Wow, I had no idea they intended to make a comeback but Surfstation is back online. For a while there, they were one of my favorite design/music/movie zines. It will be interesting to see how they fare now in the highly competitive world of blogging. The landscape has changed dramatically since they first came online a long time ago.
While I am on the subject of web design today, there is no way I could leave out MSNBCs spectra visual newsreader. It’s a whole new and fascinating way to read the news. It’s really a grand experiment in information organization and that is something that has always interested me in terms of web design. One of the first things that interested me in Flash, and still does, was the amazing possibilities for how you could file, categorize, display and allow users to access information. It was exciting to see MSNBC take that idea and apply it to their news stories. Spectra is a really fun website to explore and since it is the news you are playing with, you might actually find something interesting to read as well.
I can’t quite figure out if this is legit or not but apparently Shepard Fairey (of Obey Giant fame) is threatening to sue Baxter Orr who is a 26-year-old artist and freelance designer based out of Austin, Texas. You can see his work above. The irony here is that Fairey has been accused blatant plagiarism in the past and the evidence to support this notion is more than damning. Fortunately for Fairey, few of the artists work that he has used in the past have stepped up to protect themselves.
Regardless, Fairey’s fan-base is strong (I have always been one of them). The question remains however as to whether or not this whole debacle is for real or a 15 minutes of fame attempt by none other than Orr himself. Either way, it raises some interesting questions.
You can read more about the story here and also see how the readers feel about it.
I am slowly but surely updating my portfolio on a daily basis with cleaner and more product focused imagery of my work. I think when it is all complete it will look nice and slick but it is going to take some time and doing to get it all completed. So over the next couple weeks you will start to see the portfolio section get cleaner and neater. I will send out a note when it is complete and do another post. There is some new work being sprinkled in there as well.
