The inaugural Little Black Blog post was on the subject of passion, and how successful people overwhelmingly cite passion, and a love for what they do as the primary force behind their greatest achievements in life and business.
I was reminded of this yesterday when I happened on a televised interview with Patrick Swayze from 2008. Out of respect for Mr. Swayze, who sadly lost his battle with cancer on Monday, I stopped channel flipping and watched.
It seems Patrick Swayze too is among those overachievers who credit their obsessive/passionate nature with giving them the drive to succeed in life. The trick is to recognize the passion and then channel it constructively. He also gives some great motivational tips on overcoming obstacles and fear management, by the way.
Aside from his onscreen personas I didn’t know much about Patrick Swayze, but I gained deep respect for him as a person after watching this, and it made me sad that he’s gone at such a young age.
Okay, the high drama of the 2009 Tour de France is over and while I managed to refrain from using Little Black Blog as a forum for venting, I couldn’t resist this parting glance at an ad from 1st Endurance that was published in ROAD Magazine, featuring Team Astana and their naked buddy. Yep. Their naked buddy… If you don’t believe me, have a look.
First the ad, and then a detail from said ad…
This one comes with a tip of the hat to @frankadman for posting this great ad from 1963 to his Tumblr blog Talking To Strangers.
Tumblr, are you on Tumblr yet?
Here at Little Black Blog we lo-o-o-ve coffee. And great design. So just imagine the heart palpitations when you combine the two! Earlier this month Webdesigner Depot did just that, with this compilation of “50 Beautifully Delicious Coffee Designs“. Enjoy!…
In Canada the language laws require all packaging to be bilingual – English and French, and both languages must be given equal prominence, which means, letter for letter, all the type has to be the same size, in both languages.
For designers it’s a balancing act that often teeters on the edge, because French invariably requires more verbiage, to say the same things as English and when you’re faced with detailed blocks of legal, the copy can easily overwhelm things. It takes a lot of finagling to ensure that all that copy (which no one ever reads) doesn’t completely destroy the integrity of the design.
But designers are a hearty bunch. Those of us who do a lot of packaging and signage learned, long ago, to take the space requirements for two languages into consideration at the beginning of a design project. I pride myself on the fact that while I can’t speak French without embarrassing myself, I can at least, typeset it, as ably as any Francophone. So I feel a bit petty bringing up this next point, but I feel it has to be said.
I’m unimpressed with the fact that while those of us in “the rest of Canada” are programmed, early-on, to consider the French language to be of equal importance to English, the same does not apply toward English, in Quebec.
In Quebec, English copy must, legally, be 50% of the size of French copy. This strikes me as discriminatory, elitist and, frankly, unfair. I did a bit of research on the subject and uncovered a couple of other issues related to the topic that I might as well share here.
In Quebec, new immigrant students are not permitted to attend English schools, whether or not they come from Anglo families.
Last year, an Irish pub in downtown Montreal came under investigation by the Office québécois de la langue française (essentially the language police) for having classic Irish signage, in English, inside the pub.
Here’s my point. Everyone on earth knows that Quebec is the French province in Canada. We’ve all heard the arguments for preserving the unique French flavor of the province and I even agree with a lot of it, but I don’t think they’re in any danger of losing that “uniqueness” at this point, so what’s with the discriminatory attitude toward English and English speakers? And why is it allowed to continue in this day and age? What do you think?
The Jerusalem Post has an article today, regarding Tuesday’s launch of jerusalem.com. A new website that, in the words of co-founder and CEO Michael Weiss will “…create a bridge between a physical location, Jerusalem, and people on the other side of the planet.”
The site itself is a commercial venue, divided into various hubs for things like tourism, religion, prayer, real estate and city culture. It’s a solid attempt to bring the vibrant and diverse personality of today’s Jerusalem to the rest of the world. And they paid $750,000 for the domain name.
From personal experience I can tell you that any domain name with the word “Black” in it has already been scooped up by some enterprising company or individual, hoping to turn it around and make big bucks on the resale. And from time to time we hear about big money being spent to secure a particular domain, so my curiosity was picqued and I did a bit of searching to see just how lucrative a business it actually is.
So with no further ado, here’s a list of the top prices paid for domain names (keeping in mind that often, the amount of cash that actually changes hands is different, when other benefits to the seller, like advertising deals, etc. are factored in.)
10. vodka.com
$3 million
9. wine.com
$3.3 million
8. korea.com
$5 million
7. asSeenonTV.com
$5 million
6. casino.com
$5.5 million
5. business.com
$7.5 million
4. diamond.com
$7.5 million
3. porn.com
$9.5 million
2. fund.com
$10 million
1. sex.com
$12 million
Filed under: polls
Everybody loves a good poll and this one is particularly scintillating, finger-on-the-pulse type stuff. So go ahead and take it, ok?
The protests in Iran are a testing ground for the overall effectiveness of social media.
The Iranian government has banned foreign journalists from reporting on “unauthorized” demonstrations in the wake of recent elections, but that hasn’t stemmed the flow of news from the protest zones, thanks to Twitter. Non Iranian twitterers have even gone so far as to set up proxy sites to host Iranians who’ve been shut down (oh yes, the Iranian govt is trawling Facebook and Twitter, hunting down dissidents).
The Daily Dish blog author Andrew Sullivan started a ‘green 4 Iran’ hue-volution, when he changed his blog colors to green, in solidarity with Iranian protestors. The word got out, and now millions on Facebook and Twitter have tinted their avatars nuke green, in response.
In the short term, news is getting out for now, and that’s a good thing. Long term? Just a reminder that this is a region where dissidents are either jailed or killed to prevent us from hearing their voices.
I love graphic design that predates the camera. Makes the simple poster feel like “Art”. Here’s a great example from Color + Design blog, a series of circus ads/posters.
