Afishionados,

I saw some footage of John McCain tonight, and I finally realized where I’ve seen him before. Remember Poltergeist II: The Other Side? Remember that evil bastard from the movie who keeps coming after the Freeling family? I did some research on his character* and it turns out the filmmakers based his character off the real-life John McCain. You know, back when McCain was around 6,000 years old so.

Here’s a picture of Kane. See, he even looks exactly like John McCain. Of course, Hollywood had to change the spelling of the character’s name so John wouldn’t sue, but sure as shit it’s him, innit?

Oh, Tangina, where are you when we need you? Lead this fool into the light, already.

*I lied. I made it up on the spot.

I am taking a typography class this quarter and I’ve got another instructor who won’t allow the use of computers in her class. This rule continues to drive me insane, and I continue to flex it in my favor when I can get away with it.

The professor has a reputation for being the most difficult instructor in all of the graphic design instructor, and I often think that she’s let it go to her head. So far, my impression isn’t that she is difficult at all, just demanding and fast paced. She also looks exactly like Cuba Gooding Junior. I don’t mean that she looks a little like him. No, she looks JUST like him, sans the mustache (at least, as much as I can tell from a distance).

Our latest project is to take a photo of ourselves, trace a detailed outline of it (think coloring book) and come up with 20 or so words that describe us and the message about us that we wish to portray. Then, using various fonts, align the letters and characters to create a realistic image of us based on the tracing.

The catch is, you can’t use a computer, which includes finding and using your own fonts. No, you have to go to the library and find books with fonts and photocopy them. Or you can find fonts from magazines or other printed materials. No computer? Photocopies? Haven’t we already done this in 2D design?

I have more than 2000 fonts in my collection, WAY more than ANY book is going to show you. I tried to plead my case to Cuba, asking only if I could print off the font and then lay it out by hand. I didn’t even mention using the computer other than to find fonts that I liked. Her response was this:

“No, because it has to be a level playing field for everyone. You might have 2000 fonts on your computer, but so and so might only have 200. It has to be fair.”

What? Fair? So Sally Suckemsilly can go to the library, check out a book, therefore preventing me from checking out and using said book, but I can’t use fonts on my own computer? And, honestly, if Sally wanted the same font and couldn’t find it, I’d GIVE her a copy of it, too. What the hell? And how is photocopying a layout of a font ANY different than printing off the same layout on a laser jet printer? How many graphic designers out there photocopy fonts, lay them out by hand, then Photocopy them to produce a final piece? Can ANYONE explain this to me? Seriously, I want to meet a graphic designer in today’s world who doesn’t use a computer and only uses books and photocopiers.

I had hoped this quarter’s classes would provide some kind of challenge. Instead, they’ve proven the professors are mentally challenged.

Afishionados,

This post comes with fine print. You must agree to the following terms and conditions before reading this post. If you do not agree, click here to go to a happy place.

By reading this post you agree with everything written, said, and/or posted on this blog. By reading this post you acknowledge that you might be one of (though certainly not limited to) the following:

Article I.

1. An Ubercunt.
2. An alcoholic.
3. An Evil Bitch.
4. A drug addict.
5. An absolute waste of human life.
6. A vindictive asshole.
7. A hypochondriac.
8. A liar.

By printing this post or any part of Old Fish and Lemonade and mailing it to ANY attorney you agree to ALL of the following:

Article II.

1. You agree to pay me $15,000 in cash.
2. You’re not worthy of the air you breathe.
3. Everything that I say is always right.
4. You’re completely incapable of doing anything for yourself because you can’t stand up to your parents.
5. I am absolutely fucking awesome.

If you do not agree with ALL of the above you are in violation of the terms and conditions hereby in effect immediately by order of the Awesome King as of this moment on Friday, November 30th in the year of our Lord 2007.

These terms and conditions do not apply to “Fellow Inmates” with the exception of Article II: Section 5.

::Whew:: Sorry about that. It seems that my Fairy Tale post has ruffled some feathers so I had to add a disclaimer for this one. Now, on with the post. And remember, NO PRINTING AND MAILING to attorneys without agreeing to the terms and conditions of this blog. Any similarities to persons or things in real life, no matter how guilty those persons or things’ consciences may be, is pure coincidence.

Once upon a time in Magical Happy Land there lived an Evil Bitch. She was annoying, had short hair, and hunched a lot.

The Evil Bitch could never do anything without the permission of the mentally unstable Ubercunt. No matter how much she thought she was independent, the Evil Bitch was not capable of thinking for herself or making decisions on her own, for fear of upsetting the Ubercunt. Upsetting the Ubercunt would only lead to panic attacks, severe dramatic upchucking, and a fast, albeit pointless, trip to the Room of Emergency.

