My friend Andrew Sloat is giving a talk at the Apple store in Soho on Wednesday, July 16 at 6:30 as part of the AIGA/Design Remixed series. Come see him and listen to him. He is nice. He is a great graphic designer and makes nice videos like this one. That video made him so famous that everyone wants him to do videos now, even Barack Obama. That video made him so famous that even some French skate crew ripped him off (Click here). The French ripping off Americans? Eh, who would have thought…

For more information click here.

This is how I found the computer desktop the first day of work. Thank you Karen.

Today is exactly two months since I moved to New York. Click here to see a few pictures of what I have been up to; freelance and personal work.

Click here

Sigur Rós - “Gobbledigook” (MP3)

I saw Reprise for the first time about two years ago at the Sundance film festival, and it instantly became my favorite film. Recently it got released in New York and I went to see it today…I can seriously say that it’s one of the most honest and unpretentious movies I have ever seen. Still my favorite film. If you live in New York you should go see it.

Listen to my mixtape here. I have included a brand new song by Beck called “Chem Trails”

The Newborn type monument that a few or my friends worked on to mark Kosovo’s Declaration of Independence received a Clio Silver Award last week in Miami, Florida.

“In the 1960s, regional carriers used sexy stews in hot pants to lure passengers aboard. This one appears to be rolling a joint, although she probably isn’t. “

click here to listen

Image 1. Bush in 2000. Image 2. Bush in 2008

1. Center for Advanced Visual Studies catalogue 2. Coffee spilled issues 12 and 13 of DOT DOT DOT Magazine 3. Journal of Radical Shimming 4. Loose chapter from E.C. Large’s novel Asleep in the Afternoon 5. Hyphen Press Catalogue & almanack 2008     6. Armory Addendum to Warhol’s Dream 7. Further Postcard 8. The Blind Man issues 1 and 2 and other miscellaneous stuff.

…and I am no longer gonna wear jeans.

Click here

I rarely check myspace. But today when I was looking at it, I randomly clicked on my friend Dane Hansen’s profile and his “About me” section is hilarious.

“My name is Dane Hansen and I can be bought easily with money.
For the most part I hold in my poop until I am at work. I do that because I feel like pooping is work, and that I deserve to get paid to do it. Also when I do go poop, I poop exclusively in the handicapped stall. And it’s not because I am handicapped, or that I need to use the handrails; in fact, I avoid the handrails at all costs so that I do not catch handicap. My reason for going in there is the ample seating and legroom. A normal stall does not do me justice. Also the door to the handicap stall opens out, not it. that way you aren’t forced to touch the toilet with your pants. I go swimming every single day. Why? Because it’s way more fun than taking a shower. And when I say swimming I don’t mean swimming laps. In fact I probably don’t know how to swim. I mean splashing and floating and then jumping on the toys as hard as possible. Thats my kind of swimming. I am from Boise, Idaho, but right now I live in Utah at Pizza Manor 3.0 (the third in a long legacy of Pizza Manors) working at Axis41 making Flash. I beat Minesweeper set on “expert” level all the damn time. I would someday like to do a study on Juggalos. I am afraid of other countries. I think that every country except America is a barren post-apocalyptic Soviet Union, amistd a nuclear winter. That doesn’t apply to Japan though. Japan is the future. In Japan, even the quaintest of suburban neighborhoods looks like Times Square on a weekend. I think if I went there I would be a god.”

This will be my home starting 2 June until 1 September.

I saw this on the way home. Today is the hottest day so far. I am ready to make this the best summer, although it will be hard to beat last year’s summer.

Tomorrow I’m gonna ask her if I can clean her desk.

“I stole my sister’s boyfriend. It was all whrilwind, heat and flash. Within a week we killed my parents and hit the road.”

May 10, 2008. Poster by Julian Bittiner.

The AIGA student group at Northern Michigan University labeled me on their web site as “A post modernist designer with some very strong modernist influences” Hmm…labels…

I came across this the other day. Cool.

I went to the SVA tonight for the graphic design and advertising show. The only good part about it was the free coke.

My friend Cameron did a 4×4 painting of my face. What a weirdo. He even got an award for it.

This is how the desk behind me looked like today.

I’m flying to New York tonight and I’m going to miss everyone here in Provo very much. Everyone has been really great and nice to me. Thank you for everything. Goodbye Utah and friends. You will be missed.

I’m done. More pictures here

Today, one of my teachers wanted to go to HFAC with me and see my degree show since he hadn’t seen it yet. As he was flipping through my “Colors” book, he stopped and said “Cowards. They scratched a couple words with a pen!”

Late last year I sent an email to friends, family and associates in Kosova and asked them what three colors represented Kosova best and why. Colors is a book of their opinions. One of the answers in the book was: “Blue, Orange, Purple…I know they sound gay and stupid, but blue is for peace and cool and chill, orange is for the god damn sun : D more seriously though, warm color that goes perfectly with our mentality, and purple for heraldic purposes.”

I had no control over their answers, and I didn’t edit any of them. It’s only fair that way. So apparently when someone was viewing the colors book at my exhibition they scratched the word “God” and “Damn” with a blue pen. Who does that? I am not mad that a page on my book is defaced, I’m just mad that there is narrow minded people out there.

I am perfectly fine with people who are against swearing. I don’t encourage it either, and obviously I didn’t encourage people to use swear words in their answers for this book.

