Showing posts with label IFTTT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IFTTT. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Pinterest: Less Crap More Rap
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/192x/b0/d3/bd/b0d3bd2152a3a4ca4d6e9ac7ed2947f0.jpg
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/218987600605555326/
Less Crap More Rap
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/218987600605555326/
Monday, July 29, 2013
typography of imaginary worth ✦ editorial design in finance magazines
This past weekend I sent an e-mail to a guy on craigslist, he was giving away a bunch of issues of Conde Nast Portfolio. We met in the parking lot at a decrepit K-mart, a company found guilty in 2002 of using media to mislead shareholders.
The desperate, decaying retail setting, the bored kids in the car next to me waiting for their dealer, the shamefully meta bankruptcy of the very magazine that catered to pre-crisis nouveau riche. I guess my coping mechanism during these times has been to glamorize the fallout. Glamorizing reality must be slightly better than ignoring it altogether, yes? Anyway, I love financial magazines! Nowhere else in publishing is the gap between art and politics so completely disregarded.
The financial industry itself is comprised of nothing more than pages, screens, numbers and letters. Editorial design is present in banking everywhere from a teller window, to CNBC, to the Wall Street Journal. It may not be the driving force behind the market, but it does form a body for it to inhabit.
So please enjoy these standout pages, they ooze control, emptiness, betrayal, order attempting to appear as though it isn’t falling into chaos. I also hope you enjoy my haphazard page tearing and lack of bleed-through correction. I just thought it looked nice.
The post typography of imaginary worth ✦ editorial design in finance magazines appeared first on touch + sight.
via WordPress http://blog.caitlin-burns.com/typography-of-imaginary-worth-editorial-design-in-finance-magazine/
art + design, books + magazines, advertising, editorial design, magazines, photography, politics, sarasota, typeface, typography, wired
Monday, July 1, 2013
Independent Creativity ✦ Dharmic Necessity
It’s July. Oh my. Six months into 2013 already. Cycles of time are never fun to acknowledge, but for what feels like the first time ever, I’m content with it’s passage. I’ve accomplished a great deal in six short months. It makes me excited to imagine what kind of magic I can create in the remaining ones! Will it include more blog posts? Ha! I can only pray that inspiration stays near me. I’ve made good on a lot of the resolutions I posted some time ago!
I have trailed off from my frequent posts in an effort to “put myself out there” — u no, IRL — talking to random folks around town, auditioning for local hipster films, attending awkward bar shows to induce camaraderie, showing artwork at assorted galleries, etc. I’m quite happy being somewhat of a loner, but at times you must act to ensure that you’re not doing so out of social disability. Um, I think I’m fine. However…
Stepping out into the community to mingle has been nice, it has resulted in a few very sweet new friends, and rekindled relationships with some old ones! But for the most part, and I truly wish it was the opposite, people are… mean! This sounds very pessimistic. I don’t want to believe that the behavior I’ve witnessed is due to real unfriendliness. I think we all want to get along, but something keeps us from opening up sincerely. I’ve observed that almost all artistically-driven young people suffer from hysteric anxieties over the unwelcoming near future. There is a lingering myth that only a select few chosen ones ascend to the ranks of respected (well compensated, culturally venerated) creative authorities. The ones left behind will have nothing but crushed dreams and ever-inflating debt.
To achieve, one must align oneself only with those who have access to that realm, through visible “talent” or privileged birth — and trust me, in Sarasota, there is an embarrassing excess of young artists with privilege. The unlucky ones: the shy, the poor, the awkward, the feral; we’re on our own! It just seems ironic that despite our generation’s overwhelmingly common subscription to belief in esoteric cocktails of libertarianism and socialism and new-age religion, we continue to treat those less pampered than ourselves with such disregard. Even worse, we treat those consciously attempting to pass through thresholds into different strata of society as desperate, annoying try-hards. Let’s stop that shit. It’s quite unchristlike.
