tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72930142595302667412009-06-03T08:55:19.456-05:00Fight.Boredom features design critiques, creative industry editorials, media and product reviews, interactive features, and the latest news from the Cloudjammer Creative Network. We're always looking for good and bad design everywhere – logos, websites, music, marketing, film, and literature – ready to editorialize and critique matters of like, dislike, and general obsession to better equip you for the battle against boredom.The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.comBlogger151125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-69910799268706793742009-06-01T20:22:00.005-05:002009-06-03T08:55:19.473-05:00

Since they first appeared on the radio in 2007, I've been a huge fan of Dos Equis' Most Interesting Man in the world.The Dos Equis campaign, as most of you know, captures the Most Interesting Man's witty advice, colorful commentary and incredulous tales of past experiences. According to Dos Equis' advertising agency, Euro RSCG Worldwide, the Most Interesting Man's unmatched suave and

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-811102142851089702009-02-23T20:29:00.004-05:002009-02-26T09:33:28.691-05:00

To say that most Americans don't understand the current financialocaplyse is, perhaps, an understatement. Confusion abounds concerning mortgage-backed securities, sub-prime mortgages, and the crippled condition of the banking system. And try as they might, most media outlets—however thorough or complete their coverage—fail to capture the problem in an easily digestible and understandable form.So

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-73117118168819271042009-02-11T09:29:00.005-05:002009-02-11T09:44:30.175-05:00

Listening to the Prez talk about the current financialocalypse got me thinking about the Great Depression (it was neither great nor depressing...discuss!) and what, if any, markets thrived during that global economic buzz kill. Turns out, a lot did. Most are pretty obvious, but if we’re looking to roll in new clients during the recent unpleasantness, these might be sectors to watch:FOOD. People

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-43914738201514236342009-01-17T14:42:00.013-05:002009-02-09T15:10:35.941-05:00

Since 2002, we've done our best to use Fight.Boredom as a vehicle for discussion and critique of creativity, pop culture, and graphic design in and outside of the workplace. And over the course of all that time, the website has changed shape several times – from a monthly to an annual newsletter, both in service of Cloudjammer Studio, before finally transforming into the blog you read today.In

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-68937550048866641662009-01-09T22:12:00.015-05:002009-01-10T19:03:53.200-05:00

As professional creatives, most of us have, at one time or another, faced the thorny challenge of refreshing or otherwise reinvigorating an established brand. But only the most fortunate among us have ever had the chance to tangle with truly ubiquitous cultural brands – a shame because cultural icons are often exciting subjects and because a great deal can be learned about how reinvention and

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-58940241447577404352008-12-30T21:18:00.006-05:002008-12-31T09:04:52.334-05:00

Back in April we talked about how the right brand could make the candidate –even how a font like Gotham could help Barack Obama rise above the primary–season tumult and win the presidency.Turns out we were right. Oh, snap!Now that the smoke has cleared, we have the luxury of not only enjoying Barack's transition from the sans-serifed Gotham typeface of a candidate to the serifed stylings of a

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-60270073993930952402008-11-02T23:33:00.003-05:002008-11-02T23:43:32.659-05:00

NBC Nightly News, of which Ann is a rabid watcher, recently carried a fascinating piece on the decline and increasing marginalization of album artwork in the recording industry. From the lauded and classic 12" LP dust jacket to the 4" CD sleeve to tiny 1" iTunes thumbnail – and, more importantly, from a $100,000 average expenditure per cover to $10,000.Watch "The Death of Album Art" at MSNBC.com.

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-17638369789833360692008-10-14T22:43:00.006-05:002008-10-15T13:27:09.243-05:00

It's no secret that I've got a thing for content analysis and Newsweek. Content analysis is a fantastic method for quantitatively identifying narratives in communications while mass-market newsweeklies – like the evening news or newspapers – represent a closed-system of news communication that captures a specific period of time.This week's issue of Newsweek, with its almost blank yellow cover

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-5843615413759847212008-10-04T12:06:00.004-05:002008-10-04T12:15:14.891-05:00

BBC magazine ran a facinating article this week begging the question: Could President Bush saved the country – and the world – some financial and political turmoil if used the word "rescue" instead of "bailout?"Branding expert Jonathan Gabay certainly thinks so. He suggests that Bush's "failure of branding" hurt his chances of selling the $700bn "bailout" package. Indeed, he suggests that a

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-61086166435104956852008-07-28T16:21:00.007-05:002008-08-13T08:59:28.294-05:00

While recently using AIGA's invaluable Design Archive for some project research, I stumbled across The New York Times' fantastic info graphic,"In Perspective: America's Conflicts." This visualization succinctly and effectively compares the cost, in lives and dollars, of America's twentieth century conflicts – World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and both Gulf conflicts. The charts likewise

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-46076359331695164362008-06-30T21:35:00.002-05:002008-07-07T09:31:23.740-05:00

The following posting is intended for satirical purposes only and is based upon an coincidence of linguistics and marketing. No relationship between Home Depot and Al-Qaeda is suggested.Back when I took Arabic language courses at UGA in pursuit of my masters thesis, a casual conversation with one of the Arabic program's professors strayed from issues of political and religious import toward

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-73772425962377776282008-06-23T21:53:00.005-05:002008-07-07T09:29:38.896-05:00

On the surface, the following video represents 20/20's attempt to correct a long overdue omission – the historical lack of reporting on graphic design on America's longest-running and most-watched news magazine show.But let the sudden appearance of Comic Sans be your first clue that this "clip" from 20/20 is a parody. In this case, a piece of satirical reporting produced by John Stossel at the

