Everyone’s got an artistic impulse. Some use it, some don’t. But there’s no denying that a part of us that just likes to make stuff – to rearrange the materials in the world so they better suit us. Maybe it’s what we do to survive, or something we’ve got to do if we want to stay in the community. Maybe we just want to make our place look nice, or leave our mark on the world. Maybe we do it for love.

And when I saw “we,” I don’t just mean humans. I mean everybody. There are some very creative creatures out there who have a great eye for form, function and design. Here are a few examples:

(I took the liberty of titling a few of these pieces. I hope the artists don’t mind)

Termite Collective - "Our Town" - Architectural Habitat - Dirt / Saliva

Chimpanzee - "More Bananas Please" - Paint on canvas

Weaver Bird - "Goldsworthy Tribute" - Installation - Twigs / Found Objects

Pig - "Technicolor Snout" - Paint on canvas

Tiger - "You're Lucky It's Not Your Neck" - Ink on paper

Tent Caterpillar - "Untitled" - Web / Twigs

Spiders (collaboration) - "Biggest Web Ever" - Webs / Twigs

Wasp Collective - "The Hive" - Dirt / Twigs / Saliva

Bower Bird - "Love on the Rocks" - Installation - Twigs / Stones

Bower Bird - "My Nest is Berry Nice" - Installation - Twigs / Found objects

Bower Bird - "Any Ladies Out There Like Blue Shit?" - Installation - Twigs / Found objects

What is this guy protecting himself from?

One of my favorite pieces of clip-art is the ubiquitous “sun wearing sunglasses” – not because it so wonderfully communicates the message of “hot fun in the summertime” and is the perfect embellishment for a summer picnic invitation – but because it illustrates a subtle facet of the human condition.

Let’s just look at this for a minute…

There he is, Mr. Sun, blazing in all his glory, pumping out 3.8 x 10³³ ergs of energy per second and yet, for some reason, he feels the need to don protective eyewear? Why? There’s no other nearby star bright enough to cause damage to his massive solar retinas. And what planet could possibly reflect enough light to require sunglasses?

He’s the sun! The source of all life and energy in the solar system – everything literally revolves around him! But somehow, he appears blissfully unaware that he himself is the one responsible for generating the blinding flares and hazardous ultraviolet rays. The truth is, only by turning his gaze upon himself will Mr. Sun find something worth shielding his eyes from.

And here we find our metaphor. Our awareness and sense of reality so often seem to be shaped by the things out there. We mistake the outer world, the things around us as the primary source of illumination, when really, we’re the ones doing the shining. All those shapes, colors, sounds and feelings – all the wonderful sensations we know – are happening behind the shades, in the recesses of our brains. Just like the sun in his Ray-Bans, we’re often blind to the fact that it’s our own internal processes that are responsible for making things shimmer and shine the way they do.

For the record, the three best television shows for children age 2-4 are as follows:

#1: Pocoyo

Set against a minimalist white background, this crazy show from somewhere in Spain contains just the right amount of stimuli and storyline to completely entrance a young mind without turning it to mush. Pocoyo is a kid with a blue hat who goofs off with a duck and an elephant while a gentle, disembodied narrator explains what’s going on. The episodes are short enough that your offspring won’t completely disengage from reality and will still have their wits when the program is over.

#2: Oswald

I think this was a show that was on Nickelodeon and was cancelled a few years ago. It takes place in a fanciful world where an Octopus has a pet wiener dog in the shape of a hot dog, and is friends with a bi-pedal flower named Daisy. The music is soothing and the story usually involves nothing more complicated than “Oswald is hot and wants an ice cream.” Some of them are also quite magical – like the one where Oswald tries to start a cloud collection. As you half-listen while writing your email, you may recognize the voices of Fred Savage from The Wonder Years and Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley (in case you were wondering what those guys were up to.)

#3: Pingu

This one is about a claymation Penguin who’s identity straddles the line between Inuit child and Penguin. He deals with a lot of toddler issues like bedtime and potty-training, but he also slides on icebergs and eats live fish. The complete lack of dialogue (except for some penguinese gibberish) is a welcome alternative to the cloying whine of Dora and Elmo and won’t distract you while you update your Facebook status.

