Imagine working for a place that would actually spend the money on an off-the-wall effort like this. Who knows if Puma got anything extra out of the people showing up to their viewing party, but I love the idea…especially the yellow cards as promotions. Such a non-threatening, fun way to engage with people on the street.

Making stuff like this easier to come by…

With Pearl Jam’s announcement of their concert poster pre-sale to all 10 Club fan members who’ve already purchased fan club tickets, my enjoyment of their shows has already improved before hearing a single song. The following text from Mundis pretty much sums up my feelings…

“U know this poster pre-sale kinda takes out the whole ‘figure out when to get to the venue, get in line, wait forever, get inside, get somewhat nauseous, find a stand, get crushed, get ur balls off my ass, stop breathing on my head, you’re stepping on my foot, I smell body odor, does this dude beside me take showers, do I have enough cash, you just rubbed your boobs on my elbow, here take my place, get a wristband maybe, wait in line after the show, hey that fucker has two wristbands somehow, get your poster finally’ fun feeling out of it. Ya know?”

Yes…yes, I do know, Jason.

The best thing involving bowling yesterday was probably the creation of team icons and a logo:

As a team, we started out pretty well. I bowled two clean games to start the night, and everyone bowled pretty well to give our team wins in the first two games, but we all fell apart in the last game. Every person on our team bowled their worst game of the night – highlighted by my 51-pin underachievement. For a night that had me pondering the personal glory of my first clean series, the last game brought me back down to the average bowler ground I should be standing on.

After 23 straight clean frames, something went awry as I began leaven pins on the left side of the lane. Aside from the 4-9 split that I picked up in game two, all of my spares through those first 23 frames were right side. Frames 4-9 were a bit of a nightmare for me. I made my first two left side spares, then missed and easy one. Then on the 9th frame, I left the “Greek Church”. It was a disastrous end to what should’ve been a great night. I left two opens and ended with a 165.

From the optimist point-of-view, our team did pick up two wins, leaving us with a 3-3 record going into next week, and we’re only 7 pins shy of the league high team average. With us already in the hole record-wise, we’re going to have to focus on team average to get us into the playoffs while slowly picking up wins along the way.

Okay. I received this team photo of the 2008 Steelers the other night when I was at the tour, and the designer in me immediately screamed, “what the hell?”.

I felt embarrassed for the Steelers. I’ve received Ravens team photos in past years, and I even picked up the Browns team photo this year at the Ravens/Browns game in Cleveland. Both are of impeccable quality compared to the Steelers photo. It’s not like the actual photography is bad or anything. I’m even okay with the idea that the Steelers organization thought that it would be a great idea to shoot the team in one location and Photoshop them onto an old Heinz Field photo background. I mean, maybe the weather was bad or something and there was no time to reschedule. Whatever. What I’m not okay with is the execution of the whole thing.

Now, you’ll probably have to roll over to the Flickr page where I have the scanned image hosted to see the details, but think about this stuff as you chuckle.

1. Lighting. If you’re going to superimpose the team into a location different from your team photo shoot, please at least create common lighting by paying attention to shadows. Seriously. If you look at the background, the light is coming from the southwest and the sun is still high (see how the shadows are cast on the scoreboard from the Heinz Field sign). The lighting on the team is straight-up indoor shooting with the lighting coming from both sides, probably slightly above head level, as evidenced by the shadows cast off of the players onto the coaches’ white polo shirts.
2. Shadows. Whoever photoshopped the team onto the background obviously has no idea about light and the shadows cast from different lighting. He or she has no idea about how distance affects the way a shadow is cast. In fact, I’m not even sure if that person knows how to apply a drop shadow in Photoshop. It looks like the shadow was created with the brush tool and someone with a twitch. Regardless, it was applied with no effort. The soft shadowing that surrounds the players on the bottom make them look like they’re floating. Note to designer: these guys would be sitting on the ground. That means the shadows should be shorter in distance and hard because of the object that is casting the shadows has a close proximity to the surface. Plus, I understand that the photographer gave you conflicting lighting to work with, but at least go with the shadows that the sun would create. That means that the guys standing in the back row shouldn’t have any shadows at all. Or are they so team-oriented that they are constantly surrounded by a noticeable aura of black? Maybe I should be asking Andy Lizanich as he’s the one with the most noticeable glow. Also, the shadows are way too soft, and don’t have nearly the level of variance that should be there. Floating people…so frustrating.
3. Outlining. This might be the only thing our little Photoshop “expert” might be capable of. Congratulations. We always need outliners here at my job to trace t-shirts and camis. Now stop embarrassing yourself and get a less high-profile gig.
4. Creating cohesion between the background and the faked foreground. This is where the real observation and detail shouldn’t be ignored…if you’re a good designer…because this is where some of the magic happens. If the players are sitting on grass, would the lines where the players’ asses meet the ground be a perfect curve? No, you moron. The grass would create a textured meeting point. Copy some grass, scale it and put it over their gold asses, shoes, etc. Apply to the floating footballs as well. Also, if you want two Steelers helmets in front of the team, please don’t just clone one and leave it at that. Please change some of the details, so it doesn’t look exactly the same. The only thing that looks convincing on the picture is the damn helmet in the grass. I guess that’s why the designer just copied it. I think that was actually shot on the grass.

