Atlas and His Impostors. Six years ago I designed a logo with a friend and former boss of mine, GoFish Creative. He hired me to design the figure for this Atlas Capital Management logo, he directed the color and put together the type.

Since then, I’ve often been contacted by companies wanting to use it and I have to educate them about copyright. They tell me they can’t find that company online, which is immaterial. They want to just “tweak” it and use it, thinking to save cost, which is again copyright infringement, sloppy seconds, and not that way I work on a logo design.

Keeping this in mind, I was using Google Image Search the other night, where you can upload images to the search box to find where that occurs (or variations thereupon) on the internet. Fortunately, much of my work has been reposted with links back to me. However, when I came to this old logo, I found no less than 17 different companies (not including the actual client company), using it for their logo, including one logo company in Australia that was selling it (they may want to beware of lawsuits if they’re selling copyrighted material).

I think of it as a strange kind of flattery to be in such demand, though I’d prefer to be paid for my work rather than to have it redistributed and basically bastardized. Where Atlas Capital Management owns the copyright, it’s not for me to pursue any damages, of course, but I’m in the process now of contacting those companies to let them know that their business is looking cheap and unprofessional, and that if they paid a designer for the logo, they’d want to get their money back and come to me next time to have it done correctly.

Obviously any designer needs to show their work, and the internet is standard now, but it also has that hazard of dishonest individual and companies purloining things, creating mistrust in the economy. Even now, I feel a need to lay over a bit of a watermark on the logo as a precaution even where I’m exposing theft.

Stop Map. Five years of running around the Salt Lake City-Provo Metro, I’ve tracked a lot of traffic and stop lights. Filtering all those tracks for speed, the patterns of where the freeway backs up and which major roads have a better flow versus the ones that are commonly slow. In town, I’m particularly noticing unsurprising areas as downtown Salt Lake, Sugarhouse, Park City, State Street in Orem and through Murray. On the interstate, few people are surprised by the Point of the Mountain congestion, as well as the stretch from north Orem to American Fork, and the I-15/215 interchange. As the graphic shows, I don’t ever remember slow traffic on I-215 or I-80.

Admittedly, these are my own trips which rarely involve a commute, but do overlap all times of day and year. It’d be an interesting project to sort this data over a year among a large group of people living in different areas of the metro.

Business, Freedom, and Discrimination

Recenly, I’ve had many discussions about the ideas and attitudes behind SB1062 in Arizona and SB100 in my own state of Utah. I was relieved to see Arizona’s Religious Freedom or—depending on the spin—Anti-Gay Bill vetoed.

What I have yet to see articulated by any legislator or lobbyist is the distinction between discrimination of service or goods provided and discrimination of individuals. One would be like requiring a Mexican restaurant to serve Japanese food because two customers walked in and craved sushi, and the other is the restaurant asking two Japanese customers to leave because the company or employees have some argument against Asians—something completely irrelevant to the business transaction.

Running a business myself, I can relate to the motivation behind much of the vetoed Arizona bill. I argue that it’s the discretion of the individuals running a business to decide what commerce they support and don’t rather than being forced by the law to provide a service or participate in a project that runs counter to the business owner’s beliefs. As an example, I wouldn’t work on any campaign promoting cigarettes, and it would be dishonest for me to put my talents toward a something I’m in opposition to and I’d respectfully inform such a company that they’d be better served by another designer. However, if an individual client happened to smoke, it’s none of my concern (short of floating sidestream smoke my way).

I say I relate to the basic motivation, however, I didn’t agree with the broad wording and subjective interpretation, something so many bills seem to fall victim to. The promise that unintended consequences wouldn’t happen or that supposedly no known examples of customer discrimination had occurred, is a pretty weak argument. Some articles writing about how gay people aren’t as bad off as blacks during slavery sound like “not that bad” is good enough. In my own state, I don’t buy this argument of anti-discrimination somehow granting “special rights” to some people while taking away the “special rights of other groups”. Equality isn’t a special right. To me, religious freedom doesn’t extend to forcing standards or ostracizing people, and misses to point of so many religions—to care for and respect others.

