I'm Intolerant

I'm intolerant of intolerant people, and I think it's a problem. I was at a gathering where I really only knew about half the people. Friends of friends were there. In the middle of the festivities I hear the "N-Word" being used along with the phrase "ruining our country." The fact that I didn't know half of these people also meant that those speaking this way didn't either. So, in a group of perfect strangers, these individuals were being blatantly racist.

Whenever I'm in these situations, it bothers me for days. I wasn't part of the conversation taking place. I was kind of passing by. Ever since then, I just can't stop thinking, in disbelief, that there is still this kind of thing going on.

The few times that I have found myself face-to-face with this type of stuff, I clearly point out my disagreement. To me, even if you're not a God-concerned person who feels we're all made in God's image and are therefore equal, I feel we live in a country that was founded on diversity. Anyone not enjoying our colorful makeup needs to realize they're living on the wrong planet.

Yesterday my wife and I met an Asian grandmother that was raising her grandson. We talked enough to learn that much about her. Today, my kids played on a playground with what sounded like a German family, and English was clearly not their first language. There was also the Caucasian grandmother with the African-American grandkids. I know it's not a utopia, but this is reality. I can't believe there are still people out there that don't see that, or worse, don't appreciate it.

I just don't get racists. I don't understand where they're coming from or where they think they're going. We live in an ethnically diverse orb spinning through space. Nothing is going to change that. Most people equate those that have tried to change that with the greatest evils perpetrated by mankind. Do these people never leave their homes? Do they not see how the majority of the world has moved past a lot of this? Have they never spoken to someone of a differing heritage? Is it crazy that I have?

Are you starting to pick up on my intolerance? In describing the intolerant, the racists, I really sound very similar to them, and that bothers me too. It bothers me quite a bit.

Chibi Friday: Vader

As requested:

Heaven

I know I still have a Challenge response to answer for, but this was on my mind today. I've been doing some freestyle writing on whatever pops into my head. Today I was thinking about Heaven. The subject often sparks some great conversations when you get people going. The Bible has a few sections on Heaven, but I don't think we know much about what to expect.

The following is just fiction inspired by my imagination. It's not Biblical. It's not based on any creed. It was done quickly, so it might be more prone to spelling errors.

If you enjoy it, please let me know. Maybe I'll expand it a bit.

_____________________________________

Did someone just call my name?

I'm lying on my back, comfortable. Feels like cool grass beneath me. My eyes are closed, but I can tell it's daytime out by the light. I was just in the hospital. Is this the hospital? I can hear birds chirping.

I open my eyes. No. Blue sky above with a few lazy clouds. We're not in Kansas anymore Toto. This isn't the hospital.

I sit up, quickly looking around. I must not have left the hospital. Where are my wife and kids? I don't see anyone else.

The sun is there, but I have no idea what time it is. I try to remember what I had just been doing, but everything is hazy. I was in the hospital. Everything is a little blurry. What time was it there? This doesn't feel like the same day. It feels like I've been… resting. It seems like I've been resting for a while.

I'm on a hill. Long, green grass all around leading down into a valley. A few trees here and there. The trees are green, full. There's a warm breeze. You can hear it weave itself through the grass and trees. It's comfortable.

My eyes, I can see things crystal clear. I've never been able to do that. They feel different, whole, no glares or blurs. All the parts feel… real. Something I'm not used to.

I pinch myself, and it hurts. I could still be dreaming, but it really doesn't feel that way. In fact, I feel very awake. I can smell the grass. Each breath is full, clean.

I stand up and look down at myself. I'm wearing a loose fitting, black Dickies work shirt and carpenter jeans. One of my all time favorite outfits. For some reason the Dickies logo makes me laugh. If I'm where I think I might be… it's just funny to see a logo. I giggle again at the thought of checking to see what kind of underwear I might have on. Nothing is covering my feet. The grass tickles them in the breeze.

Then I realize something else, I'm thin. My eyes jump to my arms. They're a bit fitter than I ever remember them being, more muscular. My skin is younger than it should be. I don't see any of my familiar scars or marks.

I realize my hair is hanging down to my shoulders in ringlets, the way I wore it when I was in my twenties. I run a hand down my face. I've got a goatie. Everything else is smooth, young feeling.

I take another longer look around. No buildings. The trees get closer together down in the valley. Behind me is more hilly incline, more open field for as far as I can see. I think I'll check out the valley a little more. That feels right.

