The internet is changing art and design. Right about now it can be said with confidence that if you are going to be a 'creative' in America, you will expect your work to be on the web. Graphic art in particular is the transformed genre. One would expect the web to be bright with flavor given that we are now 15 years beyond the wars between Photoshop and Quark Express, wars that have created such power in visual manipulation that practically anything is possible. The same can be said for CGI in film but I want to focus on the static.
BTW, the last pseudo-prediction that I made was that magazines will be replaced by a new sort of graphical production for the iPad. The iPad is the future of the graphic novel, and the graphic novel is the future of middlebrow, the best example having been Electric Sheep's Spiders.
I have found Alphadesigner, a mind of interesting cant whose appearance to me marks the new age of digital design. There has always been a way to get graphics onto the web. Nothing quite like an ugly website to show you any idiot can do it. Creating an asethetic that is functional and beautiful at once takes skill and patience. What is emerging is a unique style and form that works well, that has functional beauty and can communicate above and beyond. When you see it, you know, it kicks off ideas and associations in your head. Alphadesigner has this.
The first thing that got my pique was brought to my attention by my cousin Lino in Rome. He posted on FB the following image, which like an off target ethnic joke was both funny and uncomfortable. For the novelty of the idea, you forgive. And it shows that Alphadesigner was willing to be even-handed about it as there are multiple versions placed on the site.
It's not Mercator's projection, it's a stereotypical projection of American projection. Which on the whole is very clever though in particular slightly missing the mark where higher points could have been scored. How anyone could mis-label India as 'Curry' instead of 'Call Center' or 'Outsource' is almost unforgivable. So my first instinct was to see if there was an app for this such that I could put my own labels. Alas, no, just a clever designer whose wit outshines his incisiveness. Nevertheless, 'Fuck Yeah' for Iraq was as inspired as 'Hockey Moms' for Alaska was tritely insipid. I don't know anybody who thinks of Brazil as a home of 'Liberal Commies', so there you go.
But you've got to know something about America to stage the picture of this dude. It is just brilliant. This is That Dude.
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