Again I am retreating back into solitude, save for the few pure souls whose company I enjoy. No more twisting my words to appease the dead fish bobbing at the surface. Collaborating is a great catalyst for growth when one is lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, but lately I find art school dropout divas with substanceless opinions and daddy’s credit card to be too much to handle. I’m looking forward to some independent creativity, projects which don’t hinge on others’ ego and money, but on dharmic necessity.
The post Independent Creativity ✦ Dharmic Necessity appeared first on touch + sight.
via WordPress http://blog.caitlin-burns.com/independent-creativity/
art + design, words + ideas, art, christ, creativity, dharma, friends, politics, solitude
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Spring Breakers WTF pt. 1 : Peter, Pools, Power
Disclaimer: Hello, my name is Caitlin Burns and I’ve lived my entire life stuck on the same sad shores and streets seen in Spring Breakers. This admittedly fluffy movie hits close to home. Almost every aspect of my life directly relates back to the tourism industry. I honestly think the reason my family wound up here is partly due to the “spring break forever” illusion, though it was indeed nice to grow up at a seaside motel. Before sitting down to write about this movie, seemingly on cue, some disembodied voice remarked at the egocentric meaninglessness of picking apart something as apparently surface-level as the art-house version of Girls Gone Wild. The wild irony in this is that Spring Breakers specifically exists to shed light on nihilism and social expectations urging us not to dig deep, thus to give in to the idea that “my dumb friends will think I’m boring and/or full of shit” is, at this point, inexcusable. If you find yourself rolling your eyes at the banality of dissecting pop cinema, fuck you. That’s all. Get ready to look at all my shit. Seriously, this is part ONE of THREE.
Rather than give you a play-by-play of the predictable plot, (read that here) or give you some sappy drivel about the state of the youth in this country, I feel it’s more my place to unearth meta-myths, iconography, astrology-laced sprinkles of Jung, purposely leaving it open-ended for your own additional analysis. And since I got trolled so hard for doubting the political innocence of Perfume’s latest music video, I’ll attempt to leave out the truly paranoid tidbits. I realize I’m fixating on the likely-not-even-present symbolism instead of the much-more-easily-hypable, delicious cinematography. I’ll be gathering some good shots to celebrate the excellent Florida Noir visuals once I can get my hands on a good torrent. (help a sis out plz) Anyhoo, onwards—
Peter, Pools, Power — how Spring Breakers unites spirituality and debauchery.
1. Peter
- It’s never specified where the girls are from. It’s presumably some sad, land-locked liberal arts college, (though it was filmed at two waterfront campuses in Sarasota, just an hour south of St. Pete.) The destination, however, is a huge deal. Saint Petersburg: Floridian vacation headquarters, location of my harborside alma mater, founded in honor of the perpetually politically troubled Russian capital. The city’s namesake, Saint Peter, has an interesting back-story that eerily falls in line with the course of the movie.
- Peter (from Petros – an ancient word meaning ‘rock’ – as in, the ‘rock’ upon which the church was built) was a fisherman, later an Apostle of Jesus, eventually the leader of the Apostles, then the first Pope.
- The Liberation of Saint Peter is a story told in the Acts of the Apostles in which Saint Peter is rescued from prison by an angel. (angels/aliens, minor differences.)
- In the context of the Gnostic gospels, it’s described that Peter deeply despised Mary Magdalene. To quote his writings: “Make Mary leave us, for [all] females do not deserve life.” —to which Jesus replies “Well, I’ll just make her into a man.” In contemporary pop-religious stories, Peter is wholly blamed for creating patriarchy as we know it.
- The upside-down/satanic cross is formally referred to as Saint Peter’s Cross. “He requested this form of crucifixion as he felt he was unworthy to be crucified in the same manner that Jesus died.” (In multiple scenes Faith wears a sideways cross, as though she isn’t sure to align with Peter or Christ.)
