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I could write a lot about Germany’s premier musical export, and maybe some time I will, but for now I’m just playing around with this neat barbed wire / crown of thorns graphic they used for the cover of their digital-only rarities album. They use the stencil-style logo on just about all their promo material and merchandise, which is a shame because the chunkier solid style is clearly superior in my humble opinion, so here’s my effort to chunk it up. I may have chunked it up a little too far in a few places.
All the versions of this track on Youtube seem to have the opening fashion show vignette chopped off from the album version, so you’ll have to stream it the old-fashioned way for the full experience. What’s the deal with people who go fiddling around with someone else’s hard work and then posting it online like anyone wants to see their goofy twist on the material? Could never be me 😏 –A∙
I'll be the first to admit that there are engines that drive what I do that are very akin to the things that drive any kind of obsessional behavior. So that obsessiveness is a tool that I use. How does anybody get themselves to do anything besides sit around and smoke cigarettes and drink beer all day? Any way that you can trick yourself into doing anything is valid.
— Mark Pauline, MONDO 2000: The User’s Guide to the New Edge
In 1967, the Westinghouse Electric Company monumentalized their brand in an enormous argon sign atop their building, aimed across the river at downtown Pittsburgh — A row of nine logos, each composed of nine individually-lit elements, all controlled in perfect symphony by a computer. While the full number of potential random combinations was enormous, Westinghouse’s designers choreographed the more elegant possibilities into a 5-minute cycle. The building and the sign were demolished in 1991, but I’ve been always been fascinated by it, and now its memory endures at the hyperlink above.
I hammered this out after two simultaneous discoveries: the pleasing geometric analogies between the Westinghouse “Circle W” and the Ansel.tv “A Star,” and that you can run inline Javascript inside SVG files. All that’s happening here is that every 1.5 seconds, a script runs through all 81 vector paths in the file and flips a coin to decide whether each one is visible or not. It would be laborious but possible to program in some of the original sign’s sequences, but I’m frankly just not patient enough for that — I’ve had enough fun and accidentally learned enough along the way to call it. Thanks, Westinghouse!
A friend of mine passed away. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time and I’ve been thinking about why.
Here’s a song by Conor Oberst that I listen to a lot.
It’s about Frank Lloyd Wright, and dreams, and how a dream kept secret in your heart is perfect forever. No one can burn it or break it or tear it down. No one will laugh at you or make you cry or make you feel foolish for hoping.
Never try & never fail. Never love & never lose.
A hidden dream can be embarrassing
and the only thing that’s sacred ‘til the end.
Regret can even keep a dream hidden from yourself. You can tell yourself the big dice rolled in the sky and you played your best hand and that’s the end of it. Smother the flames and bury the coals in sand. Pin the butterfly under glass and close the drawer. Lay the slab, salt the earth and dance away.
A long time ago I was proud & blind, and I turned my back on a friend I loved. I locked a painful memory and a beautiful hope away together and thought they would both wait for me. Now the years have passed, the time is over, and only the memory remains. My friend is gone. We’ll never see each other again.
If you miss someone, or if someone misses you, don’t give in to pride & shame. Face your fear and open your heart. Tear back the veil of memory and reveal the hidden dream in the harsh light of now — ugly, broken, and imperfect. It won’t feel comfortable, or natural, or easy, and you might hurt each other all over again and wonder why. But the hurt is coming, today or tomorrow, and when it strikes a final, fatal blow, you’ll find tomorrow’s loss hurts worse than today’s worst fears.
Nothing in this life is sacred ‘til the end.
Nothing is promised but the end itself.
Seize painful, frightening, doomed life today.
It may not wait for you tomorrow.
Stuck in geometry class? Learn to draw the timeless, iconic "A Star" insignia at any scale — on your computer with ease, or on paper in real life with slightly less ease and a few hand tools. Get your compass & straight-edge and let’s roll.
Start with a pentagon.
Connect the pentagon's points to make a star.
Connect the star's outer points & inner corners.
Add 5 points where step 3 overlaps with step 2. Connect these points to make a smaller star, continuing the lines to the larger star's edges.
Add 10 points where step 4 meets step 2. Connect them in 5 pairs.
Draw a circle connecting the rightmost pair around their midpoint.
Draw 5 circles around the midpoints of step 5's pairs with radii extending to the star's nearest outer point.
Add 10 points where step 7 meets step 1. Connect them in 5 pairs.
All the lines are in place to complete the logo. Trace the glyph (A), dot (B), and flower (C).
Color it in and you're done.
Still with me? It’s not over yet. Read more words and experience the + in 10+ on the full page over at ansel.tv.
Hey folks. I’m online once again. I turned 30, an old friend died, and it all really threw off my groove in a big way. After a few weeks of doom & glooming the future is coming back into focus, and it’s time to do some arts & crafts.
I’ve started working part-time at a neighborhood surplus store that any St. Paulite will know, where I’m meeting new pals and consuming a steady diet of cool old stuff. This logo came off an AM/FM radio tuner the size of a family-size cereal box. I’m going to try to keep doing these practice vectors while I devote more time to drawing art-type art — stay tuned for more of that real soon. Onward & upward.
I used to work at a self-storage rental facility, and as a direct result I was summoned by the state to testify as a witness in a criminal trial. I haven’t gotten another phone call today, so it should be over with, but I really thought it was over with a year and a half ago.
You’d think a name like “Lies” would get you off the hook for this kind of thing. –A∙
I’m adopting a looser definition of the word “daily” — I probably don’t have it in me to do a one-off every day, but when I do, my rule will be that it must be wrapped up & posted the same day I begin. Like a lot of creative types, I have a problem with starting and shelving.
This is the Mantix Multipurpose Model, and he lives in a larger alliterative universe that you’ll be seeing more of. For now, he’s just chilling & charging. –A∙
