It's the thought that counts

So here I go, and only one month late (sorry Michael).

What brand do I think gives a great branding message? Knog. Knog is cool. No debate. Sweet company. Knog is a clever, playful company that appeals to clever, playful cyclists. Sometimes they are downright bizarre, but the best people usually are at the very least mildly eccentric.

Let's take a gander at my one of my favorite products from Knog - the Frog.

Knog Frog! The name rhymes, it comes in lots of pretty colors, and it's squishy! By far the coolest bike light ever made. Do I have one? No. Buzz off - I'm poor.

The Frog also conveniently ties in with their other, higher-powered bicycle lights - the toads, the bullfrogs, and the gekkos. I feel like relating bike lights to nocturnal reptiles that can cling to almost any surface was genius, and the form language is fabulously coherent and tied together.

Quite possibly the best part: the product descriptions. This is how they describe the Bullfrog light:

"2am. There was a panicked tapping at my window. It was AXL Rose (again!). He was soaking wet, heart-broken and not on any type of drug. I cuddled him close to my bosom and he pleaded for me to enter the darkness with him. I flat out refused and instead gave him my Bullfrog. The big guy immediately cheered up, impressed by its waterresistant silicon casing, built-in mounting latch and a light show with more punch than Chinese democracy."

Check out their wares here. And by all means, feel free to buy me a present. I've had my eye on those love and hate gloves for some time now....





Who doesn't love lesbians and small children with mustaches?

You got doored

Oh, I'm bad. Very, very bad. Trying to be good, but jiminy...

Anyway, how have I progressed this quarter? Hmm...I like to start with the bad and end with the good, so I'm a dismal failure at doing the things I don't particularly feel like doing. 3D modeling still gets my goat. I'm just not into it. It gives me a headache. I feel completely incapable of making an Alias model look anything like my sketches. I have promised myself, time and time again, that I would take some time and really put effort into learning it well. Let's face it - I hate it. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. But...maybe I could learn Rhino? I've heard good things...Solid Works, too, but I feel like that stuff is kind of primitive. Dunno...something I need to work on. Focus on, even...

Technology, too. Bleh. I don't know anything about it. I'm not particularly interested, either.

But! About that sketching...it's fun now. Really, really fun. I'm actually sitting here, sketching tea kettles, watching Weeds, and having a grand ol' time. Not literally sketching right now, but...will be. Soon. And was.

I'm not sure if I actually got any better at it, but I have gained a new perspective. Designers sketch to explore forms. I can draw something really stupid looking, and now I can look at it and say "Ok, that sketch makes me a little nauseas. Time to move on." Sketching ugly stuff is almost as helpful as sketching pretty stuff. At the very least it will help me decide what I definitely don't want to do.

And...I'm going to Tool this winter. Yay! And I think yoga is becoming a fairly integral part of being a balanced designer. Just a side note.

So, I think I'm more or less fine with how things are going. We'll just have to see.