful scenes and creatures. Many of his graphics are green-friendly and all of them are smart, whether playing with words figuratively or literally, with his intriguing typefaces.

MTV's site. Olympics 2008 ad. Trademark illustations as wallpaper.

Christmas miracle.

So my christmas miracle is that 'Ridiculous' is now officially a design blog.
Why might you ask would Christmas inspire a nice Jewish girl to do such a thing? Well, Greg just im'ed me and confessed he had his own design blog, so I am coming out too.

PS.
Here is a link to Greg's blog as it very worthy. http://gmizzller.blogspot.com/.
Don't kill me mister!