I’m not a fan of Stag. I’m a beer snob. But I understand the brand, at least, what it is these days. A cheap no-nonsense, don’t-give-a-shit beer, as in: it competes on price, not quality. Maybe the brand also has a little nostalgia, but that might be purely accidental. I’m not all that familiar with what the brand meant in the past. I know it was a regional beer, and this little find I made at the St. Louis Curio Shoppe suggests that they had, at least, some ambitions to be a mid-market to premium product. I don’t know enough about the history of the company to know how successful they were. As far as I can tell they don’t even rank as a national budget brand, they seem to be that odd regional budget beer. It’s popular only in the southern Illinios and Metro St. Louis area, which is no doubt because it was brewed in Belleville Illinois.

Anyway I found this little gem of Stag years past. I don’t know when it was published exactly, but anyone would be right to guess that’s it’s a relic of the mid-20th century. Oh and here’s a PDF you can download to read and enjoy as well.

I’ve always wanted to try my hand at a book trailer. So when Amanda Doyle reached out to me for ideas on how to promote her new Guidebook to St. Louis it was one of the things I suggested we do. It seems to have been effective. It got people buzzing about it and has reached the top of the local best seller lists. The trailer often gets included in blog posts and news sites when the book has been written about and has become a valuable part of her press kit.

This was the second video The Royale commissioned to document their annual Kentucky Derby Party. This was passed around quite a bit on Facebook and will be used to promote the next Derby party next year.

The owner Steve Smith is a good friend and collaborator on other projects and he really gets the value of using video like this to help build and support the brand of The Royale. He understands that the trick to making people love your business is not to worry too much about being profitable, but to worry about creating a great experience for the customer. He frequently makes decisions and plans events that might not make much sense to a business person with an eye toward the bottom line first, but these events have helped to build a loyal following for his restaurant and bar. Which is not to say he’s a bad business person. He’s made a tiny little bar into a local institution and a profitable and sustainable business in an economic climate that doesn’t make that an easy feat.

In working on several St. Louis themed projects over the years I’ve often found myself in need of a good clean graphic of the official flag of the City of St. Louis. Unfortunately there are precious few of these graphics available around online. The ones that are available are low resolution jpgs that don’t scale well for printing purposes. So a couple of years back I sat down and decided to create my own nice vector version of the flag. I recently came across this recently while tidying up some files on my hard drive and decided to make them available to anyone else who needed them. So here they are. I made several versions, AI, EPS, SVG, PNG, JPG and GIF and they are all packed up in this zip file. Take them and use them, I am making them public domain as all public symbols should be. My version is slightly different than many versions you might see around on the internet–mainly in the fleur de lis which is in better shape than a lot of them. I think that a lot of the STL flag graphics you see around are the result of generations of analoge copies that have caused the fleur de lis to degrade and become less defined.

Anyway consider this my little gift to you. Enjoy in good health.

By the way here is a little history on the flag and how it came to be. It may not be as old as you think. The flag was designed in the late 1960′s by a college professor named Theodore Sizer, who died just last year. (Correction: Theodore Sizer the designer of the flag, passed in 1967, it was his son that died last year. Thanks to his grandson left a kind correction in the comments below) From Wikipedia:

The flag of St. Louis, Missouri was designed by Yale Universityprofessor Theodore Sizer. The flag is often called the “Three Rivers” flag, symbolizing the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and the Meramecrivers near St. Louis. The intersection of the blue lines is covered by afleur-de-lis, which symbolizes St. Louis’s French heritage. Although the flag is strictly the municipal flag of St. Louis, it is sometimes flown over government buildings in St. Louis County.

Revised Code of the City of St. Louis, (Section 1.20.010)

“The design submitted by Professor Emeritus Theodore Sizer, Pursuivant of Arms at Yale university, and now on file in the office of the City register is approved, adopted and designated as the official flag of the City. The flag with a solid red background has two broad heraldic wavy bars, colored blue and white, extending from the left top and bottom corners toward left center where they join and continue as one to the center right edge. This symbolizes the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Over the point of confluence a round golden disk upon which is the fleur-de-lis of France (blue) calling attention to the French background of the early city and more particularly to St. Louis of France for whom the City is named. The golden disk represents the City and/or the Louisiana Purchase. (Heraldically, the disk is a “bezant” or Byzantine coin signifying, money or simply purchase.)

The flag’s colors recall those of Spain (red and yellow or gold), Bourbon France (white and gold), Napoleonic and Republican France (blue, white and red), and the United States of America (red, white, and blue).”

I’ve always admired some of the more elaborate kinetic typography examples out there. They’re good to watch if you’re looking for examples of creative things that you can do with type and graphics with modern tools. There are a lot of bad examples of it out there too. The trick, I think, to making a successful one, is to discover a literal or metaphorical visual theme that complements the speech you are animating and be consistent with it.

I thought I’d give it a shot. It’s not quite as elaborate as some I’ve seen, but I think it’s effective. It’s the famous paper bag speech from Major (Bunny) Colvin from HBO’s The Wire (the greatest TV show ever), so given his cop like manner and cadence of speech, I don’t think it required a lot of movement. In fact I tried a version with a lot of movement and it didn’t really work very well at all. And I think the choice of a brown paper bag texture was obvious, but I think it works. Sometimes the obvious choice is best.

Anyway here it is for what it’s worth. I would like to do more of these, but I don’t know when I’ll have time. It was fun to work on and I learned some new stuff. Oh an in case you’re wondering; I did the whole project in Apple Motion.

This is sort of a typophiles wet dream. An hour of radio dedicated to a discussion of Typography. One surprising take away is that the Coca-Cola logo is based on someone’s actual handwriting who was trained in a kind of penmanship called Spencer Writing. There is also an interview with Matthew Carter the type designer responsible for Verdana as well as Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones who designed the ‘Obama’ font Gotham. Here is the link to the show page: http://www.wpr.org/book/091101b.cfm

Update: It’s come to my attention that the main link on that page is to a Real Audio stream of the program (who still uses Real?). I heard it via their podcast I’m subscribed to, so here is the direct link to the podcast MP3 File.

First official trailer for Brick by Chance and Fortune the documentary I’ve been working on since last fall about St. Louis brick. We’re currently halfway through production and hope to have the final cut done by fall 2010. Follow our progress at our site stlbrickfilm.com

Bill Streeter
Director/Producer/
Editor

Jeannette Hoss
Managing Producer

Virginia Lee Hunter
Director of Photography

B. Bowls MacLean
Assistant Director of Photography

Greer Lange
Assistant Editor

Original Music by:
Pokey LaFarge & Mat Wilson

Music Supervisor:
Matt Giant

This film is being produced with a generous grant from the Commission for Access and Local Original Programming (CALOP).

Posted via web from Bill’s posterous

via wellesnet.com

This is to certify that the bearer is a member of the human race. All relevant information is to be found in his passport. And except when there is good reason for suspecting him of some crime, he will refuse to submit to police interrogation, on the grounds that any such interrogation is an intolerable nuisance. And life being as short as it is, a waste of time. Any infringement on his privacy, or interference with his liberty, any assault, however petty, against his dignity as a human being, will be rigorously prosecuted by the undersigned, I.S.[sic].P.I.A.O. That would be the International Association for the Protection of the Individual Against Officialdom. If any such outfit is ever organized, you can put me down as a charter member…

In light of Facebook’s announcement today.

Posted via web from Bill’s posterous