San Francisco Hill Use # 509
Ryan McGinley does Caves
So, my favorite episode of Planet Earth hands down has to be “Caves”
The shit that can happen underground is nuts. It’s not fair that such gorgeous underground landscapes exist that nobody gets to see.
Of course, Ryan McGinley gets access to some cave and throws naked people around and it looks rediculously amazing. Surreal nudies. Check em out:
See full series here: Moonmilk
lovin me some Vena Cava
Check out their blog: Viva Vena Cava It’s filled with goodies
Help I Need Help
Help I Need Help offers clean solutions to simple health issues.
They say it best: We find the best solution there is, and take away everything else. By stripping away some of the complexity and fear mongering of the health industry, we hope to make medicine friendlier and more accessible, and in doing so empower people to make their own health decisions.
They even have a “Help I’m bored” section where there are tons of Help questions answered. These are all picked from user generated questions. Making medicine friendly and reliable? That’s unheard of.
Remember the Time
I love how Michael Jackson’s music videos were always the biggest productions. 10 minutes plus with countless well known actors. He ruled.
Modern History
Last week I went to the Met and a piece by Sarah Charlesworth entitled, April 21, 1978, caught my eye. She had reproduced the front page of newspapers from around the world, and besides the header, blocked out all type so only images were left amid blank white spaces. She was tracking the reproduction of one specific photographic image seen floating around each page:
It is a picture of Aldo Moro taken during his capture by the Red Brigades, holding a newspaper from the day before, April 20, 1978, declaring him dead. Obviously false. For Moro’s full story click here.
The key point of this piece lies in the manipulation of text and image, and how “Charlesworth was able to reveal some of the ways that image choice and placement were invariably politically motivated… Perceiving the photographic image as a strategic instrument for the exchange of information and the creation of values within in our culture, as Charlesworth describes it, is crucial to unraveling these persistent questions about the mass media and our relationship to it.”
Hierarchy is engrained in every designer’s brain as a way to communicate importance and visual direction. I often forget how powerful this is.
I am a direct contributor to mass media.
I have the power to change the way people think.
This is strange to me. It could be a gift or a curse, or both. Who knows. But, this piece made me start to put things back into perspective.
Sarah Charlesworth’s full project can be found here
Twitter Tracker on Coco
While Late Night’s replacement Jimmy Fallon is embracing the digital world, taking full advantage of fan involvement through Facebook and Twitter, Conan O’Brien, new host of The Tonight Show, is jumping on the bandwagon with a slightly different attitude:
A lot of sweet time was spent on those graphics.
I am not a Twitter fan. I think it’s self-indulgent nonsense, and this sketch underscores this point. Hooray for Conan
( the worst )
Just A Friend
Heineken made this genius little commercial.
The pacing of the shots reveals the story nicely. By the end, we find a group of drunk party people in a cab singing along to Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend” with their fellow cabbie. The tagline, “Let A Stranger Drive You Home” makes a beautiful lockup with some interesting attempts at ligatures. Heineken does their bit for responsible drinking with some classy design. Kudos.
The Real San Francisco Treat
THE IT’S IT!!!
Growing up in San Francisco, I never realized that this dessert was particular to the Bay Area. I guess I just assumed they were part of everybody’s childhood. Now that I know it wasn’t, I am doing my part to introduce this amazing ice cream sandwich to as many people as possible.
Turns out the It’s-It has been around since 1928, originally made and sold only at San Francisco’s Playland-At-The-Beach. You can see the illustration along the bottom of the packaging.
I assume they were sold at the “Pie Shop”
Once this funland was demolished in 1972, the It’s It ended with it. But in 1974, a factory was bought to distribute the It’s It and it still exists today right off of the 101 freeway in South San Francisco.
Contents of an It’s It: A scoop of vanilla ice cream smooshed between two large old-fashioned oatmeal cookies and then dipped into dark chocolate. So delicious.
Flavors of It’s It’s: Vanilla, Chocolate, Mint, and Capuccino. All amazing.
How can you resist this goodness?
Now go find one: http://www.itsiticecream.com/find_us/
Prologue Designs Main Titles for OFFF
Ilya Abulhanov kills it.