So I’m back at home, and last night I took out some legos because I wanted to do something with my hands. I took everything apart and put all the colors together and this is what I had:

These are the colors of Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. He was influential not only in painting but also design, and he owns these colors:

Above is “Composition A.” I decided to make a version with legos. I had two yellow flat pieces that together formed a 32 x 32 lego unit square. Here’s where it gets nerdy. I took the image you see above and laid a grid over it in photoshop:

Note the Icon Factory icons in my dock. The lines didn’t match up exactly, but I was able to figure it out and start laying down the legos:

As you can see, I wasn’t able to keep the level the same throughout or have the black lines from the original painting. However, I’m pleased with the final product, which was best captured with the camera’s flash on. Maybe next time I’ll try something more difficult.

The rumor mill has been churning recently about the health of one of my favorite magazines, The New Yorker. There’s no question that almost all magazines are hurting, especially those owned by Condé Nast, but the question remains as to how badly The New Yorker is being wounded by this recession.

While interning with the production at The Atlantic, I’ve learned about the way that specific issues of magazines can by compared through analysis of their advertisements. There are two specific measurements that are particularly telling: the ad-to-edit ratio and the ads in the beginning of the magazine. Each magazine has a specific balance of ads and editorial content that it strives for in each issue. The most expensive ads are in the beginning of the magazine. For an anecdotal, qualitative approach, I’m looking at two issues of The New Yorker.

May 18, 2009: This is most recent issue of the magazine. Of 86 pages, only 13 were ads, at 15.1%. The rest was editorial content, taking up the remainder of 84.9%. Some advertisers request that their full page ads are in the first 20% and other request placement in the first third, so I looked at which ads were place in the first 25% of the magazine. In this issue, there was BMW, Fidelity, Verizon, RoC, and their “showcase,” which has a lot of small ads in it.

July 21, 2008: The famous “terrorist fist-jab” cover. This magazine comes to us from a past where the print media looked far less dead than it does at this moment. Though we were officially in a recession last summer, every sector of media was riding the wave of interest in the Presidential Election. So, was the magazine in better shape? The first sign is that the magazine had over ten more pages, clocking in at 98. 23 pages were ads, giving the issue 23.5% ad content and 76.5% edit content. In the first quarter appeared: Citi, Embassy Suites, Mercedes, Chevron, Vanguard, Westin Hotels, Verizon, Express, and two spreads — Exxon Mobil and Bridgestone.

This is obviously not an exhaustive study, and it would be difficult to draw conclusions from this data alone even if it was taken from magazines over a period of several years. I even pulled out another issue from 2007 and it fell in between the two looked at here on both counts. However, it is interesting that these two issues diverge so greatly.

Not only did I get into the best graduate school ever this week, I found out that I won a design show here in DC. My entire graphic design class (of eight people) submitted a board to the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington’s annual Real Show. I’ve been told that over 400 people submitted from around the country and there were 48 winners. I was one of 12 winners in my category. Here’s the list: my name is under “Naked Décor Stationery.”

Above is a bigger view of my logo. The challenge was to design an identity (logo, letterhead, envelope, business card) for a hip home decor company. I tried to go and see my work hung in the Corcoran but it had already been taken down by the time I got there. From my teacher’s pictures, I could see that other entrants had pursued ideas tossed around in class. More fun than your average school project!

Photo courtesy of flickr user Pedestrian Typography, who is also AU Adjunct Prof. Carolyn Sewell. Thanks!

UPDATE: I got in to CCS! I’m going in fall!

This weekend I completed part two of my application to comics U. As you can see above, it is a stylistic departure from my previous work, and I’m extremely pleased with the result. The resulting two page whimsy is called Simulacra & Slackline, and it’s available here in PDF. It shows intersection of casual tight rope walking and thinking about Baudrillard. Wish me luck.

