{ the COMMAND C blog }

Obviously…

Exhibit runs May 21-June 28th
The Leslie/Lohman Gallery
26 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10013
(between Canal & Grand-closer to Grand)
Hours: 12-6pm, Tues-Sat, closed Sat-Sun
Tel. 212-431-2609
Opening reception: Tuesday, May 20, 6-8pm

www.sophiawallace.com

The Learners: New Book by Chip Kidd

Just read it, but if you haven’t read The Cheese Monkeys, read that first.
Good Is Dead.

… because everyone needs some emo Mariah.

Top 3 Tracks:

Side Effects (feat. Young Jeezy)
Cruise Control (feat. Damian Marley)
O.O.C.

Last Friday we let 3 sites loose…

www.laviva-home.com

This site is a milestone of sorts for us. We built it using Magento, which Darren, our Head of Technology, ambitiously sought out and learned as a means of increasing the value and functionality of the sites we offer. “Magento is a new professional open-source eCommerce solution offering unprecedented flexibility and control.” He did an incredible job, pushing out the entire thing in just over a week. One of my favorite aspects of this software is the one page shopping cart. Go ahead, add a product to the cart and test the checkout. It’s super smooth.

www.yourdecornyc.com

This New York based Interior Design/Services team started a new brand of interior services that combines design with move management, painting and tv and artwork installations. The site was fun and challenging in that we wanted to let their work speak for itself with large images, but they also had a lot of copy to convey. They were looking for the cleanest, simplest way to go about this.

www.ohtheladies.com

The revamping of this site involved condensing the once 15 page HTML site into a 3 page PHP database driven site, in tandem to maintaining a fresh, clean look.

It’s difficult to walk out of the Brooklyn Museum and imagine what sort of exhibition could come possibly come next. Takashi Murakami has done it all, sealed the deal, over, done, literally put art in the grave. Really, he has. Only art doesn’t work like that.

I’d liken this exhibition to the big bang. Murakami has developed an unabridged visual language of his own. It’s deliberate and collective, embedded with dialogs between East and West, business and art, past/present, real/surreal, and high and low culture. The only appropriate thing to do next would be to leave the museum’s walls bare.

Our sweet tooth for sensationalism is obviously exploited here. The problem so often with sensationalism is that what is on the outside doesn’t honestly represent the content on the inside, or it convinces you not to care. Murakami’s work is simultaneously sublime to the eye and mind. The content on the outside and the content on the inside stand unified, firmly pressed up against one another, back to back.

If you know me, you will know why I swoon over this work. I am obsessed with little worlds within little worlds, mass consumerism, cultural obedience, and the dialog between art and product. Built into the exhibit is a Louis Vuitton boutique store, selling Murakami designed LV products. This has stirred up a ton of controversial dialog about this show.

Lee Rosenbaum of CultureGrrl says:

Having finally seen (too briefly) and loved the show, I remain convinced that a Louis Vuitton boutique has no place in an art museum’s exhibition, no matter what arguments you might make (as LA MOCA did) that it’s consistent with the artist’s philosophy.

There are few sights more bizarre than that of two separate elementary school classes of young Latino children being trooped through the land of outlandishly priced plasticized canvas, brightly adorned with corporate logos. Then again, the sight of young children, brought in great numbers to this show of childlike imagery and ogling the very unchildlike subject matter of some of those pieces, was also disconcerting.

I hear you Lee, but I think you have an outdated, surface level argument. Murakami’s work is intended to make that situation awkward. He has designed this work to illuminate these cultural high/low incongruities and confront you with them. Censorship like you are suggesting is detrimental to artists and the work they create. In my opinion, educating children about issues of race and class is more effective and appropriate than shielding them of the reality of these problems.

This is not to say I had no conflict about the exhibit. I did. My biggest consideration is with the use of art as entertainment. This is a consumer’s show for sure. Consumption in this manner shifts the emphasis from the quality of the work to what the most consumers will buy or come see. I think this is a dangerous precedent to set.