One day, the Ubercunt got it in her head to continually pester the Awesome King by making shit up and sending him copies of his fairy tales by means of a Loiyar. Though the Ubercunt considered herself a super hero, the reality is that she was nothing more than a fat Ubercunt in really bad tights.

One of the claims of the Ubercunt and the Evil Bitch was that the Awesome King had been “text messaging derogatory messages” to the Ubercunt’s phone. This was not at all true, however, and the Awesome King would be MORE THAN HAPPY AND WILLING to submit the last few records of his cell phone statements as proof. After all, the Awesome King only gets 200 text messages a month with His Majesty’s Service Plan, and why would he waste them on the Ubercunt when he’s since met so many beautiful women at college and work?

The Ubercunt and the Evil Bitch also feared that a specific line from the Awesome King’s Fairy Tale was a threat to their life. “If only they could be silenced forever”. The Awesome King was confused by their reaction to a fictitious tale, and certainly never planned to take the lives of anyone. Especially not with gas at $3.15 a gallon. Sadly, the Ubercunt and Evil Bitch were gravely mistaken if they thought that the Awesome King cared enough to travel so far to do such things. No, children, the Awesome King would never do that. The Awesome King never meant it as a death threat. But no one ever said that the Ubercunt or the Evil Bitch were intelligent and that the Awesome King’s schedule certainly did not revolve around them and their guilty consciences.

In the end, the Awesome King also reminded the Ubercunt and the Evil Bitch that there existed, even in Magical Happy Land, the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights happened to include the First Amendment, which states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This gave the Awesome King the ability to continue to write his fictitious stories and share them with his followers and admirers throughout all of Magical Happy Land.

And so, the Awesome King continued to live a happier life with his newfound friends from school and work and the memories of much, MUCH happier times.

Afishionados,

Tonight was my last night with the Photocopy Queen. A BIG HOORAY to this, as I will never take another one of her classes ever again. What an uppity bitch she is. She works in Cincinnati at some design firm but lives and commutes to Dayton to teach. So she is always¹ in a FABULOUS mood when she arrives for class at 5:30 P.M. Tonight was no different. I’m pretty sure that my class is the worst she’s ever had, which isn’t really fair because most people do their work and turn it in on time. There are a couple of people that seem to have ruined it for the rest of us. I think the real problem is that most of the students in my class have personalities and the Photocopy Queen (PQ) doesn’t.

My final project was to create an brochure or pamphlet for my musician (Mozart). The way that the PQ wanted us to design the project was just as retarded as all her other “ideas”. Create a really nice comprehensive mockup and then (any guesses?) photocopy it for the final piece. If you have to, you may glue additional elements to your final piece as necessary.

I love this post

No, I didn’t make a typo. You read that correctly. I said “glue”. Who the hell glues things into a FINAL brochure project? I can understand gluing two prints together to form a brochure, but I would never in a million years glue something inside a finished piece.

There is also a serious problem with students using images they found online inside their brochures. Copyright issues aside, the biggest problem with this is that the images are typically at resolutions of 72 dpi (dots per inch). This looks great on your monitor, but looks like total shit when you print it out. But nobody seems to be able to grasp this concept and of course the PQ never explained it to anyone. To better understand how poor 72 dpi is for printing, consider that a newspaper is about 150 dpi and most printed material you see (magazines, photos, books…etc.) is 300 dpi or better.

My classmates can be thankful that I am not their professor, because I would fail you instantly for using pixelated images in any final work that you turn into me. Instant F, no questions asked. I am a resolution Nazi.

I created my whole project by cheating with Photoshop at 300 dpi so it looked perfect when printed. I created a cover and back from scratch using an old leather texture. The cover should look familiar, because it’s what I was working on when I decided to redo Old Fish and Lemonade’s appearance. It even uses the same font.

All the burns, stains, and “spine crease” were added by me. There is also a gradient and burnt effect added to the text, in addition to separate stains for the W and the A (Wolfgang Amadeus, in case you were wondering). I “carved” the corner pieces out of a brass texture and added stains and cracks to them to make them look older as well.

There were 16 panel pieces in total, but these are the parts of the brochure that I like the best so I’m not showing you the other 6. The brochure unfolds to this “mini poster” made up of the interior 8 panels.

