Level Orange

I’ve never understood March Madness. Not because I don’t like basketball or because I don’t get the fuss over college sports (OK, maybe that’s a little true). It mostly because I don’t follow any sports with enough regularity to know who’s doing what or why any of it matters.

However, this year, as a perk with my new job, I was invited to take part in the office March Madness bracket. While I was at first reluctant to display my ignorance for all to see, the latest issue of Esquire arrived just in time to offer up a solution—their Sexiest Woman Alive bracket.

I’d seen it as I was flipping through the pages and just thought it was a fun thing to get cats who are really into sports to take pause and think about beautiful women for a few minutes. Then I considered that maybe this was actually created with guys like me in mind who couldn’t care less about sports. I mean, I don’t know any of the schools or teams in the NCAA but I’m all right with figuring out who the hottie du jour is (although I did have to look up a few).

So I took all of my picks and essentially mapped them onto the NCAA bracket, then added them to the office pool. I have to admit, it’s made March Madness fun for me for the first time ever. Now to see if my taste in sexy ladies pays off.

Round 1

After the first round, here are my picks that are moving on:

• Beyonce
• Rihanna
• Katy Perry
• Ana Ivanovic
• Gina Carano
• Tanith Belbin
• Megan Fox
• Marion Cotillard
• Penelope Cruz
• Eva Mendes
• Ashley Greene
• Lindsey Vonn & Julia Mancuso
• Jessica Alba
• Zoe Saldana
• Christina Hendricks
• Bianna Golodryga
• Gisele Bundchen
• Adriana Lima
• Alessandra Ambrosio
• Natalie Gulbis
• Blake Lively

Not bad for what I figured would be a fun gag. I’ll let you guess who made it all the way to the end, and while you’re at it, why not pick your own?

Check out Esquire’s Sexiest Women in the World bracket here

OK, I admit it. I wasn’t exactly looking for an article in the latest issue of the German edition of Maxim when I spotted this cover, but that’s beside the point. What caught my eye, believe it or not, wasn’t new Bond girl Olga Kurylenko either, but rather how similar the design was to just about every cover that’s come from David Curcurito and gang over at Esquire for the last couple of years now.

A concept that originated with Esquire editor in chief David Granger, the “wall of text” treatment, featuring partially (or in some instances, almost entirely) obscured text on a stark background behind a single subject has ostensibly become a trademark for Esquire’s design aesthetic since first appearing back in September of 2006. In fact, it’s become so much of a touchstone in publication design that it’s just about played itself out, and yet, it just works. It works so well that another magazine in the genre is now taking the same approach to their own cover design.

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In this recent interview with Ad Age, legendary art director and ad man George Lois made no bones about his dislike for Esquire’s recent “e-ink” cover, calling it “gimmicky” and “ridiculous”. He also goes on to comment on the state of other magazines like The New Yorker and Ad Age itself, while also suggesting that the younger folks need to get out more and appreciate the finer arts to find inspiration for great ideas.

Just in case anyone hadn’t noticed (because aren’t magazines dead, after all?), the 75th anniversary issue of Esquire is about to hit newsstands with a unique approach to cover design. How unique? It’s being produced with an electronic ink process that could either revolutionize (or further trivialize) magazines and printed publications in the future.

Earlier today, I happened across this post at dannychoo.org where Len-Vesper goes on about his “internet battle” with PiQ and how the magazine is closing its doors. Well, while I don’t remember hearing about or witnessing any “battle” and the magazine actually closed down two months ago, that’s hardly the focus of his tirade.

Like many others, Len-Vesper is actually more upset about the messy transition from Newtype USA to PiQ and how subscriptions were handled.

As I read on, I considered leaving a comment on his blog post here, but since I’ve never written at length about it and I got kinda wordy, I just thought I’d post it here on my own site.

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While at a local Barnes & Noble today, what did I see but a copy of the July issue of PiQ staring back at me. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised because the issue won’t go off-sale until another week or so.

Sometime in the last week, the site for PiQ Magazine, piqmag.com, went missing. And not missing in the “we’ll be back soon” meaning, but missing in the way that so many sites go missing when there’s no one left to keep them alive—someone just decided to pull the plug.

I can’t say it saddens me a great deal because I had expected it to happen eventually. In fact, I’m more surprised that it happened so soon. Granted, it wasn’t a huge loss, but it was largely made up of content that didn’t make it’s way into the pages of the magazine itself, and since the magazine closed back in June, I’ve been watching the site in hopes that it would stick around and be a small, lasting tribute to what we tried to do with PiQ Magazine.

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One of the biggest concerns a graphic designer can ever be confronted with is cribbing from someone else’s work. Sometimes it happens unknowingly, sometimes it’s completely intentional, and whether or not a viewer makes that distinction usually doesn’t matter. It’s the responsibility of the designer to make sure he’s keeping his vision and work original and fresh.

Most people would say that technically nothing is original or new anymore, and in some ways, that’s absolutely true, but that doesn’t give a designer the freedom to knowingly copy another’s work. Aside from outright plagiarism, there’s nothing necessarily illegal about doing it, but it’s one of those unwritten moral codes that artists (or any creative person, for that matter) must live by.

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One of the biggest challenges of starting any new enterprise revolves around the most basic and essential factor of business–the name of your company. It requires you to know your own ideas and goals, as well as your target audience and customer, far ahead of time.

It can be tricky in the beginning, because not only do you have to take into account everything that you want to accomplish with your company, but you also factor in how people might possibly react to your brand, and maybe more importantly, how you’ll be able to process said reactions. If you present your brand and aren’t solid on what it is or what it means, you’re going to have a hard time defending it or having to explain it on a regular basis, so it’s best to choose something that you believe in and can stand behind.

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Okay folks! We have officially begun the second half of the year 2000. Everybody give yourselves a great big ol’ pat on the back. For any stragglers out there, this should pretty much cancel all of that “world coming to an end” bullshit.

On a different note: anyone know what happend to Bikini magazine? The website has disappeared, and there aren’t any new issues on the racks. What the hell happened? Tell me.

UPDATE: Bikini Magazine apparently folded some time ago