Every step down the hill is soft, full of green grass and soft soil. I feel leisurely, like I'm out for a stroll. I keep thinking about my wife and kids, but not even that is stressing me out in the least. I'm just going to walk for a while. See what's what.

I think about how strange it is that I'm not panicking. I don't know where I am or if I'm in danger, but I just don't feel any of those things. I'm calm. I'm not hungry, tired, or overly warm or cold.There's a very natural feeling grin on my face.

The trees get more numerous and taller. I hear a cicada buzzing. There are birds in every tree, chirping. I walk for a few minutes before noticing movement out of the corner of my eyes, not the trees, not the birds.

People! Maybe four or five coming through the trees into a clearing up ahead. They're still yards away, but people! I'm smiling again, the craziest thing. I don't know who these people are. I don't even know where I am for certain. Without explanation, I'm happy to see them.

As I get closer, I see that they're all smiling too. Maybe we're all crazy, but that doesn't seem to matter. A few of them are waving.

Their clothes are weird. They're a motley crew. One lady is wearing a long, full dress like something from the 1920's and a fancy hat. There's a guy wearing clothing I've never seen the likes of before. It's some form of shirt and pants, but the style is strange to me. There's an Asian guy wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt. They're all about the same age, maybe eighteen or twenty. Everyone is fit looking, strong, healthy, smiling.

Before I can say anything, I hear a voice, "Come. Follow me." I recognize that voice. It's like a voice that I've heard every day for my entire life, but I also can't exactly place it, though I have my suspicions. We all turn toward it, and there, just above the trees, miles away still, is what appears to be a city.

Social Justice

I'm a Social Justice Christian_PSA from New Name Pictures on Vimeo.

Random Things from My Weekend - April 5th

• What is it about holidays that make me want to eat candy? I'm not a candy person, but around holidays, something takes over the craving zone of my brain.
• My sons were fighting over a plastic, play hoe yesterday. The only time I'll ever be able to say, "Hey boys! Bros before Hoes!" without getting into trouble with the wife.
• If you type in "hoe" to my desktop widget, it doesn't even give you the traditional definition anymore, only the slang for street walker. Sad.
• Our Easter was great. We went to church, heard one of the best sermons ever about the Gospel of John. Okay. I'm a little biased. John is one of my favorite Bible contributors. We spent hours outside in our front yard with our boys playing with frisbees and foam rocket launchers, which caused some people driving past to honk at us. We had a great dinner at my parents' house. MMMMMM… sauteed asparagus and mashed potatoes. Ate way too much chocolate and finished the night reading books in bed. I think if we could cut out the chocolate, we could repeat this every Sunday.
• The movie, Brothers - highest possible recommendation. Marvel had decided this guy isn't going to be Spider-man anymore? What are they thinking?
• I've learned that taking my kids to free events always ends with disappointment all around. Expect a blog post about it soon.
• Let the grilling begin!
• Detroit has Kowalski. Flint has Koegel's. I pity the people that have to eat brands like Eckrich, tastes so much like smoke infused bologna.
• Coloring Easter eggs with two years olds often ends up as leg coloring and the little collapsable dye cups look like female condoms.
• Owen, back from a few days at Grandpa and Grandma Buckley's house, pretending to be on the telephone says, "This lady keeps calling my phone, telling me I'm going to die soon." Kids can really be creepy sometimes.
• Fun Easter things to check out: Rob Bell and Peter Rollins' videos. Enjoy. I did.
• When I became a Christian I bought into this idea that sometimes we do things for people that they aren't expecting. Conversely, if you are going to do loving things for people, you have to allow people to also do kind things for you. You can't deny them the opportunity to bless you. That's a hard thing for most people, including me. Someone did something nice for me yesterday. Something I would have never expected. I was speechless and nearly in tears to be honest. All I can say is 'Thank you.'

Chibi Friday

Here's some Chibi work I did a few years back. Produced in Adobe Illustrator (I'm not responsible for his badge). If anyone likes this, I have a few more I could post.

(inspired by J.K. Rowling characters, books published by Scholastic, movies by Warner Brothers, did I cover everyone?)

What Makes a Good Design?

A good design, whether its straight artwork or some form of advertising, sells or conveys whatever the producer was trying to sell or convey. There are structural rules you can employ to make the overall appearance of what you're doing pleasing to the eye. There are other tricks that can be employed to elicit certain emotional responses. Understanding and employing either of these two camps can get you half way there, but half way isn't always good enough.

