Cut & Paste Digital Design Tournament

by chris cunningham

[CUT & PASTE TOURNAMENT VIDEO]

[CUT & PASTE TOURNAMENT PHOTO GALLERY]

Designers as Rock Stars! Finally! I mean come on artists deserve real live applause! The former Art Director in me was all twitchy with excitement about this competition. The way it works is two artists go head to head and have 15 minutes to complete their piece. They’re first given a theme, like “Time Travel”, then they have to conceptualize an idea, gather any support work that they need, such as a photo, then execute the final product. Needless to say some fell flat on their face, others rose to the challenge. All this while a few hundred people are watching every move. Each Wacom Cintiq was hooked up to a projector so everybody could watch. The dynamic range of those projectors was terrible so I tried to get shots of the Wacoms when I could. The funny thing is the the final round was the weakest. The designer Dennis I thought was the best and was even a bit of a showman. Of course he lost. The video’s about 15 minutes. The same time they had to create their pieces.

What did I learn? I learned I really want a Wacom Cintiq. My oh my those are beautiful. If you cross the beams of a Cintiq and Illustrator you could quite possibly create world peace. I’m serious, ok I’m not. But still.

Adobe also world premiered their new online color matching software called “Kuler”. Looked pretty cool and I shot a pic of the screen. You can make up color themes and pull out different shades and complementary colors and then rotate the wheel around to see it in a new part of the spectrum. It seems to be behind closed doors right now. [Kuler] Please unlock it Adobe, I want to play. Released… [Kuler]

Ran into Heather, Keiko, and Meredith from work and I didn’t know they were going to be there. Also saw a girl from high school. One of the six Chris’s that made up a Biology class of 24 students. After the digital design smack down, Keiko, Heather, Meredith and I met up at Damiano’s and chatted until some wee hour. Tired, oh so very tired.