Disobey your professor’s instructions.

Research papers. We’ve all done them, and yes they are quite boring and mainly involve the regurgitation of other people’s writing. But you just have to suck it up. In one of my architecture classes during the last year of the program, we had to write a research paper about an architect. I chose Hector Guimard. His instructions were that we had to write 15 pages, double spaced, and put any reference images on the back as an appendix. Well I thought: It must suck for the professor to have to read through all these papers, and having to look through the same old formatting. Is there a way for mine to jump out?

And then I had the random idea to turn the bland research paper into a fictional magazine with graphic and layout design, and where the images pertaining to the text would be on the same page rather than all at the end. I knew I was quick at Photoshop, so I did a mock magazine cover, a table of contents, and a double column layout for the text and images. The use of green was in line with the idea of the “organic” plants that Guimard frequently used in his designs.

And it turns out he liked it a lot, and I got a pretty damn good grade. See the higher resolution version at my deviantART page.

Don’t be afraid to bastardize products!

Yes, you’re damn fucking right! I use a Starbucks bottle to store my loose change in. Often times people perceive products for only what they’re intended for. But I challenge you to save money and bastardize products for other uses. I actually don’t drink Starbucks coffee. But as I was walking around the grocery store, I suddenly realized that the 4-pack of glass bottles could be used for other things, one of which was that I didn’t have a sealed jar for my loose change. And there are plenty of other things I could’ve put it in too. A spagetti sauce glass bottle, or anything that was durable enough (w/ a lid) to hold the weight of coins and keep them sealed. So I urge people to think twice before throwing “crap” away. Is there some other purpose for it?

We don’t need anymore waste on our planet, as Al Gore would say…

Don’t Get Lazy: People will defect!

Yeah, I use Windows XP on my MacBook Pro. I still consider it the best operating system available today (Vista bombed). But the fact still remains: Microsoft has long been lazy at their software development because they know they have such a strong grip on the market. But as more and more people are born into the age of computers and high technology, we’re not as ignorant as Microsoft thinks. Smaller companies are slowly taking away from Microsoft’s share of everything. It used to be that Internet Explorer had 98% market share, but now each day Firefox is eating away at that. It used to be that Outlook was the email client of choice, but now Thunderbird (with its low resource requirements and easier to use interface) is gaining ground. But it’s not just Mozilla who’s challenging Microsoft, it’s the combined aggregate of all the smaller forces trying to take down the big guy. And these smaller companies are coming out with amazing programs that put their Microsoft versions to shame. With the exception of Windows and MS Office, virtually all my previous Microsoft programs have been replaced with better alternatives. Take a look:

Internet Explorer = Firefox / Outlook = Thunderbird / PowerPoint = Apple Keynote / Windows Media Player = Media Player Classic and Winamp / Microsoft Calculator = Moffsoft FreeCalc / Windows Picture & Fax Viewer = IrfanView / Microsoft Notepad = Notepad++ / Windows Disc Cleaner = CCleaner / Windows Disk Defragmenter = Auslogics Disk Defrag / and the list goes on and on…

Do yourself a favor and explore other BETTER alternatives. And never get lazy with your customers. Eventually people will realize and join the rebellion!

Rename all quicktime vids to .hdmov

As you probably know, quicktime videos are saved as .mov files. However, if you rename the extension to .hdmov, the video will play smoother, have better color accuracy and brightness, and you won’t experience image tearing while watching it. There are several programs that play .hdmov files, but I recommend Media Player Classic. Also, Dave’s Trailer Page is a great place to directly download movie trailers to your hard drive. If you’re not familiar with renaming extensions, you have to go to Tools –> Folder Options in Windows Explorer, click on the View tab, and deselect “Hide extensions for known file types.” Now you can see that all your quicktime videos have a .mov extension afterwards. Just add an hd before it, play it in Media Player Classic, and you should definitely notice a difference like I did.

Media players: Keep it simple, stupid.

Along the same lines as a previous post I made about keeping your desktop simple and clean, the same goes for media players. Many times I see people using media players with all the bells and whistles visible on the user interface. But really, do you need all that?

In comes Media Player Classic, an all-in-one player that plays virtually any video format you throw at it, AND it allows you to customize the user interface and strip it down to what you see here: a clean beige border and a simple seek bar. Now you may be asking: But you need a play button, stop button, volume controls, etc! It’s true, I do use those functions, but there are shortcut keys for all of them. The spacebar to pause and play the video, and the mouse scroll wheel to adjust the volume.

If you’re wondering, the video I’m playing is a 720P version of the newly released Diablo 3 cinematic trailer. It’s pretty fucking awesome!

