A month or two ago I was tipped off regarding a design contest being held here in Chicago for the first-ever Wells Street Fall Festival in Old Town. The prize was $500 and it seemed like an under-marketed contest, so I figured I’d give it a shot and maybe take on some light competition. I thought I’d put 3 to 5 hours in and hope to turn a handsome profit if I won but not be too disappointed in my time investment should a better entry come out on top. I know how subjective judgment can be in the realm of art/design, which is why I don’t like entering these contests to begin with. There’s just such a huge opportunity to be passed over in favor of something completely different — not necessarily better or worse — that it’s hard to fully commit to a project for fear that I’ll have wasted my time (which I obviously take very seriously). Anyway, this one seemed like a safe bet.

Of course, I forgot to take into account possibility #3: Lose to a shitty design. Now, like I said, art is largely subjective, but I think we can all agree that the winning design sucks to a quantifiable degree!

Here’s mine — you can click to enlarge it:

And here’s the winner:

You may notice that the winning design is also less informative than mine. They didn’t even include all the information that was on the contest prompt! The conspiracy theorist in me has connected two dots and would suggest that the contest wasn’t widely advertised because the organizer’s husband just figured out how to use clip art and gradients in Photoshop and the shit was fixed. Nice work, honey!

We did it! 3800 miles and a lot of crappy (see: great) motels + food without a single problem. It was pretty much everything I expected it to be. My car has never been more awesome. I’ll post more thoughts and pictures as they come to me and as the video editing begins, but the main thing I must stress is the overall consensus reached by Liz, Mike, and me: words and pictures (moving or still) will probably never fully translate what it was like to be out there on the Bonneville Salt Flats. It was the type of pure experience that can best be summed up by Mike’s short but useful observation: “Livin’, man.”

We’ll see how this affects the final narrative construction of the project. School starts on Wednesday!

Huge high fives for Mike and Liz, photo- and videographers for the whole trip and new members of the exclusive “I have driven Eric’s car across a giant field of salt” club. Great work, guys.

Akemi and I are working on a publication to go in the bathrooms at SAIC’s Sullivan Galleries for an upcoming art show. We’re collaging text and images from various home & garden magazines into our own piece, called “Passages: Number 2″ (Akemi recently finished work on another piece called “Passages“) …

We came across this advertisement and after some deliberation decided it was too obvious to put in our magazine but not too obvious to hang in our bathroom.

Here’s the updated projected itinerary for the Limited Edition Road Trip (Leg 2):

August 21 (Saturday): Chicago, IL to Lincoln, NE (518mi)
August 22: Lincoln to Cheyenne, WY (448mi)
August 23: Cheyenne to Dinosaur, CO (303mi)
August 24: Dinosaur to Bonneville Salt Flats, UT (288mi) + FILMING
August 25: FILMING
August 26: FILMING (half day) + Salt Flats to Rawlins, WY (439mi)
August 27: Rawlins to Pukwana, SD (597mi)
August 28 (Saturday): Pukwana to Belmont, WI (496mi)
August 29: Belmont, WI to Chicago (175mi)

This is what it looks like on a map:

View Larger Map

Travel tips welcome — what games should we bring to play in the car? Music to listen to? Other secrets for long hours on the road? I’ve already loaded the iPod playlist with Kelly Clarkson and Soulja Boy…

I just went through all of my unpublished blog drafts in a most pointed example of doing pointless stuff to avoid doing what must actually be done at the moment. Here are the complete texts from the forgotten waste: leftovers that were deemed too mundane even for this blog!

05.11.2010
I just rode my bike home at 3:30am in the pouring rain.

02.05.2010
I changed the blog header back to the old version because I’ve been too lazy to finish re-designing it to match that new (now old) one.

12.09.2009
Cloak/Dagger is easily my number one favorite band. They just released their second LP, Lost Art, and it rules (duh!).

10.28.2009
I’m not leaving until Friday, so this is like that awkward moment after you say goodbye but still walk together to the parking lot.

——————–

Sorry I never finished writing these, folks.

I had this for lunch yesterday:
Hot Dog
Black Beans
Pepper Jack Cheese
Corn Chips
Hot Sauce

I also had it for breakfast, but with turkey bacon instead of hot dogs.

John wins the contest! Victory Tax! I laughed out loud.