I haven’t been that excited about someone’s music since more than a year, when I heard the last Róisín Murphy album. And that wasn’t exactly a mainstream album, it was rather arty for radio play.

It’s not because I’m too old. It’s because at some point during this decade, pop music became so predictable, so polished and so soulless that it lost all its genuine appeal. There’s nothing that really rocks the boat. That’s what I thought until I saw Lady Gaga for the first time. She has potential, she has guts, she’s funny, intelligent and not as constrained in her public persona as, let’s say, Beyoncé. She reminds me on Michael Jackson and Madonna before their kinetic energy ran out.

I wish her all the best! As of now, I am officially gagafied.

I considered putting some prints of my artworks and photos for sale since a long time and I think I finally found a great site for this purpose. It’s called RedBubble and besides a commercial online shop, it also hosts a very vibrant community of professional and amateur artists. I got a really warm welcome there – 3 of the 6 artworks I uploaded got featured on the main page. I have a RedBubble profile where you can take a look at what’s available. I will surely expand this collection but I’ll do it gradually and with an eye on quality, not quantity.

I started the 12th version of AlphaDesigner the other day and I was thinking about something pretty clean. No bling stuff, no pompous environments, just few lines of text links and my artworks. I could do it in seconds and move on with my life but few minutes after I drafted the whole concept I stopped, scratched my head and got the feeling I was trying to lobotomize myself. Seriously, it’s not me. I’ve never been simple. I am slightly irrational, occasionally dramatic and often very complex. Not complex as in “Wow, that’s very complex” but as in “Wow, that’s a total mess”.

On the other hand, I enjoy simple things. Like Tweetie. It’s a tiny cleverly built iPhone app for Twitter and for some reason it reminds me on cold soda water. Bubbly, slightly sour but no flavor. Pure delight.

However, Tweetie doesn’t represent a person. It’s supposed to be a tool, not a design statement.

I filed a report to Facebook staff almost two weeks ago, explaining why the page is fake and that the Artwerk persona it claims to represent is no one bu me. I also provided the necessary links to my website and to my Flickr profile. Any person who reviews content wouldn’t have much difficulties finding the truth just looking at the content and the provided details in the “Info” tab:

Basic Info
Affiliation: ARTWERK
Location: Designer Town; Tzarevo, Bulgaria

Detailed Info
Website: http://Artwerk; http://on; http://Flickr
Personal Information: AlphaDesigner
Personal Interests: Prince & Madonna

Contact Info
Email: rodaragtime at yahoo

According to Facebook’s policies, which are displayed on the page that enables creation of fan and business pages:

Fake Pages and unofficial “fan pages” are a violation of our Pages Guidelines. If you create an unauthorized Page or violate our Pages Guidelines in any way, your Facebook account may be disabled.

There is a necessary requirement for a confirmation that the person who creates the page is explicitly authorized to do so. I mean you have to click on it and agree to this statement, it’s not like you are able to skip it or overlook it. The question now is how long will I have to wait before the reviewers at Facebook decide to take action. Obviously more than two weeks. So for now, I will have to accept the theory that Facebook is a place where imposters can do whatever they want and there’s nobody who really cares about genuine content.

That someone, hallowed be His name, gathered a bunch of designers and said “Hi guys, here’s the new iPod touch. You have one week to study it. It’s not crap like Steve Ballmer told you, it’s actually good. People are buying it for Bill’s sake! I want something better than this.” The designers, well trained in their profession and all of them closet Apple fanbois, began to scratch their heads and probably said to themselves “That man tripped in the corridor! We’re doomed!” That’s because they didn’t know (yet) how much money Microsoft is ready to pay to get the job done. The goose was fired and sent to a farm. Where it should have been in the first place.

The first suggestion the team of designers made was to get rid of the brown Zunes – they said “Mr. Someone, our research clearly shows that people, especially young promiscuous geeks, associate the color brown with poo. It may surprise you but nobody wants to hold poo in his hands or put it in his pocket, so let’s ditch it.”

“Fine!” said Mr. Someone. Here’s a 10 000 $ check for a good suggestion. The designers went home, told their wives what happened and were accordingly rewarded in bed. The morning after, they went to work ecstatic. They found a note on the door saying – the next good idea gets 20 000$. Then they unlocked their secret drawers, threw all those books about Jonathan Ive and started thinking… and thinking… and thinking. And one of them got it. “No rounded corners!” he cried. “OMG, said another, how come we didn’t think about that before!”. His buddy tapped him on the head and replied “Well, great ideas seem simple only in retrospective, my friend!” “True!” said the guy behind them “True!” repeated Mr. Someone as he wrote the next check.

The designers went home and saw their wives (or husbands, for those married before Proposition 8 was accepted) made them a gourmet dinner and after the clock hit bedtime they were rewarded with the most dirty and shameless sex a woman (or a man) could offer. It seemed like a dream. Working for Microsoft had never led them to such excesses. The next morning they woke up with a headache but even more enthusiastic. They went to the office, ate some donuts and started thinking again. “Hey pal,” said one of them to the person sitting next to him “I think that enormous blob called button has to go. It was a bad replica of Apple’s wheel, neither round, not rectangular, kinda big, and to tell you the truth… I never really liked it.” “Neither did I” said Mr. Someone and wrote the next check.

When the designers went home, something even stranger happened. Their wives had invited a colorful bunch of strippers of all races and hair-types to the most lustful orgy the world had ever seen since the times of Sodom and Gomorrah. The designers woke up late the next morning and went to the office where Mr. Someone already waited for them. “I know” he said “You all had an orgy last night and couldn’t wake up in time” The designers were totally struck. “But how…” “Well” said Mr. Someone” Bill Gates paid for it and picked up the girls personally with the assistance of your wives. Now let’s get to work, you never know what could happen next…”

The story is longer than that and I won’t go into further details but what we can all learn tonight is: a) design matters, b) motivation matters, c) when people love the stuff they design they are really productive, d) one should never rely solely on money to get good results and e) the money must be spent wisely. Of course the new Zune HD is not perfect yet. Nobody wants it to be. What we really want is someone to light some fire under Apple’s ass. That way, both Zunes and iPods will win. Oh and that “marketplac” on the Zune screen… well, some designers have really bad hangovers. May they be forgiven!