I Wanna Be Your Dog

Corporate Challenge T-shirt Design Vote!

Every year we design t-shirts for some of our clients that are in the Chase Corporate Challenge which is a Delaware Park road race taking place this Thursday (June 4th) which raises money for not-for-profits. It is a fun event where corporate Buffalo lets down their hair, runs/walks a race around the park and then parties. And, no, the OtherWisz team of highly athletic workers is not involved as participants this year.... but once again we have designed special race tees for some of our clients. This year we did designs for two: Fisher's Friends Dog Day Care and Kenmore Development.

The KD tee wasn't designed in-time to get entered in the yearly t-shirt design contest, but the Fisher's Friends tee was. You as the voters can catapult our t-shirt design to victory by voting online. So do it, please. Go to here and vote by choosing the 'It's all fun and games until someone gets a cone' t-shirt.

The concept was brought to us by the client and our crack team of dog-loving designers came up with this illustration and a design that worked out just super. If you like this witty t-shirt enough, they are for sale at Fisher's Friends in Eggertsville, view website here for directions.

VOTE HERE: click me.

Flying High in The Brooklyn Sky

I work in the electronics department of a fine local department store. My days are filled with "May I help you sir?" and the ever-popular "Thank you and have a nice day." I love my job. The hours fit my rock-n-roll lifestyle, the money is decent and I can share my vast knowledge of music with the general public, whether they deserve it or not.
excerpt from "MUZAK: Delightful Sounds or a New Voice of a Generation?" Strick's Corner

Slack issue #14- The Cartoon Issue" Dec. 1994
(published 11.23.94)

Today I'm standing on my corner listening to the Mission of Burma instrumental track "All World Cowboy Romance." It's a warm Fall day, the leaves are turning colors, the sun is shining and the breeze is light. I have on my I-probe music player and I am waiting for my daughter's bus. The drums rush over and under like water and I can really concentrate on the ebbs and flow of the the song since I am just standing there... Man, it doesn't get any better that this for a Wednesday afternoon. How often do you just get to stand there? The bus can be a little late and I won't mind today.

When the bus arrives and the kids get home the 1st thing they want to do is watch TV.... man, did I watch a lot of TV when I was a kid....

Slack numero 14, the issue devoted to comics and cartoons is a sensational mag with a crappy cover. Though one of the bullet points on the cover promotes:

• Typos (sorry...)

That text right over the Duck Dogers cover photo is painfully wrong. Though maybe I did that on purpose-- bad design for good reasons was creeping into my mind at the time. The thing is, the rest of the issues has some great, tight layout and the 'cartoons' theme was much appreciated by the staff. Articles include Cartoon Characters Posing As Real People (Michael Jackson, Ollie North, Rush Limbaugh, the Royal Family and Jesse Helms- hello, again 1994), Raisin Blowme's Welcome To My My Cartoon Life, Homer Simpson, My Hero by Dave Koch and this list of Cartoon and Comics Top Slackers:

• Bugs Bunny
• Road Runner
• Fred Flinstone and Barney Rubble
• George Jetson
• Pink Panther
• Snoopy
• Dagwood
• Beetle Baily
• Shaggy
• Jughead
• Daffy Duck
• Zonker
• Andy Capp
• Calvin (of "& Hobbs")
• Wimpy
• Ren and Stimpy
• Beavis and Butthead
• Homer J. Simpson

True slackers, all of them... it makes you start to realize all the Warner Brothers stars were some serious slackers! Some advertisements of note in this issues #14 include ads for Yeast West Bakery, a coming soon Concrete Cafe (it opened in Dec. 94), and the only Slack ad I have ever censored: the Das Boot condom man ad. I covered the lube tip of condom man's condom head and Bob at Das Boot was mad at me. Andre and I discussed it ... and well, we were all worried that it would get us in some sort of trouble or the scant few other advertisers wouldn't like it.. or the shops and bars would pull them from the shleves (and from the top of cigarette machines)... Oh, I don't know!?!?! What the hell? it all seems so stupid now, but this act enabled Das Boot to run that OJ ad without us even saying 'boo' later on down the road....

