eternally

Yeah, I know everyone is MJ'ed out, but I think this one is worth it. Its been making the rounds so chances are you've seen the Eternal Moonwalk, but if you haven't check it out at the link below. The best thing about it is how simple an idea it is and how it allows for unlimited participation from anyone. Just tape yourself moonwalking across the screen, coming in and out of frame, and the website links the submissions together to create - the eternal moonwalk. It can be addicting. If you mke a submission, let me know where to find it, and I'll post it later (you can search submissions). Not surprisingly, this looks to be the brainchild of some folks in Belgium. But even better: they're not selling anything. Nice job.

The Eternal Moonwalk

the view

Work seems to always go in periods of not much going on followed by periods of just way too much going on. This is no exception. The past couple weeks have been unusually busy, so I don't have a lot to report. I have a few days out of town coming up, so there will be more interesting things to share soon, I promise. Obviously I can't show any of the projects I'm working on, but for now, here are some of the colors and textures I've been spending my days and nights staring at lately...

gallery

a few recent slivers...

united we strand

A few more from the fourth extravaganza... One of the things I love best is how you can feel the holiday in the air here. Even as early as it was in the morning, people were everywhere along the strand from Manhattan Beach through Hermosa to Redondo. Parties were already underway or being set up. People were selling everything from lemonade to cupcakes along the strand. As we approached the area where the Ironman is held and we saw the throngs of people on the beach, we realized half the throng was already in the water. We still got there to catch half of the fun and the messy aftermath. From there we started our pilgrimage through several stops in Hermosa and Redondo, with a couple friends joining at different stops along the way. The weather was perfect, the food was good, and the beer was cold. And after a break for dinner, we reconvened by the marina for fireworks. A perfect cap to another great fourth at the beach.

fourthin

a few scenes from the day... more tomorrow....

on broadway

Some shots of neon nearby and on Broadway last night. The top shot is one I stole from one of my friend Jon Westerman's tweets today. He made that last night with his iPhone using the AutoStitch app, which finds common edges in multiple photos and stitches them together to create one image. Yup, there's an app for that.

boxed

A break from work tonight for a bit to go to our last movie night in the "Last Remaining Seats" series. Tonight we were back to the Orpheum for "Pandora's Box" a 1929 German silent movie based on Wedekind's stories of Lulu. I think it was the first time I've seen a full length silent film, complete with accompaniment on the Mighty Wurlitzer, of course, in a theater. It being such a 'scandalous' tale of its time (and of course the German aspect) only added to the luster. We grabbed drinks at the Broadway bar next door beforehand, which suggested we bring in food from the Pastrami Stand next door. Fast, tasty, fun, perfect. I have to give kudos to my friend Alan for putting these together. This series is one of those things I always want to and mean to do every year since I moved to LA, but never have managed to. Alan rounded up a few of us in advance and had everything ready to snag tix as soon as they went on sale. They've been some fun evenings of movies and theaters I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

clicks

Banner ads are usually nothing more than annoyances that we are trained to not even notice. They aren't the kind of things that win awards, and I can't think of the last time I actually noticed and remembered a banner ad. I certainly don't remember a banner ad ever going viral. But this one has, and deservedly so. Created by Bridge Worldwide, its a seemingly never-ending quirky story that is played out with each click. And best of all, it never even takes you to the Pringles website. Even more impressive, it just won a Gold Cyber Lion award from the Cannes festival. Click on.

Pringles banner ad

four to fourth

July 4th is one of my favorite days to be living at the beach, and it always amazes me that I lived here for 7 years without even knowing what a big event it was in the beach cities. The highlight of the day is earlier than I care for, but the best things always are. The Hermosa Beach Ironman kicks off the day between 10 and 11am, but this is no ordinary Iron Man. This unofficial renegade event features several hundred guys and gals braving a one mile surfboard paddle followed by a one mile run before downing a 6-pack of beer. The first contestant to hold the beer in for 20 minutes wins. Needless to say, its a spectacle. As much as the suburbanite nouveau Hermosaans whine perenially about the event, it has managed to survive for more than 25 years, and is always a good spirited romp with no trouble. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The entire strand from Manhattan to Redondo takes on a party atmosphere, and its the perfect day for the ultimate beach barhop on bikes. Along the way we have run across hot dog eating contests and margarita wrestling, so you never know what to expect. We naturally make a stop at our favorite watering holes, including Naja's, which is also the perfect place to catch the fireworks at the end of the day. If you're in the area, feel free to come along for a beachin 4th.

