February 1, 2010 • 7:12 pm
More pictures, and video, available at my Flickr page
Every year for the past 32 years, the weekend before the Super Bowl is Concertina Bowl (CB). A couple hundred people pack the Blainbrook Bowl Even Center for 12 hours of non-stop concertina music, KOC bratwurst, and lots and lots of dancing. I went for the first time last year on a bit of a lark, but found the even so damn interesting I went back again this year.
I grew up near the city of Blaine, where CB is held. 20 years ago it was the edge of the suburbs, full of sod fields and pumpkin farms. All that land has now been turned into housing developments and KFCs, and the edge of the suburbs is now more like East Bethel, or Ham Lake (what we used to consider the ‘country’). But the Blainbrook Bowl has always been there. Even with the expansion and widening of Highway 65, which now lumbers just beyond the parking lot behind a wall of concrete, Blainbrook has endured. It’s not fancy. It never was. It was just where you went to hang out at night. After the place closed for the night the mass exodus headed just a mile north on 65 to Perkins. High schoolers and bar closers alike would sit for hours drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and eating Country Club Melts.
I’m sure this nostalgia plays a large part of why I’m so enamored with CB. But the strangeness of it all is what really attracts me. It’s fo alien, so foreign to me. I attend Concertina Bowl without irony or condescension. I am just truly fascinated with it. I’m not a fan of concertina music, although I secretly enjoy the fact that I can’t tell one song from another. I can usually discern the waltzes from the polkas but after that I’m lost. I guess I just really enjoy seeing people who have enough passion to carve out an event for what they love, even if I don’t understand it. I guess it all boils down to what the great Reine Motschke said about his love for the concertina:
“If I have to explain it to you,
you ain’t never gonna get it!”
Filed under: Stuff I've Found , Blaine, Blainebrook Bowl, Concertina Bowl, music
January 12, 2010 • 2:44 pm
Here’s a piece of paper my friend Daniel used to take orders during the Muddy Pig’s second annual Belgian Beer Fest. Notice how he began using different colored pens and wrote in different directions to discern which orders belonged together. Emergence. Fascinating.
Click image for hi res.
Filed under: Stuff I've Found , Belgian Beer Fest, emergence, Muddy Pig, waiting tables
January 11, 2010 • 7:06 pm
January 1, 2010 • 3:31 pm
Big Table Studio is now on the board, or at least on the wall. I just slapped up our ’signage’ last night. Every studio in the Jax Building has the opportunity to have their name on the wall in the entryway, kind of like a directory. So Craig asked me if I had any extra time if I wouldn’t mind coming up with something. So I found a roll of masking tape and went to work.
Big Table is comprised of 5 other designers, illustrators, a screen printer, and myself. We’ve had the space in the Jax Building in lowertown St Paul for about two months now, but have finally finished the painting and have moved in. I’m hoping to spend some quality time here working on a number of projects I’ve got on my mind for 2010. And there’s a liquor store right across the street, bonus.
Filed under: Work I've Done , big table studio, jax building
December 19, 2009 • 6:00 pm
I thought this was pretty funny for some reason.
Filed under: Stuff I've Found
December 11, 2009 • 7:27 pm
Where else on the net are you going to find hi res scans of awesome Asian soup packaging?
Filed under: Stuff I've Found , Asian Soup, packaging, pho
Click for Hi Res
Filed under: Stuff I've Found , chopsticks, packaging
November 6, 2009 • 7:04 pm
Click for larger versions
Boy, I love me some good ‘bad’ design. I think it’s a lot more interesting than the stuff that wins awards. I found these outside my apartment this morning. I became mesmerized and just had to share them with you. I’m not even sure if I could ever design anything like this. I think I’d have to try really hard to get it ‘right.’ But, frankly, I’ve become bored with value judgments in regards to design. There are those that say that good design only needs to communicate a message effectively, while the other camp says that there is also a lot at stake with regards to aesthetics. That visual pollution and ‘bad’ design is just as harmful as misscommunication. Little headway has been made in establishing either of these vantage points beyond the anecdotal, because both sides are equally ‘good’ and ‘right.’ I’m beginning to see the designed world (which is what I call the totality of anything which has been made by or influenced by people through a decision making process) as the reflection of ourselves. It’s as difficult for me to call a design ‘bad’ as it is for me to call a person or culture ‘bad.’ Maybe this is the curse of seeing things in black and white, but I do believe that it’s time to quit arguing over this nickel and dime good-and-bad design bullshit and start seeing beyond the horizon of the printed page, the computer screen and the poster. It’s time to start seeing the larger picture. We need to see it all. Collectively. Everything that we produce, because in these things we can see the decisions we are making, showing us how we really think.
Typically we have to wait a few decades, and gain the asset of hindsight, before we can look collectively look at a period of time and relate it to how a group of people thought. I believe we can do that now for our period in time, and that we must. We must look at what it is that we are creating and influencing and see who it is that we are at this instant. The speed of our lives has increased dramatically, we can no longer afford to wait to look back and see who we were, but must see who we are now, and look at how we will create the future.
Filed under: Stuff I've Found , aesthetics, car wash, design, theory, thought
October 27, 2009 • 12:06 pm
I’m working on pulling together a number of ideas for interesting projects I’ve been wanting to do for some time, but have not had the time, money, expertise, etc. So I’m opening it up to you dear reader. I’ll be posting briefs for each project here on nickzdon.com. If you’d like to contribute, be it time or money or insight, please respond (contact info to come). Shared ownership and recognition for the project is required by both parties. The projects range from small screen printing and poster installations, to mobile device specific websites. So if you’re interested keep your eyes and ears open, I’ll be posting the briefs one at a time soon. I’ll also be sending updates via Twitter http://twitter.com/nickzdon
Filed under: Work I've Done
