One Big Elevated Poster: Stage Design Tips

Its been a while I wrote something graphic design related. Currently majority of my work consists of designing structural stuff like an event stage. One of the most important factor of an event is where the host will do the emcee work, particularly a stage. Even if it is just a little raised area in the middle of the venue it is still considered as a stage. Here are some tips, rules and ideas before designing the stage, both simple and complex ones.

1. Initially, you should already have the idea of the area where the stage stands. A stage always consist of the backdrop (main background) and the platform (where the hosts and the event itself placed).
2. Get the width size of the area and importantly the size of the “floor to ceiling height”. The height will be your basis of the backdrop area of the stage. In all, the backdrop size consists of width and height.
3. The  height of the backdrop should not reach the ceiling. Try using at least 2 feet down from the floor to ceiling height. For example if you have 10 feet floor to ceiling height of the area, you may consider a 7-8 feet (height) backdrop size.
4. The platform’s width is the same with the width size of the backdrop unless the client wants a longer platform.
5. If necessary, work with stage and floorplan layout back to back at the same time for consistency of the size.
6. Once you got the basic sizes (Platform: Width, Depth, Height and backdrop: Width, Height) you may start designing the design itself.
7. Lastly, always check on the limits (like will the backdrop be using tarpaulin or bunch of die cutting all over the stage) before engaging on the real design.

Thats it, some tips before submerging yourself to the stage design. Design it with a mindset of thinking you are just creating a poster. Now go create that one big elevated poster.

Internet is serious business… can give you serious issues

We are online at least once a day, like what I always say, being online, through your mobile or in a computer, is very essential tool for our daily lives, it provide us with entertainment, time-wasting activity generator and of course profit. In the end, there should still be a limit of being online and not affecting your real life with all the crap the internet has to offer,  its time to cut off the access before it developed into a full-blown internet addiction, complete with having a session with an Internet addict anonymous group, which unfortunately exists.

Pointless Updates From Out of Nowhere
With the power of mobile internet, you can absolutely use the net anywhere. In the end , you don’t need to put unnecessary and very pointless Facebook status and tweets that only you and your personal stalker will care. Your personal stalker will deed every time you post a single update in directionless intervals, even if it is pointless (like you just ate your favorite ice cream), you saw a celebrity (slightly interesting) or you saw an Elephant crashing from the skies (that is very interesting.)

Your DVD/Beta/VHS/VCD/Laser Disc movie collection is… collecting dust
When was the last time you actually bought an original movie that is in a physical case? in my opinion, movies in physical format is still superior than watching your hard drive eating movies from your computer or other similar devices. It sucks whenever you watched a streaming movie buffers due to your internet speed. At least you are not worrying about disk space of your computer. It is also awkward to watch a movie, in a small screen, shaking like crazy while you are inside of a vehicle, with your headphones on your ears.

Getting REALLY angry in message boards, chatrooms, etc
Message boards is a way to interact with other people, some good but mostly dicks. Don’t go bonkers whenever you read something that is not right, like someone responding negatively from your entry. Maybe have a respond and have a good debate of some sort but don’t bring it up in real life. If you can’t let go your rage because someone fought you online with harsh words and emoticons with angry faces, which should not bother you in the first place, just find any flash games that involves explosions and shooting to release your anger.

You can’t last a short time without checking your email
It’s okay to check your email regularly, especially if it is work related, but there are times you don’t need to check your email, especially if you are in appropriate place and time, like in a funeral or having a well deserved vacation. You don’t need to keep on clicking the “new mail” every chance you can, even if it is clearly there is no fresh email arriving. It is not your problem if someone from a different time zone, country and with “all work no rest” mentality send you an email with a time stamp of 2:32 AM local time, and you go in a paranoid trance because you did not get a chance to read his email, at 2:32 AM, wherein you should be resting and catching some zzzs. That is why there is a determined work time at the office, that’s when you can check the email from a guy that has no life.

Constantly checking updates
Opposite of you constantly updating your status. This time, you are the one, probably the personal stalker of someone, stares at the screen, awaiting for any kind of update since you know the person is online. You just can’t wait to know what he ate for his lunch, was it a Tuna sandwich his dear mother made or a corned beef sandwich he taken from a gasoline station from the other side of the city? This disorder also applies to surfers who refreshes a web page with a patterned interval just to see a latest update, even if the writer of the site is somewhere taking a coffee break.

