I was in the line at Wal*Mart and noticed this crazy little packaging change on a Snickers bar. Awhile ago I blogged on how Starbucks was using their original logo this year on select drinks to help celebrate their anniversary. It would appear that Snickers is doing the same from the look of it (from what I have heard it sounds like it is their 75th anniversary). Apparently radical marketing like this works- I bought a bar just to show my wife when I got home… I didn’t even want the candy bar.

Well… it appears that a very promising graphic design entity, Create Magazine, just bit the dust. I received an email today saying that Jupitermedia Corporate Inc purchased the magazine and is merging it with their magazine, ‘Dynamic Graphics’.

I remember when Create Magazine first came out. It was so full of promise, it had a great design sense to it, and it was locationally relevant by publishing region-specific issues that contained news specifically going on in my neck of the woods. We’ll see how this all pans out, but if this new homepage is any indication then I’m not going to hold my breath (man that design is nasty… granted my blog has seen better days, but if you own a domain like graphics.com you’d think there’d be something more to show then ads, ugly banners, and unnecessary columns).

Que sirrah, sirrah…

On Wednesday a photo was published depicting missiles being launched by Iran’s revolutionary guard. For those fearing Iran as a weapon-saavy loose cannon, this may have been a disturbing image. However, this story proved to be more comical than frightening in the end…

For you ‘photoshoppers’ out there, a quick glance will easily reveal a very bad ‘cloning’ job. For some reason Sepah News, the media arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, decided to fabricate an additional rocket into the photo using a cloned smoke trail and rocket from the real rockets. There a couple things that give this image away as an obvious dupe: 1) The smoke billows at the bottom are identical… that just doesn’t happen… 2) the rockets are the same, just altered in size (this isn’t a huge deal as this would be hard to discern in the real world), and 3) there has been additional brushed in ’smoke’ in the rocket trail that has been obviously added (this is one defect that I have not seen talked about in many sources that are reporting on this). There are also a few clumped areas of offending pixels that are the result of a bad clone sourcing. This obvious manipulation was confirmed a day later when another photo surfaced depicting not 4, but 3 rockets (top photo: photoshopped version, bottom photo: original photo).

The funny part is this: BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites aired/published this photo without even doubting its validity. This had to have gone through an imaging department at some point. You’re telling me that no one caught this prior to publishing? Umm… oops.

This begs the question, “Do you always believe everything you read on the newspaper or watch on the television?” Why in the world would Iran try to (badly) fake an additional missile into their photographs? Well thanks for asking, here’s my take- militant countries like Iran know that one of their most powerful weapons (even more so than missiles and gun powder) is the US media. They know that the US as a nation gobbles this stuff up. We consume it, we integrate it, we allow only these news stories (that have been selectively picked to cause commotion) to shape our world view.

What gave me a chuckle was that this is not the first time this has happened. Iran was caught photoshopping another news story claiming to have discovered US weapons in Iran just a few months earlier; again, another blatantly botched ‘clone job’.

In addition to the obvious benefit of getting a good laugh out of this, I’m glad that this happened. Maybe now we’ll all be a bit more inclined to wake up and smell the pixels.

One of things I love about being a graphic designer, is the people I come in contact with throughout my life. I thoroughly enjoy bragging about my friends! I had the privilege of working with Drew Dunlap for a few years back when I was doing in-house print work with a company called Group Imaging. Drew is a talented sketch artist and designer. He just posted some new pieces on his blog that blend his sketching ability with his photoshop know-how. I really like the unique style and personality that he put into these. Great job Drew- these pieces look phenomenal!

There is a hilarious blog post over at graphicPUSH regarding the interaction between a designer and his ’special’ client. The laughter has been helping me through my day; the sad part is that clients like this exist… abundantly.

My favorite excerpt:

ME: “This is great feedback. Thank you. I really think we should avoid most animation all together. Studies have shown that it really distracts from the rest of the page and makes it harder to read. I honestly feel the blue Helvetica really conveys a sense of professionalism, which is what we want to establish with your offshore banking operation.”

THEM: “I talked to my wife and my friend and this guy I used to work with and looked at some of the drawings my son did for the website design, and I really would like the headline in neon green and set in the typefontface Comic Sans. I use if for my church newsletter and I think it would be perfect. I think it really makes a statement about the brand’s market leadership and being a disruptive post-Web 2.5 startup.”

ME: “OK sounds like you have some experience designing so let’s try the idea. Here is a new comp with the headline in Comic Sans. As you can see it really clashes with the rest of the design. I think sometimes it works great like your church newsletter, but might not be the best option for an offshore bank targeting senior Mafia members and corrupt hedge fund managers.”

And you hired a designer… why?