Fou-Roux, Van Gogh’s nickname—means “carzy redhed,” and that he was (although it seems a harsh label for someone so talented). Whether you believe he cut off his own ear or you think Gauguin actually did it, there’s no dispute that he wasn’t all right in the head, especially in his later years. But there’s no disputing either, that he was (or rather his paintings were) one of the greatest things to ever come out of France.

Everyone’s probably familiar with Starry Night, Café Terrace, and the Vase with Twelve Sunflowers. What follows are some of my favorites that don’t always get as much attention as those others, but that I think are equally as intriguing. Click any image for the high-res version.

Flowering Plum Tree (after Hiroshige)

Autumn Landscape – makes me want to go camping.

Avenue of Poplars in Autumn – Makes me wonder what a poplar is.

Evening Landscape with Rising Moon – Thought that was the sun coming over the mountain…

Landscape with Couple Walking and a Crescent Moon – Love that moon.

Starry Night Over The Rhone – The other Starry Night

Vincent’s Home in Arles (The Yellow House)

The Church at Auvers – I saw this one at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

Skull With Burning Cigarette – Not sure if this one has more the feeling of “I’ll smoke to my grave” or “Smoking will put you in your grave.”

Vase with Lilacs, Daisies and Anemones – A great alternative to the popular Vase with Twelve Sunflowers.

Wheat Field Under a Clouded Sky – You need to see it large.

Wheat Field with Crows – Although not his last, one of his final paintings before he died. Also see this one large.

Newspaper account of his cutting off of his ear. Some disagree over who actually cut it off, but it seems everyone agrees that he took it to a brothel down the street and gave it to his girlfriend. The clipping roughly translated in part:

Last Sunday, at eleven-thirty in the evening, the named Vincent Vangogh [sic], painter, originally from Holland, presented himself at “the maison de tolerance no. 1, asked for someone named Rachel, and gave to her…his ear, telling her to ‘keep this object carefully’. And then he disappeared…

Newspaper clipping announcing Van Gogh’s death. Roughly translated:

Sunday July 27th, Van Gogh, age 37, a Duchman, painting artist, living in Auvers, shot himself with a revolver in the field and only being injured, he returned to his room where he died two days later.”

In a few days, I’ll come back to that whole favorite artist thing I started a couple of weeks back. Getting out the scanner is proving to be more of a pain than I’d anticipated. So in the meantime…

I remember…oh…twenty or so years ago when I lived in Pleasant Grove the first time, my parents talking about how the city was home the worst roads in the country. Mom, Dad- they haven’t changed much over the past two decades.

Morning after morning, Whittney and I pass the same sight on our way to work. This week, I wrote a letter to the city as follows:

Dear City of Pleasant Grove,

I’m writing to thank you for the commendable addition to our city’s enlightenment and aestheticism at the intersection of State and 2000 West.

At first, I ignorantly assumed the orange barrels, cement barriers, and motionless tractor in the middle of the left-turn lane were simply the usual road construction gimmicks we see so often throughout our Great State.

Then, after 5 punishing weeks of inactivity at the site, I realized it wasn’t actual construction—but rather a fitting addition to, and reflection of, our storied Utah County culture.

A standing tribute, a timeless monument, testament to the ever stationary nature of our progress—and tireless, yet unaltered state of the endless road construction we offer to friend, foe, and all who this way pass.

And so, in light of this important realization, I apologize for my belated action and offer my sincerest thanks for this beautiful work of art that promises a glimpse into our dusty past, present, and future for the untold generations that will follow.

Please use the enclosed $5 in your efforts to preserve this important token of who we are as a people and as a community.

Yours Truly,
Brett

Special thanks to WhittneyLynn, Editor.

A couple of years ago, I had a conversation with someone who told me that my faovurite artist was cliché. Not that the artist himself was cliché, but that picking him as a favourite was cliché. Whatever.

In the coming day’s I’ll be posting scans of some of my favourite pieces by this well-known artist. And while the artist is well known, hopefully the pieces I post will be ones you’re not familiar with yet.

In the following posts, you’ll have no problem in identifying the painter, but for now, can you tell who the artist is by this piece?

Interesting findings from a research project by Mindset Media came out in Advertising Age’s Jan 28th issue that I thought I’d plagiarize share here. I’ve hand-picked the good stuff from a study by Mindset of 7,500 Nielsen online consumers. They found the following characteristics typical of Mac owners:

• They are more assured of their superiority
• Less modest
• More open
• More likely to buy organic
• Drink Starbucks or coffehouse coffee every day
• Drive a hybrid

And here’s where it gets good. Mac users:

• Notice imperfections in things and stress over them more than average
• Are more likely to have purchased five or more pairs of shoes in the past year
• Use teeth whitening strips
• Drive station wagons as their main car
• May be seen as self-centered, arrogant or conceited by others and have a strong desire for recognition
• They listen to way more music than PC owners. Half of mac owners paid to download music in the 3rd quarter of 2007 compared to only 16% of PC owners

So what did the study show about PC users?
Apparently not much. PC users showed far less cohesiveness in traits (probably because with PC market share at 95%, they are actually the “average” computer user), but they did stand out in an area of creativity: Low Creativity. Mindset media found them to be “realists who are emotionally steady and work well with what they are given.”

