April 2009 Archives

The University of Alabama at Birmingham Visual Arts Gallery was the site for the 6th Annual Birmingham AIGA Student Portfolio Review.  About 20 area graphic designers, photographers, creative directors and in-house creatives, including Tim Denny of DavisDenny, were chosen to serve as independent reviewers and participate in a panel Q&A discussion with graphic design students.

"I think I've been at all six of these and the work is getting better," says Denny.  When asked, "What makes it better?", Denny acknowledges tech advancements as one reason.  But he was quick to add, "It's not the most important thing.  There are some really good instructors and professors and so forth who care about typography.  In my opinion, the leap in design from old student to new student is the attention students pay to type."

Over 130 students from about a dozen colleges and universities, as far away as Northwestern, lined up with portfolios, some toting their distinctive black zippered cases and others with laptops.

"I wish we had more than 30 minutes per student.  Maybe AIGA could grow this into an all day thing, panel discussions mixed with reviews.  I want to see more work," Denny added.

The purpose of the AIGA Student Portfolio Review is to provide design students with professional feedback on their work and their presentations to prospective employers.

DavisDenny was recently recognized by the Birmingham Business Journal in the 2009 Pacesetter Awards.  The awards recognize the fastest-growing businesses in the Birmingham area, and include companies with revenue streams ranging from less than $2 million to more than $100 million.

David Davis credits much of the company's growth to the DavisDenny team, and the reputation they have built in the last twenty years. 

"Every day, we're building on the foundation of the previous day," Davis says.  "It means an awful lot to continuity in the work that is produced here."

Members of the DavisDenny team joined other recipients at a special honorary luncheon at the Wynfrey Hotel on April 9th.

The Pacesetter Awards were published in the April 10th edition of the Birmingham Business Journal. Click here for the full article (subscription required).

Next Tuesday is my birthday.  We are going to visit my daughter at Warren Wilson College and go to a Wilco show.  I saw them at the Alabama Theater on the night they won a Grammy and if they play anything like they did that night, they will officially become A Band To See Twice.
 
Anyway, Warren Wilson is about five miles from Asheville, North Carolina.  It is on an organic farm and the students MUST work 15 hours per week on campus doing everything from cleaning bathrooms to running a printing press to ploughing. They must have 300 hours of community service to graduate. Not to mention the challenging academics in both traditional and progressive courses.  I mean, you can get a degree in Peace Studies there taught by a professor who conceived the Reconciliation Courts after the rotting of South African apartheid. 

I think that studying peace is a noble pursuit.

This is the kind of stuff that happens in Asheville.

I have been there many times since my first trip from Chapel Hill a long time ago.  When I go there Tuesday, I have no reason to believe much has changed and that will be of great comfort to me.  Asheville has a vibe.  Like New Orleans has a vibe.  Like Barcelona has a vibe.  They are different vibes, mind you, and each distinct.  But Asheville is a small town by almost any standard, far and away smaller than the above vibesites.  It may even be smaller than, say, Chattanooga, but I'm not sure.
 
Asheville is populated by young and old hippies, dastardly bankers, trim business men and women, farmers and crafts people who make useful things like drawer handles, books, natural organic local food and lots of other useful items. The retirees mostly live in cabins on hills or mountains surrounding the city proper.  Their minor league baseball team's name is The Tourists, but many who visit from elsewhere never get past The Biltmore.

Asheville's vibe is local.

Local food.  Local merchants. Local talent.  Locally made things.

And local beer.  Here's the marketing part you thought we'd never get to.
A local brewery, Pisgah, is located in the village of Black Mountain, near the foot of the Swannanoa Valley about seven miles from Asheville.  A couple of organic brewers set up shop and began making really good beer.  I don't think they entered it in one of these competitions other breweries work to win so they can say so in their advertising and packaging.  It took these guys about a year to get everything like they wanted it, selling a little here and there to keep the hops coming.  Pretty soon, they had regular customers and delivered the beer in a pickup purchased locally.  Demand ran up, and these local fellows had some decisions to make:  "Do we invest in trucks for delivery?  Do we buy more stuff in which to make more beer?  Can we afford more employees so we can get home before 3:00 a.m. every damn day?"