Murakami brazenly crosses cultural thresholds in a way never done before. Boundary pushing in the art world is considered legitimate if not welcomed. I have more of an issue with the museum store itself, than with the store-within-the-exhibit concept. The museum store is there only to make money off you. The store-within-the-exhibit is asking you to question why it’s there. In addition to intellectualizing it’s presence, it encourages the viewer to engage on a new, interactive and tangible level.

*Photos: Julien Jourdes for The New York Times, and Helen Pearson

It’s taken me a few days to come down enough to sit in a chair, at a computer, organize my inspirations, and write about this. As I’ve been writing more, I’ve noticed that it generally takes me between 5-7 days to process something enough to write about it, just FYI. Last Wednesday, I was generously invited to attend Spotlight on Pentagram: Designing New York’s Visual Identity. The panel was at the Museum of the City of New York and included Pentagram partners Michael Bierut, Michael Gericke, and Paula Scher, who all spoke about designing some of New York’s most prominent visual identities. I’m still wide eyed and talking too fast…

Each of the three partners talked for about fifteen minutes while showing some of the work they’d done at Pentagram. Paula Scher, Michael Bierut (mentioned in an earlier post about the film Helvetica, Faster Than The Speed of Type) and Michael Gericke each have distinct, pungent personalities, this felt important. Looking at their work while simultaneously hearing them speak about it allowed me to see how distinctly theirs the work is. It became evident to me that their individuality was a huge part of why they are successful and why people want to work with them and specifically them. They all said a few things that stuck with me, pretty profoundly.

Michael Bierut designed the new look for Saks Fifth Avenue and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM - logo above). More about the Saks project here. Something Bierut articulated about this project that was so great was that a client [with regards to identity] is looking for “something that is always the same, but always different; something that’s contemporary, yet respectful of the past.” It just was really right on, and so was the design that followed. Dreamy.

Paula Scher talked a lot about what it feels like to be a part of the “fabric of New York.” I think about this often, from micro to macro levels. I think about the layering of this city, the silt that sets daily, the painted over rooms and street romance, how design and art really only matter if they are seen - it reminds me of that Basquiat (and others) mural they found hidden in a SOHO loft back in November:

Read more about that dopeness here. As someone who anthropomorphizes and visually experiences everything, the graffiti and buildings around me are as much my friends as Jack (not really, Jack). Scher does a lot of large scale site specific signage work and she talked about creating solutions that aren’t purely visual, but also resolve issues of context and content. She comes across as one of those totally committed New Yorkers who gets off on the high level of work it allows.

After each designer spoke, there was a question and answer session, a lot of which was focused on Pentagram’s unconventional business model and its success:

Pentagram is run by 17 partners who are all designers. Each of them has a small, organic team with whom they work. The designers work directly with the client. Michael Gericke and Paula Scher pointed out the flaws of a bureaucratic structure—one that adopts the attitude of shielding the designer from the client and creates several levels in between. The more people you have to go through to get to the client, to more opportunity there is for someone to fuck it up or for information/communication to be lost.

The strength in this sort of company structure is that they are all in it as equals, everyone makes the same about of money and no one is trying to out do anyone else, their goals are cohesive. They said it is a real collaborative environment, built for designers, noting that they all know each other’s strengths (which are strategically varied) and go to the person who is most appropriate for the job, often collaborating on multiple levels within the firm.

One designer in the audience asked what to do about a client/designer relationship where the client just isn’t satisfied or keeps wanting a design that the designer feels is inferior to another prospective idea. The unanimous response from the panelists was that there was a fault in the client/designer relationship, that somewhere, at some point, there was failed communication. Ultimately, though they didn’t come right out and say this, that’s the designer’s responsibility to spot and rectify. Gericke noted that a good client is clear and articulate, but gives you latitude and leeway to do your job.

The audience was predictable and Scher’s final note was along the lines of: It gets better as you get older. You start out and your clients are your age with no money, but as you get older, so do your clients and good clients make good money.

