I still have problems drawing in public. I’d love to do it more often but I get extremely conscious about people looking over my shoulder to see what it is I’m doodling in my book. Is it performance anxiety? I wish I’d find it in myself to care less about what other people think and just do something with very little inhibition or hesitation.

>>Rommel

Been out of touch for a while, bogged down by lots of stuff that’s either too early or too confidential to post at the moment.

One good thing that happened this month is the wonderful feature from Rogue Magazine. Rogue has always been one of my favorite magazines because of its great photography, design sense and informative articles. And did I mention the beautiful women inside the pages?

Anyway, 16 of us were featured in Rogue’s Illustrator Folio. The amount of talent from the other illustrators is insane! So they don’t need me to post their work here. I already get insecurity attacks every time I look at their works. I’m just happy for being included in the bunch.

Thanks also goes out to Charlene Sawit interviewed me for my profile. I met Charlene when I interned in McCann Erickson over 4 years ago. I’m glad it was her who got assigned to me.

Kahon from Rommel Joson on Vimeo.

Here’s our first short film, done way back when I was in college. Forgive the crudeness. I still have a hard time watching it again, but hey, it was our first.

The REAL ad came out today. This is the unapproved ad I made. I enjoyed doing it and since it will never see print, I thought I’d post it anyway.

Kasalan siguro ng mga double decker ham and egg sandwich na kinakain ko buong bakasyon. Bakit hindi, nakakadalawa ako bawat araw sa loob ng halos dalawang buwan. Sa dami kong kinain, lumobo ako ng 20 lbs, hanggang pumalo na ako sa 179 pagtungtong sa unang araw ng 2nd year high school.

Laking gulat ng mga kaklase ko pagkakita nila sa akin. Ako naman, hindi ko naintindihan ang pinagsasabi nila hanggang makita ko ang sarili sa litrato. Tumaba na pala ako ng husto.

Ayokong tumaba. Siguro dahil sa banidad, o baka naman hindi lang talaga ako nasanay sa mga panunukso ng mga feeling-gwaping na high school jocks sa locker room matapos ng PE, o mga atrebidang saleslady na paulit-ulit na pinamukha sa akin na nakaharang ako sa counter dahil ang taba ko. “Hoy taba” umaalingawngaw pa rin sa tainga ko tuwing hinahawi ko ang kurtina ng nakaraan.

Kaya nga’t pilit akong nagpababa ng timbang simula noong high school, una dahil sa ayoko nang matukso at pangalawa, dahil na rin sa kalusugan. Ngayon at treinta na ako, malalapit-lapit na rin siguro akong tamaan ng mga sakit-sakit sa katawan. Mabuti nang ma-preserve ang youthful glow habang maaga.

Mahirap maging physically fit. Maslalo na kong buong buhay mo mas hilig mong magbasa at mag-drawing kaysa mag-basketball. Pero sinusubukan naman namin ng kapatid ko. Noong linggo, sumali kami sa una naming 5 kilometer run. Sana naman ngayong 2009 mag-umpisa na kaming magka-beach body. Kaya nga mas gusto kong nagbabakasyon sa Baguio kaysa sa beach. At least sa Baguio, di mo kailangan maging mukhang miyembro ng Spartan army.

Reinventing Comics

Comics smart guy Scott McCloud speaks on Ted Talks about the future shape of comics. It’s basically stuff that’s in his book Reinventing Comics, wherein he talks about applying comics onto an “infinite canvas” with the use of digital technology.

This was written way back in the late 90s and despite the proliferation of webcomics, digital comics won’t be replacing the printed page anytime soon. Granted that comic scans are now widely available, the format still makes use of the printed page and doesn’t adapt the content to the peculiarities of the digital medium.

Hypercomics

Comics geeks interested in formalist comics experiments may also find the work of Daniel Merlin Goodbrey very interesting. I studied his work in preparation for my thesis and this particular hypercomics piece blew me away when I first saw it.

I became interested in how comics could tell non-linear stories. The way the images were composed also reminded me of Chris Ware’s work, another comics genius.

image courtesy of Picture Poetry

Imagine my surprise when I found out Goodbrey was a speaker at the Comica Festival when I was there for the Lingua Comica Project. He presented his work in hypercomics and this piece in particular.

