VerveCast

Timothy Westbrook working in The Pfister's studio.

Perhaps you’ll recall a post of mine from a few months back about the search for the next Pfister Hotel Artist in Residence. Well, the lucky artist was selected and has now been set up in the hotel for about a month.

Timothy Westbrook is a talented, young fiber artist from upstate New York who made the big move to pursue the Pfister’s residency. If you have not met him, you should make your way to The Pfister and check out his work, which is primarily crafted from recycled materials such as cassette tape (and even The Pfister’s retired bedsheets!).

Here’s a great feature segment from CBS 58 on Timothy and the artist-in-residence program.

The Shot Glass Card is a great way to help a friend celebrate their birthday with a drink!

Fifty Five Hi’s has a nice blog post with details, and there’s a fun video below.

One thing I learned in school was that designers need constraints. Without constraints, it’s too difficult to define the problem that needs to be solved. Tell a designed “do whatever you want!” and that’s just going to cause problems. Tell them “I need a logo that incorporates a sword, a monkey, and the color blue” and you’re more likely to get some good results.

I’m not sure if that’s all true or not, but it’s an interesting concept. What else is interesting? This banner ad for IKEA. Watch the video to see how a simple banner ad became something much more clever than a simple animation.

Digital creative agency Holler decided to push the boundaries and moved their entire web site to a Pinterest account.

So are these guys on the bleeding edge, or just looking for some publicity for a stunt?

This is only slightly interesting to me because it’s just another case of using a tool for unintended purposes. If you’ve ever used a butter knife as a screwdriver you know what I mean. Since the early days of the World Wide Web, I’ve seen people use web sites for things the developers never imagined. It’s just how things work. When the first blogging tools came out (which were specifically for creating a series of chronologically ordered posts) people found ways of creating entire (traditional) web sites out of them. It’s been done.

As for getting rid of your site and moving it all to Pinterest, others have done similar things… killing off their sites and moving to Facebook, or Myspace, or whatever came before. I see it as a “flavor of the day” thing, and not a long-term solution. Putting your trust that a new service (you have no control over) will be around in 5 or 10 years seems a bit risky, and I know digital creative agencies are all about “taking risks” but I also know that providing clients with solid, time-tested advice is a good strategy.

[Hat tip to Mana for finding this one.]

Every now and then here at Z2 we need to fly to some remote location, sometimes it’s for client meetings, and sometimes it’s for a location shoot. When we flew out to Arizona we actually bought a ticket for our RED ONE rather than check it. (You tend to do that when your camera costs more than your car.)

I’m no stranger to bringing cinema lenses or a matte box as my carry-on luggage, but I still try to be really careful with what I bring. (Last month I brought a tube of toothpaste that was a little to large, and the TSA did not appreciate that!

I’m on another flight next week, so I’ll be sure to check out The TSA Blog so I know what not to bring.

It’s amazing what people try to bring on a flight! Here’s a few of the crazy ones:

• 1000 hits of ecstasy
• 163 marine tropical fish
• Real gun concealed as toy gun
• Stun gun
• Brass knuckles
• Spear gun
• Throwing stars
• Cannon balls

And no… you really can’t take a hand grenade on the plane!

Safe travels, everyone!