It doesn’t take much to make something look right. Take a look at this logo for Technorati. I’m not looking at the choice of typeface, the color, or the logo design itself. You either find that it works or not. I’m just looking at the letter spacing. The visual space between each letter in this case. The letter spacing is pretty crappy. It doesn’t take much to fix. Squint at it and look for too much or too little white space or dark space. Adjust to taste. I mean this is their company logo. I think some effort should go into company identity and their marks.

Just look at the ‘Te’ letter combination in my note above, in the word Technorati. It’s totally different letter spacing compared to the rest of the word. I set this in Photoshop and left it as the program spit it out. Or look at the ‘Ty’ combination in the title of this very post. A machine is spitting this out and doing the best it can do, today. It needs some help to be done right. The computer and typography have come a long way, but certain special letter combinations will always need some manual help.

I wonder how many blogs and websites are done by designers. It seems that anyone with a computer and a keyboard can ‘design’ a web page these days. Something that a computer can’t do, well not yet with total accuracy, is correctly letter space. Now it is pretty evident that in text like this blog text the letter spacing is usually pretty good. What generally needs more help are logos, titles, & product names. Actually, programs like Adobe’s Illustrator, Indesign, or Photoshop can give surprisingly good results right out of the can. What they still have trouble with are the problem letter combinations like Ty or Tr to show two. Read the rest of this entry »

Poor Julius. Murdered on 15 March 44 bc.

This years PMA ended on Sunday 11 March. There was some interesting new tech stuff. Here’s a link if you’d like a pretty thorough rundown of all the stuff. Canon did introduce a fab new pro body, the 1dM3 I think it’s called.

Anyway, I was a little disappointed because I wanted to see an upgrade to Canon’s 5D. I have a four, well nearly five year old Canon D60 which only has like 4,000 clicks on it and is like new but I need more and better pixels. It’s mainly because an agency I do business with has an 11 million pixel minimum. The 5D would fit the bill but Canon has introduced some new things that I want in my next body. Vibration whatever you call it to help keep the sensor clean is one. Another is the ability to adjust front or back focus with the camera. No more need to send body or lens back to Canon for adjustment.

So I’m expecting, wanting some upgrades in whatever the next version of the 5D is. Ok, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that there is a next version. The other pro camera bodies accepted by this agency are the Canon pro 1’s and Nikon’s D2xs. But man oh man they are just too big and heavy for the type of work I do.

I’m also secretly hoping that Nikon puts a full frame sensor in its D200 line. I think the agency would accept that. I think I’d buy that if the sensor was good. If it gave low noise up to 1600 iso I’d be happy. Better if the low noise went up to 3200. I doubt it will happen but I’m hopin’ a little ’cause I already have two nice Nikon lenses I could use.

Hours trying to figure out the code stuff so I could change colors, column widths, and spacing for this Wordpress controlled blogarooni. Finally have it close to what I envisioned. Something clean looking but not too boring. I wonder if you find it a bore? Oh, here’s another photo. I wanna try something new. 1px border. Some height top and bottom. Yes. That’s working ok now. Just hate widows so I’ll add a bit of text. Ha.

It was good to change the title type color to red as well as all the link stuff. Man, the link stuff was this old computer blue. Bleech. But I’m just hating the letter spacing of the title type. The R I in Rififi is too far apart. Also the N A T it too far apart. I may try and replace it with similar type that is a png file or something done in illustrator or photoshop. I’m not sure I can though. Tonight I’m just too tired. Tomorrow, as they say, is another day. Kisses.

On 13 December 2006 we changed our store name from Karavane - only passin’ through to Rififi Tees. The pronunciation is like reefeefee. We changed for two reasons. First, we wanted a name that we thought people would remember. Rififi has this unique and fun aspect we liked. It seemed less plain Jane than Karavane. Secondly, it encompasses all the values and emotion we felt and still feel for karavane.
Rififi means a brawl in french. You could translate it as trouble, a commotion, hubbub, a free for all. Seemed to us an appropriate way to describe life, our relationship with each other. It also seemed to encompass all the craziness we suffer with things and ideas.

Rififi : C’est la Vie!