Goodbrey presenting his work during the Comica Festival. Image courtesy of Linguacomickers

Inside one of the conference rooms of the ICA. Image courtesy of Linguacomickers

My co-collaborator Paola Cortese and I sitting inside the conference room

I found out it was a collaborative project created for the wall of the Institute of Contemporary Arts as part of a previous Comica Festival. Goodbrey applied McCloud’s concept of an infinite canvas through the use of a flash-based zooming system called the Tarquin Engine.

Another web based comic is When I Am King, created by demian5. The piece has been in the internet for ages. It’s irreverent and nonsensical but a pretty fun read.

Comics in the Digital Age

As we move into the future, even more printed content will migrate to the digital world. Already, economic and technological upheavals are changing the face of publishing (read Time.com’s article on “Books Gone Wild: The Digital Age reshapes literature”). In Japan, “novels” are being created and read on mobile phones. Now, there’s a comic reader application for the iPhone. Even an established traditional comic publisher like DC Comics has established their own webcomics division called Zuda Comics.

Now, I don’t know what comics will be like in the future. I, for one, still like reading it the old fashioned way – printed on paper. That way you can smell the pages and curl up with in bed. But make no mistake, the future will come one way or the other.

This was supposed to be a rant but something happened along the way. I started out pretty pissed because I ordered a book from ebay international last December 10 only to have it arrive in the Philippines on January 8. I paid over 900 pesos for the book, over 600 of which was for the shipping so I sort of expected that the package would be delivered to my house. But the book was shipped through the United States Postal Service and when that happens, the package goes through Philpost. But instead of having the book waiting for me at home two days ago, I got a card from the post office basically telling me to pick up my parcel and that there was a 35 pesos service fee I had to pay. Okay, I half expected that. I also got mail sent through UK’s Royal Mail service last year and I had to pick it up from the Makati Post Office (which is another story in itself).

Anyway, the card I got didn’t give an exact address for the post office, just a barely legible ink stamped mark on the corner which said QCCP NIA ROAD (although when I first saw it, it read like CCP). So I had to search the post office’s website for branches and clarify the address by phone and get a map to plan my trip. All this preparation defeats the purpose of having to pay for shipping if you ask me.

So I headed for the post office, partly thankful that the package didn’t get lost in the Christmas mail and that I was finally going to get my hands on my book despite having to wait a month for it to arrive.

Now, this is the part where I had a change of heart. I had my sister along with me and we entered the post office through the back area. The area felt like a warehouse with its large open bay doors where they wheeled in bags of mail through trolleys. The place  looked very much like a government office with two rows of aging tables surrounded by cubby holes, shelves and inboxes. On one side was a wall with teller windows, almost like a bank.

I hadn’t been that far inside a post office before and I was actually charmed by how antiquated it all looked. I could see bags and bags of mail being sorted from behind the tellers. There were shelves stacked with parcels and packets and I wish I could just go inside and take pictures of it all.

As it turns out, we were in the wrong part of the post office and the parcel claiming was at the front of the building pictured below. Now this place looked even more like a bank with its marble counter and its teller windows. The counter girls were old amiable women that smiled when they took my card to have it checked.

I got my package quickly enough after claiming it through the customs window and paying the service fee. Finally getting the book was a bit anti-climactic after having to wait a month and going to all the trouble just to pick it up. What I did like about the whole thing was visiting the post office. I wish I had more pictures to show for my trip. But I just didn’t want the security guards harassing me for taking pictures. Nowadays, they think everybody with a camera is a terrorist.

I was so charmed by the place – with its steel P.O. boxes and the old teller women and even the postmen with their blue shirts and their worn out leather messenger bags – that I would have felt guilty writing an entry lambasting the Philippine Post Office. What I did get out of it was the pleasure of receiving actual, physical mail. Nothing beats holding something tangible in one’s hand knowing that it traveled oceans to get there and that someone on the other side of the world actually took the time to pack and send it to you.

So, I think it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to go low-fi one of these days; maybe send the people we love an actual letter mailed through the post office. There is something to be said about exerting the effort to buy stamps, mailing a letter and then waiting for it to arrive. When it finally does, there’s the anticipation of opening a sealed package meant only for another person’s eyes.  It’ll probably be quicker just to deliver the letter personally, but I think having a stamped envelope arrive on one’s doorstep from a friend feels strangely more intimate and charming.