Why am I up at midnight doing this, why am I up at midnight doing this, why am I up at midnight doing this? Well, because, if your day/night was anything close to mine, you wouldn’t be able to sleep either…

Three new sites launched, check ‘em:

www.parkavenyc.com

www.orlisheli.com

www.vodboutique.com

Newark: If you’re ever there, you should check out Aljira.

A nue (?) is a legendary creature found in Japanese folklore. It is described as having the head of a monkey, the body of a raccoon dog, the legs of a tiger, and a snake as a tail. According to the legend, a nue can transform into a black cloud and fly. Nue are supposed to be bringers of misfortune and illness.

WERC (960 AM, “News Radio 960″) is a radio station licensed to Birmingham, Alabama. Its daytime and nighttime power are both 5,000 Watts. In 1982, it became the first radio station in Birmingham to convert to a news/talk format. WERC is the home in Birmingham for the syndicated radio shows of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. WERC is owned by Clear Channel.

I don’t know…

I did something this week that I hadn’t done since I was 10: I was the subject of a photo shoot. I have been a photographer since 10th grade, consistently making it my preliminary medium of choice straight through graduate school. I am familiar with being behind the camera.

When asked to be photographed my initial reaction was quick and absolute; it was all of a sudden strange that I had been taking pictures all these years, but hadn’t been at the mercy of someone else’s eye. It’s kind of like one of those trust games you play at sleep away camp (though I definitely never went) where you get blindfolded, lock your knees and fall with dead weight, all the while assuming your bunkmate you met just yesterday is going to catch you prior to sinking teeth first into the compacted, root-ridden earth beneath you.

Only there’s a difference. Unlike the adventures at sleep away camp, I felt confident that I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. I had complete trust in the photographer prior to stepping foot in front of her lens. Introducing: Sophia Wallace.

It takes a minute to identify the elements that make Wallace’s photographs so alluring. They are straightforward and clean, yet there’s a ‘more than meets the eye’ sentiment to every image. This duality in her work repeats itself over and over again. It’s conservative while progressive, harsh but so gentle, both distant and intimate. I initially identified this as a push/pull in the work, but came to see that what makes it extraordinary is that she’s found a way to conjoin these opposing factors; in her work, they don’t oppose, rather those aspects unionize and befriend one another.

Something about this combination of characteristics made me feel complete confidence as a subject. I trusted that she wasn’t going to portray me with any falseness, and at the same time I knew she would protect me. This allowed me to be present and true and it was a totally unique and wonderful experience. After the shoot I reflected about how I had been documenting my life around me for so many years, but had little documentation of my actual self. I thought about how I will be just as thankful for these images in 20 years from now and wondered what I will think of them then.

I spent some time considering whether or not to post these photographs publicly. I think a lot about the fact that often times I never meet the clients with whom I work so closely. I have this one particular client, we’ve worked together for 5 years. I met him once, for about 10 minutes, about 7 years ago, one evening after I finished a babysitting job. I find it endlessly interesting that we’re creating identities for people we never meet. I wonder what people think I look like… all they have to base their opinions on is our work. Isn’t that funny? Ahem, Psychological Guess Who in reverse.

This experience was compelling to me. I think that in its own right is grounds for me to put it out there. But, beyond it being compelling, it’s personal, deeply personal actually. And that is what made me consider what to do with it. There’s a fine line between what’s appropriately personal and what’s inappropriately personal when it comes to business.

But, this is me. This is Sara Bacon. And COMMAND C and Sara Bacon are very closely related…

“Integrity simply means not violating one’s own identity.”

- Erich Fromm

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right A B A B Select Start. Contra? Anyone?