- Basically, I’m arguing that in Spring Breakers, Saint Petersburg is intended to represent a city built on false/abusive male authority, filled with instances of naive intentions gone terribly awry. I don’t think that’s unreasonable to infer, it simply underlined how I already felt about Saint Petersburg.
2. Pools
- Baptism — In one scene, the girls are draped on the edge of a pool, Faith is droning on about how they’re “finding themselves” in this mystical, magical Eden that is St. Pete. At the peak of her monologue she dips under the water. As she levitates beneath the surface for a split second, we can hear her friends making fun of her odd spiritual tone. They spit water at each other, sapping whatever holiness Faith had hoped to convey.
- I grew up in a pool at a beachside motel on Anna Maria island. Some days I would stay in the water so long, it would literally blind me. The chlorine and other toxic chemicals in pool water are extremely corrosive to your eyes, skin, and hair — definitely do not drink it. In Spring Breakers, though they’re along the shore, we never see them submerged in the Gulf of Mexico, only in a swimming pool. The purifying characteristics of water are lost when it’s just a cocktail of antibacterials and algae-growth inhibitors. Still, Faith convinces herself that their week-long chemical binge is a religious journey.
- Though I’ve mentioned it too often before in other analyses, it’s not fair to cast aside the obvious correlation between religion+water symbolism and Neptune/Poseidon, God of the Seas, ruler of the sign of Pisces. There’s uber-haute dreamy, delusional, hedonistic vibes throughout this whole experience. I mean, Spring Break falls right smack in the middle of the sun being in Pisces for a reason — that escapism is encouraged, and often desperately necessary. At the time of the release of this film, March 15th, 2013 — 5 major celestial bodies (Neptune, Mercury, Chiron, Venus and the Sun) were in Pisces. It’s like the solar system was telling us “have fun, just remember it’s not real!” (Pisces Rising/Aries Moon— I have to say the recent shift of this stellium from Pisces to Aries has felt fucking glorious.)
3. Power
- So, Saint Peter denies females spiritual authority within the artificial constructs of the early church, — and somehow I’ve connected that to a deranged French director creating a film involving young Monarchs imbibing to the point of transcending power. As soon as you rid yourself of inhibition, you have power. Through chemicals Faith finds peace, Cottie encounters the physical consequences of hubris, Brit and Candy take the plunge to the ultimate depths of power, disgusting though they are.
- Each girl represents a different style of female power. Faith first displays a certain kind of power by putting up boundaries. Her innocence and (ugh, I didn’t want to say it) apparent virginity, are what allows her to get away unscathed from the misadventure, though it was her substance consumption that allowed her to get crazy for Jesus in the first place. There was no weakness in deciding to leave, it was her exercise of power, tears and all. I was shocked at how she so suddenly disappeared from the film. During the first half, she was the most interesting, well-developed character, then she was gone.
- Cottie is an interesting transitional character. I researched a bit, because “Cottie” is an odd name, especially compared to banal Faith, Brit and Candy. It is apparently derived from the french word “Côte” meaning coast, shore, riverbank, etc. The point at which water meets the land; where body and soul connect. Because of the physical damage to her body, the pain that no amount of intoxication could cure, she was unable to continue the spiritual power quest with Brit and Candy.
- The climax of the movie is Brit and Candy killing a lot of black gang members for no real reason at all. In unicorn-adorned ski masks and bikinis, no less. (Alien is dead. GET IN THE BOAT AND LEAVE, Y’ALL) This scene was viscerally awe-inducing, but it hurt deep inside. But that’s the point — in life, when you’re greeted with power-snatching opportunities, it usually is a morally corrupt and risk-filled idea to go forward and take your loot, but most of the time, we do it anyway. It’s how we become Gods.
To summarize these scattered views, what I took away from Spring Breakers was this: religious institutions encourage us to despise ourselves for our impulses, and it’s time we legitimized the idea that cleanliness is nowhere near godliness.