It’s no secret that I’m a “semi-regular” blogger, but I’ve been slowing down to an embarassing rate recently. I’m really pushing my drawing this month (for reasons I’ll explain later), and because I’ll probably have to start going crazy with work for the end of my last semester of college, so I’m gonna opt out of blogging for at least April. That’s not to say that I won’t blog, but this gives me an excuse to not. Keep an eye on my flickr if you are interested in new drawings or photos.

This three page ad, originally in color, ran in the Febraury 1968 issue of The Atlantic.

Click on the last image to see it bigger. The ad purposes all sorts of fantastic future phone technologies, including versions of cell phones and the internet. The one on the top right reads, “Home telephones may be able to reach computers for figuring income tax, getting information from the library, or helping your son with his algebra.” A laugh comes at the bottom where it reads, “We may be the only phone company in town, but we try not to act like it.” Maybe not the only any more, but certainly still the biggest.

Reprinted without permission, but with humilty and in tribute to looking ahead. All rights are retained by AT&T.

Journalism teachers always encourage you to get published, and for good reason. To get hired somewhere (ha!), you need published examples of your work, and there are usually a few places interested in student work. At AU, one of them is the American Observer, the Graduate Journalism Magazine. I submitted a piece I wrote a class, and it was published here. Please read it, I bet you can do it in a minute or two.

Now I understand that things have to be fact-checked and verified—very quickly I might add—but the original story (below) was 757 words. The edited version? 301. I can’t really complain: the essence of the article remains the same, except all the “zazz” is gone. We all learn in J-school that because the internet is a page-less medium the size of articles isn’t bound by the same physical constraints, but speediness has never been more crucial. Still, feature-y, details-oriented writing has its place on the internet, and readers still flock to it. Click through (or scroll down) to read the original story.

photo by flickr user sskennel

Frederick Douglass’ house in Southeast Washington D.C. sits high on a grassy estate. The property that he lived on from 1877 till the end of his life has been lovingly preserved and is enclosed by a wrought iron fence.

Taking a tour of Douglass’ house on Cedar Hill, now known as the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, one can admire the eccentricities of a wealthy, self-made man who escaped slavery and went on to become one of the most important abolitionists.

Take for instance the growlery, a small hut around back where Douglass could work without distraction, and well, growl. But far from being a recluse, Douglass loved to play music in his west parlor and was a self-taught violinist. He had a rule: everyone in the room had to participate (the tambourine still sits vigilantly in the corner).

While Douglass’ house seems almost untouched by time — it’s carefully restored and eighty percent of the collection is original — the community it sits in has changed dramatically. Modern day Anacostia is in need of many things, and though Cedar Hill probably receives the most direct federal funding out of anything in the area, it is beloved as a local monument to a man who’s inspiration is felt today.

Terry Ricardo, who lives on V street, near Cedar Hill, thinks that Frederick Douglass serves as a good role model for his community and that his house is a point of pride. Referring to Douglass’ house, Ricardo says, “They just need to keep the grounds up a little better.” He describes Anacostia as an “outgoing neighborhood” and thinks that kids here could use places to play like a skate park or bowling alley. Or maybe the city could just improve the roads.

However, Ricardo, 35, sees change and has hope for the future. “I know they’re gonna knock a lot of stuff done…It’s a long time coming, getting better,” he says.

Services have always come slower to Southeast D.C. than every other part of the city, from schools to roads to public programs. Public housing and garden apartments built during World War Two contributed to the mounting white flight and Anacostia was mostly black and poor by the mid 1960s.

Like other black areas of the city, Southeast was badly damaged in the 1968 race riots that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. By the 1980s Anacostia was 98.3 percent black and desperately in need of development and assitance.

Even with Marion Barry, a former Southeast resident, as mayor, population fell 30 percent and drugs and violence raged. Partly to blame was a lack of governmental commitment: federal services dropped $583 million during President Reagan’s first three years in office. Getting a Metro station built in 1991 was a big victory for the neighborhood, but only after years of fighting with the agency.