Welcome to my world. Games have always been a part of my world. Not the head kind, although the games I play are definitely mental. Throughout the years, my friends and I have come up with several renditions of pre-existing games as well as new games in their own right. The whole idea of games and the design of games is fascinating to me–why we play them, how their designers think and what their intentions are, the subtle nuances that are either embedded in the game or arise as a result of the game…

The other night I went out for some bromance with a buddy of mine and we ended up spending more cash on Erotic Matchup than beer. Erotic Matchup is a game where two of the same (erotic, but not by my standards) photos are juxtaposed, only there are 5 subtle (poorly photoshopped) differences between the two that you must point out in a set amount of time. The thing that resonates with me about this is that we’re not playing to catch a glimpse of some scantily clad hot thing (that’s just not gonna happen), we’re playing because we’re Photoshop nerds and get off on the absurd use of the program. Anyhow, we decided we would be SO MUCH better at creating this game by our own standards. So, we did. Can you spot the 5 differences between each pair?

Round 1:

Round 2:

Round 3:

Round 4:

Round 5:

Rounds 1, 3, 5 by Helen Pearson.

If you liked this game, you’ll like this blog as well: Photoshop Disasters

Do you remember the game Guess Who, the mystery face game where you ask questions to narrow down a collection of faces with different color hair, eye color, hair, hats, glasses etc., trying deduce who the secret person is that your opponent has chosen? In the end you and your opponent are each left with one card standing, your respective guesses at which character the other is.

We took this a step further, enter: Psychological Guess Who. In our version, the rules are the same except for one. You can’t ask any question that’s based on the tangibly physical. So, instead of “Does your person where glasses?”, you would ask “Does your person prefer cats to dogs?” Or, “Does your person check their email at least once a day? ” Or “Does your person perform taxidermy in their garage at 3:17am every Tuesday?”

As you play the game, you come to realize that it’s a complete exploitation of stereotypes and that it’s all based on appearance nonetheless. The player’s own stereotypes are thrown out on the table in full effect and common judgments are illuminated. The game really works, like, you actually win, often. I must accredit the genius behind this game tweak to Maggie. We went on to create three different versions of the game: Version 1: Northampton (which I own if you want to play), Version 2: Tri-County Fair, Version 3: Connecticut. I believe there were 24 characters per set. We would walk around and ask people we found suitable if we could photograph them for a project we were doing, and they usually agreed. Below are some of the characters from our Northampton Version.

In college and sometime after, I lived in a house called Cherry 13 with 5 of my tightest. The house was a gathering spot of sorts and we once hosted this party under the theme name “You Won’t”. The rules of the party/game were as follows:

You bring $5 to the party. In return, you get $500 of monopoly money. Prior to your arrival, there have been a series of dares ranging from easy to disgusting written out on pieces of paper with a specific price tag attached. Obviously, the more disgusting the dare, the more money it’s worth. You go about your evening, going up to people saying “You Won’t… stick your hand in the toilet for $100…” And, of course you receive similar dares in return. Mature, I know. At the end of the evening you cash in your monopoly money for real money at the initial ratio ($5/$500).

Games are designed to bring people together and ease social situations, or if you’re one of my friends, to make social situations more difficult and embarrassing. It’s all in good fun. My point is, games add layers to life. The reasons people play games are varied, the competition, the flirtation, the mental judo, the list goes on, but some elements remain consistent, the goal is always to win, they are usually played by choice despite the fact that they’re not always enjoyable and it’s always a matter of if this than that. I don’t know… maybe it’s a weird fascination, I’ve been known to have those.

Northampton Cornfields, October 2001, Pentax 35mm Camera, T-MAX 400 Film

Northampton Cornfields, February 2008, Canon 20D Digital SLR, 8.2 Mega-Pixels

Yaurga is when you put on a leotard and do anything you want. It’s kind of like yoga, but not really. It originated in some ridiculous play I saw with my main nuts, but it stuck to my crew like glue and now we are all Yaurgi’s for life. This post is about the essence of Yaurga.

Among the simplest and wisest things my father has ever said to me was this:

Creative people need time to do nothing in order to balance and allow for the flow of creativity.

I think he told me this once when I was having a compulsive mental meltdown about not being productive enough. As a self-employed workaholic, this phrase has been one of those little pocket-dwelling notions I pull out and review like loose change.

