Changethethought

The Atlantic has published a series of spectacular photographs featuring the past year’s volcanic activity. Some of the imagery is as frightening as it is stunning.

written by Christopher | tags: News, Photography, The Atlantic, Volcanoes, Weather

Over this weekend, the local police clashed with the protesters taking part in the Occupy Movement here in Denver. At least 20 were arrested in a stand off that erupted into a clash that made the headlines of national news this morning. A few protesters were injured by rubber bullets and pepper spray. The 99% movement has brought forth the constitutional right to peaceful assembly versus the operation and ownership of private or public property.

However you feel either way, I think these people have a right to protest peacefully and assemble on public space. We wanted to extend our support toward the movement. We ourselves have been laid off from downsizing employers and are home owners, parents and debt slaves like many of the rest of us have become in this country.

It is an interesting time here in the U.S. at the moment, and will no doubt be a time that our children will look back upon. We just hope that no one else is injured and the message the protesters are trying to communicate is received and in time genuine change will be initiated. It’s taken nearly 10 years of war, lies, bail-outs and deceit from both sides of the aisle here in America for citizens to finally take to the streets. It does not seem like this protest will be ending any time soon. We extend our support and wishes for a continued peaceful protest that helps bring about the kind of reform the 99% in this country deserves.

written by Christopher | tags: News, Occupy Denver, Occupy Wall Street, The 99%

You can’t do it. No one can.

“Try as you might, you can’t walk in a straight line without a visible guide point, like the Sun or a star. You might think you’re walking straight, but as NPR’s Robert Krulwich reports, a map of your route would reveal you are doomed to walk in circles.”

written by Christopher | tags: documentary, News, NPR, Short Film

So today is my birthday. My wife is gone in Brasil. She’s actually flying to Rio tonight to spend the next few days there. It’s kind of a lonely birthday and it’s my last before becoming a father in February. So I guess it’s a bit of a benchmark, but one I am experiencing alone so it’s hard not to be a little contemplative. So much has happened already this year that it has been hard to stay on top of everything. I left my job as an Art Director after 4 years at Cactus. I then embarked on the crazy startup phase of officially opening the Changethethought production studio for business. It took nearly 3 months to finally completely finish remodeling the studio which aside from one granite countertop and sink was done entirely by me and my initial business partner. Not long after I found out my wife was pregnant. Then only 3 short weeks ago my new and amazingly talented partner Mike Slane informed me he was moving out from San Diego to join me after working the last two years for Shilo.

So now here we are, crunching it as hard as we can go day-by-day to get the studio off the ground and support our families. It’s been tough so far and we both know it is going to take time to build our list of clients and begin introducing ourselves and our work to agencies. We are new to all of this so we are still feeling our way but we are not new to producing creative. We know what we are capable of in that arena.

So after all of these changes, it’s almost impossible to imagine where I will be and what will be happening 1 year from today. I know I will be a dad and I know I will be a husband. Aside from that, who knows. The best part of starting a new business is that each day is a new adventure and that continues to be rewarding.

Thank you all for tuning into the blog for one more year and for all of your support. What I really want for my birthday is a new project to work on but meeting the people I have met through this blog and communicating with such a richly talented and passionate audience has been the best present I could ever ask for.

Expect much more this next year. We are only just beginning what Changethethought will one day become.

written by Christopher | tags: Birthday, Changethethought, Ctt Studio, News

The Boston.com has a series of photographs detailing the events surrounding the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. Another plume of ash erupted over the weekend that may again stifle air travel over Europe this week. I have enjoyed how the American media just refers to the news as ‘that volcano in Iceland’ as opposed to trying to pronounce the actual name ‘Eyjafjallajokull’.

written by Christopher | tags: Eyjafjallajokull, Iceland, News, Photography, The Boston.com

So I was working on this psychedelic triptych, just for the hell of it, and finally finished it last night. I threw it in my personal section because I wasn’t really sure where else to file it. I hope you dig it. I think for my next round of posters I may print these up. If anything, just because I want to hang them in my own home to freak people out a little bit. Most people aren’t accosted by introspective art every day and I like to put some in my home especially in private places like bedrooms or bathrooms to force people into that zone where they have to confront themselves a little bit and think. We may take that for granted because so many of us spend so much time plugged into the current of digital art and culture but most people have yet to enter that space. So, it is easy to take them off guard and I love to see how they react to work like this.

