gone the way of DevStudio

deviation studio was a young, romanticized version of a comprehensive design studio which acted as an outlet for a group of jobless designers. the idea was to become the faceless, ageless pioneers of graphic, web, & reproduction design, which had been completely underrepresented in our area. at times, painfully so.

this wasn't the problem; we had no trouble bringing on clients, we had no trouble with turnaround (as we had no jobs at the time, this was life), & no problem with customer satisfaction. the only thing(s) distancing us from our goal was the idea that it wasn't what we should have been doing.

"dude, are you looking for real jobs too? yeah same. i've got nothing so far."

well all went to college for something or other, some to grad school; the way we thought we should be spending our time was the way we had always been taught to. study hard, work hard, be educated & driven, & you'll make it. these are the magical ingredients to your inevitable success. though as we've seen in recent history, our parents' guide to create a future has a shelf-life.

all this time we've been bred to pursue [some would say] outdated goals of a concrete career, when in reality the ethereal aspirations we had as children & young adults seem like safer bets now. or, at the very least, something one could say they took a risk for.

oh well. it was fun while it lasted.

we want your vote in 2012!

i usually try to avoid any kind of political commentary, but i saw a photo of some graffiti that inspired me.

it's quite a cheeky little "campaign," but i feel like the graffiti artist (& yes, hate them or love them, they are artists) shared the same sentiment.

née global ecosystem.

just about the way i've been feeling.

needed some exercise; sometimes you need to get up in the middle of the day to do a few jumping jacks to stay in shape.

this building used to be a brothel.

Update (12.01.2011): Humid Beings posts news about this project as its Featured Article.



one of the projects i'm working on is a restaurant/bar & art gallery, called Cellardoor, located in the CBD of New Orleans. they want it to be as nice as it sounds, so if you know any super rich people, forward them the link if they'd like to support them. & by that, i really mean help them buy nice furniture, because nice furniture is very expensive.

Gravy Flavored Kisses EP Release

a local New Orleans band, the Gravy Flavored Kisses asked me to do the album artwork for their upcoming EP: "In the Red" due this fall. the EP features a few of their new tracks & you can find them on iTunes any time you care for a listen.

HBO's Treme season 3 kickoff party.

this is the representative art i did for their invitations. i did one for season 2 a year ago that was pretty tame, but decided to take this one in a different direction. mostly "because i felt like it," which turns out to be a pretty solid argument for designers, so long as the work is halfway decent. they wanted to use differently colored paper, so the design had to be a basic B+W palate.

another site launch, targeted for the beginning of 2012.

because i've decided to take all of my Architecture work & separate it from my Design & Graphic work, i'll be using cagIII.com to present the former, & this site (which has remained all but ignored for the better part of a year) to display the latter. we'll start with a bit of graphic work, serving as a representative sampling of just what the hell i've been doing for the past few months.

1111 Lincoln Rd.

a position.

this is a position to which i have held for a number of years: the only real mistake in design is the lack of stance. if one does not have a point of departure, it is rather impossible to prove the relevance of one's thoughts or ideas, & if a design tactic cannot be defended, it will immediately lose the applicability in its use or functionality in every day life.

the almost simultaneous rise & fall of kitsch industrial design has proven this. if the goal is to please the masses through diluted ambivalence, it will ultimately fail in pleasing anyone. the only noteworthy aspect of this tactic is its intentional ubiquity; the thought that a single idea could be muted enough to apply to everyone is not a new one, though when applied to design it becomes almost antithetical.

successful design is successful because it incites discourse. it certainly does not need to make everyone happy, but it does need to make everyone feel something; positive or negative, the sentiment needs to exist.