It should be noted, that these shows are very rarely watched on an actual television set. They are usually consumed via Netflix or iTunes on an iPad or laptop. Nothing is more heartwarming than seeing your innocent child’s expressionless face bathed in the cool glow of a liquid-crystal display at 5 in the morning.

Inside my brain - age 7

A: Please follow along…

1. Imagine a disco ball
2. Turn the disco ball inside out so the mirrors are on the inner surface.
3. Inflate the inverted disco ball so it is as large as your house.
4. Cut a door in the side of the disco ball, climb inside with your newborn child, and turn on a light. You are now inside your kid’s brain.
5. Continue inflating. As the sparkle-room expands, things around you slip through the door – a blanket, a stick from the yard, the neighbors cat, a piece of tinfoil, a kid from down the street, etc.
6. Look at how all the new things reflect off the mirrors of the disco ball, and how the reflections are then reflected by other reflections. It’s all very shiny, and will no doubt make your kid very happy.
7. Eventually a T.V. will slide through the door. If you turn it on, it will create a most magnificent show inside the room and your kid will be enthralled. But because it’s so bright, it will the only thing that gets reflected off the mirrored walls.

Does that help? If not, don’t worry. You’ll soon have much bigger questions to worry about, like “Should I tell my kid he’s living his entire life inside an electronically-generated multiverse, or should I just let him have fun?”

(The attached illustration was created on kaleidolism.com – try it yourself!)

A time-saving way to waste time.

I was falling asleep one night and realized the world was missing a very important thing: A micro-site that allows you to select two animals from a matrix and immediately be presented with a YouTube video of those animals playing together. Well, guess what, all you seekers of inter-species cuteness? I have heard your laments and have toiled tirelessly at my laptop to make your lives easier. I present to you… CritterVidder.

Free icons! Get yer free icons!

As a thank you for visiting my blog, please accept these complimentary cuddly animal icons. Use them as you see fit. Make a t-shirt, or a stamp or a sticker. Arrange them into a story. Really, do whatever you want. These animals are free. You can see them in action at CritterVidder.com

To get the vector file, right-click (or control-click) here or on the image above and select “save linked file as” or “save target as” (depending on your browser) Then save the PDF file to your desktop. Once you have it, you can use a program like Adobe Illustrator to extract or edit the images. Have fun!

This post is also an experiment in search-engine optimization to see how many people land on my site after searching for “Free Animal Icons”, or for that matter: Free vector animal icons. Free vector icons. Free cat icon. Free dog icon. Free bird icon. Free monkey icon. Free squirrel icon. Free baby icon. Free rabbit icon. Free bunny icon. Free turtle icon. Free fish icon.

I’ll let you know the results, if you’re curious.

Some of the circles appear convex, others appear concave. But why?

If you’ve ever taken a close look at the buttons you click on your computer screen, you might have noticed that there’s something about them that just seems “clicky.” The secret to making things pop off the screen, (as anyone who’s ever designed a button can tell you) is to cast some virtual light on it so the top is brighter than the bottom. This gives the illusion that the element is actually catching the light because it’s so thick and poppy.

Interface designers are painfully aware that users are basically lazy – but in this case, that laziness has been exploited to our advantage. Human brains like to take shortcuts and jump to conclusions whenever possible. One of these shortcuts is to tell us “if something reflects more light from its top edge than it does from its bottom edge – then its definitely popping out at you.” It’s actually a pretty safe assumption, since, from the time we were apes, the main source of light has been the sun (which is above you, as you’ve probably noticed.) And if the thing popping out at you was a hungry lion instead of say – the back button on a web browser, you might be glad your brain cut some corners to buy you a few milliseconds of running time.

In his book The Telltale Brain, my new hero V.S. Ramachandran discusses this phenomenon and points out that your brain is even lazier than you might have bothered to notice. When it informs you “that thing is coming at you,” it isn’t basing the assumption on its knowledge of the sun’s location (above you,) it’s actually just basing it on where the top of your head is. That’s usually a safe bet, since the top of your head is often pointed towards the sky, but try turning your head to the side and looking at the illustration above. If you’ve got a normal brain, the shapes don’t seem to pop anymore.

