M.I.A. PART I

Went down to Miami to shoot the last race of the NASCAR season.


Got to the track in Homestead and checked in. We picked up Pit Passes good for the whole weekend. Ryan lost his within the first 15 minutes.


Thursday night Truck Series practice. Andrew aka Bloggo, Tayler's manager, snapping a few shots.


Off track, Andrew on his cell making some moves. Light rain came in and ended up cutting practice short Thursday night.


Back at the hotel we shot some interviews for the video project we're working on with Tayler.


Friday morning Truck Series practice. Tayler only had a few hours between the end of morning practice and call time for his race that evening. We thought about doing South Beach for lunch but instead played it safe and just hit the local Olive Garden.


After lunch Bloggo and I headed to a quick meeting and handled some business at the track.


By the time Tayler's race started we had 3 cameras positioned all over the venue. At least 1 inside his pit at all times, 1 roaming, and Matt and I took one to the other side of the track.


Ended up finding a good spot to shoot from, behind a fence in a dark corner near Turn 2 of the track. No fans, no security guards etc. Only other person out there was another photographer shooting for one of the newswires. He saw us behind the fence and walked over to us - I honestly thought he was going to kick us out - NASCAR has some pretty strict policies about photography and videography at their venues. Anyway, the dude ends up bringing us out deep into the infield with him, shows us all the best spots to shoot from and tells us where to stand so that the control tower can't see us.


Awesome experience. Later, there was a big crash on the opposite end of the track and we thought about how our prime photo spot was a bit more dangerous than we'd first realized, but, whatever. After all, we're graphic designers, we stare danger in the face on a daily basis anyway.


Chilled out for a bit while they cleared the wreck off the track. Tayler ended up finishing 10th - very solid and a good way for him and his team to end the season.


And of course Kyle ended up winning (again). Not sure if you guys had heard, but I ate lunch with him a couple months ago. No big deal.


Around midnight, Tayler caught the private charter back to Charlotte. No metal detectors, no baggage fees, no body scanners. A message for all those people complaining about the TSA procedures: Step your game up. Until then, suck it up.

STENCILS

Sprayed a few crates over the weekend.

We actually ordered these stencils laser-cut from a place online but they didn't get them to us on time. Luckily, in college, I once worked as a Studio Assistant at a design firm in Santa Monica where my only role was hand cutting and mocking up Power Ranger toy boxes.



Which is all just to say that I'm fairly ill with an X-acto knife so I sliced these up by hand pretty effortlessly. No big deal.





These crates are on their way to Vegas for the National Finals Rodeo.





Matt and Ryan were gone so I dragged my cousin with me to help out. Also Shannon from Iron Horse came through around midnight and brought us some Snickers bars which definitely helped.



12 crates; 48 total impressions. Wish I'd got a shot of all of them together before they got shipped.



I guess that just means we'll have to head to Vegas ourselves.

MOORESVILLE

Went out to Mooresville, North Carolina last week to get a few things done.



We're working on a video project with our boy Tayler Malsam so that was first on the list. In case you didn't know, basically all the NASCAR drivers live in Mooresville, which is just outside Charlotte. So we spent a couple days out there and shot a lot of stuff at the Randy Moss Motorsports garage, Tayler's team's headquarters.




Honestly, I'm not even sure what parts of the car these really are


Tayler pretending to work out


Half this room was filled with old tires. Such a great background, in hindsight I wish we'd taken pictures of us in front of these. We could've thrown them on our site - made us look tough.


Couple shots of Lancaster's BBQ. This place is so NASCAR-ed out it's crazy.


Ate inside the bus. Pretty cool spot.

Since we hate working on just 20 things at once, we ended up shooting a television commercial out there on Wednesday for Iron Horse Jeans. Turnaround time was honestly ridiculous. We cast this model last Tuesday. Thought of the concept for the ad 15 minutes before the shoot. Came home this weekend and edited the spot in 1 day. Found a voiceover guy for the narration online. Shipped the final edit to Charter on Tuesday of this week. Anyway, I'll post it up here for all you kids to see sometime next week.


She's cute and was easy to work with. She's 17. No further comment at this time.

Few stills we took from the commercial shoot setup. We'll probably use some of these in Iron Horse's print campaigns starting next year. These are unretouched - click to enlarge.