This is my final project in college, I have put one year of work into it and for someone to just go and open my book and scratch certain words with a blue pen is very disrespectful.

Why did I never really pay too much attention to this guy? I have been listening to his stuff a lot this week and it’s so good. Bubble hard in the double R flashin the rings with the window cracked holler back money ain’t a thang.

I have written about the national visual identity on my old blog before. It’s an issue that really interests me. After all I dedicated my final degree show to it. Following the declaration of independence, the Kosova government announced the flag they had picked from over two thousand proposals submitted. Judging by the enormous number of submissions, i thought something good would come up. Unfortunately, what they had come up with was kind of an embarrassment. I am very disappointed.

From over two thousand submissions they picked this flag? Did the other two thousand plus really suck? I imagine there were so many bad submissions, but c’mon I doubt every single one sucked so bad. I am sure there was one, at least one that was a little better than this one they chose.

 The map of Kosova, six stars representing six ethnic communities living in Kosova, european union color palette? reminiscent of the Bosnian flag?…Who are we trying to be? Whose ass are we kissing? I can’t relate to it. Are the stars the best icons to represent these six communities? Do these six communities not have any history that we have to borrow history from the european union in order to create our own identity?

(below the flag of ex Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, current flag of Kosova, communist Albania flag, current Albania flag)

This was such a great opportunity for Kosova to come up with something great. The Kosova government ignored that opportunity. What a shame.

One of my best friends Chris Coy participated in a group exhibition titled Montage: Unmonumental Online at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York in February. He is also the featured artist on Ignivomous. He’s got a website full of great work.

Check it here.

Lately, I’m really into taking screen shots from different movies that I like.

“Designing the Star User Interface”

Last night I saw “Le Ballon Rouge” or “The Red Balloon” for the first time. It’s a french movie made in 1956. It’s written and directed by Albert Lamorisse. I loved everything about it, but especially the cinematography.

The Story is about a lonely little boy who befriends a big red balloon. The balloon fallows him everywhere.

Some scenes were filmed in front of some posters who I thought were really really amazing. Here are some screen shots I took when those great posters appear.

click here

I wrote about the “Water, Politics and Hope” exhibition on my blog before. It’s an exhibition done by the current senior graphic design class at BYU. The exhibition stresses the lack of usable water around the world and it’s effects. For her part of the exhibition, Tara, along with her typographic information displayed on the wall, she put a fish tank next to it and a bowl with a fake fish floating in the water. For some reason this narrow minded music professor who doesn’t even care to understand the point of the exhibition, or hasn’t even cared to read any information, has been complaining everywhere about the fish. She apparently thinks it’s a real goldfish. What’s more absurd to me is that Tara’s wall happens to be right in front of her office and she still for some reason continues to complain about the fake gold fish, and categorizes it as “a defenseless one”. Recently she sent an email to the Dean of the fine arts department complaining about it, then she also emailed the Visual Arts department and today she wrote a letter on the Daily Universe newspaper on the readers’ forum section.

She titled the letter ‘Senseless killing” and this is what she had to say:

“A display was set up on the fifth floor of the HFAC last week on the topic of water, and it initially included a live goldfish. On Friday, when it appeared that harm could come to the unprotected fish, I did what I could to save it.

I contacted ORCA in the ASB, the college dean in the HFAC, and the Visual Arts Department, but alas, all to no avail. On Monday morning, when I returned to the building, the fish was dead. As of Wednesday the body continues to float in the fishbowl. It now appears that killing the fish may have been the original plan. Someone said to me, “It’s only a goldfish!” What does that mean? Does a goldfish not matter simply because it is a goldfish or because it is small or because blood did not “spill” when it died? Do we believe the goldfish was created to die as part of the art? Would we (and the BYU administration) not protest if it were a cat or a dog or even a mouse that was killed? We protest and abhor senseless killing around the world, especially of the defenseless ones, yet we kill so easily a goldfish for an art display. Go figure.”

I want to laugh out loud but I’m in the library.

I liked what my friend Cassian said after we discussed this; “I think universities should punish professors who give opinions publicly that are presented poorly. It’s so embarrassing. A professor of the university is this stupid?”

P.S. Her name is Marilyn Parks

The Kosova government has just announced a competition for the new National Anthem. The rules are that it should be 30 seconds to one minute long and have no lyrics. The other rules are that “It should also bear no similarity to the anthems of any country, party or movement, or imply loyalty towards any particular ethnic community.” I still can’t decide if the part about having no lyrics is ridiculous or cool. Read here

The current senior design class at byu is having an exhibition on the theme “Water, Politics and Hope” at the HFAC on the fifth floor. There is some nice work there. Images below are of Tara Shields presenting visually the concept of “water-stressed” countries.

During one of her shows in Tokyo last month, Bjork dedicated her song “Declare Independence” to Kosovo. You can read a small article about it here. She was also scheduled to play EXIT Festival in Serbia this summer, but her performance is now canceled by EXIT’s general manager. Read about it here.

I’m a bit behind on my degree project due to being very sick with the flu for the past few days. This flu has basically paralyzed me, and I haven’t been able to do anything but lay in bed all day and all night. The garbage bin in my room is overflowing with white facial tissues, and my room as well as the hallway smell like flu (sorry Andy and Naomi). Images of things I’m working on will be posted soon.

Test Test Test Test Test. For the old blog click here