Archive for the ‘#client’ Category
September 12, 2011
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Hewlett Packard is kicking off its cybersecurity conference today, HP Protect 2011, and they kindly hired gapingvoid to design some posters for them.
Basically, I wanted to draw something kinda cool n’ fun, something that computer security people wouldn’t mind taking back home and hanging on their office walls.
To the uneducated, the cartoon might seem trivial, but actually, it’s not. Like Lennie Bruce famously said, “Humor is serious business”.
Fred Wilson is right, we are indeed in the middle of a major, long-term, global trasformation, and Obama (or anybody else who wants his job) is NOT, REPEAT NOT going to save us.
So what IS going to save us? The SAME DAMN THING that has ALWAYS saved us:
That’s right. The Play Ethic. Creativity. All that good stuff Sir Ken talks about. All that good stuff that gapingvoid hopefully represents.
All serious work begins with serious play first. AND NOT the night before, but FIRST thing in the morning.You think Jony Ives works for a living? Hell, no, he plays for a living. So do I. So do my friends, Charles Hope, Seth Godin and others like us.
And YES, you can bring that sense of play anywhere– to a conference on cybersecurity, for example. Don’t get me wrong; cybersecurity is also serious business. Our collective safety and our livelihoods as citizens depend on it, and companies like HP work to help protect our culture’s critical infrastructure systems and generally keep us out of trouble.
It’s a nasty, dangerous world out there, after all…
That being said, security nerds are also people who like to play and get paid for it, more than most. They like to have FUN, at conferences and anywhere else, of course they do. Who says the good guys cannot be sweaty and unshaven? News to me. To PLAY means to HACK something. Hacking is INHERENTLY playful. Of course it frickin’ is.
[Note to non-Nerds: the reason that nerds don’t spend a lot of time on their personal appearance is because they’d rather spend their brief time here on Earth, working on something that actually matters to them, not spend it on something that matters to the usual crowd of clueless, superficial, hipster knuckleheads.]
Thanks to Hewlett Packard for giving gapingvoid the opportunity to live in a place it hasn’t yet i.e. the complex and mysterious world of cybersecurity i.e. the world where the hackers live and thrive happily. It’s good to know that some of them are on our side. So far, it’s been a blast. Rock on.
[Bonus Link: The ever-brilliant Ben Hammersley gave a great talk to a bunch of high-level UK cybersecurity nerds recently. A wonderful read.]
[The “Hire Hugh” page etc.]
September 9, 2011
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Very cool– Socialfresh have a new t-shirt out, based on the cartoon I drew for them recently.
No, sorry, I don’t have any, either to sell or to give away. I believe you have to attend one of their events to get one…
Re. The idea for the cartoon: Inspiration is not something you freebase or download or whatever. It’s something you DO, it’s something you MAKE, it’s something you CREATE.
i.e. Inspiration first requires work on your part. Lots of it.
And no, it’s NOT worth it. Not worth it AT ALL. Not one iota.
Until, of course, it is…
Rock on.
[The “Hire Hugh” page etc.]
April 5, 2011
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[Download the printable version here etc.]
Another Rackspace-sponsored cartoon…
I like this cartoon. It’s something that Scoble would would say.
Scoble works for Rackspace, too. Do the math.
[Commission your own cartoon here…]
April 4, 2011
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[One of my more successful “Social Objects” of late: The SXSW t-shirt I did for my client, Rackspace. We printed 3,200 of them, and they all went REALLY quickly. The just FLEW off the table. It was stunning to watch…]
I’ve been talking about Social Objects for a while now. And using cartoons to create social objects i.e. “Cube Grenades” is the main way I make a living.
Whatever your social media strategy is, it needs the object. It needs that thing that people socialize around.
Because people socialize around objects– a product, an idea, a movement, a person– people don’t socialize in a vacuum.
Creating cartoons is my way of creating social objects, but of course, there are other ways.
gapingvoid is basically a little Social Object factory.…
March 21, 2011
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My second cartoon for a Rackspace customer is for Posterous, the photo-sharing, proto-blogging site.
Basically, Posterous is a site that makes it easy to upload and share photos. It’s simple and straightforward. It doesn’t need a lot of explaining, really.
