Tag: graphic design

No, it wasn’t

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

By the graciousness of my nanny, whom I excused from being on time to check at a QT for me, was she able to procure a reprint of the November 3rd commemorative Braves World Series victory edition.  This, was the highlight of my day.

So, I’m happy that I got the one thing that I had really wanted to commemorate the joyous occasion of the Braves reaching the top of the mountain and getting to be World Series champions, a sight and notion that is still hard to digest two days later, but I’m still peeved at just how hard it was to get a small piece of history to remember it by.

I’m pretty sure there’s something in the Constitution that says something along the lines of that news shouldn’t not be available to those who seek it, and it’s a stretch, but the AJC, whether it was deliberate or stupidity, suppressing production of the one and only obviously high-demand edition of their shitty paper, I would interpret as being fucking unconstitutional. 

As relieved as I am to have my own edition, predictably, the well-publicized high demand for these editions has created the dreaded and insufferable secondary market for them, and I’ve seen them on Facebook Marketplace going for at least $10 a pop, and mythical wife, after hearing me bitch and moan about it the night prior, spied some on eBay, going for around $27 a pop.

I’m not going to be a hypocrite about it, because I’ve definitely purchased extras of things before, with the intent of trying to flip them.  But whenever I’ve done that, that makes me an asshole, and what people are doing with these fucking AJCs, are making them assholes too.  I’m just glad that I didn’t have to pay a second-hand price for this, although I would have done so in order to get one.

The irony is that, it’s not even that good of a commemorative edition.  The AJC’s aesthetics and design has always been sixth-rate as far as major market newspapers go, and this commemorative edition doesn’t do the Braves justice.

The newspaper industry took a lot of flack over the last few decades over many publications taking cost-cutting measures and eliminating photographers, and instead tasking reporters to take pictures on iPhones.  I don’t know whether or not the AJC was one of those publications, but based on the shitty photo quality of my collector’s edition, I’m inclined to believe they are.

The photos are out of focus and have been enlarged way past the original resolution, and whatever staffers they have pretending to be graphic artists apply a bunch of high-pass filters to try and sharpen them, but instead make them look all posterized and pixelated.  I’d almost be embarrassed to actually display it after I frame it, but it will eventually become artwork for lack of a better term.

Anyway, I’m just glad I got my copy regardless of all the bullshit and hoops that had to be done in order for it to happen.  I just wish what seemed like a simple thing didn’t have to become such a joy-suppressing ordeal.

Fuck the AJC.

A fate worse than death

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few months, among the few things that I still do pay attention to outside of my own little world, professional wrestling is still there.  Normally, I’d cite sources or link to the things that inspire my writing, but frankly the brog’s sense of time is pretty warped as it is, and my zero readers will have to take my word on the things that I’m talking or referring to.

But long story short, over the last few months the WWE has been firing an alarming amount of talent and personnel, AEW has been more than happy to pick up the crème of the crop, and there’s all sorts of panic and wild rumors flying around scuttlebutt and I’m taken back to 1999 when I wish wrestling chatter on the internet could all collectively stfu because it’s kind of ruining everything when everyone’s so astute to backstage happening.

Among the fallout, Triple H, whom most are aware is the head cheese when it comes to anything NXT-related, has been given the lion’s share of the blame when it comes to the fate of the short-lived Wednesday Night War, when an arriving AEW was met by a nationally-televised NXT.  After about a year and amidst a pandemic, NXT decided to move to Tuesdays, in a move widely seen as hoisting a white flag and surrendering.

And supposedly, Triple H is the fall guy in this scenario, and as a result of it, regardless of the corporat-ese used to describe it, has been basically demoted and alleviated of the reigns of NXT.  Vince McMahon and one of his lifer-stooges, Bruce Pritchard will take over the production of the show, which basically means that NXT is going to be run a lot like RAW and Smackdown, which for the better part of the last 2-3 years has been the very definition of mediocre and hardly watchable.

Needless to say, this is basically a fate worse than death for NXT, which is restructuring under new management, naturally accompanied by, a rebranding, complete with new and questionably horrid logo.

A long time ago, I read some adage about how fewer things attempt to smokescreen mediocrity more than a rebranding, and from the looks of things, this is going to be a textbook instance of something once good, headed down a very slippery slope, with the rebranding and restructuring of NXT.

Continue reading “A fate worse than death” →

Professional crossroads

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I am somewhat at a professional crossroads currently, and I don’t particularly know how to approach it.  Actually, I do know how to approach it, it’s just unfortunately I’m realizing that so few out there seem to be able to understand much less comprehend the choices that I’m willing to make in order to change my career path, which leads me to wonder if I’m really that unorthodox in my approach, or if the world around me is too inside the box thinking.

Basically, I am a graphic designer with 20 years of experience in graphic design.  But I’ve grown unhappy with the direction of my general career, and am seeking to pivot my career, preferably into user experience.  However, in spite of the course that I have recently completed where I think I did a pretty good job based on feedback and reception, I have zero years of experience in UX.