Diablo III: Landscapes & Architecture

Holy shit! Diablo III was announced last Saturday, and Blizzard kicked it off with an amazing CGI trailer. For those who know Blizzard and their capabilities, the amount of detail and fluid animations they’re able to achieve is the best in the entire video game industry. What caught my eye was the breath-takingly beautiful landscapes and architecture, shown on the left in 4 screencaps I did of the trailer. This is on par, if not better than anything Hollywood can produce. You can also view the gameplay demo.

Bravo Blizzard! The bar continues to rise…

I hope that based on what I’ve seen from Saturday and also from a year ago with StarCraft II, both will live up to or exceed the tremedous hype surrounding them.

The importance of packaging.

You go to the cereal isle in the grocery store, and you’re bombarded with tons and tons of graphic designs for the front of cereal boxes. You go to Toys’R'Us and see the massive fields of board games. Now, we all know that ultimately it’s the quality of the box contents that matter, but for someone who doesn’t already have a predetermined purchase choice, the packaging just might be able to earn you a sale over the others. Apple, for example, keeps its packaging minimalistic, displaying only the product in multiple views. There’s no text cluttering at all.

The image on the left is a screencap from Apple.com’s movie trailer page. Are there any ones that stand out? Don’t stand out? Which of the graphic designs do you think is the most clever? Personally, I think the X-Files poster is the best. It’s very minimalistic, and the cleverness of using Mulder and Scully to cast an “X” is brilliant. And also, the poster clearly dictates the tone of the film: dark and ominous.

During my internship with Discovery Bay Games, I went on a field trip to Toys’R'Us to study the existing packaging that all the games had. We took pictures and discussed the various color patterns and packaging materials. It was unbelievable how much everything looked the same. So rather than trying to design packaging by purely looking at the product behind it, design also relative to where the packaging will be displayed.

Business Suit Assimilation

I hate having to dress up for work. Seriously, it sucks. If the job is really good, I’ll probably do it. But otherwise it just feels like some sort of massive assimilation where everyone looks the same, especially men. I’d rather be in a work environment where there’s no dress code. So long as you’re not dressed in your underwear, the company’s fine with whatever you wear. And even better if they allow more priveleges and provide nice creature comforts.

And that brings me to my experience at my last job with Discovery Bay Games. It a small game company that has produced hits like BaffleGab. Anyways, one of the great things about working for them (and it seems to be the case with a lot of smaller companies) was the culture. No dress code, take an hour lunch whenever you feel like it, free dishes/silverware and easily accessible fridge and microwave, no fucking cubicles, and dogs at work! This is the way I like it. Who cares about formalities like wearing suits? In the end, performance and execution of your duties is of upmost importance. If you dress up nicely and talk all proper-like, who the fuck cares if you’re a shitty employee who can’t perform?

Companies should really evaluate if strict dress code guidelines are really necessary…does it even impress anyone anymore to be all dressed up?

Don’t be so fucking lazy with slides!

This basically applies to 99% of students and most of corporate America. The people who have no idea how the human mind works in terms of information retention, attention span, readability, etc. People are visual learners, and we like things simple! Not dumbed down, but simple. Have you seen slides that look like the one on top, where it’s basically just a paragraph of text that the presenter is reading off verbatim? That shit puts me to sleep. And it was especially true during my one year in business school, where basically everyone except for me pulled that lazy shit. I didn’t understand anything they were saying. The absolute worst case of this was in my Management Information Systems class, where the professor used slides that had 10pt font in front of some really tacky backgrounds. It was the most boringest shit I’ve ever had the displeasure of sitting through. Pure hell.

But to be fair, I had a few cases in the past where I did just that and posted a fucking novel for people to read. But I eventually saw the light, especially after becoming interested in Steve Jobs’ presentation style. He keeps his slides simple and clicks through them relatively fast, and thus always maintaining visual interest. I also got a lot of great tips from Presentation Zen, a blog which provides advice on effective presentation techniques. So the image you see on the bottom was a presentation I had to prepare for a debate. I kept it visual as much as possible, and added in appropriate animations to clarify my points.

So please people, head on over to youtube and search for some Steve Jobs keynote presentations to see how a master does it. It’s all the presentation skills training you ever need.