You are more productive in online games than in real life
You earn millions, has a set of houses and have a successful restaurant, all in online game formats of course. In real life, you barely reached a substantial income every month, you still pay to your run down house, and still eating in same old restaurant. If you can be productive in online games, even if the premise were ridiculous and easy to win, just use that drive in real life to be successful in real life. Who knows, using your own developed strategies raising cattle online is the way to lead you in a better tomorrow.

Just use the Internet in moderation, even if it is redundantly everyday. Just balanced everything and remember that the most important thing ever is that you have a life outside of all those cables and tubes called the Internet

The Business District Streets List of Randomness

I usually parked the car at the other side of the business district because for one, its only 60 pesos for the whole day and I can trust the car to those parking boys. My office is located at the other side of the business district means I have to walk a good 10-15 minutes to my office. Along the way there are a lot of  things I observed while trekking 2 areas before reaching the door of my office. Here are the business district streets list of randomness.

Foreigners Fast Walkers
I always noticed they walk unusually faster, like they need to run and find a toilet immediately. It’s like brisk walking but a little faster. I had foreigner bosses before and they walk in a faster phase as well, even if they are only going to walk to Starbucks which is only a building away. Even the ones who are just going to a nearby convenience store they walk faster as if they are avoiding someone attempting to stick a finger up their rears.

Fresh Grads Congrats
I can sense that they are  fresh graduates who just got their first job. We all know we are happy when we first hear the words “You are hired” by the HR personnel and we can see the road to our final victory, which is your dream life, starts sparkling all over you. You can see them usually in packs, looking in their best clothes and they talk really loud, like a microphone stuck in their throats, they even surpassed the noise of buses nearby. They greatly reminds me of set of freshmens back in college that will stand in the middle of hallway after class, chatting with words “dude” and “awesome” placed in between.

Coffee Shop Door Stop
I am attempting to write a witty description and  come up a fitting rhyme for the word coffee shop. I think a door stop perfectly fits to this observation. They are people just sitting outside of a coffee shop, probably waiting for something, killing time or plain “look at me, I am in a classy coffee shop that means I am classy” without ordering anything, a step in social-climbing. Like a door stopper,  they are just there, staring in the menu or to the people who passes by.

Rider sound blaster
Blasting their music to the point you can’t hear anything in the road except with that sound, except they are scooters, not suped-up cars. I strangely find them a lot in the business district especially around night, but they are not blasting music via a car but instead through a Vespa or locally known as scooter. The scooter riders will pass you by and have their music emanating throughout the streets, ranging from annoying novelty songs to the bass oriented music of hip hop.

Odd Ones Shenanigans
Everyday you will come across different set of people, minding their business and walking hurriedly hoping to reached the allowable morning grace period. Among them, you will have a high chance of seeing instances and people of pure randomness. For many years walking around the business district I saw a lot of them like:

• A sad looking clown
• Naked crazy woman blabbering about something
• Bunch of fishball vendors accelerating their carts like crazy to avoid “anti-food pushcart guys”
• Couple of foreigners brawling over a local exotic looking female
• Deranged woman peeing beside a convenience store
• Fast food mascot standing beside of a street, looking bored, probably waiting for his ride

Traveling on foot, of course in not crime infested place, can be entertaining since a lot of random things will just pop up just like that. It’s like one of those blog idea generators, something new will surface every single day. But damn it, the parking fee should be cheaper around in my office area so I can park the car over there and not cross a couple of big business districts. They should just ditch the “45 pesos for first 2 hours, and 10 pesos per additional hour” craptacular rule. Just give us a decent parking price and adequate space and everything will be alright, hopefully.

Green Zone: A Humble Movie Review

Green Zone is one of those movies where a majority of casual movie goers will enjoy but heavily scrutinize by critics and people who are obsessed of conducting anti-war demonstrations. Again, like always, I am a sucker with action movies and I love this movie.

Green Zone is the story of a group of soldiers led by Matt Damon as Miller, conducting raids to the supposed locations of WMD or Weapons of Mass Destruction, which is the basis of why US and its allies invade Iraq in the first place. Upon discovery of finding nothing on this locations provided by their intelligence he began questioning the credibility of the source, which leads him to his own personal investigations finding the terrible truth of the invasion. The action sequences on were top notched and you will probably think Damon is portraying a younger version of Jason Bourne of the Bourne Trilogy, which he also played. Many online movie goers refer Green Zone as Bourne 4, a prequel of some sort. The only difference between Bourne and Miller’s character is that one is a special operations guy and the other guy is the charismatic chief warrant officer.