But even as the neighborhood changed, locals fought to preserve Cedar Hill. Local community groups maintained the house, sometimes with Southeast school children holding penny drives to raise money, until the National Park Service took over the site in 1962. In 1988 it was declared a National Historic Site.

Yavocka Young, Executive Director of community organization Main Street Anacostia,  also lives near Cedar Hill on W street.

When in the house, “I personally feel inspired to be better,” she says. Young, 40, moved to Anacostia in 1992 and used to volunteer at the Historic Site. She describes Anacostia as still up and coming. She’s seen more stores open and more young urban professionals move in. In 2007, Anacostia got its first grocery store, a Giant supermarket.

In talking about her neighborhood’s advantages, Young says, “we’re very close to everything,” recalling that Frederick Douglass himself walked to the capitol when he lived on Cedar Hill.

Ed Fleet, Executive Director of THEARC, a community education and recreation facility, says that he thinks that Cedar Hill is an important feature of the community.

“It’s the centerpiece of Anacostia,” says Fleet. He says that visiting the house gives people from outside the community an excuse to come to this side of the city. He thinks it is also important to see the Washington Monument and the Capitol and see the beauty that is often lost when thinking about Anacostia.

As for Frederick Douglass, Fleet calls him the “spirit of Anacostia.” THEARC even has an animatronic version of Douglass that can recite over two hours of his speeches and answer 50 questions. Douglass might have been able to predict a black president in this country’s future, but surely not that.

The cupcake trend has hit DC with full force. Forget donuts and frozen yogurt, there are at least 4 popular boutique cupcakeries within city limits. For Valentine’s day this year, I figured that the lady and I would do our best to try some of them out. Here’s the route we took, and all the pictures. (She also tweeted the whole way, if you’re into “new media.”)

We started at Baked ‘n Wired. One of my bosses wrote an article about the cupcake obsession, and picked out this place for making “the only just-right cupcake.” (First, watch the accompanying video, it’s great! Second, AU students who have taken photography should note the photo credit at the top of the article.)

I thought it was amazing. I got a “chocolate satin” cupcake, and apparently I was making a lot of strange noises as I demolished the thing. The icing was extremely creamy and luscious, but the flavor of the cake itself was huge. Without being overpowering or too buttery, it was really delicious.

Next we walked over to Georgetown Cupcake, which I’ve heard is more in the Magnolia Cupcake tradition, and it is ripped apart in the above-linked video. Frank Bruni loved this place. I went to Magnolia when I went to New York over a year ago. I took these pictures there, and remember waiting a long time but really enjoying it. Unfortunately, there was a really long wait at Georgetown, and we spotted a kid we really dislike in line, so we decided to go elsewhere.

We walked to Hello Cupcake in Dupont. We took our cupcakes home for later, and it did make a nice dessert. I mean, let’s be serious, it’s hard to not like a cupcake! The Baked ‘n Wired cupcake was more fresh, but the Hello cupcake (I got a peanut butter blossom) was more classic tasting. B+W was definitley the winner, and I really reccomend it, even at $3.50 a pop. I’m still curious about Red Velvet over in Penn Quarter, but I’m sure I’ll get there sooner or later.

Well, I finally submitted my application to the Center for Cartoon Studies. Below is my application comic. The prompt was, “a minimum two page comic story starring yourself, a snowman, a robot, and a piece of fruit.” Click the links for bigger images.

I was there today, all wrapped up, near the National Portrait Gallery. Above was more or less my vantage point. The video and audio was out of sync, it was nippy right around freezing, and the moving around in the crowds afterwords was trying, but I was there, and it felt important. And at the same time it was a little surreal. For those of us that largely became politically aware in the last eight years, I think things will be disconcerting for a while. The new Whitehouse.gov is already evidence of that. We’ve had our post-election breather people, let’s lean forward and read the news again.