jbd blog: all ironman posts

traveltip: kayaks go farther

I've posted before about my love for kayak.com. I have no connection to them and no benefit from plugging them, but they are far and away the best airline search service I have found. To really get to love it takes a while - at first all the thousands of options seem overwhelming, but once you start playing with all the buttons on the left after getting your results, you can easily learn to love its flexibility. While I've always found it to have cheaper fares than Orbitz, Travelocity, etc., I've recently had an odd thing happen. First off, you don't book through kayak - it finds the best result on other sites and when you click on the fare it links you to that site. But a couple times recently, I have searched a fare on kayak and linked to the Delta Airlines website as the cheapest fare. For whatever reason, I also searched the fare starting directly on Delta.com. But for the exact same flights, the fare was cheaper coming to delta.com from kayak than starting from delta.com, despite Delta's low price guarantee. Not a lot, but hey, thats your baggage fee. Speaking of which, that's the new option that I really love on kayak and was posting about: You can now search with baggage fees included. And as I learned with United last Christmas, it may not matter even if your bag is a legal carryon and fits in the carryon test box display - they can still tell you that you can't enter the secure area of the terminal and you have to pay to check it (which by the way now costs a new extra fee if you pay at the airport instead of online). So its a good idea to assume you may have to pay the fee even if your bag fits in carryon and at least make your travel searches that way. Then if you join the carryon-folks who delay takeoff and make boarding unpleasant for everyone, you at least have a little bonus cash. That is, unless you use it for the fees to reserve a seat or buy a drink: Kayak also has a page to help you keep up with all those extra fares being added continually - a good thing to check before you fly. Or save yourself the hassle and just fly Southwest. (and by the way, you can click on any image above to see it full size)

kayak.com: megachart of individual airline fees

gallery

random recent slivers from here and there...

finale

Today was, as many have said, definitely one of those days that will be a 'remember where you were when...' days. But to me, an interesting development of it was how technology shaped the day - specifically with regards to the internet and social networks, both from the spread of the news to the communal expressions afterward (including this one). Twitter went crazy with early reports of Michael Jackson's death first, followed by facebook about a half hour later. Once journalistic sources that actually confirm reports before reporting them (imagine that) confirmed the news, you could watch the expressions change. It was an interesting phenomenon to watch how people shared the experience. We didn't have those when Princess Diana died. Yet the best piece I found to reflect on Michael Jackson was a commercial created in 1992 for Pepsi. Its commendable for how subtle the product message is in it (though there are other versions where both Michael's grab the Pepsi bottle on the piano). In both its way of bridging the child Michael Jackson and the adult Michael Jackson, as well as the tone that is pensive but tinged with joy - it fit the mood of the day strangely well to me. I don't remember this commercial, and many versions I found included titles in spanish and latin languages, so I wonder if maybe it wasn't a US commercial. I found no information of who wrote or directed it to credit, but its a really nice piece. And of course, I found it through Google and YouTube. As for expressions on Michael Jackson's passing, the best of the day was a short tweet from Andy Cohen: "He wasn't meant to get old...."

YouTube: 1992 Pepsi Commercial: I'll Be There

majesty

Tonight was another of our movie nights in the LA Conservancy's Last Remaining Seats series, which shows old movies in now-closed movie palaces in LA. Tonight's movie was "Streetcar Named Desire," yet another classic that I had never seen. We had planned some themed activities to go with the movie - Sazerac cocktails and dinner at a restaurant in the building that used to be the hub for LA's streetcar system, but I got behind on some work and messed up our plans. Luckily, I did make it to the movie itself. The Los Angeles Theater opened in 1931 and was the last of the great movie palaces on Broadway, and perhaps the grandest. The size of the theater, complete with a downstairs ballroom, childrens playrooms and enormous and elaborate bathrooms and lobbies, is impressive in itself; but its elaborate French Baroque-inspired decor explains why they are called movie palaces. Indeed this is.

impressionist

I have to apologize if this post is a mood killer, but this is such a strong piece (and so different than we would ever see in the US) that it deserves notice. Adfreak.com today featured a recent PSA by Saatchi & Saatchi Paris for the French Alzheimer's Association. Its a bravely honest and brutally powerful glimpse at the ugliness of Alzheimer's. No sugarcoating, but then again, the French have never been known for sugarcoating. AdFreak compares it to a British PSA, which in fairness is probably similar to what we would typically see in the US. Its pretty clear which one leaves the lasting impression. It reminds me of a professor in one of my design classes making the point that design is about communication, not making things pretty. If the message isn't pretty, the design shouldn't be either.

