This one’s a bit painful for me to watch, for a few reasons.

First, my talk had a lot of time-based elements (audio and video), which meant I really needed my 45 minutes, but I started late, and I was the last talk of the day, so I had very little wiggle room. In the future, I’ll definitely insist on speaking earlier if this is the case. I’m a fast talker anyway, but it sounds like I’m trying to break a vocal cord land speed record to get the event wrapped up on time.

Secondly, every piece of technology that could fail did fail in the course of the talk, including the projection screen, audio playback, microphone and presentation wand. I’d never attempted a talk that relied so heavily on tech, and I doubt I’ll do so again for a long while. There are way too many unknown variables, any of which can completely derail your message if it goes awry.

Lastly, I packed way too much into a single talk. I neglected the fact that I’ve spent the last decade thinking about the convergence of my varying interests, and it’s unfair to expect an audience to catch up in under an hour. Attendees who talked to me afterwards tended to gravitate toward one portion of the talk or another, which tells me I would have been more successful if I had exercised a bit more restraint.

Problems aside, I still believe in the ease and control scale I proposed, and that idea is probably presented better here than in the presentation materials alone.

Watch the recording on blip.tv

I had a blast speaking at this year’s CyborgCamp Portland. Many thanks to those who attended or tuned in to the livestream!

My slides are available, appropriately enough, on Slideshare.

Most of the videos I showed are available on YouTube. I’ve created a playlist for your convenience. Please note that some of the videos have strong language that I censored for my presentation. This playlist does not include the Eric Schmidt interview (viewable here), the Objectified clip (watch it on Netflix or buy it), the Human Giant sketch (it’s from season one), or Radiohead’s Idioteque performance on Saturday Night Live (because NBC kind of hates the internet).

This is arguably the most ambitious topic I’ve ever tackled. If you have any reactions, comments or criticism, please let me know in the comments or on Twitter!

I’m so wicked proud to announce that Fragments (the comic anthology I’ve been organizing to benefit the amazing charity, Save the Children) is finally available for purchase! If you like comics, or if you just like doing something awesome for a good cause, you should purchase a copy.

The book features awesome comics by Tram Ngo, Kristen Bailey, Pav Kovacic, Theodore Taylor and many more. The cover was illustrated by Tony Papesh, with a logo by Marc Roman. It’s thanks to all the contributors that this book exists.

The Fragments web site is the first time I’ve published a site written in HTML5 with liberal use of CSS3. Safari 5 users should notice a cool three-dimensional transform on the cover, accomplished via some CSS Transforms and a bit of JavaScript.

If you don’t have Safari, you can see the effect in this screencast:

A special thanks to everyone who has supported the project by tuning into its progress via Facebook or Twitter. Please continue spreading the word; with your help, this project will be a resounding success.

I’ve been troubled by minimalism for a while now, beginning near the end of my study of Interactive Media Design a number of years ago. I remember sitting in a class which sought to strengthen our portfolio development. The subject was raised as to what a student more versed in development rather than design should do in order to compete with more polished, aesthetically-pleasing, designerly portfolios.

“Keep it simple and call your style ‘minimalist.’”

I have the utmost respect for the instructor (and this “tip” was delivered with the sort of dry wit we had come to expect of him), but it struck me then the problem with minimalism. Unlike nearly all other stylistic descriptors, it’s defining characteristic is the absence of elements.

This statement is surely an oversimplification, but it is authentic. Wikipedia describes minimalism in art and design as work which is “stripped down to its most fundamental features”. Dictionary.com describes minimalism in music as “reductive” and possessing “minimal embellishment or orchestrational complexity”.

Stripped down. Reductive. Minimal. Minimalism.

Minimalism, when executed correctly, is powerful and moving. To make the greatest impact in the most economic way should be the goal of any designer (and certainly a fair share more artists). But any term encompassing the art of reduction is a natural target for the lazy and careless.

As a designer and instructor, I’ve seen peers and students alike justify ham-fisted work under the guise of minimalism. Their work is not minimalist, but graceless. The absence of extranious elements is not the result of careful deduction, but of careless convenience. The former deliberate, the latter unsophisticated.

When I design, I will determine if my compositions are born of purpose or convenience. I will strive to promote minimalism over gracelessness in my work.

An excerpt from the letters of Piet Mondrian (Wikipedia):

I construct lines and color combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things…

I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true.

I was grinning ear-to-ear as I walked up to Sergio Aragonés at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, opened the souvenir book to a page of the Groo 25th Anniversary section and proudly proclaimed “I drew this.”

Sergio was one of the first cartoonists I had been exposed to outside the traditional newspaper page, initially by my father who helped me a acquire a second-hand copy of the paperback In MAD We Trust! While many of my tastes have changed since, I’ve never lost my love for Sergio’s deceptively economic line work and an impeccable ability to distill basic human nature and emotion to its most effective (and humorous) form.

Cartooning is powerful and possesses a uniquely universal resonance because it focuses on the important aspects of an object and omits what isn’t relatable. As Scott McCloud said in his fantastic book Understanding Comics, “By stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning,’ an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t.”

Though my opinions are constantly evolving, I’ve recently noticed that this philosophy carries through all aspects of the aesthetic works I enjoy. While I can admire the craft evident in representational artworks (especially that of David and da Vinci), I gravitate much more powerfully toward modern art movements such as impressionism, cubism, expressionism, futurism and modernism itself. While I attempt to maintain a fairly eclectic collection of music, I am hopelessly enthralled with rock and roll.

What do cartooning and animation in visual entertainment, modernism in art and design and rock and roll in music all have in common? All three respect a conversational view of art and communication. Purely representational works are mind-blowing for the events they describe and their impeccable level of detail, but they allow little room for personal interpretation. On the opposite side of the spectrum, more arbitrary works operating on pure expressiveness provide little foothold for comprehension. Conversational artworks are those possessing enough elements to interest, inform and/or enlighten the viewer, but with enough mystique that the audience might impart their own experiences and insight.

Like any good conversation, the best art is give and take. Of course, I maintain the prerogative to change my mind.