Hot Air Balloon

How posterity will laugh at us, one way or other! If half a dozen break their necks, and balloonism is exploded, we shall be called fools for having imagined it could be brought to use: if it should be turned to account, we shall be ridiculed for having doubted.

- Horace Walpole in a letter to Horace Mann, 24 June 1785.

Halfway to Christmas

This little guy is hidden away on one of the parking lot stairwells at work. He's just protected enough that the weather really doesn't touch him, so he doesn't melt away no matter how hot or rainy it gets.

Don't forget, we're just over halfway to Christmas. How much of your holiday shopping have you completed to date?

Tickle My Ivories

Play a little ragtime tune, or make it slow and soulful. No matter which way you play it, just play it.

Fresh Tomatos

Brightly colored tomatos to tantalize tired taste buds.

Retro Sewing Machine

Ah, the classic, chromed lines of Detroit Baroque. Usually it's only found on automobiles, but occasionally that heavy chrome design finds it's way onto more mundane items. This time it's an old sewing machine with button hole and zig zag capabilities. It's the kind of design that just screams out to be touched and used.

Happy Door

Happy Door is happy to see you.

Hex Code

Sometimes it's the things you see every day that inspire you.

The light at the end of the tunnel

No jokes here about the light at the end of the tunnel being an oncoming train or even that it has been turned off as a cost savings measure. Just a nice shot of the underside of a new and often unused bridge.

The phone did a great job capturing the detail in the concrete (like I was hoping it would). The light at the end washes out what is actually on the other side (an added bonus).

Happy Bread

Happy Bread is pleased to meat you!

Oh the joys and perils of finding small bits of humor while hungry...

Read a Book

Sticker bombing: The quick and dirty way to do graffiti with minimal chance of getting caught.

The advent of sticker bombing made graffiti mass-producable. Many are still hand drawn, but others are printed out on home computers to help speed up the process. It's not unheard of for a graffiti artist to be able to "distribute" over 10,000 stickers in a month's time.

What makes this one so great is that it's not someone's tag or someone trying to make a political statement. It's a great little social statement instead.

I think I'm going to go read a book now. Yo!

It's all in how you look at things

Hello, Moon!

The night has come

You appear in the sky

You must weight a tonne

To need a crane help you fly

Goodnight Moon

Self Portrait

Digging through some "old" images I came across this so-called self portrait. By old, we're talking about something taken six months ago. That's flat out ancient in the digital world...

I don't know what I was doing at the time to end up taking a picture of my foot (other than walking and fiddling with the phone's camera).

The bit that catches my eye here: The focal point of the camera lens being at the top of the image.

Puff Puff

I think some of the best designs out in the world are often graffiti.

They're often done in haste so the tagger isn't caught, so the message must come across as clear as possible. Sometimes there's a serious message, other times it's one of the person's tags or a tag for their gang. Still other times it's just a fun little something that will make some people smile and others just grumble about the defacement of public property.

This is one of those that just makes me smile. A quick scrawl with a Sharpie of a happy and mellow little guy and his blow that's on a parking lot light pole that I walk by on a routine basis.

Great Shadow Pic

Admit it. You search for things on Google. Odd things. Unusual things. And it's not just autogoogling. For that matter maybe you use Bing. That's your business, not mine, even if autobing sounds more like a German version of cars.com. But that's an issue for another time.

I was searching images on the number 20, and it was during that search that I came across this little gem.

I like the starkness and use of negative space. There's something mysterious and possibly even sinister about it. At least it's sinister if you like old black and white crime and detective movies.

Image courtesy of Rex Gradeless at http://socialmedialawstudent.com/social-media/top-20-blog-posts-of-all-time/

Wooden Stairway

Open stairwells, especially old ones, always make me think of fractals. There's something mezmorizing about them.

Best of all is that it creaked. Every step had it's own distinct sound.

Poor Placement

Something had always bothered me about the local WalMart (other than that it's WalMart). It wasn't until I was in the parking lot late one night that I realized what it was.

It would seem that this one sells McMeat...

Compressing Dimensions

Q: What do you get when you cross a geek with half-an-eye for design?

A: You get folder after folder full of weird pictures; many taken with a camera phone.

...And that's exactly what this is. A place for me to post images of things that have caught my eye. Many will probably be poor quality. Others may not. Regardless, this is just a place for me to post design related things in hopes of me remembering how I organized them later on.