The Meaning Of Color

By James Curcio

Johan Ess, a co-conspirator and collaborator on HoodooEngine (among other things), was sharing the album design mockups for another project he's working on, Bradley The Buyer. The front cover was looking good, I thought, but uses a monochromatic scheme and I suggested tossing in a splash of color.

Those who know my visual aesthetic know I'm all about the vivid colors.

I suggested red or possibly yellow. They had tried red, Johan explained, but thought it looked too "mafia."

Mafia? Is that a "thing"? This got me thinking again about something I wrote about in The Immanence of Myth. That is, the associations that we have with certain colors, sounds, smells, etc. As a professional designer, I encounter this most frequently in the visual realm.

Let me include a little from The Immanence of Myth, and then explore this more:

It is through choosing to accept predetermined meanings that we opt into cultures. Of course, much of this occurs as we're growing, before we realize we have any choice in the matter. As we grow into adulthood, the onus of choosing an unpopular path is the fear of being an outsider. The crisis period for this is in adolescence, when issues of identity and social hierarchy seem to reach a fever pitch.64 Entire sub-cultures spring out of this conflict — rock, punk, goth, etc. all resulted from the clash of “insider” and “outsider” culture, and our own warring interests as the mold of identity begins to set. Of course, when any of these sub-cultures reaches a certain size or popularity it begins to flip-flop, exhibiting more behaviors and concerns that go along with insider, or popular culture. The fashion overtakes the ideology.
The cogency of a culture arises, in part, through an agreement upon certain terms. If a group all choose to give X meaning to object Y, they are then entering the same ideological domain together, at least in regard to that object or practice. Let's say one night you wake up in your bed, and look under your bed. There, shuffling amongst the dust bunnies, is a lobster. Would you even consider the option of eating it? We had to be instructed of the possibility of this course of action by the surrounding culture. Of course, you may now think that sea cockroaches are disgusting, or they might be your favorite food.

This is what happens when you let the designer write copy.

(Ignoring the fact that I have been a "professional" writer in the past.) As is often the case at work, today I am fueled by caffeine and snarkiness. As we work on a massive overhaul of the TLA website, I have been doing a lot of mockups lately. And by a lot, I mean A LOT.

To keep myself entertained, sometimes instead of using lorem ipsem, I wrote fake copy. Here is a small piece from the mockup today: "What the hell is going on? This copy will explain that. It might also entice you to buy something. Don’t act so surprised. That’s why they call it “ad copy.” Well, the “ad” part anyway. I don’t remember why it’s called “copy” anymore.

It may go on slightly longer than this but hopefully not too much more or else it’ll throw off the balance of everything, and designers will cry pixel tears. And just because they are pixelated (and restricted to 256 web colors) does not mean they are not real. Oh no."

Somehow, I doubt this will make it to the live site.

JamesCurcio.com updates

Whew. Organizing content for this site has been much more time consuming than coding it was.

Enjoy.

JamesCurcio dot Net Live!

On weeknights when I'm not working on freelance client work, or the script for the sekret project I keep alluding to, or when I'm not being (pleasantly) accosted by cute naked women and convinced (I put up such a fight) to dye my body hair purple-- I'm working on my portfolio website.

Well, it isn't done yet but it is now far enough along that I feel comfortable pointing you towards the URL. It is now live at http://www.jamescurcio.net ... I'll post large updates as they happen. This is all hand-coded (I've been using notepad, just because), and uses all of the things I've been learning about semantic code and presentation managed entirely in CSS. I know I did a huge no-no by using the italic tag in one or two places, which I'll get back to, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with how damn clean it is working this way. (And now, looking at nested tables or messy code makes me- and baby Jesus- cry. Tears of blood.)

Over the next couple weeks I will be filling out the music, podcast and design areas, and hopefully setting up a flash player for media and a lightbox app of some sort to present images. Setting up styles that denote the type of file associated with a link, and other nifty things like that. For now, it's a good start.

I hope you like.

A Brand Is Born

"I admit, technically this isn’t a film review. Hell, it isn’t even figuratively one- but I was told I could blog about “whatever,” so let’s see if that holds. If my posts stop, and I am later found, gnawed at by rats and cannibals in a back alley in Chinatown… well, you know what happened. Raise your glass to another patriot who died for his convictions.

For me, the process began about a week ago. I was told that we will be unveiling a new review blog, angled towards our gay male market. After much deliberation in the editorial and marketing departments, I was presented with the name of the new blog: “Homo Pop.”

Now when you’re presented with something like this as a designer, your job isn’t to make copy suggestions- it’s to “make it work.” (Project Runway can’t sue me for just saying that, right?) I’m not ashamed to admit that at first I was stumped. To the writer, and to the designer, the blank page is terrifying. You pace, think you’re nowhere, call your friends and ask for their condolences on your impending demise, appeal to higher powers that you don’t believe in, and then suddenly- you have something. Hammer it out in a flurry, and pass out in a pool of your own sick"...

(Read full article)

From

More sneak peeks.

There's a hell of a lot going on behind the scenes here.

Most of it I can't make public yet- but here's a taste. The 2nd edition Fallen Nation cover:







Expect the first episodes of the Fallen Nation theatrical audiobook, the website, and the 2nd edition on Amazon by the beginning of '08.