The Official Blog of the Grateful Web

Interview with Miles Donovan

Where are you based?
Londonium.

How long have you been working as a professional artist / illustrator?
10 years.

Are you part of any group or collective?

Yes,  the wonderful Peepshow Collective.

How does the collective work, do people have special roles or does everyone chip in on everything?
It varies completely from job to job, depends who is available or wants to work on a particular project, so the rota of roles changes all the time, I tend to work in an art direction and production role most of the time. Generally I’d say about 4-5 people work on any one project, with everyone in Peepshow involved at the initial idea stage. Who does what changes a fair bit, but we always have one point of contact (a producer), and then people who artwork, animate etc.
Aside from projects some of us have specific things we do, I tend to work on updating the website, making sure the news is updated, blogging, all that kind of stuff, we have people who work on the accounts, Alex deals with new business, arranging meetings and day to day organizational stuff and Pete who heads up the animation. It’s a company in all honestly not a collective.

What did you want to be when you were a kid?
Stuntman or Librarian.

Is advertising the golden challis of illustration? 
No, far from it, I guess if you're chasing the dollar then it is.

What would you rather do instead of advertising if you could?
I don’t do much advertising work, I’m happy making work that isn’t interfered with much and as long as I’ve learned something along the way that I can use in the future I’m happy.

Do you have any dreams about what you'd like to achieve in your field?
Honestly, no. I’ve got no idea what’s coming up next most of the time. I’ve had work on the side of a fleet of planes, I’m not sure where you go after that. The future most probably and hopefully lies in more collaboration with Peepshow and less individual work.

Who do you currently admire in the field of art and design?

Robert Rauschenberg,
Geoff McFetridge,
Kate Gibb,
MMParis,
MeSo,
HelloVon,
Mingering Mike,
Bill Sienkiewicz,
Autumn Whitehurst,
Karel Martens.

can they be dead? If so,
Warhol, Basquiat, Saul Bass, Jack Kirby, Max Huber,

What's the most annoying thing about what you have to do in your daily working process?
Sitting in front of the computer for hours, slowly making myself blind, and the long hours.

What's the best?
Not having to get the tube in the morning, deciding my own hours, sitting in the studio with all the other folks, and most importantly..lunch.

Your work while produced on a computer, has a hand crafted element to it. How did this originate?
It just came about at college after not being able to get into the silkscreening studio very easily, the technician was a horrible evil man. I’d try my best to recreate a flat silkscreened look using stencils and car spraypaint from my bedroom. These same techniques have just been carried across to using a computer, so everything is still cut by hand or silkscreen printed, it’s just created in layers and coloured in the computer,  I’ve got the flexibility to move things around if need be. It looks hand crafted because it probably is, but there is a lot of trickery involved and the boundaries between the two things are quite blurry these days. Technology and the hand crafted are all the same thing to me, it’s about how you use a particular programme and what other things you throw into the mix with it.

What would be your advice about getting work for any illustrators starting out today?
It’s a minefield these days, it honestly is, so many people want to be Illustrators these days, I think its more popular than Graphic Design at Universities. I ‘d say work to create a style of working that looks unlike anyone elses and don’t look to other current Illustrators for inspiration and work bloody hard!

What's your favourite vegetable?
The Pepper

What dish do you like to eat it with most?
Chilli, it’s Columbo’s favourite dish.

Thanks
Pleasure

Charlie Gower, Tantramar

68th Reason Outlook Sucks, or '2 Kinds of Service'

Actually Stan covers it with his 67 reasons post.

I had been LEANING on Outlook as my data base. I loved it while it worked. When composing in Outlook, I would simply search a word or phrase and get all my other letters using it.

Then in early January this year, the announcement: My Outlook was full. I pointed Outlook archives to the server, but this was the slippery slope of GatesThink I've been down before. Once I did this, I could not search my old emails without spending an hour turning archives off and on, restarting Outlook, rebooting my computer, running to the bathroom and screaming in the tiled stall.