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-71323347157808813072008-06-13T10:21:00.005-05:002008-06-13T10:50:52.280-05:00

Just in time for Father's day, we were reminded of Beam Global Wine & Spirits and BBDO Energy's new advertising campaign for Canadian Club: "Damn Right Your Dad Drank It."Canadian Club's campaign works a familiar theme once employed by Oldsmobile, though from an opposing tack. While Oldsmobile tried to distance itself from its aging audience with the poorly-conceived "It's Not Your Father's

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-50021740422774181172008-06-02T16:14:00.001-05:002008-07-07T09:28:45.497-05:00

There is a secret transatlantic tunnel running between New York and London ... and it has lain undisturbed for a hundred years. Now recently completed, this tunnel forms the backbone of an extraordinary optical device allowing people on one side of the world to see the other. Behold the Telectroscope – an incredible public art project by British artist Paul St George that is designed to provide a

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-42950157211187136482008-05-19T20:51:00.003-05:002008-09-10T09:38:16.801-05:00

Great progress has been made, in recent years, to standardize users' online experience across various browsers. Perhaps nowhere has this trend been seen more than in the widespread standardization of CSS rendering in nearly all major browsers (including the new, more-standards-compliant Internet Explorer 7).The same can not be said of HTML rendering in email. Despite encouraging desktop clients

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-72865242013056981132008-05-12T13:26:00.022-05:002008-05-13T17:16:48.483-05:00

On April 2, 2008, The United Kingdom decided to change its currency.Not to the Euro ... heavens no! But the august pound sterling – the third-most-common, and forth-most-traded currency in the world – is getting a long overdue face lift. And the new coinage is a graphic dream: an integrated series of seven coins that work individually, as a collective whole, and reinforce the kingdom's royal

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-79564735215512383962008-05-05T13:33:00.001-05:002008-05-13T14:50:56.680-05:00

It's amazing that Domino's villanous, red suited Noid (created by Group 243 and animated by Will Vinton Studios) and rapper/clock aficionado Flavor Flav coexisted in the 1980s and early 1990s without this brand hybridization coming to light:This is the sort of thing that happens when graphic designers have idle hands and an unhealthy affinity for trademark infringement. Enjoy! FB

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-52820007420304850882008-04-28T12:22:00.001-05:002008-05-13T14:50:16.496-05:00

Think you are pretty good at identifying typefaces? We thought we were. But we were recently shamed by our 23/34 score on Kari Pätilä's Rather Difficult Font Game over at the Say It Ain't Slow blog.Currently the game challenges you with 34 typefaces to identify but the word is out that this may soon expand to an even larger collection of fonts. For our part, every designer we know (well, aside

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-63280385496239608152008-04-21T20:03:00.006-05:002008-05-13T13:22:31.138-05:00

A friend of ours, Carl London, recently brought a great new service to our attention: CNN recently launched a tool that enables users to purchase recent news article titles on t-shirts. This beta service was quietly released today with the sudden appearance of little shirt icons next to the video icons on their homepage.But you better hurry because the wearable headlines are only available as

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-33381551011060138202008-04-14T09:05:00.002-05:002008-05-13T13:19:37.621-05:00

We've long had an interest in the way photography and visual editorials can affect the way the public perceives news and conflict. So we took special interest in the way the press and the public marked this past March's bittersweet anniversary of the Iraq War. Most remembrances and acknowledgments focused on the 3,990 American troops that have been killed, and 29,395 that have been wounded, in

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-86143701228357192992008-04-07T10:23:00.006-05:002008-04-08T20:54:26.389-05:00

We love fonts – that's no secret. So we were thrilled when Newsweek recently ran an excellent article on the emerging role of fonts in celebrity marketing and campaign politics. Author Jessica Bennett points out that "America has developed a geeky obsession with fonts, the latest instance of our sophistication about design."Alongside her discussion of Beyonce and Bjork's celebrity typography,

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-76945800153966296442008-03-24T14:57:00.004-05:002008-03-27T18:10:03.826-05:00

StarWars.com's Expanded Universe blog recently showcased a number of scenes from the original Marvel comic and the much later Media Works magna editions of the original Star Wars trilogy. It reveals both a striking contrast in how different cultures approach the material in a graphically illustrated form and how different artists either suffered or benefited from a sophisticated familiarity with

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-42211066477567601772008-03-17T11:56:00.002-05:002008-03-19T09:18:02.986-05:00

There are plenty of ways to embed documents into webpages. But when it comes to replicating the look and feel of a magazine or book, most digital efforts fall flat or complicate the interface.Thank goodness there's Issuu.Issuu lets you upload a PDF and then flip through it seamlessly on a dedicated Webpage or in a small embedded widget. Issuu's media viewer, which presents the content like a real

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-47608587397050514442008-02-18T12:42:00.003-05:002008-02-19T12:07:18.159-05:00

Over the last several years, Al Jazeera has become one of the world's most widely recognized brands, its calligraphic logo decorating not only its own news broadcasts but also those of every Western network that replays their much coveted footage. But the logo itself remains a bit of a mystery to many Western viewers unfamiliar with the Arabic script and the language's calligraphic

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7293014259530266741.post-79614756848549019332008-02-11T23:28:00.001-05:002008-02-13T15:23:17.630-05:00

It's no secret that I've got pretty strong opinions about creative business – particularly about the many ways designers hurt themselves and the industry by not knowing or following good business practices. In the past, I've written about designers selling their services for pocket change. But I was recently asked to produce some work on spec and, in refusing, I realized that a far more insidious

The Cloudjammer Creative Networkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09612693084668892716noreply@blogger.com1