Beautiful New Aol.

Aol Phase 02 from Universal Everything on Vimeo.

The Creative Taste Debate

Rule #2: Understand the difference between art and graphic design

In his book, Website’s That Work, renowned creative guru Roger Black wrote, “Design shouldn’t be mere decoration; it must convey information.” Black wrote that book in 1997, a lifetime ago, yet the principle still rings true today. That’s because graphic design is all about communication, not art. Yes, there is an “art” and a “science” to crafting messages that are relevant and meaningful to a target market. But let’s be clear, art is something we admire in an art gallery. In our homes, we use art to decorate. It’s personal. What it means to me may not mean the same to you. In marketing, graphic design is only good design when it communicates a strategic objective (usually to sell something). If it doesn’t do that, it will not matter how cool it looks, it will not resonate. In other words, no sales. Just mere decoration.

Full article: http://blog.sterlingklor.com/?p=155

Milton Glaser on Art

"Art is fundamentally a survival device of the species. Otherwise it wouldn’t be so persistent. It wouldn’t be in every culture. We wouldn’t know about it…

How does art help you survive? It helps us survive by making us attentive. In a simplistic way, when you go past a forest and you look at it and you say, ‘that looks just like Cézanne.’ And you realize Cézanne has made you see the reality of the forest in a way that you never could have seen before. He’s made you attentive. Every work of art that you care about makes us attentive. And if it doesn’t do that—it ain’t art."

Water Color

This was from a illustration class in college. There was a live model, but we were encouraged to be abstract and experiment.

Dragosaur

This is a painting I made one day while I was bored. For some reason squirrels appear a lot in my paintings. I am starting to think it has to do with the fact that they are one animal that you can still see on a day to day basis. Like birds they are part of a city. They are – for better or worse – able to coexist with humans in the city, although more so in the suburbs.