In my mind, the most logical thing to do is to try to get in on the ground level of wherever would hire me as in a UX role, and prove my worth and work my way up, and re-build a career in a different discipline.  Frankly, this would be the normal course path of trying to switch to any job outside of what I’ve been doing over the last 20 years, regardless of if it were UX or going into construction or working at a restaurant.

However, there are large camps of people out there whom I speak with that basically make me feel like I’m crazy to be willing to walk away from a managerial position and going into an entry-level position, regardless of the difference in growth potential as well as just career potential in general.  And it’s these conversations that make me feel kind of sad but mostly frustrated and disappointed at the things that I hear, and gives me more reluctance than I should logically feel about the choices that I’m willing to make.

I tell people often that I’ve left a job that paid well and had a great commute, simply because I was miserable at it.  The company hierarchy sucked, and people were playing professional games, and job titles dictated on whether you were right or wrong.  I left the company and went to where I’m currently at, in spite of lower pay and a shitty commute, because I was pursuing sanity and happiness, and I have zero regrets on making that move.

I’m kind of in the same boat all over again, but the difference is that I’m currently in a managerial role, and I’ve been speaking with more people, on account of the delicate circumstances in which I’m working in, and as a result, running into more resistance and questions rather than support and empathy for the simple fact that I’m miserable with my current job, and am wanting to make a change.

When the day is over, I’m going to do whatever I want to do, but my concerns are that the roles and places I apply to in the future, the people that make the hiring decisions, will also be hung up on the narrative that I’m a manager wanting to walk away from management to go into something entry level and then assume some bullshit conclusion and pass on me.

Frankly, I have a hard time understanding what is so hard to comprehend about sometimes needing to go backward in order to move ahead in careers and life in general, and it’s because so many square pegs like this exist in the world that really makes me feel like traversing these professional crossroads is going to be way more difficult than it really should be.

One year later (the not-so good one)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It was just days after my child was born.  As she was premature, she was immediately admitted to the NICU, and it was heartbreaking to leave the hospital without our daughter coming home with us, but we tried to take comfort in the fact that she was exactly where she needed to be in order to play some physical catchup to where she would be allowed to come home.

Every single day afterward, mythical wife and I would go to the hospital twice a day to spend some time with our child.  Except for those first few days, I didn’t go, because I had come down with a pretty nasty cough, and given the situation that was rapidly spreading across the globe, understandably, there were some major red flags about an Asian guy having a cough, especially not just at a hospital, but at a NICU.

Fortunately, it was most likely just allergy-related, as like a true genius, I had participated in a double 5K event that involved running two 5Ks in an eight hour span; one at 1 am, and then one at 7 am the following (same) morning; it was daylight-savings themed, and the novelty of it alone made me want to try it.  But in doing so, I had inhaled a metric fuckton of early Georgia spring pollen, and my body was revolting as a result.  However, it cleared up fairly quickly, as the pollen coursed through my system, and I would get to go into the NICU later on.

However, it was on one of those days in which I dropped mythical wife off at the NICU, and came back home to log into work, I have a memory of swinging by the nearby Publix on the way home, and knowing we were low on bottled water, I made a point to pick up some more.  There was a display upon entering for a buy 2, get 1 free, so I figured, why not just get three cases?  With this whole pandemic thing starting to gain momentum, I figured three cases of water between two adults should be sufficient for all this shit to blow over, right?

Funny how perceptions are when you’ve never really lived through a global pandemic in your life.

So here we are, one year later; people with brains larger than a pea, are still wearing masks out in public, if they’re even leaving home in the first place, and coronavirus has officially killed over half a million Americans, and countless many more over the rest of the globe, but pretty much nowhere worse than it was in America.  Several vaccines have finally come to light, but the distribution of them leaves a lot to be desired, considering an entire planet’s population all need it in order to hopefully return to some semblance of normalcy, so in spite of the supposed cure existing, it’s still a slow and still dangerous path to the finish line.

Continue reading “One year later (the not-so good one)” →

Man, What A Stupid Commercial #017

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Plot: family jonesing for some small business ice cream is sad to discover shop is still closed, inspires small business to pivot business model to a delivery system.  Small business owners allegedly uses solely Adobe products to rebrand and expedite their customer-facing identity

Yes, I have dusted off this old series from the days prior to the brog going down for several years, as there will never be an end to commercials that are capable of triggering my ire and unleashing the snark.  It’s not that I ever abandoned this series as much as a combination of brog downtime, the improved avoidance of commercials by virtue of streaming television, plus the baby I now am responsible over which further takes me away from television watching, that has collectively reduced my exposure to commercials outright, but it’s always been a thing I’ve enjoyed blabbing about, because most everyone can agree that commercials suck, and I can typically keep these posts shorter and sweeter than a lot of the other drivel I tend to go on about.