Download PDF here:
Slack Magazine n. 14, the Cartoon Issue (6.2 mg)

Don't forget these issues already up (6 more to go)!:
Slack Magazine n. 18, The Two-Year Anniversary! issue
Slack Magazine n. 13, The Food & Beverage Issue
Slack Magazine n. 12, The One-Year Anniversary Issue
Slack Magazine n. 11, The True Crime Issue
Slack Magazine n. 10, Summer Fun Issue
Slack Magazine n. 9, The Dead Rock Stars Issue
Slack Magazine n. 8, The Beer Issue
Slack Magazine n. 7, Slack Goes to The Movies Issue
Slack Magazine n. 6, The Buffalo Issue
Slack Magazine n.5, The Slack TV Issue
Slack Magazine n. 4, SEX in the '90s Issue
Slack Magazine n. 3, The Politico Issue
Slack Magazine n. 2, The Travel Issue
Slack Magazine n. 1, The Debut Issue

Alright Hear This

Get Out the Vote 2008!

The AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) has an annual election year contest where they invite members/designers to come up with inspirational posters to get the peoples out there to vote. They post the gallery online so you can view, download and print them. Do it! Put them up and try and to use design to inspire.

Some of them are really great, well designed and inspirational. Some of them are just designed well, not very inspirational- they could be selling just about anything. Some of them are designed poorly- I am sorry to say-- they may be getting the message across, but at what cost? They all should be great designs, these are professionals.

Some notes:

The Simon Cowell poster is cute and clever (like a lot of ad agency projects I see these days).

The Gone Votin' is a great retro design, but what is the message...

The Chen design poster is just beautiful, but again, is the message really getting across?

The blue Thomas Jefferson poster is again clever, but man, they could have used a better font.

The Heal Vote (pictured above) is a favorite of mine- well designed, beautifully balanced and the message is really getting across.

View them all, let me know what you think-- click here.

Steppin' To The AM

I know I am stuck on the past, but if I don't preserve the memories... who will? I think I may have found the 1st logo I had ever designed that was actually used by someone. Now this doesn't count graphics for school projects, friends bands, etc. This is a real logo!

This logo was for the 10th annual Buffalo State Dance Marathon- what, don't they do dance marathons anymore? This was designed probably around 1985 and was used on posters, ads (Buff State Record, baby!) and signage. I remember it was drawn by hand, probably at 200%, and colored in with a black ripideograph ink pen. The text was press type I meticulously set on the curve (no attached to path in those days).... Then it was shot down on a stat camera (by Dave Meinzer, the Buff State design maven & local singer songwriter) and touched up. This version was the final art stat I just ran across in the giant flat file of stuff.

Man, I remember being psyched about this getting used. Of course I didn't get paid, it was the thrill of seeing my artwork become a real logo so early in my career. It was so early, in fact, I had no career at the time.

What time is it? Nine o' clock, or half past the hustle! Ha! So young.....

Black Diamond (well, actually, the 2 of clubs...)

Deal me in (though, you gotta know when to fold 'em...)!

P22, the local typeface foundry, has released a second set of Type Specimen Playing Cards as a follow up to the first set from 2004. Each card in the deck is an original design using a different P22 font. The cards work as a clever and cool collectors item as well as a unique take on the font specimen book (which is the method type foundries display their fonts for sale, a 'type catalog', if you will).

All 52 cards were designed by either an internal P22 designer as well as local and international designers including Jim from Typeco, Paul Hunt and Hajime Kawakami. Last year Richard Kegler from P22 put a call out to designers to submit designs using their favorite P22 font. I am proud to announce that the deck includes an OtherWisz designed card. Yeah!