And nor should it have to. Talking to their CEO, Sachin Agarwal on the phone the other week, it’s apparent they want their service to have mainstream, mom n’ pop usage, not just something for the geeks…
As for the cartoon, well, I was determined NOT to draw yet another one of my cute-sy “monstercritter” cartoons [I was already doing a lot of them for Rackspace already], but in spite of my best intentions, this Posterous one just stuck, somehow… the humanity of it.
We know the point of photos is to document the seen world, capture memories and all that. But a big a part of that is the social and emotional– the creation of what I call “Sharing Devices”- social objects that allow us to share ourselves with others.
i.e. Posterous’ value comes not from the actual photos per se, but from a very human need that was around long before photography (or cave painting, for that matter) was even invented.
[Check out my other Rackspace cartoons here…]
February 1, 2011
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So I drew this cartoon earlier today for Rackspace.
An idea for a greeting card. An “Apology” card. For when Rackspace screws up [ALL companies screw up occasionally].
Just a way of saying sorry. Of staying human.
It could be printed on to a card and put in an envelope. Or it could just be a digital image you put in an email or on a website.
That kind of thing…
[You can see the other cartoons I’ve done for Rackspace here.]
2 Comments
[Download the printable version here etc.]
To mark the launch of my upcoming book, EVIL PLANS on February 17th, I thought I’d do a special cartoon for my biggest client, Rackspace.
The first line in the book is “Everybody needs an Evil Plan”. This sentiment would apply to both big companies like Rackspace and, or course, the people who work for them.
So there was a natural fit. Plus I dig the red…
Hmmm… Thinking of making this one a print.
[You can pre-order the book here.]
[You can see the other cartoons I’ve done for Rackspace here.]
January 30, 2011
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Like Loic and I discussed many years ago, the best thing about being a blogger is the people you get to meet. It’s also true of being a cartoonist, as well. Cartooning opens doors.
Three weeks ago, the whole cartoonist thing somehow led me to Santa Monica, CA, sitting in the office of Dr. Gian Gonzaga, PhD.
Dr. Gian is the head research guy at eHarmony.com, the big dating site. You’ve probably seen the commercials.
We sat there and talked for about 3 hours. It was one of the most fascinating conversations I’ve had in… like, forever.
Gian’s research, both in academia and for eHarmony, asks very simple questions: What makes for successful couples? What makes for good long-term relationships?
And yeah, as someone who spends a lot of time every year designing fine art Valentines, I find the whole thing absolutely fascinating.
The one big takeaway from the conversation?
It’s called “eHarmony” for a reason. It’s not called “ePassion” or “eSex” or eHookUp or “eRomance” or “eOneNightStand”.
True love, lasting love, cannot exist without some sort of inherent “Harmony” in the relationship. And no amount of sex or passion or romance or money can make up for that. Hence the cartoon above [I actually drew that cartoon well over a year ago, long before I met up with eHarmony. Great minds think alike etc.].
And so eHarmony tries to match single people in a “harmonious” way, to give them a better chance at being in a happy relationship. Visit their site and dig around a little, you’ll see what I mean.
Another big takeaway from Gian?
People are designed for harmony.
We’ve evolved over millions of years to be a certain way. And if we act in such way that is not “in harmony” with this long-term evolved self, we will make ourselves unhappy.
We are made to be good people. We are made to love. We are especially made to love our children. We are made to care about one another (at least in close proximity). We are made to live good lives. We are basically programmed for goodness, and not evil.
The things that make us happy are the same things that made our prehistoric ancestors happy. Our true nature is hard-wired; our true nature has been evolved over millions of years. No amount of “Drugs & Hookers” is going to make you happy, no matter how much money you spend on them. Nature simply didn’t make you that way.
Funny: The day after our meeting, I then found myself in Las Vegas, attending CES on behalf of one of my clients, Intel.
It was REALLY interesting to be in Vegas the day after Dr. Gian. Walking around the bars and casinos, I witnessed a COMPLETELY different worldview from eHarmony’s, to say the least.
I really, really, really enjoyed my meeting with Dr. Gian. I left his office feeling totally energized with my brain on fire. Whatever your take on eHarmony may be, I’m always elevated by people who, in their own way, tried to build their lives and their work around something that isn’t trivial, something that actually matters both to our individual selves and humanity in general. Something not enough of us do. Good luck to him, I say.
[PS: I’m doing a wee Valentine cartoon promo with eHarmony. Watch this space…]
