I Want To Be Thumbody

An out of print book that compiled a large list of logos from the mid-70s was discovered by Eric Carl. Eric, who did not create this book, noticed that the book was open domain. He scanned every page of the book onto his Flickr stream. It's a must view for logo junkies. 

9 Premonitions For '09

Now that I have a blog it will be much easier to see if any of these come through. Happy New Year everyone. 

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9) Barack Obama will continue to innovate government communications with integrated branding and new media ideas, but will fail to appoint me to his cabinet as Secretary of Branding after several of my repeated requests.

8) Sometime after Spring Break '09, the brand managers at Pepsi will stop mixing whiskey in their drinks and realize what they've done to their identity. It's going to be a hell of a hangover.  

7) wii and twitter form a partnership titled twiittiiwt.

6) Blagojevich will declare Illinois' independence from the union. 

5) Brand managers will finally recognize the print campaign they developed in '08 didn't shift their customers beliefs. 

4) The Blackhawks event at Wrigley will be the largest single sporting event uploaded to flickr in '09. 

3) Ideas will become bigger as teams get smaller. 

2) I will tweet early and often.

1) Google will evolve their brand identity. 

Low-Fi Point of View

With 62% of adults owning a digital camera, personal photography has become very homogeneous and in my opinion much less a process of discovery. Not only has the general consumer gone digital, almost every professional photographer has made the leap to digital just to stay in business. With the death of the still image on the horizon Kodak announced that they will be eliminating the production of Kodachrome film. For decades, Kodachrome was the standard choice for professional color photography and avant-garde filmmaking. (It's the only film to have a state park named after it - photogenic Kodachrome Basin State Park in the red-rock canyons of southern Utah). The elimination of Kodachrome is just one of many signs that the new era of image making is officially here.

I understand this change is a natural cycle of technology and business but I'm truly sad to see so many quirky photographic processes and experiments fade from the creative process. If there is a bright spot in all of this there has been a revival of low-fi cameras and experimentation. Holgas, Dianas, Lubitels and just about anything else that puts light on film have been dusted off to capture the distinctive quality of pictures that only they can create.

I'm a big fan of cross processing and enjoyed the surprise of opening the pack of prints because of the vivid colors. The images at the top of this entry I took a couple of winters ago in Chicago and Santo Domingo.

You can stream more low-fi images at
http://www.flickr.com/groups/35mmtoycameras