French Alzheimer's Association: "Fortunately"

AdFreak.com: French vs British Alzheimer's Ad

summer slivers

Just a few slivers from Sunday on the beach with George and Joe. Its good having a friend in the neighborhood again to nudge me and get me outta the house. Somehow a day on the beach seemed appropriate for the first day of Summer.

traveltip: pocket this

Today on Twitter, I replied to a question from @jaunted that I realized would make a good "traveltip" for the blog (while also realizing that I have forgotten to continue with the occasional traveltip theme altogether). They asked for tips to avoid pickpockets and what to do with your passport. I have no idea if he had this purpose in mind, but several years ago my cousin Chris gave me a small change wallet about the size of a standard credit card. When traveling overseas, I always use this wallet and keep it in my front pant pocket. I carry my drivers license and a couple credit cards (along with usually the hotel key and my transit pass). I keep my paper money in there as well. As for the passport, I have never needed it except when crossing a country's border, so I leave it in the hotel safe (or hidden in luggage if there is no safe). I carry a xerox copy of my passport with me just in case I need it for any reason (though I never have). @flyboyvancouver also had a good suggestion of keeping a scanned version of your passport in your email so that you can access it from anywhere in case you should need to. Not groundbreaking tips, but sometimes when traveling, the simple things are the ones you don't think of.

summer nights

Another Dodger game tonight. The place was packed. We've had the best record in the majors all year I think, so I don't know if that's whats bringing people out. Maybe it's just the difference between a Thursday night and my usual Wednesday, when most of my games are this season. I never knew there were so many A's fans in LA, but there were a lot out there tonight. I have a hard time believing that the "free parking" promotion made a difference - but maybe so. It sure made the parking situation a mess, its been years since I experienced anything that bad at Dodger Stadium. But so it goes, who cares... the dogs were great, the game was great, and nothing beats a summer night at the ballpark. Except maybe one in October.

strollin'

more beach slivers - a couple solid weeks of great sunny beach days are making up for those may gray/june gloom days before them. My friend Bill came down today and we walked down the beach to Simmzy's for some tasty grub and beer at lunchtime(ish). (Add the east-west wings to the pulled pork panini I wrote about earlier on the list of Simmzy's must-haves.)

make some fun

Another found on the web spotlight today - this is a really great rebrand of Jell-o packaging found on UnderConsideration's website 'Brand New'. The worst thing about it? It's not real. This is student work. Seriously. It was created by designer Richard Perez, who recently graduated from San Francisco's Academy of Art University. I didn't even realize how bad Jell-o's packaging had become (last image above), including their adoption of a swirled O logo (wtf?), until researching this post. What Perez has done here is a great job of balancing a lot of fine lines - fun but not tacky or cheesy, clean but still energetic and exciting. I love the use of color tones within the logo and within words that don't stray from the base color to give some energy but still maintain legibility. The use of characters that reflect urban pop art is also a brilliant bridge of child to adult, smart but still playful. It looks like the logo has a subtle baseline shift in it that I might take issue with if this were an actual rebrand, but it's not, so I won't. Nice job on a really great brand system that captures the character and soul of the product better than the actual product's packaging does.

Skinny Ships / Richard Perez: Jell-o

sharp

This is from March, but its been getting a lot of play on the web lately (probably because the show's new season just started here in the US). This is an outdoor campaign in New Zealand for the tv series 'True Blood' (which runs in the US on HBO) created by DraftFCB in Auckland. Pretty damn clever.

gallery

just a few random pics from today...

beachin

Another perfect Southern California beach day today. Sunny skies, moderate temps - add some friends and it doesn't get any better. My friend George, who has been on the East Coast working on a movie for 8 or 9 months, is back in town (yay); he and his friend Joe, who's in from Jersey for the weekend, came down to take the bikes along the beach. Naturally we ended up at Naja's along with our friend Jack, who met up with us along the way. After sampling a few beers from Naja's selection, we stopped into the arcade in the Redondo Marina for a few games before biking the way back to El Porto. What more could ya ask for to make another perfect beach day?