I often feel I am bashing my head against the way Bill Gates thinks I should be doing things. There are two kinds of 'service' in this world. Good service: gives you freedom to work and create. Bad service: makes you follow someone else's rules every step of the way to get anything done, if you can.

Good Service examples are usually found at any company that is successful. Apple at times, Google when it started out. Federal Express. Comcast sometimes. Nordstroms.  Lijit. You build your own search engine your way.

Bad Service companies still in Business are usually any monopoly that feeds off its size.  Since they can, they love making you jump hurdles. Sometimes poor product and often times a control thing for once perceived purpose: more $$$. What happens is users are pushed farther and farther away from the company. How about Office 2007 making all previous versions obsolete?? Or the 'Web Pages' you build in Word don't work for Firefox browsers unless you save as 'Filtered' (with a warning from Microsoft bad things will happen to you if you save this way).

The fix for me searching  old Outlook emails was installing Google DeskTop, thanks to techniQal's tip. Google Desktop search finds most of my archived emails, but not all. Now back to work!

Barney Moran
Grateful 'For Competition on the Desktop' Web

Kenny 'The Soundtrack Man' Loggins

Knocking Kenny Loggins is like knocking life. He was part of the solid gold yacht rock group, Loggins and Messina, he co-wrote What A Fool Believes and wrote, Footloose, I'm Alright and Danger Zone. He's great but some, well ok, most of his albums covers are astonishingly bad. Case in Point.

Charlie Gower, Tantramar

Lighten up People! Don't kill people over parking!

Lance L. McDermed shot his two neighbors dead this month in Colorado, over a parking dispute.

I googled "Killed over parking" and got way more hits then just this story. Thankfully, the NRA has worked hard over the decades to insure people with trigger tempers, kids who go off medication, and anyone with a pulse can easily get gun and kill their way out of parking disputes.

Holy Cow people lighten up! The Buddha would say point the gun at yourself first, that would make the problem go right away, and bail out the NRA you love so much at the same time!

There are safe, effective ways to vent your rage at humanity, here's one to perhaps save a life:

http://www.youparklikeanasshole.com/

Thanks to Jeffrey Charles for posting on youparklikeanasshole.

Barney Moran
Grateful 'You Have not Shot Me' Web

Oratory Hunger

Why is Obama beating Hillary?

Where did he come from? Why are people who've never voted before voting for him?

What's the deal?

Cut from an Obama victory speech to Bush talking about Fidel's resignation. Or bailing out the recession. Or anything. What's the difference? Bush cant speak.

Americans are starving for the dream, for some hope, yes, for someone who can speak to them. Forget the politics. Its been years since we turned on the TV, radio, YouTube, or streamed from the Internet and heard a voice  speak to us.

We've had almost 8 years of broken, guttural meanderings, and meanwhile, America meanders. Hearing Obama, its like our ears have been turned off all these years, and something just turned them on.

I'm not taking sides here. Listening to Hillary explain why she voted for the war not knowing the outcome, but had she known..., listening to McCain say, 'My friend's in his aging voice, I am going to sleep again, meandering in my living room. America will always need a powerful, meaningful speaker, humanity does. Take this away for any length of years, and we will be back with a vengance.

Barney Moran

Grateful Web

The Worlds Greatist Music Collectable is the Owner

Aha! A crazier vinyl maniac then moi!

Paul Mawhinney, the ultimate Vinyl Album PacRat, makes guys like me look like a 'PacAmeoba'. Faced with the exact same marriage dilemma, "Me or the Records", Paul did our fantasy, saved the marriage and got a warehouse. This could only happen in Pittsburgh, PA.

Why would anyone own aisles and aisles of Vinyl? To WALK THROUGH of course. Not necessarily listen to anything. Walk through, check out some album art, spray the mold patches. Soon of course, a hard drive will come out that can hold this entire collection in your pocket. Hopefully Paul unloads this before next week. The 'buyers' comments on ebay tell the cynical story.



I am working on the beer belly, but right now Paul's got me on all counts!

Thanks to Northern Comfort for posting about this.
See the auction on ebay.


Barney Moran
Grateful Word

Who pays for our Spy Satellites that never work?