For the record, I own a PC.

-info picked from Jan 28, 2008 Ad Age “Mac Owners Just Like, Well, The Mac Guy”

After a couple of kitchen mishaps (but only minor smoke damage), I realized the fire alarms didn’t seem to be working. I still haven’t given them the good old manual test but I figure if real smoke doesn’t trigger them, there’s not a good chance that I’ll have time to manually set them off during an actual fire anyway. I did decide it was time for a little added security, though.

So a couple of days ago the Mrs. and I bought a safe to store our valuable collection of Garbage Pail Kids.

The safe has been great so far, but then again, we haven’t had many people try to break into it. The other good news is there have been no additional fires in the house (at least that I’m aware of).

But—I did notice a disconcerting image on the box the safe came in (see above). It seems that while the safe will do a good job standing up to fire, it has a tough time standing up to a fireman with a walkie-talkie. Apparently firefighters have no problem taking a break from battling the fire currently consuming your house (and pets) to crack open your safe and take a look inside. I know they say it’s a “Dramatization”, but…doesn’t seem like good marketing to me. I’d put a picture of the safe with a dead burglar next to it. And his eyebrows would be on fire or something.

Sentry must be a pretty funny company to work for though. If you took time to click the link to the product page for the safe, make sure you check out the product picture. Apparently this particular model is also good for storing those small golden boots you’ve been saving for retirement.

Welcome to the new year. After recovering from a “Top Ten _______ of 2007 List” overload, i decided I’d simplify things by creating just one Top 10 and one Bottom 10 for all of everything last year.

Top 10 (no particular order)
1- Being married to an awesome chick
2- Ohio
3- Bermuda
4- Steak
5- Royal Caribbean
6- Move Networks
7- Guitar Hero
8- Some snow, finally
9- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
10- …still trying to decide if any good music came out…

Honorable Mention: This piece of viral advertising by Quicksilver: http://tinyurl/366pjd

Bottom 10 (also in no particular order)
1- Jamaica
2- Provo
3- The word “pundit”
2- The pipe-dream of bipartisanship
3- Dudes driving cars into my parked trailer
4- Tattle-telling the landlord
5- Paragon Press
6- R&B
7- Putting the “free” in freelance
8- Fruit
9- The amount people think they can get for a dumpy house on a dumpy lot
10- Uninsured drivers

Honorable Mention: People who walk around wearing a bluetooth headset.

Crispin Porter does it again. Normally I don’t embed videos, but this was such an original idea for “viral” marketing, I had to post it. It’s not so much funny as it is interesting—I love watching people’s reactions when they’re told their favorite grease bomb is no longer on the menu.

Hope you enjoy it. You can watch it full screen by visiting www.whopperfreakout.com.

I was working on an invite for our company holiday party a few days ago. Since we’re a tech company (ok- officially we’re a services company, but we can argue about that later), I figured some screen fonts and pixel art would do the trick.

I was wrong. It didn’t turn out near as awesome on paper as it was in my head so I’ve sort of scrapped the idea. But in the meantime if you want to use my pixel art icons for your holiday cards, feel free. You can download them here. The file is in EPS format (so you’ll need Illustrator or other vector drawing program) and includes a snowflake, menorah, new year’s calendar, a present, and a Christmas tree.

*I know my menorah only has 5 branches but my Christmas tree only has 6—so i figure it’s a fair trade. And since 5 branches make it non-specific, you could also use it as a kinara for those of you who like to celebrate Kwanzaa.

Things have been pretty busy lately with work, a bit of freelancing and the holidays (Ramadan and Halloween). We’re moving this weekend and next, and then we have November next month, so things don’t look like they’re going to slow down for a while. I figured I’d take some time while I’ve got it to post a few things I’ve worked on in the last while. I didn’t really get permission to post any of them, so I did a little cropping to keep it semi-anonymous. Descriptions follow…

Got another couple of weeks to go on this one.

Logo redesign for a pretty sweet software product. If you’re in public utilities (aren’t we all?), let me know and I’ll send you their way. My part in the project was more to give it a jump-start, then their in-house marketing (or “JJ”) took the ball and did some pretty sweet stuff.

Measuring the future of online video. Actually did this a few months ago, but it’s just being implemented. On second thought, decided against posting the screenshot. If you squint really hard, this is what it would look like.

The little lady and I decided to start a sort of family blog a few weeks ago and kicked it into high gear once we found out everyone else already had one. I used WordPress for the first time, so it’s been a fun project—but we’re still waiting for Whittney to add the content.

What’s that you say? The design is a little juvenile? Probably true, but it’s different than anything I’ve done before (especially illustration-wise) and I had a blast doing it. No pun intended. We’ll see where it goes from here. If i could just get someone to nag Whittney…

You know those times when you really, really, really wish you could make the decision for the client?