Chris Blog

We're all fans

This ad makes me wish I still had a TV...

Catch the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards this Sunday

In the meantime, check out this awesome companion site: wereallfans.com

(Ms. Gaga is up for 5 awards, and is rumoured to be performing with Elton John...)

Fantastic plastic crap!

Dixie's Tupperware Party!

Showing at the RBC Theatre in Mississauga, ON until Jan. 31

From her website:

"I'm Dixie Longate, America's #1 Personal Seller of Tupperware. I come from Mobile, Alabama, but I moved my trailer with all my kids to Los Angeles a couple of years ago as part of the conditions of my parole. I started selling the fantastic Plastic crap in 2001 and I have never had so much fun drinking for free in my life. Within a year, I was one of the top sellers in the nation because, well, me and some plastic bowls, and a bunch of drunk women somehow equals lots of sales."

The first Apple product I can [probably] live without

The Apple iPad: Like a giant iPhone, without the phone.

Green

Put a lively clove of garlic in some soil last night... let's see what happens!

(See previously: adventures in potatoes)

Theatre that will "lift you"

Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill

Playing until February 28 at the Panasonic Theatre

Design rules

The 7 Rules to Understand Design and Designers

(via)

Fit for a Queen

Latte at Queen Mother Cafe

208 Queen St. W.

Things I love

Letter stencils! (I didn't realize I had so many!)

If you like collections, you'll LOVE this site.

Design rocks

Recent poster design for the Archaeology Centre at the University of Toronto

(please click for a closer look)

Today's words of wisdom

“The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.”

-Jessica Hische, in an iChat interview over at HumblePied

(previous post about her here)

Gaga, simplified

Brilliant Lady Gaga poster mockup by Workerman

(Thanks Terry!)

Colour me happy.

Christian J. Faur has created an alphabet based solely on colours. For real.

From his website:

"...I have become aware of how difficult it is to find a universal meaning of color that can transcends the cultural boundaries in a similar way that the symbols used in written language and mathematics have become universal. In a failed quest to find universal color meaning, I hit upon an idea of just mapping colors to a pre-existing system that can hold meaning, the alphabet."

Here is his basic colour-coded system:

Or:

On his site, you can learn more about how text is processed by our brains, how he assigned the colours, how he expanded the system to include upper case, lower case, numbers, and punctuation, and see some stunning examples of his work in action:

Even more interesting are some of the problems and broader questions his work poses about art, design and typography:

Using colour, one can write without the limitation of using glyphs to represent data. As colour has no direct shape ... colour can be used in ways that traditional fonts can not
Colour text can be used inside of images to encrypt character data or embed metadata within the image itself
Colour can be applied to existing text to render double meanings

And for extra fun, he's included a free alphabet font and Colour Alphabet Converter.

Bravo!

(p.s. What does this mean for us synesthetes???)

The world we live in

"... Being provocative is not just about getting people's attention - it's about really saying something that affects people in a real way, in a positive way. So all the things that I do - in terms of The Fame and in terms of The Fame Monster - it's meant to sort of make it a bit easier to swallow, this kind of horrific media world that we live in."

-Lady Gaga, today on Oprah

Meli-mello, rebranded

My dear friend Melanie recently asked me to help her out with a logo/identity for her website.

The original website banner:

Some process work:

And, the new logo:

Plus, a version for the blog:

Along with her über-talented web designer, she has come up with a really beautiful new website. Good luck Melanie! (And congratulations!!)

The More You Know: Synesthesia

Do numbers, letters or days of the week have colours or smells? They might if you experience the unusual phenomenon called Synesthesia. To a synesthete, one or more sensory channels cause a kind of "cross-talk" that triggers experience in another channel.

A synesthete may experience colours with numbers or letters (very common), colours with sounds or musical notes (also common), taste or touch with certain sounds (less common) or even colours with changes in temperature (more rare).

No one really knows what causes Synesthesia, but neuroscientists are fascinated by it and are conducting research to try to better their understanding. Some believe that we all started out as synesthetes, but lost the ability in early childhood.

More, from Wikipedia:

"In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme → color synesthesia or color-graphemic synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored, while [...] numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities. In spatial-sequence, or number form synesthesia, numbers, months of the year, and/or days of the week elicit precise locations in space (for example, 1980 may be "farther away" than 1990), or may have a (three-dimensional) view of a year as a map (clockwise or counterclockwise)."

An example of how a word might be perceived by a synesthete:

I have a sinking feeling

Some new gadget called the Boxee Brown, which shares internet content with your television.

(I would buy it just to look at!)

Vintage resolutions

Delightful illustration by Martin Provensen

from The Fireside Cookbook by James Beard, originally published in 1949

(thanks Steph!)

Beautiful disaster

"On May 1, 1947, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. 'He is much better off without me ... I wouldn't make a good wife for anybody,' ... Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale's death, Wiles got this picture of death's violence and its composure."

-from Life Magazine, on the tragic suicide of Evelyn McHale