Although, maybe I’m being too hard on this person. It’s not his fault that he was given a task way out of his league. It might not be his fault that the art director was a moron and hired a skill-less putz with no observation or technical skills. It’s also probably not his fault for deciding to ignore the lighting and match it to the background. I could see if this was some small-time company with no budget for marketing, but this is a NFL team. No matter how small of a market your team is in, you should be able to get better workers than this. It’s an embarrassment that an organization with as much of a successful history on the field can’t pull it together to get the damn team photo right. I know most don’t care and won’t notice, but for me, this is ridiculous. Note to all employers: Stop hiring awful designers. All they do is surround us with awful design…and people are accepting the crap as the norm. Stop it. Seriously. Stop. Help make the world at least look better.

As we were walking to the hockey game on Friday night from the hotel, we happened to pass by this giant outdoor advertising promoting “Coops Paints” and Nationwide Insurance. At first I just saw the paint advertisement, with the paint cleverly running down the wall and onto the cars in the parking lot. That was cool enough, but after scanning the wall, it became obvious that we were looking at a clever Nationwide ad, not a paint ad at all. In fact, Coops Paints isn’t even a real company.

It was a great bit of advertising that was guaranteed to catch your eye while not simply playing to the idiot in you. It was smart, mentally engaging (if for only a moment), and left me inspired as a designer.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have an affinity for Pearl Jam. When the bandwagon had to cut down on the amount of passengers it could hold back in the No Code era of 1996, I decided I wanted to jump on…and jump on I did.

I have been riding with the current wave of PJ fans for about 10 years or so. I guess I was always a fan since I had Ten on cassette and my second CD ever was Vs., but around 1994, I began listening to more reggae, ska, and hip-hop, and really sort of ignored the whole grunge thing for the most part. Then when I was about 17, after wearing out all of my other CDs, I decided to listen to something that I hadn’t listened to in a long time – Vs. It was amazing. The lyrics were great, the emotion, everything. It blew my mind. I then started getting everything I could listen to by the band because I didn’t want to think that I missed everything if it was this good…which, for the most part, it was.

I went to my first PJ show in 2000 in Virginia Beach. Since then, I’ve traveling to Cleveland, London (ON), Kitchener (ON), Boston, Houston, Virginia, Maryland, Pittsburgh, Reading, Camden, Hershey, East Rutherford, State College, and Chicago, blowing my money on gas, lodging, and the must-have tour posters – limited number, well-designed, unique, screen-printed, and specific to each show. That’s not too crazy since I’ve met far more insane fans, but the simple fact is that they’re the one band that I’ve really put any effort into seeing and supporting over the years. I’m cool with it, too, because I feel like they’ve continually provided me with great music since the beginning, but I’m just starting to hate them. Not really, but they always seem to find a way to get my money with neat stuff.

Just today, I logged into MySpace and saw that they now have a book of their tour posters for sale. As a designer, I had to buy it for the fact that within that book contained immeasurable amounts of inspiration. As a fan, well, it’s a must-have as much as the posters themselves. Considering that so many fans stand in line for hours just to rush the merch stand when the gates open to get their hands on a single poster, and that the posters go for ridiculously high prices online, a book commemorating all of these great posters seems like a great idea for PJ to make another killing from us fans. Damn you, you capitalist f*cks. Ha.

At the end of the day, they got me for the signed/numbered copy. I love you guys for being a great rock band, but I do hate you for taking all of my money. At least my stock pile of merchandise pales in comparison to Mundis’.

Now I can’t wait to get that damn book.