We rushed my Dad to the Chinese General Hospital Emergency Room at around 4am this morning. He was coughing very badly and his nose started bleeding profusely. There were blood splatters on the edge of the bed, the floor and even on his legs. He tried to stem the bleeding with tissues and towels, so the floor was littered with blood soaked and crumpled tissues that look strangely like paper rose blossoms. It wasn’t the first time it happened, but this time there was so much blood that he really had no choice but to allow us to take him to the hospital.

Blood Pressure Gauge na de gulong. Nakalagay malapit sa receiving table ng emergency room.

The emergency room waiting area at 4am was peaceful. My Mom took my Dad into the emergency room after the preliminary check-up while my sister and I stayed in the waiting room. There were around 10 people waiting for relatives who had already been rushed inside.  I sat myself beside the emergency room entrance so I could get a good drawing view of the people. Every time the door opened, I smelled antiseptic. I snatched what could from the snippets of conversation in the waiting room. One group had a police man for a family member. They were asking if he was conscious. An old woman who I assumed was his mother was starting to cry and the others tried to console her.

May kamag-anak na pulis na pinasok sa emergency room. Nauna sila sa amin kaya pagdating namin sa emergency room, nasa loob na yung pulis. Tinatanong nila kung may discount ang mga pulis. Kaso pang-Manila Police lang ang discount. Nagkataong taga Quezon City ang kapamila nila.

Once in awhile, a new patient came through the waiting room doors. Twice, unconscious women were wheeled in with a gurney after having been brought over by a tricycle. One of them was a fleshy looking woman with short hair. She was as white as marble and naked from the waist up when they wheeled her in. A small towel covered her breasts and her left arm dangled from the gurney. I heard she didn’t make it.

Another group came in after having been injured from a collision between a car and a tricycle. The tricycle driver was pushed through the emergency room in a wheel chair grimacing in pain. Then there was the guy who came out of the room with a patch on his forehead. He had a big red blotch on his shoulder that I assumed was blood. It looked strangely like tomato juice.

My sister and I had to buy medicine from the Mercury outside the hospital to lower my Dad’s blood pressure. By the time we came back at 530am, Umagang Kay Ganda was playing from a TV set in the waiting room. The people inside had increased and so did the chatter. We got the medicine to my Dad and we waited a bit more and I drew what could. There was a lot of waiting involved between having to lower my Dad’s pressure to hospital personnel attending to the more life threatening cases. Although, seeing how much blood was coming out his nose a while ago looked pretty life threatening at the time.

My Dad and Mom finally came out of the emergency room at 6am. We were all hungry. I had an unusually strong craving for McDonald’s, probably because everybody was talking about the “First Love” commercial and I was looking at some new McDonald’s packaging earlier today.  I hadn’t eaten McDonald’s in months because I was cutting down on the fatty stuff. But that morning, I wanted to eat a Sausage McMuffin with Egg. It must have been catharsis, I don’t know. When I finally opened the wrapper, the muffin was all cheesy and beefy and I remembered how much I used to love eating these things after overtimes. I felt a bit guilty eating it and I joked that if I kept on eating one of these, they’d have to take me to the emergency room.

in a meeting, a mind can wander

brainstorming in salcedo park

office mates

I wonder how much time we spend in meetings, holed up inside our fluorescent lit board rooms. If I counted the hours, would it amount to a small life span?

I have been in meetings that have lasted from morning till night and quick meetings that lasted only a few minutes. I’ve been in big meetings and in some that would have been better if the agenda were sent in an email. Then there are meetings where 80% of the time is spent on gossip and others where nobody really knows anything at all. Some meetings leave you pumped and ready for action, while some leave you more confused than when you came in. Some meet just to create the appearance of productivity while some hate meetings so much they zone out completely.

The fate of the world is decided in meetings. Bombing Hiroshima was probably decided after a meeting. The invasion of Iraq began in meetings thousands of miles away from where the first shot was fired. Even good and bad art is decided in meetings while creativity is produced by committees. Sometimes things actually get done, other times the loudest voice in a meeting dictates the outcome.

They say that nothing is certain in life except death and taxes. Well, in our business nothing is certain except the promise of even more and more meetings.

Download away! Sounds interesting.

Taken from cpluv.com

“Modernist legend, Massimo Vignelli is offering a free downloadable version of
The Vignelli Canon

This digital edition has been conceived as a book that could be reached directly by downloading it directly to your computer, making it available to the whole world, bypassing the problems caused by traditional distribution.

Divided in two sections, Intangible issues and Tangible issues, the book describes the basic rules of our work.”