I want to do a few things this next go round with my posters that are a little less direct and more open to interpretation. I hope you dig it. If not, that is fine too. Its art you know. You can’t please everyone. These were digitally-collaged using found imagery.

They are loosely based on the concept of identity, memory and the infinite nature of the space-time continuum.

2009 is going to be a good year. I can feel it. Expect a lot of new work and a better website (if I can find the money to upgrade it). I am going to bust my ass this year like there is no tomorrow. And there may not be a tomorrow with 2012 around the corner. You never know.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, Ctt News, News, Personal, Posters, Print

I have been working hard lately on several new poster ideas. I have put some of the results up in the work section of the site. I have a new Obama poster that I want to get ready for the inauguration. The poster measures in at 18×24 inches and is 4 screens. I actually want it screen printed this time and I am looking for a good screen printer (preferably one here in Denver, Colorado). If you know of one please drop me a line. I am also working on another series of smaller A3 posters as well. Two of those you can see in the Print Section of the site. One of which is a revised version of an older poster I did a few months back. I am working on 2-3 more of those as well and then I will be doing another run of A3 posters. Probably sometime within the next month. The other posters are just a personal experiment I have been working on lately collaging found imagery together to create psychedelic landscapes. You can see two of those in the Personal Section. More of those to come as I get to them. I probably won’t print those but who knows.

Also, I am still seeking artistic representation (an art rep) to help me find new projects. I am also still planning on rebuilding the site sometime in early 09 and I will be looking for relevant sponsors and advertising. If you would like to take a look at the traffic numbers and are considering advertising please send an email to hire(at)changethethought.com.

Basically between Changethethought and my 9-5 job as Art Director at Cactus, I am busting it pretty hard right now. I love what I do though and that is why I do it. I will also be working on a new television commercial right after Christmas and we just released our new series of commercials for the Own Your C campaign also. Lifelongfriendshipsociety did an amazing job on the spots and I will be getting them up on the site, along with a full right up on the new direction we chose for the OYC campaign this year in the very near future. You can actually see the spots at Motionographer right now.

Thank you for all of the emails and support. Full steam ahead.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, News, Personal, Posters, Print

I remember seeing this a long while back on television and laughing pretty hard upon viewing it. It kind of puts things in perspective. I have been working in some regard as a designer/Flash developer/Jr. Art Director/Motion Design Director/Copywriter/Creative Blogger/Actor/Lead Singer/Lyricist/Illustrator/Painter/Art Director for around 10 years or so. If you count when I started painting, drawing and singing when I was 5, well most of my life now.

In that time I have been around countless creative types. The people that always tend to strike me the most though with their almost borderline compulsive behavior are graphic designers. It has always amazed me how seriously some designers take what we do. Some people treat design like it is akin to splitting atoms or solving the global energy crisis. I am amazed sometimes at how little humor people see in our obsession over things that 99% of the rest of the population could really give a shit about. (I have to briefly mention actors too, since I am now spending more and more time with them also, and they tend to think the same way about acting).

I think this little video kind of cuts right to the heart of that and should serve as a little reminder not only to me, but to everyone sitting a little too close to their computer right now, to relax a little every once in a while. This may be what we do for a living, but after all, there are a lot more important things going on in the world as well. Especially right now.

written by Christopher | tags: , Graphic Design, Humor, News

I have just posted several new works in the Print and Illustration sections of the site. I have posted a new poster set titled, ‘Live Fast & Die Young’ as well as the first two in an ongoing 50 part study I have embarked on using nothing other than simple geometric forms, single colors and Helvetica. This study will take some time and doing but I thought it would be a good way to pull me back to the basics of Graphic Design.