appening: cardstar

Thanks to Twitter, I have a new favorite iPhone app. And at the moment, you can download it for free. I find store reward programs and membership passcards incredibly annoying. For me, its not some privacy issue or that I mind being marketed to or even someone having info about my purchases - for me, its the annoyance of carting around a whole slew of cards in my wallet. Go figure, there's an app for that. It's called CardStar, and all you have to do is enter your membership number and it generates a scanable upc code, so you don't have to carry around a bunch of cards anymore. There was a time when I would have been reluctant to whip out my phone like that, but its to the point that iPhones are pretty common, so it feels a lot more comfortable to do so now. So far, its always worked for me. Have a favorite app? Let me know, I'd love to hear about it.

gone ishing

Today was our second movie of the LA Conservancy's 'Last Remaining Seats' series, showing movies in LA's now-closed old movie palaces. Tonight was Cabaret, one of my friend Alan's favorite movies. He had taken the day off for it, so I tried to come up with some thematic stuff to do leading up to the movie (with some help from my friend Myron). Cabaret is based on the play 'I am a Camera', which is based on the semi-autobiographical stories by Christopher Isherwood collected in 'Goodbye to Berlin'. So, stretching that a bit to justify some activities for the day, Alan, our friend Jon and I started with a Bacardi rum drink near Ginger Rogers Beach, where Isherwood met his life partner Don Bachardy. We attempted to refer to ourselves in the third person and only using last names, like Isherwood did in one of his books, but we didn't prove to be too successful in sticking to that. We then headed downtown to take in the Richard Neutra exhibit at the downtown library. There's no true connection between Isherwood and Neutra (that I know of), but Neutra was from Vienna and did work in Berlin at around the same time that Isherwood was there, before both moved to Los Angeles. The exhibit - and the library building itself, by the way - are both amazing. It may be my new favorite downtown spot. From there, we stopped into the Bradbury Building. Isherwood wrote a review of Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles that is said to have boosted Bradbury's career and led to a friendship between the two. The Bradbury Building, best known from Blade Runner, has no relation to Ray Bradbury, but that didn't stop us from justifying it as part of our day. After that, Alan's friend Dino joined us and we trekked on to our next stop, Wurstkuche. As you might have guessed, Wurstkuche features German sausages along with some great German and Belgian beers, and pommes frites. Not much of a stretch for that connection. Then it was on to the main event - the movie. The Los Angeles Theater was really amazing. (Bachardy, by the way, used to go to movies downtown with his mother as a kid. It's likely that they might have gone to the Los Angeles.) I've been in a few old movie palaces, but this was unlike anything I'd ever seen - outrageously over the top gaudy and elaborate, and the perfect setting for Cabaret. The movie hit nerves in many realms, but I'm really glad to have seen it in that environment and on the big screen. It was a fun day, but truly a day of sensory overload - in every good way.

trust

You may have seen this one making its way around the interwebs last week. Its a pretty interesting study of something thats pretty common anymore - as referenced by how often I find myself saying "I can't believe this one got approved" when some really great design is done by high profile product or company (like, for example, the current rebrand of CocaCola that was done a couple years ago). A web designer named Dustin Curtis was so exasperated with the American Airlines website that he quickly mocked up a version of how good it could be and posted it with an open letter on his website. Much to his surprise, he heard back from the company. A user experience (ux) architect (a guy who helps build websites) at the company wrote him, essentially saying that there are so many people and so many groups involved that its impossible for a good product to ever make it through the system there. (He did say they were trying to make small improvements wherever they could.) Curtis makes an important point - a brand is more than a logo and design, its an entire user experience - from on the web to on the plane. If you're not providing a good experience, you're not giving someone a reason to come back when they have a choice. We saw it kill Circuit City. It even comes back to that glass of water at Simmzy's pub I wrote about yesterday. But good design plays an important role in creating a good experience for a customer, and good design cannot be done by a group that is afraid to reach beyond the lowest common denominator. Apple and Coke have figured that out (and I would wager that 200 people aren't involved in making their design decisions). Trust the vision of the people you hire with the decisions you hired them for in the first place.