Believe it or not, the structural rules have been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years. These rules have to do with balance, proportion, symmetry, grid structures, and oddly enough, deviation from all of the above. Visually, people like things broken into thirds, laid out in grid patterns, or arranged in triangular formations. Most people don't even realize that they're looking at such things.

Anyone can study these guidelines. There are tons of books out there. You could sit in an art museum all day and study the commonalities contained in each piece that really stand out to you. It wouldn't take you long to discover these often overlooked structures. You don't have to have a great love of art or even a long history of artistic ability to tap into these concepts, but it doesn't hurt either.

Learning the structure will get you most of the way there. Of course, I've met people that have college degrees that couldn't design their way out of a paper bag, and people that have never even thought of these structures before and design beautifully. Sometimes design talent is like gymnastic ability, some of us have it and some don't (I can't do a head stand to save my life).

The other emotional marketing tricks are pretty easy to understand, but they're also often incorrectly used. People like to see people in their advertising. People like babies, cute animals, and of course, sex always sells. These ideas have to be used appropriately. Here are some examples of using these ideas incorrectly:

After a few weeks of working with the client, we had a campaign narrowed down to two or three consistent looking ads that they were going to run. The only thing that had to be finalized was a photo they were going to take to showcase their store. Since they were selling furniture, we expected a photo of… get this, furniture. Instead we received a photo of their granddaughter sitting on a couch. When we asked why the child was the obvious focus of the photo, they indicated that they wanted to showcase their love of family. There was already a line in the ad that indicated 'family owned and operated.' If you want to sell furniture, you need to emphasize your great furniture.

Another example: Within weeks of the recent Financial Bailout of large banks, we received a request for a logo/mascot design. A small, local bank was trying to expand their loan department. They requested that we use a cartoon because people like cartoons. The problem was, they wanted a cartoon monster alongside the phrase "Loan Monster." People were already upset with banks. A monster is generally a negative thing. We pleaded with them to let us come up with something else.

Some of the other common mistakes:

Most people don't realize, and most advertising sales people won't tell you, you have about 2 seconds to get someone's attention, and possibly another five to re-engage them and keep them. Another words, even the best designed advertising is likely only effective for mere seconds, if you're lucky, you might get a minute.

If you try to cram too much information into one advertisement, you won't sell or convey anything. People will give up on trying to take it all in. It's very common for a potential viewer to glance at an ad and immediately perceive too much text. If you have paragraphs of info, you'll likely cut your effectiveness by half right off the bat. You want to keep things simple, make a fast impression.

Color is a great thing to include in any design, art or ad. That doesn't mean the more colors the better. You want a color scheme. That might only be three colors that make sense together.

Colors elicit their own emotional responses too, and you have to keep that in mind. If your bank runs an ad all in red, people tend to make negative associations with the color red and their finances. Green is tricky when you're working on restaurant ads. Green can easily make people think of spoiled food.

Fun fonts are great, but you have to use them responsibly. No one wants to read more than a word or two when Old English is the font. Too many fonts in your design can make things look so disconnected, no one will try to piece it all together. You'll likely miss your critical two seconds.

Time can be a design's best friend. Rushing things will make things look rushed. One of my college instructors taught us that a good design is never 100% finished. You can always make little tweaks here and there, apply new skills or ideas. Sometimes a design has to be mined, chipped away through trial and error. Sometimes the creative mind needs to chew on an idea for a while. That doesn't mean that changes should be made for the sake of making changes.

Both of these ads aren't too bad. They both have strong calls to action with consistent looking use of fonts. Both of them are pretty simple. We don't have tons of text to read.

The one on the left is on the verge of having too many colors, but it helps that each character's color also splits the ad into four horizontal sections. Vertically it is split into three sections, two of which are triangular. The colors do repeat above and below the dividing bar, which helps the balance a bit. The images they chose make perfect sense because they're advertising a movie, you would want photos from the movie included. The images help portray what the movie is about. You know this is a superhero movie even though it doesn't come right out and say that with words.

The ad on the right has a great, simple color scheme with purple and green dominating. It highlights benefits and has a call to action. I think I would have centered or evenly divided the two points in the top of the ad, but I think this is the better of the two ads. The only image they chose to use is their logo.

So, for a good design, you have to learn to balance all of these things. You want to sell or compel a simple main point with balanced color, fonts, and appropriate images. If you give a decent graphic artist a fair amount of time, balancing all these things shouldn't be too hard for them.