wax ideal » art

Private (Vomit) Practice

sarandi — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:46:07 +0000

Get out that big imagination paintbrush in your brain:

As I write this, I’m laying in bed with my girlfriend. Naturally, I am building a database and naturally and she is watching Private Practice. It’s her guilty pleasure – a stress relieving wind-down before bed. All of the sudden I hear a familiar voice – the voice of Mark Sloan. Yes, Mark Sloan of Grey’s Anatomy fame. Now, I know what you must be thinking. You recognize his voice? What a doofus.

But, yes. Yes I do recognize his voice. You know why? Because. Because there have been many nights that while I was working, she was watching Grey’s anatomy – enough so that I’ve loosely become familiar with the shows.

So fuck me in the ear: what the fuck is Sloan (McSteamy that is, not his daughter – whose first name is Sloan but last name is Riley) doing on Private Practice? I shit a brick. A huge brick. I turn and ask, “Why is McSteamy on Private Practice? That is his nickname, right? And the other one is McDreamy?” She tells me I’m right, after which I pull open the elastic of the oversized women’s basketball sweatpants I’m wearing and vomit into my underwear.

Fake doctor shows have cross-over episodes. Holy fuck. What is the world coming to? I’d rather vomit on my balls than deal with this nightmare.

So, I write this, and relocate to the dining room table.

Links on How to Fill a Concave Polygon

sarandi — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:31:04 +0000

I’m working on a project in Max/Jitter and have run into a problem: dynamically filling a complex (concave, crossed, or holed) polygon. Here are some resources that explain the math behind find the area of and or filling such shapes:

SPAM!

sarandi — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 19:28:42 +0000

I just found this drawing. I don’t know how old I was…probably 13.

Workhorse Typefaces

sarandi — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:50:15 +0000

Paula Scher, Stefan Sagmeister, and David Carson shattered the way I think about typography in their applications of organic, freehand character-writing. For so long, even non–conventional applications of digital typefaces seemed so dry, formal, forced. Letters drawn by hand were a fresh breath—no, a gasp! out of astonishment, but also for oxygen anew to fuel my little typographic grey cells.

Such typography, one comes quickly to realize, doesn’t suit all applications. In fact, it doesn’t suit most applications. The majority of typesetting isn’t done to draw attention to the text, but rather to make its characters melt their meaning with as little distraction as possible. It pays to know this—especially when that pay is coming from a client expecting your understanding of conventional typography to benefit her business.

That stated, listed below are the typefaces I most commonly employ. I use them for their stylistic range, completeness of character set, and most importantly, as a framework from which I can branch out and build more creativity—perhaps by employing or creating an entirely new typeface. No more delays. Here they are:

ITC Garamond Std
ITC New Baskerville Std
Mrs. Eaves
Futura Std
Trade Gothic LT Std
Helvetica Neue LT Std

I’d say I use these for 80% of the work I do. Other typefaces I might consider are listed below. Some are either related or variations of the faces above. Others are slowly building up to workhorse status, or are used in extremely specific instances.

Adobe Garamond Pro
Adobe Jenson Pro
Avenir LT Std
Univers LT Std
Bodoni STD
Frutiger
Gill Sans
Helvetica LT Std
ITC Franklin Gothic Std
Poetica
Gotham HTF

What are your typographic workhorses?