Angelusnoctis - Bats inside my head

That could be a good title for a terror movie, as publicity is more and more present in our lifes. But today it stands for a post related to free 2.0 sites and advertising.

I was updating my myspace account and I found an ad of sanitary napkins, a Flash horizontal banner that grows up when you roll over it. It includes a video and some animation to show the offer and links. Also, as you can see in the image, you find another ad in the right column.

Usually I don’t care about that kind of big animated banners, unless they have some noise: then they become irritating, so I always leave the page. But this time, with this napkins advert, I had a little problem. The main admin page of myspace is a place where I spend a lot of time, checking the news of my friends’ profiles. At some point, the big banner expanded and the video begun. And for some strange reason, just in some cases, if you roll out of it, it doesn’t disappear.

I tried to find a “X” to close it, but it doesn’t have one. So I had to reload the page to continue “working”. I suppossed it was caused by an strange behaviour of my browser (Firefox) in some circumstances, but I think that these kind of things should be tested before by the designers. As you see, with the expanded add you almost get a 50% advertising page! If I would have been browsing in other kind of page I would have left it inmediately. They forgot the “close” button!

That makes me think about the ads in my blog. Are they intruders or they actually contribute to enrich the content with interesting links? The ads in my site have another function too: they teach me about internet marketing and advertising. That’s the main reason I have them. But, do users feel disturbed by them till the point they leave my page?… Time to think…

Look the CD cover of the latest Miss Kittin work!!!!

I love all those small bats, the illustraton style, the colors… ^^

I want a T-shirt with those drawings!!!!!!

Yesterday my boyfriend and I were shopping in a shopping mall… Just searching for some throusers. And suddenly we paid attention to the waist of some men’s black jeans… And the Combichrist skull was there! They have used it instead of the “i” dots. Here you can see the photo. It was a pity I didn’t have my camera with me, we took a small pic with a mobile phone…

I had already seen that skull in other clothes, is exactly the same as the one in Combichrist CDs, but they have just removed the signs in the forehead…

I wonder if the ones making clothes are copying Combichrist logo, or if Combichrist did it and they just added the signs… I’d love to know who’s the designer of their image. Anyone?

Some weeks ago searching for free photos in the internet (in the great community of http://www.sxc.hu) I found a curious one, that made me think about the design, the resources we use, and the small size of the dark electro scene.

The issue is that I found the photography of the latest CD cover for Combichrist. I was so amazed that I went to my Ipod to check that I was not confused. The photo uploaded by user ‘emsago‘, which is given free to use, was the one in the latest Combichrist CD (by the way, great CD, listening to ‘Shut Up and Swallow’ makes me dance even inside when I’m working quiet at the office!).

Immediately, I thought about all the times I have to do the same when designing for these kind of things, when I even make designs for free in my spare time just to help the scene grow a little bit with my job. For example, the poster I made in Halloween for a friend of mine, who owns a little but nice club in the city. I had to use several free images which I also took from Stock.schng, and today I’m revealing my work on this poster, and the photos that some people around the world decided to share.

As a designer, I want my works to be paid, but I think that maybe, the things I make and don’t use -beacuse finally I don’t like them- may be useful for others. I think sharing is a good way to optimize this work: sometimes my work is useful for others, and sometimes their work is useful for mine. At the end is just a big exchange of work among people from all over the world.