Impeach. Get someone competent in there. Not that we don’t like him. We just think the world would be better off if Bush was doing something else. Anything else. And we’d get rid of the rest of his administration while we’re at it. What a sad excuse for leadership. Impeachable? You bet. Will it happen? Probably not. Just look at that bunch of wuss democrats. Even if they do take a majority in November, which we aren’t holding our breath about, they don’t have the balls.

It all started with election fraud the first time around. Much of that same ‘flavor’ the second time around. Did you read that article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? ‘Did Bush Steal the 2004 Election?’ Some pretty shady stuff went down in Ohio.

Then there’s a whole list of stuff that everyone knows about. The war in Iraq based on made up evidence. All the dead American men and women. All the dead Iraqi men and women and children. The untold suffering. The torture and murder at the hands of American soldiers in Iraq. The Gitmo prison. Secret prisons around the world. This just doesn’t sound like the America I grew up in.

The Katrina tragedy that is still ongoing. Bush wasn’t responsible for the death and damage, but he is responsible for the people in charge. He is responsible for all the money going out the door to fight an unjust war while Americans at home suffer and do without. Just like he’s responsible for all the corruption going on all around him. Of course he keeps his hands clean, but if he claims ignorance to all the scandals he shouldn’t be in the job. He hired in all these criminals.

Saying no to the Kyoto Protocol. The world’s worst polluter doesn’t want to help keep the environment clean. Why? Jobs. Economics is now more important than life. When did that happen? We thought religious people cared about life, family, and the well-being of all. We must not understand something here. George says he’s found god. It must be a strange god based on all the killing and torture he’s authorized in the name of freedom and democracy.

Perhaps the worst thing is how he has dragged religion down into the dirty pit of politics. It’s hard to believe that so many religious people have been suckered into voting for this liar. He used religion to get elected. He has backed a war to make his friends in the oil and war business rich and richer. We really don’t get how people can be taken in by his religious claims. Is anyone who gets up in front of an audience and proclaims “christ is my saviour” gonna be elected into office? Is that the criteria?

What’s really amazing is how Americans are afraid to disagree with the government. And Dick Cheney will imply that you aren’t a real American if you do. He’ll call you a fascist or communist. He’ll tell you in this time of war it’s unpatriotic to question your government. Funny, we thought he and his administration creating stories to start a war would have been looked down upon. Tapping our phone lines and computers, is that some new American freedom or right? We think the Bush administration has it all backwards. We think they’ve taken Americans down the darkest, dirtiest alley in its history.

America has lost confidence from nations around the world. We feel like the world is holding it’s collective breath until the nightmare is over, until Bush and his administration of warmongers is out, and the world can get back to a somewhat ‘normal’ phase. All Bush has been spreading is violence. And his war on terror is creating new generations of terrorists that will hate America and the west. His policies, if you can call them that, have created death, enmity, insecurity, and suffering.

There is no ‘mission accomplished’ here, George, just death to thousands. Impeach. Let’s start a movement.

This first black and white drawing was originally done for a magazine article. The topic was america and it’s voracious appetite. In the end we used another image for the article, but I liked it enough to revamp it and use it on some product. I just got rid of the flag on the arm and drew in I love Mom. This is simply a fond memory I harbor from my youth of big bikers in gangs professing their motherly love. I always loved that juxtaposition of the big, tough, violent biker gang and Love. I still do.
When I started thinking about this image for product the first thing I did was add the flag colors. I just scanned my original art in and colored it in photoshop. I kept the teeth, after discussing it with other members of the studio, because it seems to me that america is still showing ‘em. Well, not america so much as its politicians. We feel today like we felt in March of 2003; there’s just no way to justify the war in Iraq.

For a second version I started adding some backgrounds. This went on for a few days and after we discussed the various solutions I came up with we decided the cityscape was the way to go. It’s always an intrigue watching humans in overcrowded cities try and get their physical excercise in. I used to marvel at all the cyclists and rollerbladers in Central Park in NY doing loops at five a.m. I once saw Madonna running on the lower loop at five thirty a.m. That was cool.

We added the text “I have no freakin’ intention of stopping…” because that’s the feeling we got years ago when we crossed some of these rollerbladers. I mean most people stopped to be friendly, but some of them, man, were they pumped on adrenaline or somethin’. So there you have it. Two designs based around the same character. We hope you like ‘em.