Month: July 2014

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Alex Heberling Leave a comment

valesbloggingadventures:

fukawasama:

nooby-banana:

thesanityclause:

And now it’s a poster… thing.

I’ll stop trying to be a graphic designer now.

Everyone has a moment when they think “I am a bad artist.” and they think that because they see a level of skill they have not achieved yet. If this is the case, every artist ever is a bad artist, because every artist ever has had some idea, some plan, some goal of a skill level or creation that they have not achieved yet. And that’s good. Learning and growth and moving forward are all good things, so instead of trying to be some fictionalized version of a good artist, let’s all be bad artists together.

I WANT THIS POSTER ON MY WALL I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING

can i just

hug

the living

crap

out of whoever made this im crying

I am going to print this and hang it on my wall or something. It’s perfect. 

Animated GIF of Oprah Winfrey holding back tears, nodding affirmatively and biting her lip.

Untitled

Alex Heberling Leave a comment

How do we feel about this possibility? I was kind of trying for a best of both worlds between swooshy and classy from the other day. You can also see some ghosting of the erased pencil where I was playing with tails off the H over the ues. Feedback welcome!

The True Price of Fast Fashion

Alex Heberling Leave a comment

The True Price of Fast Fashion

sugarbooty:

This was a *great* article and imagine my excitement when I saw that my homegirl Tennille and her awesome clothing line nakimuli is also featured in it! Yay! Nakimuli is amazing and also caters to lots of different sizes for women; goes up to 3XL I think, but she also does custom orders for individuals who don’t fit into the confines of traditional sizing.
Anyways, I want to say that although I agree with pretty much everything in this article, I don’t want to reserve judgement for the socially/economically/environmentally conscious people who may not be able to afford indie clothing or who cannot sew/aren’t good at sewing/don’t have time to sew. Making your own clothes and buying more expensive indie labels is not for everyone and that’s okay. I don’t think there is a simple solution to shifting our cultural view of consumerist fashion, but having conversations about it is such a great start, and might be the push some of you need to start moving in a new direction. I started sewing in college cause I thought it was so much fun, but the more time I spend doing it, the more I have become critical of my own shopping habits and relationship to disposable fashion and fads, and I started recognizing how my own spending was more often than not fueled by emotions, whether positive or negative. Something to celebrate? Let’s go buy something cute! Rough week? I should treat myself to a trip to the mall (or, let’s face it, to the internet). It’s not a habit I want to continue, and thankfully sewing has helped me curb a lot of it…although now I just spend money on beautiful fabric :/

There’s a very interesting book on this subject called Overdressed, for anyone who’s interested in reading more about this!  In the book, the author contacted a bunch of Chinese garment factories as a buyer and I think even visited several. (It’s been nearly two years since I read it so the details are fuzzy.)  But anyway, it’s a very interesting starting point for looking at the issues of fast fashion, though I wish the author had gone into the socioeconomic issues mentioned by sugarbooty above.  It’s not discussed much in the book, but it’s a very important facet of this conversation.

Dashcon, and what you can do about it

Alex Heberling Leave a comment

jimintomystery:

So last night I was like “Wait, there’s going to be a Tumblr convention?  It’s in Schaumburg?  It’s happening this weekend?  I wonder how that’s going?”

What you mainly need to know about Dashcon is that it’s based around the Superwholock/Night Vale/Homestuck side of Tumblr, and it frantically raised $17,000 Friday night to avoid being shut down.  There’s more to come, I’m sure.

I’d rather reserve judgement until Monday, but I’ve read about this before.  It happened with Meeting of the Mines (2014), Las Pegasus Unicon (2013), WrestleFanFest (2007), Tentmoot (2003), Ultimate Fantasy (1982), and surely others I haven’t heard of.  The pattern is simple:

  1. Some people have an ambitious idea for a fan convention
  2. They expect a huge success and book beyond their budget
  3. The con starts and Friday ticket sales won’t cover booking costs
  4. Organizers scramble to keep the show running
  5. People speculate that the whole thing is a scam
  6. Everybody is assured ticket sales will be up for Saturday
  7. Guest are not paid, pay their own way, or don’t show up
  8. Attendance is way down on Sunday because everyone’s heard about the trainwreck
  9. The organizers either skip town or get cornered to pay what they can

So far Dashcon is somewhere in Stage 7.

I’ve seen people calling Dashcon a scam, but as with many of the cons I listed above, I don’t think so.  They certainly could be scams, but there have to be easier ways to swindle people.  To me the organizers always come across as sincere dreamers who overestimate fandom’s power and underestimate the difficulty of promoting a live show.  That’s what makes these fiascoes so unsettling—somebody is getting driven to financial ruin and having their wildest dreams crushed.

What’s far more troubling, though, is that each failed convention yields a group of gobsmacked fans, who believe they’ve witnessed an unprecedented, unrepeatable debacle.  Which makes sense, if you think about it.  The odds aren’t great that My Little Pony fans would know about WrestleFanFest.  Minecraft gamers aren’t likely to remember a Star Trek convention from over 30 years ago.  So fandom as a whole is never fully inoculated against this problem, and never evolves to guard against it.

Dashcon, more than any of these other cons, was clearly founded on a love of fandom for its own sake.  So here’s what I’d suggest to anyone who shares that love: Fandom doesn’t need another convention, it needs wisdom, shared by people who’ve researched and experienced these things across multiple communities.  Someone, somewhere, is going to try this again in 2015, and it’ll be a pity if they remain ignorant of the lessons of 2014.