I Will Be Back ....

photo by Nancy ... taken in NYC a few summers ago at one of the Friends Schools in the Lower East side.

Inspiration

Kimberly

Kimberly was born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., home of the Sabres, Goo Goo Dolls, and chicken wings. Growing up an only child, her passion for music and television intensified during the long snow-covered Buffalo winters. Fast-forward to Kimberly's college years when these two passions collided. Years of watching ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’ finally paid off for her when she became a disc jockey and news director for WBNY, an alternative rock station.

A self-proclaimed guidette, Kimberly also loves everything Italian. Her dream is to travel to Italy in 2011. In the meantime, Kimberly is working hard saving her pennies for the trip. Literally. She’ll search cars, couches, and parking lots, leaving no orphaned coins unnoticed. If you’re walking along and you drop some change fuhgeddaboudit, she was probably behind you and already picked it up.

Shawn

Documentary film-maker and bassist Shawn Sharifi, reknowned for his monumentally successful film Why Hollywood Sucks, is in the final editing stages of his newest offering, a sequel entitled Why Hollywood Still Sucks. "The working title was Who'd I Forget? More Hollywood People I Can't Stand," says Sharifi, "but nobody in Tinseltown returned my calls." "Ahh," he said "what do you expect. They suck!"

When not griping about over paid, useless celebrities, Shawn can be found playing his bass for Hot Buttered Elvis, enjoying snorts of whiskey, curing plants of what ails them, and lurking late into the night. He's also been seen around town on occasion with the band groupie Mina who happens to be his wife.

Robyn

Robyn is a hardworking 25-year old. She leads a busy life as a graphic designer for a college and a receptionist for an animal hospital. She works seven days a week without rest while she dreams of traveling the world like a vagabond. She comes from an insane family that spawned from the back wood mountains of West Virginia. Inbred you ask? Well who knows, but it’s suspected that cross breeding may have caused an onset of lunacy in her family. But in spite of all this, Robyn is a cool city chick who lives in a high-rise apartment building with her filmmaker boyfriend C.J. She hopes one day they'll move to London to escape the drama and at the same time rekindle her passion for traveling.

A Summer Picnic

... to introduce our two families.

Objectified

Objectified, the second in Gary Hustwit's design trilogy, isn't as passionate as Helvetica but that conclusion may be about me. I left the film wanting more. More objects. More designers. More insight.

Instead I was left with questions. Are product designers more methodical and less emotional than graphic designers? For some reason, I had them classified as the same group of people in my mind. Not the case. Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec were the exception, though. I enjoyed watching them interact and they seemed intensely involved in their work. Are product designers different and what are their particular concerns?

And why do objects look the way they do? Take the camera for example; this item is based on a form that was required when film was used. Why does it continue to look the same and what else is left over from our past?

And there's still lots more to consider. While Helvetica may have inspired passion and controversy, Objectified provokes, asking questions about our culture and future. I'm looking forward to part three of the series. My question now is what do you think IT will be about? Gary Hustwit isn't saying.

American Independence

Pic by Kevin who has a new blog you can find here. And, by the way, I've been blogging for a year now. My first post was last July 3, 2008.

Welcome Mr. President

That's me in white at the top just before I shook hands with President Barack Obama this afternoon. And then me again in the lower left at the conclusion of today's town hall meeting. The discussion was about health care reform in America.