Who pays to shoot them down?

There is another war its unpatriotic to mention, the Financial War. American's in this patriotic age should keep quiet as marauding shark salesmen patrolling our Industrial Military that has this complex get billions of our taxed dollars to sell us spy rockets to fly into space and then shoot down because they were lemons to start with.

What's the point of protecting America with Lemons we have to spend more billions to shoot down?

What's the point of shooting up billions and billions of dollars when we don't care about our kids being able to get medicine or see a doctor? When we don't care about sending our bigger kids into war with no protection? When we don't care about taking care of what's left of them when they return from war?

There is a big, spoiled fat rich kid sitting on the heart of America, shooting rockets, buying more, and laughing his arse off.

Military designation: US 193. US 193 satellite  launched December 2006. US 193 lost power and its central computer failed almost instantly afterward, rendering its classified billions of dollar investment useless and a complete waste of America's time and resources. US 193 carried a sophisticated and secret imaging sensor that is completely useless unless the bad guys get it. Then its useful for them.

Barney Moran
Ungrateful Taxpayer

Echo and the Bunnymen: Heaven Up Here

I have thousands of Vinyl from last century. My records are crammed in under the basement stairs, in the rafters of our garage, and in my basement back office of horrors.

What records do I take the time to look for and pull out to spin and burn to disk? Echo & the Bunnymen's 1981 Heaven up Here is one. Dark, driving, with Ian McCulloch's amazing vocals, and drummer Pete de Freitas unrelenting but don't stop percussion.

Echo is a 'great promise' band, with a few classics worth entry into the halls of rock, and a unique sound. Great Promise bands share these traits, giving glimpses of greatness but producing a mixed bag and not enough compared to icons who bang out years decades of work building upon greatness .

Great Promise bands are content to release albums with 'filler' songs, way below par with their best, and Echo does not escape this on Heaven Up Here. If the final track 'All I Want',  simply had been left out  this may have been their best, though  pundits and sales figures say their 1984 'Ocean Rain' was their best.

Like re-visiting a dark lover from the past; cruel, purple bags under the eyes, and delicious, Heaven Up Here is a pulsing dark loneliness I love to visit. My kids and wife hate it, that's also a good sign, and I'm forced to listen when commuting. Its dark, delicious, too rich chocolate you can't have often. Just a treat now and then....

  "All My Colours"

Flying
              And I know I'm not coming down
              You're trying
              But you know you must soon go down
              All my colours turn to clouds
              All my colours turn to clouds

            

Zimbo...

            

What d'you say
              When your heart's in pieces?
              How d'you play
              Those cards in sequence?
              That box you gave me burned nicely
              That box you gave me burned nicely

            

Zimbo...

            

Flying down
              Flying down
              All my colours turn to clouds...

            Hey, I've flown away
              Hey, I'm blown away

**

Echo and the Bunnymen have reformed ( 3 of the 4, Pete de Freitas was killed in a motorcycle accident), and they are selling out shows like the Royal Albert Hall this September, 2008, and close to releasing a new album. Tells me other old farts have been dusting off this vinyl in secret, under the stairs, like me.

Barney Moran
Grateful Word

Grateful Web on TownHall

Yes, I am fully aware Grateful Web's founder, Barney Moran, is quoted on the first page of TownHall's Letters to the editor. Yes I know its in their just released February 2008 Magazine version of their famous conservative blog community where Grateful Web has a voice.

I'm proud of it. Why?  There is something I dislike much more then someone's views disagreeing with mine: Censorship. Townhall has founded the perfect open forum vehicle for all voices to be heard. Sure its founded by conservatives who seek to find ideas and a common purpose for the movement. But, what is wrong with that, even if you disagree with their views?

Who's side am I on? The side that gets things done instead of yelling. It's in the big fat American middle, where every day people are trying to work hard and carve out a life for themselves and their families.

Liberal and Progressive movements can take a pointer from TownHall, and remember the American way is for all voices to be heard.

Barney Moran
Grateful Word

Manned Cloud

Flying hotel by French designer Jean-Marie Massaud.