It’s very true. Creativity has to be nurtured and bred, it’s not infinite or automatic; it needs a fertile bed from which to grow. So my health should be very important to you. To a certain extent, creativity is unpredictable and unexpected, so when your job is to be creative all of the time, brain drain is a common occurrence. I have some personal procedures that help stimulate creative flow…

MUSE-AK
Listening to music is a main ingredient of my design process. When I used to work at the magazine and be there for, I don’t know 15 hours straight, my iPod was my saving grace. I have this very clear memory of plugging my in headphones and feeling like I was listening to my pre-game warm up mix. I could feel the adrenaline pump as I stepped foot onto my court of Quark 6.

Starting a new project is like baking a cake, only, there are no instructions on how to mix and cook the ingredients, that’s your job too. In my head, I am that mixing bowl, freshly washed with lingering droplets of water. If I hadn’t gone away this past weekend, I would have been caked with hardened remnants from the last batch. The fresh new ingredients would yield to their ancestors and each bite would have a faint taste of prior relations.

So, here’s to clearing the brain. It’s part of my responsibility to you. And since you’re paying me, I figured I’d share some of the ways in which I do it:

Current Top 5 Songs to Design to:

Banquet: Bloc Party
Oh Mandy: Spinto Band
The General Specific: Band of Horses
Weekend Wars: MGMT
Lost Someone: Cat Power

SKIPPING TOWN
This past weekend I took a trip to Northampton, Massachusetts where I went to college. On Friday, during the snowstorm, my buddy and I threw the dogs in the car and made our 30mph trip to the country. Old friends and old stomping grounds help clear the mind and soul; they remind you of where you’ve been and where you’re going, they remind you of permanence amongst transience. Think about it this way and you’ll be paying me to take a vacation, come on… it will make your project better… promise.

WRAPPING THE DOG UP IN GARB:
This inspirational tool doesn’t need an explanation.

DUMP THE DEBT
Okay, so I’d never actually refer to my clients as debts… generally speaking. However, finishing up a lingering project is the best way to make room for new ideas and new clients. Feng Shui-ing your work flow is like, the best thing ever. I can’t tell you how good it feels to launch a new site or send a client a disc containing their new identity. Just as it’s a release for me, it’s a new beginning for them. Pretty much a win-win situation.

Here are a few of our latest projects:

Whippoorwill Logo Design

Great City Productions Customized FTP Software

Medical Aesthetics Website, Logo Design & Photography

I’m a firm believer in prioritizing mental health, especially in the work environment. I’ve always felt my employees were my greatest assets as well as my greatest liabilities. So if you work for me, you will be treated well. I will never make you work a 15 hour day, and if I do, you can be sure you’ll have the next two paid work days off and I’ll pay for your next acupuncture treatment. My MO is to put out there what you want to get back, as both a sign of good faith and an informative gesture.

The New York City Government recently held a design competition in which architects and city planners were asked:

What if New York City were hit by a Category 3 hurricane? What if the most densely residential city in the country loses hundreds of thousands of homes in a few hours? What if millions are left with nowhere to live, to work, or to go to school? What if subways flood, streets close, and whole neighborhoods are submerged by up to 23 feet of ocean water and battered by 130 mile-per-hour winds? What if New Yorkers need a place to live during years of reconstruction?

Manhattan based Studio Lindfors came up with CLOUD CITY and here’s what they have to say about it:

Because of its population density and concentrated infrastructure, the City is not well suited for traditional post-disaster housing, such as mobile homes.

Though perhaps an unusual proposal, CLOUD CITY is literally an uplifting experience that will allow communities to remain intact as they pull themselves out of the rubble. The homes can be rapidly deployed with minimal site preparation. They are intended to ‘plug in’ to existing utility services, and can be deployed by a team of four workers in roughly an hour. Once airborne, the floating homes allow construction crews below to work unimpeded, speeding up the recovery effort. This in turn reduces cost overruns and unnecessary delays.