Huskies > Cougars

I just want to put my 2 cents into this age old debate among college students in Washington state. Now, first and foremost, I have to say that I attended BOTH. That’s right, both campuses: UW Seattle and WSU Pullman. And I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I enjoyed being a Husky far more than a Cougar. And there are a lot of reasons: 1) Seattle is a better place to live than the ghost town known as Pullman, 2) the UW campus is vastly superior and much better funded, 3) I enjoyed the architecture program much more than business, 4) and many more reasons… But seriously, why all the hate? It seems to me that only Cougars have a strong hatred towards Huskies, but not vice versa. Maybe it’s simply because the douchebag rating for WSU is higher.

So I’m going to side with the purple dawg, always and forever bitches!

A neat little site for movie trailers.

Ever wish that you could easily download all the movie trailers available without having to go through layers and layers of navigation? Do you also wish that you could directly download the trailers and save them on your hard drive? Well Dave’s Trailer Page is an indie movie trailer site where the owner has provided straight-forward links to all the latest movie trailers. He updates the site very often and provides direct download links to all sizes (480P, 720P, etc) for all movie trailers.

Business Cards: Make them unique!

If you’ve ever been to a job fair, you probably see people all over the place trying to hand out resumes and business cards. And what about those business cards? They are all generic: usually white paper, small typography, maybe a little logo. Similar to my post about being a superstar, you’ve got to be able to up your style a little more. Here, we see Steve Wozniak’s (co-founder of Apple) business card. It’s made of metal, shiny, thick, and has interesting holes in it. It’s pretty fucking sweet. Any person I’m sure will do a double take on his card if they’re shuffling through a stack. So if you’ve got a business card, take a good look at it and ask yourself if there’s anything unique, be it texture, color, design, etc. If there isn’t, REDESIGN! And this not only goes for business cards, but also resumes. Can you format it in a different way or make use of color and different typography to emphasize certain skills? Just think how a human resources guy or recruiter perceives any resume, and think how refreshing it would be for that guy to receive something that isn’t lines and lines of Times New Roman or Ariel font on a standard piece of printer paper.

ALERT: Nerd factor! Video game inspiration!

There’s always at least a little nerd in all of us. The image shows two models I built during my 2nd year in college. One is based on Metal Gear Ray from Metal Gear Solid 2, and the other is some futuristic weapon that looks like it belongs in the Ratchet & Clank universe. Why video games? Because they are some of the most creative pieces of art/design in the world. I still think that much of the older generation has a distorted perception of what they are: mindless shooting games where some guy goes around blasting shit with gore everywhere. It’s mostly the media (in particular FOX news) that tries to suppress video games. But hey! Games have come a long way. I mean series like Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid incorporate such a detailed plot and immersive experience that they become films in a sense. Very long 40+ hours films. And the composers behind those games, Nobuo Uematsu (“To Zanarkand”) and Harry Gregson-Williams (“Debriefing”), inject such a powerful score that the games’ soundtracks trump that of most artists today. The production values on some games are insane now.

But the problem is that in academia, you will never be told to look at video games for any kind of creative inspiration. I certainly never heard it from any of my architecture professors. And yet, despite being fictional, there is plenty of architecture in video games. Ever played ICO for PS2? Or Devil May Cry? Or Morrowind? Just a few off the top of my mind that have beautiful architecture in them.

Labeling / Figures in Architectural Drawings

Here’s a couple of things that I like to do when drawing details. The image on the left are my tectonic detail drawings for the Dubai Planetarium in Studio 402. Sometimes (and you have to judge for yourself on your own drawings) labeling with words directly on the drawings may become too much of a distraction or too cluttered. So instead, I label them with letters and then have a text column on the right side. Also, because it’s a tectonic drawing, a lot of it is self-explanatory, so excessive labeling may be unnecessary. Also notice that I tried to align vertically as much of the lettered circles as possible. It gives a more cleaner look. Finally, don’t just put in one or two figures for scale. Put a ton of them in there, especially if it’s a building designed to hold a lot of people! Ideally, the people’s positioning and gesturing will also make sense. For example, on the drawing to the right, there’s a man pointing outward over the railing.

Concrete=cardboard, Metal=wood

I present, the greatest architectural model I’ve ever built. It was for my studio 400 class with Sharon Sutton. It’s an entrance detail for a fire station design. I spent fucking forever making this, but it was well worth it. Craftsmanship is my best, as well as the detailing. But I want to suggest people who want to abstractly represent concrete and metal to use thin cardboard and wood pieces respectively. For extra detail, score out expansion lines and rebar holes into the cardboard.

Worst thing you can do is try to emulate the texture and color of the real thing in a realistic way, and even worse if you try to paint it. It just all becomes a mess. Abstraction is best. Many of my classmates that tried making it overly realistic regretted it. Paint was everywhere and unevenly distributed.