Notice the return of my flowery violin pattern! I wanted to use it somewhere in my final project and I’m glad I did. Also notice that the treble clef is stained inside and slightly blurred to look like an antique drawing or print. The text over Mozart’s head is a snippet from a biography paper we had to write about our musician and is typed in one of my favorite fonts. I added a slight golden glow to the text to make it look older, stained, and easier to read. The quote is from Mozart and is meant as a jab to the PQ and her ignorant beliefs about photocopying everything. I think my approach is better than hers.

The final brochure is 8.5 inches high and 17 inches wide. I printed the two parts on a plotter and used a spray adhesive (Barbaro in a can) to stick them together. I trimmed the edges so that they lined up then folded it together so it ultimately became a 4.25 inch brochure that unfolds into a poster. No glue or photocopying required!

Perhaps I am too conceited, but my brochure was one of the VERY few brochures that didn’t suck horribly. It really did look better than everyone else’s and I’m glad that I used the computer and Photoshop, despite the bitching of the PQ.

¹Never

Afishionados,

Once upon a time there lived an evil bitch. She was short and had red hair and she was very annoying.

The evil bitch was married to an Awesome King, but filed to leave him when the King was out of the castle visiting a family member that had just come back from the Crusades.

The evil bitch lacked any self confidence, so she made friends with idiots more easily than most. The idiots and the evil bitch liked to hang out and talk about how pointless their existence really was.

As a means to deal with her incompetence, the evil bitch turned to alcohol. This caused her to throw up in the King’s castle and pass out on the floor.

The evil bitch’s mother was even worse. Her mother was a rare species known throughout the land as an Ubercunt: A vicious creature that is known to suffer from hypochondria, laziness, drug addiction, and the Lifetime television network.

The evil bitch was completely incapable of ever saying “NO” to the Ubercunt. Anything the Ubercunt asked of the evil bitch, the evil bitch did. No matter what. After deciding to leave the Awesome King, the evil bitch teamed up with the Ubercunt to try and displease the Awesome King. Much like their own lives, their attempts were futile and pointless.

One day, the Awesome King received a packet of bullshit paperwork from the Ubercunt and the evil bitch. It had been sent via another feared beast, known as a Loiyar. As it turned out, the Ubercunt and the evil bitch had been reading His Majesty’s Royal Blog! Unfortunately for the Ubercunt and the evil bitch, His Almighty Highness the Awesome King had expected this all along, and so he had been careful as to what he should post about.

The packet of bullshit paperwork contained reproductions of the Awesome King’s posts about his new cell phone and his new Adobe software for school, along with complaints as to the funding of such niceties. The Awesome King never admitted to paying for these niceties himself, and so the cries of the Ubercunt and evil bitch were silenced. If only they could be silenced forever.

As long as the Ubercunt and the evil bitch are reading the Awesome King’s blog, they may as well also know that the Awesome King has recently acquired the brand spankin’ new Apple operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard a full two days earlier than the general public. And there is absolutely no way in hell that the Awesome King will ever send the Ubercunt and the evil bitch a copy for their *outdated* iMac.

And the Awesome King continued to live on, happier than ever without the evil bitch around.

Afishionados,

In the spirit of Mike’s excellent Myth vs. Reality blog, I offer my own submission.

Afishionados,

Nobody loves him and he has no friends. But at least he has a video on YouTube.

Afishionados,

I’m taking a class on Adobe Illustrator and today we had to create a project that essentially involved “cutting out objects” within basic shapes. Eventually, we’ll be doing a complete paneled piece, and today’s goal was to create something that you could use for your final work.

My selected theme is the Iraqi war because it’s controversial and everyone else is doing music, movies, nature, or something stupid and I wanted to be different. I’m pretty sure that the teacher is a fan of ol’ Dubya, too, which makes it even better.

Here’s what I came up with this afternoon. I like it and I think it came out pretty well. Sorry for the watermark, but I don’t want people stealing it and using it on their web sites or something without my permission. I think I’ll even be able to use parts of this in the final panel piece towards the end of the quarter.

Afishionados,

I was out shopping with a friend of mine when she spotted this on the shelf of a local retail store. Hideous, I know. And scary. I didn’t even know they made NASCAR propaganda for rednecks this young.

Afishionados,

It seems my cheapo printer has decided to terminate our relationship. It dumped me tonight, and I am a little sad inside. I was trying to print some stuff from Illustrator this evening and she decided to freeze up on me and throw a tantrum. I pushed her buttons, I admit, but she still wouldn’t help me out. Instead, she tossed me to the curb.

The reason, she says, is because I have an unsupported personality. She wouldn’t print my project out. No, sir. Instead I got this goodbye letter. I took a photo so you could see it. That just hurts. Hurts like a deep paper cut right through my heart.