Sunday, December 28, 2008

Sam Brown at Gel Conference

Sam Brown at Gel Conference is a wonderful video of a talk by Sam Brown, the artist behind Exploding Dog dot com, focusing on his creative process, his failures, and his upcoming book Amazing Rain (none of which are mutually exclusive).

Sam spoke at this year's Gel conference, which stands for "Good Experience Live."

Surely you're thinking: great, that title told me nothing about this conference. And don't call me Shirley. You're right. In their own words

"Instead of focusing on just one thing (design, technology, user experience, business, etc.) like many conferences, Gel touches on many things. This challenges attendees to find, and learn from, the patterns that underlie good experience, even in disciplines vastly different from their own..."

So that's a roundabout way of saying it's a conference about nothing, or everything. And Sam did their logo. The point is, I really like Sam's work, and I would post the video, but it auto starts. So just go check it out already. 

Sam's process is simple: people email or post phrases, and he draws minimalist cartoons based on those phrases.  He has a delicate, naïf simplistic style that is totally hip and precious at the same time.  The unsteadiness of his lines is slightly reminiscent of old Snoopy... with a dash of Parkinson's, only totally indie. (Clearly, I've been reading too much Pitchfork. I digress.)

At the end of the video he does an impromptu drawing from an audience suggestion, making it well worth your 6 minutes.  (Well, an audience member gets in a one-liner that I thought made the video worthwhile). Enjoy!

(From Kottke)

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