dustincurtis.com: Dear American Airlines

dustincurtis.com: Dear Dustin Curtis (the response)

welcome details

My friend Jim came down to the beach today to help me out with some car repairs (thanks Jim!); we grabbed lunch at a place thats only been open a few weeks downtown by the pier called Simmzy's. I had been once for a beer at night, but have been wanting to go during the day and sit on the patio. Simmzy's features a lot of not-so-common beer choices but (to my delight) doesn't shy away from whites and wheats in their offerings. We tested a couple, but I stuck with an Allagash White from Maine (which seems to be becoming popular around town). But just as good as the beer was the food. I had some pulled pork with enough tang to do any Tennesseean or Carolinian proud. The weather was perfect again today and a sliver of the ocean was visible in the distance. There's a slight tinge of Manhattan Beach frou-frou-ness, but the place is still generally comfortable. Oddly enough, what impressed us both was when a server brought Jim a glass of water - unasked for - as I was signing the bill, apparently seeing that we were still in conversation and noticing that I still had half a glass of soda left. That was a really nice touch of attention that made us feel welcome even though our meal was done and the bill had been paid. I'm already looking forward to my next visit back.

perfect daze

Saturday was about as perfect as beach weather can get. The sky had just a few puffy clouds, the breeze had just a bit of chill to it to counter the sun that was baking through. Perfect day to hop on the bike and meet up with friends at my favorite hangout: Naja's Place. Naja's is on the marina in Redondo Beach and features 77 beers on tap (though we noticed there were 87 yesterday) and 700 bottled beers. That means enough to satisfy my friend Pat's preference for hoppy varieties as well as my taste for whites and wheats (even though they waste too many taps on things like Pyramid and Widmer and not enough european options). Naja's only offers a few food items, but everything we've had there has been pretty tasty. The crowds always a pretty interesting mix and live bands range from reggae to classic hairband rock (we could do without those). No better place for beers on a perfect day. Afterward, Pat, Heith and I found ourselves at Hermosa Beach Yacht Club before capping the night with a Pizza from Micky's across the street. Its part of a beach bike tour we hope to repeat many times this summer. Next time, come along.

handy

More hand-painted signage from along Lincoln Boulevard's stretch across Venice, Santa Monica and Marina Del Rey. I'm not sure what I like so much about these signs or why they seem so charming to me, because they (usually) are not examples of good typography. Part of it probably comes from the cumulative effect of so much of the street having signage like this (I would guess 50% or more of the businesses have some sort of hand-painted signage). Probably more than anything, I find them charming because they don't pretend to be something they aren't, or they don't try to pretend they are better than they actually are. There's something refreshing about that.

tweety

I started following twitter a few weeks ago (yeah, even Oprah jumped in before I did). It was actually the Kogi bbq truck that finally pushed me into it, and over the last few weeks I got off to a slow start, just kind of checkin in to see whether it was something I wanted to bother with. But in the last couple days have made a conscious effort to be more active on it, and I have to admit that doing so has made a big difference in my perception of it. The biggest lesson: ignore the question "what are you doing?" and instead answer "what has your attention?". Its still a learning process, but by following more users and putting out more myself, I realize why its often referred to as a conversation. If you don't put much into the conversation, you don't get much back. Its obvious why facebook made its last format change in an effort to be more twitter-like, and thus my tweets often duplicate something I'm sharing on facebook, but where you are sharing with people you already know on facebook (since you don't 'friend' strangers), you are sharing with strangers on Twitter. If nothing else, I've already found it valuable, just on those couple days, in the amount of 'stuff' (especially, for me, design-related content) I've found through other users, as well as strangers with similar interests and in similar fields that it has brought me in contact with. I do look forward to when something like Google Wave can combine all these things into one, but for now, I'm still growing and learning my way around it. If you're on there, let me know (@jonberrydesign) and help me broaden the conversation.

duck, duck...

I posted this on facebook and twitter the other day, but I think its worth additional attention if you haven't seen it. I have no idea what this is, or if there's any reality to it. There is, in fact, a company called Stevenson Strata Management with that logo in Australia, so this guy may have actually pulled this on his apartment management company. Who knows? And does it matter? Its a great read. Poor Helen. Save it for the part of your day when you need a good chuckle, then read through:

27b/6: The ducks in the bathroom are not mine