OtherWisz used P22's London Underground Extras on a balanced design for the 2 of clubs (see graphic to the right). I was very excited to see one of our designs included in the set. It is an an honor and a privilege to part of this project.

The London Underground, a humanist san serif font, originally designed by Edward Johnson for the London Transit Authority has had quite a re-birth since P22 digitized it for release in 1997. The new expanded release of the Underground Pro has really taken the fontface further with several additional weights to the original design. It has always been one of my favorite P22 fonts and one of my first P22 font purchases.

The cards can be ordered on the P22 website (click here) for $10 (plus shipping) or they are FREE with an order of over $100 from P22. I am sure they will for sale at the upcoming Typecon, as well.

More about the London Underground font here.

BONUS: View the complete set of OtherWisz rejected submissions (click here)
... you only need one winner, to be a winner!

Free Shirt (er..bird)!!

Congratulations!! We have our weiner.

DJ Nate Pharaoh entered and got a good dozen or so correct. Though he should automatically be disqualified for attributing Billy Idol to a PUBLIC ENEMY song!! My word!

Nate got all the funk ones, soul songs and a couple reggae ones. His missed all The Smiths (a band he dislikes) and the Clash songs, which there was a lot of.

Nate come by and pick up your prize: a Where To Roam shirt.

Heer is the list of correct answers: click here.

Just a Little More, Baby

Get your responses in for our name the blog post titles/song titles!
Deadline is today (Thursday, May 1),
and I will be announcing the winner tonight!!

I will also post the complete list of answers as well- so look for it.

Hurry, hurry, hurry!!!

Contest details >> here.

Sightsee MC!

The 1/1 Anniversary Contest deadline has been extended to May 1st!

Since many folks seem to be hard at work trying to decipher the song title/blog titles, I thought I would give you all so more time. So on Thursday, May 1st I will announce the winner. Bonus points for the folks to get the additional 3 posts that have been added since the contest began this week.

Good Luck. Rock on. Decode.

Hard Luck Woman

Another freebie. Hurry, only 2 more days!!

J. has informed me that one of her posts (way back in the beginning) is a song by a local artist and could be a really hard one to guess. Apparently the song "Harmonica Virgins" was written by Dave Meinzer (Nimrod Wildfire, Davy and the Crockets, Beatmongers, Dry Bones, Outlyers and more....) after j. and Dave came up with this amusing play on words. The song was born in Dave's Buff. State graphics office back in the mid-'90s.

So to remove the hardest one from the competition, here is another answer for you:

Harmonica Virgins by Dave Myles Meinzer from post #2

Sing a Simple Song- The RoamBuffalo 1/1 Anniversary

The contest: you could be a winner, Mr. DJ know-it-all.

Well there ain't nothing like playoff hockey. Though everytime I leave the room some team scores 2-3 goals in a matter of minutes. There are a lot of teams I don't like, so I just root for the team playing against them. Boo Ottawa!

Hockey in spring has reminded me that it was last year at this time that this RoamBuffalo blog was borne. So on April 17th, we are going celebrate our:
>> 1 Year, 1 Month Anniversary!!

As I write this, there have been 121 posts- not bad. This also means there have been 121 songs referenced as the titles for these post- each post title has been a song title-- or a very clever play on a song title.

So for our 1/1 Anniversary Contest, the 1st person to identify the artists for all these song titles/blog posts will be a winner! Oh yeah! The first person to identity all 121 artist matched with song title by the 21st of this month will win a Where to Roam Tee (your pick). If nobody gets them all, the person who gets the most right (by the 21st) will win. Good luck to you all.

There has been a lot said in these electronic pages about design, art, graphics, fonts, the b-lo, the weather, artists, and, of course, music. Without the music, none of this may have happened. Music and me go way back.

Here is a freebie: Inspiration Information is by Shuggie Otis
Song on YouTube (no video, just CD cover): Shuggie!- click here.