The funny thing is that in spite of all the reasons why I don’t get exposed to many commercials, on Thanksgiving, my father-in-law turned on the actual television to watch some football, and at the time the only game on was Redskins Washington Football Team vs. Cowboys, and it took all of five minutes for the game to go into a commercial break and expose me to a commercial that immediately caught my attention as something needing to be blistered on the brog.

Make no mistake, I am all about supporting small business and ice cream, and the general narrative of the commercial itself is sweet and pleasant.  It’s just the fact that it’s a commercial for Adobe that I find both objectionable and unbelievable that inspires me to write about how much bullshit it turns the entire commercial subsequently.

There’s no fucking way a business can rebrand and change all of their UX/UI through Acrobat and Sign.  Why they advertise it as such is completely beyond me, and in order for this much action to occur, undoubtedly the entire Creative Suite would be necessary to utilize.

But most importantly, what the commercial fails to convey is the sheer unreliability and instability of Adobe products these days, and sure they can eke out a 60 second spot to look all happy and cheerful, but off-camera there’s probably numerous hours lost to Adobe software crashing over and over again in the process of altering the brand of Mila’s ice cream shop, and scenes where Mila herself is ready to throw her computer(s) onto the ground when the constant software crashing has her questioning why she’s even trying to pivot her business in the first place.  Feeling resentment at the little girl who taped a picture to her door and making her feel sad in the first place.  Cursing the monopoly Adobe has on the entire graphic design industry, justifying their position to release subpar software at egregious prices.

Furthermore, without question, after the camera stops rolling, the drone stops responding and crashes back down to earth, and when Mila’s truck turns around to investigate, it too stops responding, and crashes into someone’s house, because that’s what Adobe products do: stop responding and then crashes.

This commercial is false advertising.  Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s kind of appropriate that it sucks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I caught wind that the WWE was going to unveil a brand-new United States Championship design, I had a moment of dread; if it looked baller, then I was undoubtedly going want to get a replica, no matter how many times in my life at this point I’ve said NO MOAR BLETS.

Plus, I’ve been very unhappy with the WWE Shop for having available replicas of just about every single championship belt design over the last 30 years, except for the one and only WWE-branded belt that I want: the NXT UK Tag Team Championship.  Seriously, they have shit like the yellow Intercontinental belt that the Ultimate Warrior wore like, twice, and the old European Championship which only existed for like 3-4 years, but they do not have the NXT UK Tag, which unlike the litany of “tribute” belts they seem to release on a weekly basis, is an active championship in the company right fucking now.

To hell if I was going to be wooed by a brand new US Championship belt before I could get the one and only belt that I really want*

*not entirely true, I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for a Ring of Honor World or John Cena US spinner belts as well

But then Monday Night RAW came and aired, and because I don’t have cable television and don’t actually watch RAW anymore, I had to wait and see when the pictures broke on Twitter, and unlike the NXT UK Tag, the WWE Shop was more than ready to push the new shit available online like a software hotfix.

And the verdict is . . . it sucks.  Whew!

Continue reading “It’s kind of appropriate that it sucks” →

Los Angeles Rams’ logo – football or news station?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If there was anything that would help get me writing about things other than being a new dad and how I’m often operating on a sleep deficit and spending the expected amount of time changing diapers, it’s a good old fashioned dunking on a rebranded logo.  And the Los Angeles Rams Formerly of St. Louis did just that, futilely trying to get people to pay attention to them and not think of them as another dead franchise that inexplicably cannot survive in a sports-crazed market like LA.

Honestly, in spite of the harsh tone and the likely critical things I’m going to say about it, the overall logo isn’t that turrible.  It says “LA” and then there’s a horn of a ram in it, the point is made, and the objective is completed: LA Rams.

The problem is, I can’t not see a glorified news station logo when I look at it.  The very first thought that came to mind when I saw it was that it looked like it had to be an NBC affiliate’s news logo for Los Angeles.  Like it was born to be a news station logo, not the primary identity of a futbol americano franchise in the NFL, one of the most influential and wealthy sporting entities on the planet.

I mean seriously, the image above is a quick shop job I did to illustrate my point.  If this whole post wasn’t talking about the logo, would anyone stop and think twice about the logo tucked in the bottom corner of any news broadcast?  It fits so seamlessly and could easily be used in any broadcast throughout all of Los Angeles.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that LA just can’t get a break when it comes to professional football.  They’re such a massive market, yet the NFL just inexplicably can’t seem to get their shit together out there.  Even the Knicks were once good in New York, but LA just can’t seem to get people to take the NFL seriously there.  I mean look at the memes that the LA Chragers became when they unveiled their low-effort logo that lasted all of like two days before it was ridiculed to literal death.

I can’t say I bothered to see if the Rams’ new logo was nearly as ridiculed as the Chragers’ one was, but to this snooty graphic designer, all I’ll ever see is a fictitious news station’s logo, waiting to be permanently positioned in the bottom corner of a television screen during a broadcast.