Anyway, we took these last Wednesday - Thursday morning we woke up and flew to Miami. Pictures coming soon.

ON THE ROAD

Few shots from this week so far - enjoy.

NO SLEEP PLAN

Things are busy.



I'll explain more later, when I have time.



20 hour days and 100 hour weeks. Brought to you by caffeine, empty calories, jet lag and adrenaline.

SETH

Woke up at dawn and drove up to downtown LA the other day.

Traffic was awful of course but I'm just glad I don't have a job or I'm sure I'd have to sit through that way more often.



So I went up to see the man himself, Seth Godin. Who Seth is and what he does is sort of hard to describe. His bio makes it sounds like he's a business writer or marketing expert. In real life he's a lot more than just that and what he says is relevant to everyone - not just business marketing people. I don't remember how I originally heard about him but I've been reading his blog and books for a few years now.



This guy is the truth. He's easily one of the most well known business thinkers alive today - but his popularity is deceiving. Seth is known and revered by a select few who know what is up but to the rest of the business world or general public he's pretty much unknown.



Here's the bottom line about Seth and why what he has to say is so relevant and insightful: The world has changed so quickly in such a short period of time that nothing now is the same as it was for our parents, let alone our grandparents.

And yet people are still living their lives and making their biggest decisions - education, jobs, financial management, career choices - based upon thinking that's extremely outdated. If you know that the entire world has changed and you recognize that whatever worked for your parents and grandparents has nothing to do with how the world currently operates then you start to look for someone who understands these changes and can point you in the right direction. Meet Seth.

AUBREY & STEFAN

Couple photos from the weekend.

Drake at Gibson Ampitheatre.



Went out to Santa Monica on Saturday.



Hennessey + Ingalls had the whole store on sale so I picked up Stefan Sagmeister's first book, Made You Look.



Honestly, all I know about this dude is that he's famous for his sabbaticals. Every 7 years or so he stops taking client work for an entire year and does nothing but personal experimental design projects. He adheres to this practice without exception even when it means turning down lucrative or highly coveted jobs and he believes that the process refreshes him as a designer. According to Wikipedia he's currently chilling out in Bali at the moment.

Hopefully some of his secrets will be illuminated in the book. I've been trying to take a week off and get to Hawaii for the longest time.

BARACK

Two years ago today, my boy got elected.

Way back when he was still an Illinois Senator I used to listen to Obama's weekly political podcasts on iTunes (I know, that's crazy nerdy but it's true). I was already pulling for him to run at the end of 06. In December of 07, I dragged a girl I was dating at the time to a rally he had at Gibson Ampitheatre. At that time, he was still a big underdog just to get the party nomination. Even now, I'm still sort of amazed that it all came together for him.

Anyway, to celebrate the day I'm heading back to Gibson Ampitheatre tonight to go see Drizzy Drake. Plus they let Weezy out of Rikers this morning.

Also, here's a link for you kids to a song from Rihanna and Eminem called Love the Way You Lie, you may have heard it before. Oh no wait - this is actually the brand new sequel to that song - that I'm sure you haven't heard yet :)

LOVE THE WAY YOU LIE PART II

MOLESKINES

Shipment from Vickerey showed up yesterday.



First off, most importantly, the 2011 Daily Planner came in. I've used this same planner everyday since 2006. Every meeting, trip, phone number and detail of my life is in these past 5 books. Anyway, I know it's barely November but things are getting a bit hectic so I'm glad I picked this up early.



A glimpse within the madness. The edition I use is page-a-day - Moleskine makes another version called page-a-week where 7 days are covered over each 2 page spread. Those books are way thinner but I say that those people just don't have enough going on.



Classic squared notebook. This one's actually for Matt to take to meetings. It's more of a prop than anything else - the pages could be solid black for all we care, he's never really going to write in it. The thing is is that I go to all the meetings and take all the notes - then Matt does all the work - that's how our system works.

But, occasionally we bring him to meetings, sort of just as a gesture I guess, and it's weird when everyone around the conference table has a laptop, notebook or legal pad and Matt has his hands in his pockets. Anyway, hopefully this should solve that problem although I doubt he'll ever remember to bring it with him to be honest.



And finally, the A4 size sketchbook. Sort of large - I'm used to drawing in the standard sized ones but they were backordered so I had to step my game up with this one.