I hope you come back to see the additional perspectives. Next up will be Spring Breakers WTF pt. 2 : Britney, Bridges, Boredom. Get pumped about it. I suggest subscribing (check the sidebar!) or using Feedly to grab my RSS. Who knows— Maybe I’ll address race issues and describe my own St. Pete-based bad ideas.
The post Spring Breakers WTF pt. 1 : Peter, Pools, Power appeared first on touch + sight.
via WordPress http://blog.caitlin-burns.com/spring-breakers-wtf-pt-1-peter-pools-power/
music + film, words + ideas, cinema, film, lists, philosophy, politics, review, sarasota, seapunk, spring breakers, symbolism
Friday, March 15, 2013
editorial design : the devil’s in the details
So how did you handle the most recent Mercury retrograde? Did you have cringe-inducing miscommunications and hopelessly uninspired attempts at creating work? This time around, I prepared for it. I let go of all expectations regarding my mind and the words that come from it, pampered myself, took care of a lot of important real-life changes, and before I knew it, Mercury is about to go direct again! It’s as if I needed a retrograde so I could step back and focus on the here and now instead of living in heady la-la-land.
Even though it’s been a bummer to not produce anything fruitful, I’ve had alarming and electrifying breakthroughs in analyzing the communication happening around me — The methods others use to express themselves, what people expect from me, how I can more effectively convey my own truth. I’ve realized that I have a bad habit of embellishment. I love the details. I often treat them as though they’re more important than the grand idea. I own a million rings and stupid jewelry doodads, but only one pair of jeans, for instance. It’s time for a change! The best ideas don’t need anything more than what they are.
As a typography-centric designer, it’s easy to lose focus in the details: captions, infographics, decorative elements, etc. Here are some examples of editorial design that allows the story to simply be. Letting content express itself is much harder than making it look good.
The post editorial design : the devil’s in the details appeared first on touch + sight.
via WordPress http://blog.caitlin-burns.com/editorial-design-when-typography-becomes-learning-becomes-art/
art + design, books + magazines, tech + publishing, editorial design, fast company, magazines, pictures, ready made, typography, wired
Monday, February 18, 2013
new adventures in old publishing : joining Sarasota Magazine!
The past few weeks have been quite good to me. (Sorry for not posting! I promise it will increase in the near future — keep reading.) I’m extremely excited to begin a new chapter in my fledgling publishing career. Earlier this month, I was offered the position of ‘Associate Art Director’ at Sarasota Magazine. Of course I accepted!
Though I’m sad to put my freelance career on hiatus, I think this full-time job will teach me a lot about the intricacies of running a monthly publication. I know I’m in for a ride: the magazine industry is probably the avenue of print media with the most to gain from the switch to digital, yet there still must be dedication to the craft of composing a printed page. With new theories, technologies, business models, and typography trends coming out every single day, there is a limitless amount of content sharing + advertising possibilities. How useful that I happen to adore typography, local journalism, publishing technologies, and laid-back Gulf Coast life. It get’s even better — the neighborhood in Sarasota where the historical loft building is located? It’s called Burns Square. Isn’t it a completely wonderful feeling to start a new job that is perfectly suited for you?
As I transition into full-time work, regular schedules, and downtown Sarasota life, I also want to start being much more serious about this blog, and writing in general. I want to appear mature and professional, but I also want to talk about some real ass shit. I don’t shamelessly promote this blog very much yet, but it is a joy to know that I have a place where I can share my work, explore my own thoughts, curate, analyze, inform + delight. It’s still a work-in-progress but every time I tinker with it, something amazing happens. The more this space morphs into the medium I desire, the more compelling content will follow.
The post new adventures in old publishing : joining Sarasota Magazine! appeared first on touch + sight.
via WordPress http://blog.caitlin-burns.com/new-adventures-in-old-publishing-sarasota-magazine/
books + magazines, life + style, tech + publishing, blogging, florida, magazines, projects, publishing, sarasota, sarasota magazine
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