So this is what they did.  They decided to limit their sales footprint to Buncombe County only and hired a local designer to develop an appropriate label and package.  Nothing over the top.

In less than a year, they were outselling Budweiser.  People were driving in from other counties to buy Asheville's local beer.  Everybody from farmers to dental hygienists were drinking Pisgah.
 
Local people supporting local products.  That's genius.  It never started as any kind of an organized Support Your Local _________ Movement.  It doesn't have a leader and is not governed by a committee.  The truth is, buying local is what Asheville and many other places, large and small, really want.  There are several good, sound reasons to buy local:  there's the freshness factor, the familiarity factor, there's the let's-be-a-part-of-the local economy factor, and other sound reasons.  You may be your neighbor's customer.  And if something goes wrong with the deal, Ashevillians are liable to work it out over a local beer at a local bar.

So there you go.  Ask yourself, "Is it worth it to buy local?" 

Lord willing, I'll be in Asheville Tuesday afternoon.  And, one of the best things about the place is that you're treated like a local.  That feels pretty good to a visitor from anywhere.
       

A few years ago, I gave my father a copy of Haunted for his birthday, sight unseen, on a friend's recommendation.  Dad loved it - this is the man who got me into Fritz Leiber and Stephen King, after all.  A few weeks later, he vividly described one of the more horrific stories.  I didn't read Haunted until last month, but that spoiler chipped the edge of one of its best tales, so I won't sully things by showing you the trailer.

Haunted follows a group of aspiring authors at an intensive writers' retreat.  Food, shelter and equipment are provided; for two months, they will be completely cut off from the outside world, and everything that hinders them from authorial greatness.

As events progress, we see one disturbing, autobiographical tale after another from each character.  Locked in their time-sealed theater, the writers soon fixate upon the workshop ordeal itself as their magnum opus (provided it's sufficiently tragic).  Before long, food is running out, utilities are sabotaged, and everyone starts shedding pounds.  The stories grow more and more extreme.

Cue the body count.

Given free rein to bang out a score of oddball vignettes, Palahniuk gleefully casts off the shackles of extended continuity (and pacing, and characterization).

There lies my only real gripe.  Haunted is a collection of short stories, each of which devotes about ten pages to each of nineteen characters.  Palahniuk gets so busy with the "Strange Tales" slide show that he gives no reason to care about anyone.  The reader is held at bay, at a firm emotional distance. Each character writes in the same dry, deadpan voice Fight Club fans will recognize; it all sounds like Edward Norton reading poetry in a jail cell.

Which isn't to say it's not a charming, inventive piece of work.  Some of the tales are impressively disturbing, quirky or grotesque.  Some are outright hilarious.  Haunted is marketed as "horror," but the advertising boys at Doubleday Publishing would do better to call it a dark comedy.  Palahniuk sticks to his usual style - characters prowling just outside normal society; bizarre money-making schemes; and odd, real-life factoids - because he does it so bloody well.

One of Haunted's first yarns comes as close to David Foster Wallace's weapons-grade entertainment in Infinite Jest (see previous "What Luke Read" post) as we'll see in real life, outside of cursed and seditious texts.  Playboy magazine initially rejected the piece as too disturbing, then ran it after news of strange audience reactions at publicity readings began to spread.

That's as much of a spoiler as you'll get out of me.  Read it, if you've got the guts.

April 1: April Fool's Day - 9 countries

April 4: Tomb Sweeping Day - Taiwan

April 6: Drop of Water is a Grain of Gold Day - Turkmenistan

April 7: Day of Beauty & Mothers - Armenia

April 9: Passover

April 10: Good Friday

April 12: Easter Sunday

April 13: National Day - Chad

April 15: Rubber Eraser Day - United States of America

April 19: Landing of the 33 Patriots - Uruguay

April 21: Tim Denny's Birthday - Worldwide

April 23: World Copyright Day ©

April 25: World Penguin Day

April 28: Day of Mourning for Persons Killed or Injured in the Workplace - Canada