Mad Men Season 3

So I've been watching Mad Men, of course, and tonight's episode, with what was quite possibly the most unexpected use of (dark?) humor in the series to date, made me point out again the amount of blood appearing visually on screen.

Last week, with Betty's visions filled with the vivid red color plus Sally's lovely cutaway shot a la Lord of the Flies, I was weary: the red blood must surely signify death of some kind is coming. When the baby and Betty both pulled through fine, it seemed out of place. Why would they put all that there if it wasn't going to be meaningful, especially in a show that is ALL about the subtleties.

Tonight I think I've found an answer: Kennedy.

The creator already mentioned how he wasn't going to address the assassination-but it is an event that can hardly be ignored on the show. Tonight, with the squeegee man wiping down the office in the background, the message shot at me like a cannon. The blood this week, and last, is a harbinger of Kennedy's assassination and the death that would follow as the decade went on. Was it something that could be prevented by changing out actions? Everyone's ignorance of the blood around them definitely gives me an eerie vibe and somehow this fits.

any thoughts?

Three reasons to watch Blindness

I just saw this movie Blindness, and it's facinating. Here are three reasons to watch it instantly on your Netflixs cue...

1. There are some pretty risky directorial decisions, even though the movie is about blindness..

A lot of the movie is spent in either darkness, lightness, or harsh contrasts so the audience is kinda blind, like most of the actors.


2. Pretty amazing art direction

This one shot shows the wife going through a door to the kitchen, the door is on a center hinge---how cool is that! The pristine, post-modern feel to the beginning of the movie is only fitting, as a major theme involves how disgusting people are when they don't can't see themselves. lots of filth, nakedness, and trash make these first shots of perfect home decorations all the more fitting....leading me to point number three....


3. The 'Dawn of the Dead' third act, where children run ferral, dogs eat corpses, and all those other post-apocolyptic scenarios desperately come true. I thought I had this movie pegged as a 'moral' movie where they all teach us about blindness in society, etc, etc---but really this guy just wanted to make a follow up to 28 Days Later...the realism of all these shots freaked me out a whole lot more than any zombie movie i've seen in recent days...

Mad Men's poster

A fun discussion about this poster at The New Yorker..

60s video..

This style makes me smile, and reminds me Mad Men is back in nearly a month!

Jenny Lewis "See Fernando" from Team G on Vimeo.

You know you're a graphic designer when....

...you identify your first font based on sight alone!!

These are great resources. I like identifont best, as it will walk you through how specific letters look. My one complaint is there's no option for script fonts (which was what i needed) and you have to guess what the computer THINKS is a script...

(Yup--that's Bickham Script Pro--only took me 30 minutes, mostly because they have different descenders for each letter---the loopy G can also look like the Y and vise-versa, of course it would be one with options!)