The shootout sequence greatly reminds me of Black Hawk Down, complemented with the expected shaky cam. Paul Greengrass, the director should lessen the shaky cam shots because they were excessive. Shaky cams were heavily used during the first quarter and the last part of the movie Thank god they lessen those shots on the majority of the film.

I praised the performance of Khalid Abdalla (Freddy, Miller’s translator)  and Yigal Naor (General Al Rawi, one of the antagonists). Even though they are not Iraqi nationals, I think they were both from Israel, but they pulled off a very convincing Iraqis and you can see in their mindset that they want the Americans give them their most sought complete freedom of their country.

The film highlights all the internal blunders of the government that leads them to an unnecessary invasion and potential civil war. For the past three movies that I watched (Edge of Darkness, From Paris with Love, and now with Green Zone) there is always one bad ass CIA guy and this time he was portrayed by Brendan Gleeson. He is like one of the last guys trusted by Miller and one of the potential instruments of declaring the whole truth of the invasion to the world. Gleeson’s character clashes with the Pentagon asshole named Poundstone, portrayed by Greg Kinnear throughout the movie. As the CIA wants to uncover the truth through the assistance of Miller, Poundstone intervenes and tries to convince the world that the US occupation of Iraq is necessary.

Of course, this leads everybody chasing everyone else, and I love how the main climax ended and how we treated with the epilogue. The movie is good in delivering the conflicts of political bullshit of the war, but don’t expect it as a full on war movie like the Black Hawk Down. Expect very aggressive but few shaky cams and cover your ears due to amount of really loud gun battles.

I highly recommend this movie, have it in your DVD collection later, either pirated or the real original version. I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars of awesomeness.

Annoying Facebooking

Facebook is a great tool for your social life and a good way to reconnect with your old friends, the close ones of course, all the way back in your elementary days. Still, the most prized feature of Facebook, the status update, can be abused with borderline annoying and most of the time unnecessary entries. Having Facebook as a mobile application can also be considered as a sin, because you can post pointless status anywhere like in a posh mall eating your ice cream or seating outside of Starbucks looking fabulous without ordering anything. Here are some of the annoying status that plaque Facebook servers.

Attention Whore
They usually post something that will make them good, or in a way praise themselves in a narcissistic manner. Examples like “I completed a 1,000 meter dash without any sweat” or “I just got my car a new set of wheels, lolz”.

Attention Whore 2: The Emotional Edition
They use the Facebook to release his emotional outburst in a confusing manner. The posts will make you ask what the hell happened to you and he will answer in a subtle way that you want to hit his head repeatedly with a keyboard. They have problems and want to share it to the world through Facebook, but his online friends will have to endure of figuring out the problem in the first place.

Gamer Inviter
We all admittedly play games in Facebook and I am a Restaurant City and Tower Bloxx addict. But please don’t bombard the Facebook walls with game invites repeatedly. One time ignore is enough so stop reinviting me again to play this games.

My lovelife is broadcasted to the world
Good for you if you have the greatest partner in the whole world, which you probably also told to your ex-significant others that they were the greatest partner in the whole world. If you want to talk about your love shenanigans either negative or positive, talk to your real life friends in real life than post it with people who has no absolutely idea about your private life.

I comment to my own status
You post a status, then in few seconds you will place a follow-up comment, then in few minutes you will post another comment even without any contribution from other users. It is like you are talking to yourself like you are having a schizophrenia moment. For example, your status is “I will have a great party on Saturday” then you will leave a comment on your own status with “That party will be awesome, YEAH” then for no reason at all you will place another comment on your own status with “LOLZ”

I answer this quiz you also answer this puhleeze
Like the Gamer Inviter, this time they will splatter your Facebook wall with invitations for quizzes, mostly pointless like are you a lefty or a righty quiz. If you ignored it, 90% of time they will invite you again to answer those quizzes. The more you answer and add the quiz results on your Facebook page, the layout will became more and more like the dreaded chopsuey emo layout of Myspace and the only thing missing is all those twinkling stars.

I unload a big load of crap in my toilet! POST IT! I brushed my teeth! POST IT! I am all alone in this cubicle because of overtime work! POST IT! I am a lefty in this quiz! POST IT! I am taking a bath! POST IT!
Sadly, there are a lot of them in Facebook that will post anything, including the ones that are very unnecessary like taking a shower. They constantly post and won’t last a short period of time without posting any new updates. They probably have at least 10 status updates per day and most of them are pointless.

Facebook Status should have a point, not annoying and must be used properly for the good of the world.