The personal lives and beliefs of customers isn’t a company’s concern, with the exception of personal beliefs entering into the project at hand. Hence, the tricky part as the often-referenced examples involving the wedding industry. Personally, if a business doesn’t want my patronage, as in the case of the wedding photographer in New Mexico, I wouldn’t force them to take my money, steer other people away from the place, and move on to someone agreeable.

I’m also bothered that politicians cited economic consequences as their reasoning against the Arizona’s bill—as though constitutionality, respect for others, or morality isn’t reason enough. As with so many situations in business or politics, or basic citizenship, it’s like they have to feel the threat of direct pain or punishment first before they chose to act in favor of someone else.

There’s headway to be made on both sides of these issues, realizing that often we could be on either side.

Meanwhile, a sampling of sketches and logos. While I work on larger client projects and wait for others to be published so that I can post about them, I’m taking a few moments to prove that I am indeed still alive and working. The evenings lately have involved more sketching as a balance to graphic design work at the computer, surprising myself at how quickly I can still complete a sketch.

Included in the sketches is a little patterned self-portrait to use for Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media. Why use a photo all the time?

I also started off the year by updating my business logo, just to shake it up a bit, borrowing an element from an earlier portfolio piece that I really enjoyed.

Also, with my Woods Cross High School class reunion approaching, I’ve also put together a logo to use for the event.

Heaven & Hell USA. Following up from the map of Heavenly Place Names and of Hellish ones, I’m summing up the two with a comparison. Nice to see that heaven is winning out. Noticing a fairly good mix in broad geography, but with some trends toward populated places having more heaven with the wilds having a little more hell—identifiable in California where the populated coasts display blue and the Sierra Nevadas cluster red.

Heaven USA Map. After the articles posted by the Atlantic Cities, Fast Company Design, and the Huffington Post in October on the Devil & Hell Place Name Map, I worked up a complement for Christmas.

A bit of Heaven on Earth here mapping place names using derivations of God, Heaven, Saints, Church, Angels, and Christmas. There were so many more I investigated or considered working in such as Good and Zion, but cut short so as not to be working in every Biblical reference or positive appellation. I anticipated the populated areas holding more of the heavenly names in contrast to the clustering of devils in remote and rugged terrain of the country. Unsurprising also to see the Spanish and French settled regions showing a concentration. I enjoyed several breaks while laying in the data into California which clearly holds the highest amount of saints between its size, population, and history. All told, I figure there’s more than three thousand points plotted. Understand that I’m not attempting to label everything as that would be a cacophony in a static graphic, rather, I’m calling out more of the notable locales or interesting names.

I didn’t find as many God landmarks as anticipated, apparently our nation is strewn with more of the Devil’s body parts, and nearly all the saintly names are much more straightforward. However, there were a few names, usually on streets, that did stand out in the layout, including God’s Bath, Angel’s Trumpet Road, Angel Tear Way, In God’s Hand Way, and 6 Santa Claus Lanes. There are also some titles inspiring an investigation into the venue such as The Angel, a peak in Alaska, Bridge of the Gods across the Columbia, Stairway to Heaven Trail in Hawaii, and Cathedral Caverns in Alabama. Not to mention Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park which I’ve hiked, reminding me that being an Angel is the only way you’re going to land from the top of that redrock peak.

Shortly, I’ll have to post the comparison of both maps, names stripped out. Merry Christmas!

Doctor Who Time Travel Timeline. Yes, enjoying all the hype myself for the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Accordingly, posting an animated graphic—after two last spring—visualizing the travels through time per story over the span of the program.

The turquoise ring spans time from the Big Bang in “Castrovalva” through the heat death of the universe in “Utopia”. Time is measured out logarithmically centering on 2000 AD, so as to afford more visual space to contemporary times. Outside of the wheel of time are the stories, seasons, and Doctors queuing up at top as the animation plays through, calling out the current story with it’s known time stamps. The dates display darker for times pictured but not active in the episode, blue for parallel universes, and red for negated timelines. The journey through time traces in red, with main stories taking place in the TARDIS/Time Vortex in the center and unspecified dates (of which there are many) at the left offset pinwheel with Gallifreyan timelines at the right.

While the design and animation are mine, I can’t claim credit for the music. Whovians might recognize the track as “The Mad Man with a Box”—one of my favorites, and apt for the graphic.