Inflatable homes would be pre-fabricated and stored in warehouses for deployment as required. Each home consists of three basic components: an inflatable bladder, a rigid core, and a metal and wood platform. The bladder would consist of two compartments, filled with pressurized helium (which is non-combustible). The pressurized gas would give shape to the tailored and stitched fabric shell, creating an open living space within. Made from recycled polyester fabric, the balloon has a large surface area suitable for mounting of flexible solar panels for generating electricity. Within this living space is a rigid core which contains an efficient kitchenette and bathroom, along with plumbing and electrical services. The 300sf living space is open, and can be configured in many ways, with up to three bedroom spaces suitable for a family of four.

I mean, I can kind of get down with it. Or maybe I just like the renditions. They’re perfectly New York. Completely isolated, yet totally integrated. They do disaster rrright.

I have three questions:
a.) How do you get up into it?
b.) What if there were a second hurricane?
3.) Can you put hydraulics in ‘em?

I suppose I am being too literal, but amidst a mindset of preventative measure, I can only assume the government was being serious in their efforts.

They did not win the competition. However, they would have had my vote. Especially after you see what the city deems most appropriate.

The drama though…
Love. It.

Sometimes, when I go through something really big emotionally, I am able to enter this bare bones state of mind. It’s a state where all developed social mechanisms fall away, it’s almost euphoric except that it’s excruciating, but most of all it’s sort of dreamlike, lofty, cloudy but clear and raw. When in this state, it’s like I have easier access to truth and perspective. I don’t know, maybe it’s just shock.

Anyhow, I happen to be in one of those states and I had this mental excursion that lasted for I have no idea how long, other than, well, I got up at 6am and it’s 10:20am now, so somewhere in that time, I had this in depth internal dialog about the nature and morality of design.

And it went a ‘lil somthin like this…

Design. Design is a number of things on a number of different levels. It’s the way something works, but it’s also the presentation of the way that thing works. It’s the thing and all the things that make up the thing, but it’s also the medium of that thing. It’s deliberate and it’s edited, that’s for sure.

Our job is very clear: to take your product or service and dress it to the nines, with, of course, a very clear notion of for whom we are dressing. This brings up some ethicality issues for me, some questions along these lines:

• Is it ethical to embellish the product by way of design?
• At what point do you say, my design is better than your product and this is false advertising?
• And, when do you say, fuck this… survival of the fittest bro, show me the money and we’ll do whatever you want…? Because, we can pretty much do whatever it is that you want, for the right amount of money.

I went through this period of time after grad school where I was obsessed with taking pictures of different candies, many of them were remodeled after some sort of actual food. There was just something about them that held my attention. The project never moved beyond the form of several work prints because I could never quite get to the bottom of it… until now.

The obvious things I liked about the candy that I was in touch with at the time were that they were small – miniatures if you will, the colors and detail were alluring, they were tactile and targeted towards kids and this brought up all sorts of questions about social responsibility and larger societal consumption issues. But there was still something else there that I couldn’t identify. Now, almost four years later, I am able to see that all the things that drew me to that candy were based solely on the intricacy of their mechanisms of design. I mean, these things are objects of sheer attraction, designed in every way to allure, intrigue and seduce to their consumer, with arguably, little to offer in return. It’s always somewhat humbling to catch yourself fallen directly into your own trap.

What do you do when internal and external design conflict? I mean, if you have a bad product, you better damn well have outstanding design in order to have a chance to make a little bit of money so you can ideally make your product better. But from our standpoint, it’s not a wise investment to go fixing the internal architecture of the product’s flaws, and at the very same time, it’s not wise to disregard the project because without the project…

This is not to say that we don’t deal mostly with great and balanced projects, we do. And I’m not really not neutral at all in terms of bad design or bad business. If I think you’re product is bad, or on the same token, if I think you are going to be a serious pain in the ass (in the bad way) to work with, I’ll kindly choose not to work with you. But on a moral level, the nature of design is an idea I toy with often. Because there’s part of me that believes all design is a front. It’s all there covering up the grime and grease of interlocking gears that either function or don’t… and with a solid design front, you’ll never know until after you’ve made the investment.