I have also a fun illustration I recently created for Cactus about the greatest haircut ever dreamed up by mankind, as well as the small ad campaign I created for the Toofy Film Festival.

I am also considering running a special on Obama Posters starting one month prior to the election. Stay tuned for that.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, Illustration, News, Posters, Print

Well, unless you have been living under a rock for the past week it has been impossible to ignore the news roaring out of the U.S. The Wall Street bailout failed today going down at 228 to 205. After a flurry of calls and emails protesting the bill flooded the government, lawmakers were just not willing to risk passing such an unpopular bill this close to an election. Wall Street responded promptly with one of the sharpest single day drops in the history of the American economy.

What does it mean for people like us? And by that I mean working designers, Art Directors, Photographers, Artists, etc.? Well, time will tell. A friend of mine who works at Wachovia stopped by over the weekend and said that people were pulling money out of the bank all last week and that the credit score for a simple car loan had been raised to 700. A perfect credit score is 850, and you can trust me when I say that there are a lot of people out there no where near a credit score of 700. That means working-class people like you and me are going to start feeling a crunch very soon unless something miraculous happens. I think what America is finally discovering is that you can’t build a kingdom on credit. Its akin to building a house on a foundation of sand. The days of the gold standard are long past and the concept of value now is open to speculation. And speculation just isn’t a hard currency.

One thing is for sure. The corporate government has been firmly put in place, and I think we are seeing the end of an era in the United States. I am just waiting to see what’s next. If I wake up tomorrow and hear the headline, ‘America Sold To China’, I can’t say I will be surprised.

written by Christopher | tags: Bailout, News, Politics, Wall Street, World News

Wow, I had no idea they intended to make a comeback but Surfstation is back online. For a while there, they were one of my favorite design/music/movie zines. It will be interesting to see how they fare now in the highly competitive world of blogging. The landscape has changed dramatically since they first came online a long time ago.

written by Christopher | tags: Blogs, Designzine, Graphic Design, News, Surfstation

While I am on the subject of web design today, there is no way I could leave out MSNBCs spectra visual newsreader. It’s a whole new and fascinating way to read the news. It’s really a grand experiment in information organization and that is something that has always interested me in terms of web design. One of the first things that interested me in Flash, and still does, was the amazing possibilities for how you could file, categorize, display and allow users to access information. It was exciting to see MSNBC take that idea and apply it to their news stories. Spectra is a really fun website to explore and since it is the news you are playing with, you might actually find something interesting to read as well.

written by Christopher | tags: MSNBC, News, Spectra Visual News Reader, Web Design

I can’t quite figure out if this is legit or not but apparently Shepard Fairey (of Obey Giant fame) is threatening to sue Baxter Orr who is a 26-year-old artist and freelance designer based out of Austin, Texas. You can see his work above. The irony here is that Fairey has been accused blatant plagiarism in the past and the evidence to support this notion is more than damning. Fortunately for Fairey, few of the artists work that he has used in the past have stepped up to protect themselves.

Regardless,  Fairey’s fan-base is strong (I have always been one of them). The question remains however as to whether or not this whole debacle is for real or a 15 minutes of fame attempt by none other than Orr himself. Either way, it raises some interesting questions.

You can read more about the story here and also see how the readers feel about it.

written by Christopher | tags: Baxter Orr, Graphic Design, News, Shepard Fairey Lawsuit

I am slowly but surely updating my portfolio on a daily basis with cleaner and more product focused imagery of my work. I think when it is all complete it will look nice and slick but it is going to take some time and doing to get it all completed. So over the next couple weeks you will start to see the portfolio section get cleaner and neater. I will send out a note when it is complete and do another post. There is some new work being sprinkled in there as well.

written by Christopher | tags: Changethethought, News, Portfolio