For the longest time, the light source in the typical system interface was located in the upper left, at the 10:00 position. You’d paint a little white highlight on the top edge and left edge of a button and, simple as that, the illusion of depth was achieved.

But about ten years ago, with the advent of Mac OSX, there was a dramatic, cosmic shift that few people seemed to notice. The light moved overhead – to the high noon position. Suddenly all the highlights and shadows had shifted! Did Steve Jobs just decide to move the sun without telling anyone? (I guess if you can forge deals with the RIAA and AT&T, then moving the sun is pretty easy.)

What does it all mean? Do we assume that it’s somehow getting later in cyberspace? First it was 10:00, now it’s noon? Should we expect another shift? Will the light start to come from the 2:00 position, then 6:00? Is this some sort of doomsday clock we need to be watching? Is it counting down to when the computers finally break free of our screens and start to steal our parking spaces??

Whatever it means, just remember, my friends: The light shines not from above, but from within.

Is this you?

Many people try to make something and fail or become frustrated along the way. As a reminder to myself, and to others who want to make things, I’ve outlined this handy step-by-step guide. For small, personal projects, some of these steps can last a few seconds and exist entirely in the mind. For more ambitious collaborations, each step might require a lifetime and a team of thousands to complete.

STEP 1: Decide what you want to make

This is by far the hardest part. 80% of mankind never makes it past this part – usually because there’s something good on TV. If you’re having trouble with this part, let me know, as I’ve got a lot of unmade things lying around.

STEP 2: Sketch it out

In a simple way, communicate to yourself and possibly others what it is you decided in step 1. This can take many forms:

• A drawing
• A mission statement
• An outline
• A prototype
• A model

STEP 3: Plan it out

This step can get complicated, because it requires jumping ahead to see what’s coming up in steps 4 and 5. (You can do that now if you like.)

Now, figure out how long it will take and what resources (people, finances, tools, materials) will be required to complete steps 4 and 5. Make sure you have enough of, and the right kinds these things before you start. And please, for everyone’s sake, make a schedule (with a set of milestones and deadlines). If you’re working alone and you blow past this part without much thought, you’ll hate yourself. If you’re working with others they’ll hate you too.

STEP 4: Design it

Figure out all the details, preferably on paper (an eraser is recommended). Again, this can take many forms:

• A set of blueprints or drawings
• A vivid description of each what you’re making, broken down into component pieces
• A “working prototype”
• A script
• A business plan

In many cases, this step is skipped, or done poorly. You can usually tell when this happens by looking at a finished product and seeing that it sucks.

STEP 5: Test it out

By the end of the previous step, you should have something you can share with a few of the people for whom you’re making the thing. They should be able to take a look at it and/or use it enough to tell you whether the thing you decided in step 1 is worthy of step 6.

If your test group says stuff like: “Hmmm,” or “I don’t get it,” or “Do you need a hug?” – then my advice would be to re-visit steps 1-4 and see if maybe you glossed-over something important.

STEP 6: Make it!

This is where you start seeing some real progress as your grand vision unfolds. For the most part, this step should be fun and satisfying. If it’s not, something probably went wrong in steps 1 through 4. Or to put it another way: “You don’t know what you’re doing.” Ok – maybe there are a few things you didn’t count on and the whole thing is just a big mess. If this happens, stop everything, and re-visit steps 1-5 where necessary.

STEP 7: Share it!

Regardless of how well you executed the previous steps, this part can be pretty difficult and unpredictable. Hopefully you enjoyed Steps 1-6 enough to make it all worthwhile, no matter how things turn out in this step. Best of luck. Just know that I’m proud of you.

Sometimes there’s just too much talk. Sometimes a rude statement or insensitive remark only adds to the noise and makes the conversation become even more intolerable. In such cases, it’s often possible to employ a silent, time-tested sign-language that can render a conversational opponent speechless with the movement of a single hand.

"The Whoop-De-Doo"

"The Cuckoo"

"The Tiny Violin"

Here are some downloadable graphics to use when engaged in a particularly tiresome social network or message board discussion. Just right-click or control-click on the image and select “save” or “download” or whatever makes sense.

150 x 150

75 x 75

A Word in the Kitchen... A Drive in the Car.

From a sketch drawn while watching a crime show on television.