Archives

Gazing Backwards

Magnet MagazineThe cover story from the latest issue of Magnet Magazine, which unfortunately does not post its editorial content on its rather thin Web site, tells the tale of that nearly-forgotten, early-nineties musical fad sometimes known as shoegazing. It’s very well-written but also bizarre to read as an historical account, having lived through that time period, having bought those records as they were released, having trekked to the clubs to see those pale, undynamic English people perform that music in the flesh before the mid-nineties swept them away. Most of those records seem insignificant now, or at least too self-conscious and non-committal, but it does make me sentimental to think of a very brief time when the formula was: the weirder the music, the greater the chance for success.

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Good Help These Days

BehaviorBehavior is still itching for some good visual designers, so if you’re smart, talented, can lead a design team, are not a primadonna, then please send us something friendly at jobs@behaviordesign.com.

We’ve pretty much just started doing interviews, and now that I’m an owner in my own business, I find that I take the process much more seriously than I did before. Or, at the very least, my questions are much more specific and I listen much more attentively. It’s interesting meeting candidates though, and chatting with them about how they work… looking for similarities and differences in the way everyone does design. The genral process seems to be: mood boards, comps, iterations, slice up the art. It sounds so simple when it’s put like that.

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New Flash

FlashMacromedia officially announced the next version of Flash today called Flash MX. I guess it’s pretty much impossible to launch a new product these days without including an “X” in its name somewhere. It looks great nevertheless, and I’m actually onboard with Macromedia’s ambitions to make it a full-fledged development platform. The product has come a long way from its beginnings in the pen computing market, as detailed in this historical account by creator Jonathan Gay.

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Pixar’s Star

PixarJohn Lasseter, Creative Executive VP for Pixar Inc. and director of the “Toy Story” movies, is on a publicity tour, talking up the chances for “Monsters Inc.” to win an Academy Award next month. He’s due to appear on NPR’s “Fresh Air” this evening. I heard him yesterday on WNYC’s “New York & Company,” when he said something really interesting. At the outset of every movie, there’s always some large piece of the story that they have no idea how to accomplish, some creative challenge that has no clear technological solution. Their approach is to back themselves into a corner and innovate through it. I like that aggressiveness, that willingness to create circumstances that demand innovation.

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Swamped

Behavior is taking over my life. Or at least trying to run several Behavior projects while also helping to run the company is devouring my waking hours. In spite of the long hours, it’s a heck of a lot of fun. Anyway, in the interest of time, I’m going to clear out some random links I’ve been meaning to post for a while now.After (or perhaps in spite of) much needling from Steve Jobs, Adobe Systems has finally announced Photoshop 7.0 for Mac OS X. It’s got me pretty excited.Text-Image.com is a really great little engine that converts GIFs and JPEGs to ASCII. It’s an old trick, but this one does it beautifully, using colored text to approximate tones and shades.Gamespot.com has a nice history of the videogaming industry.

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