El Gaffney

Make a Personal and Presidential Statement

A cool new application from Paste Magazine called Obamicon.Me. (Probably a better name than Faireysize Me.) Just as Logobama helped bring individuals into the election period, this allows people to express themselves in the days leading up to following the swearing in of our President-elect using the iconic Shepard Fairey poster and a very interesting, easy-to-use interface. So in anticipation of next Tuesday, I wanted to make a few extremely politically-charged statements.

Enjoy, but also be on alert.

Tags: art, obama, personal

Do Day: What? You Don’t Have A Logo!?!

I was going to call this “Me-keting” or “Marketmeing” but I didn’t think either of those qualify as new terms worth coining on putting in the subject. What’s worse is I’m not sure they’re even original. Either way, I’ve been thinking a bit lately about all my online accounts (from Seesmic—which I stopped using—to Y! Live on which I’m currently watching Aki)…and I’ve been thinking lately about my brand (El Gaffney vs. Seth Gaffney and specifically what is the persona I present online).

Also, I was talking with Clay and Eric about a side project (that hopefully I’ll be featuring in a very near Do Day) for which one of them asked for a picture and a logo. “A logo?,” I thought, “I guess I can hit them up with the El Gaffney side profile with drawn in mustache image.” Though while it was done by a real designer (at my first agency), I felt a bit naked. Why didn’t I have a logo? (Daddy, I want a golden ticket!)

Then, that same day, I saw Eric’s post about Logobama over at Marketing.fm. This site has meets people’s profile (logo) needs in such a smart and easy way—and more interestingly, the idea to create this site seems to have stemmed from online observation…

We’ve been noticing a trend of people displaying their support for Barack Obama’s Democratic presidential campaign by using his logo as their avatar, or visual representation on the web. We thought, ‘what can we do to show our support?’

So we created Logobama, a place for you to create your own custom Obama logo and use it wherever you want. As Obama says, ‘we are the change we have been waiting for.’ That’s what Obama is representing… someone who wants all of us to participate in changing the world. And together, we can make this change, one logo at a time.

It let’s you personalize his logo and download it at full size or for a variety of other places web-goers will likely have profiles. (i.e. YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, etc.) Here’s the one I created:

Yes, very much in the spirit of “A More Perfect Union”. And yes, I did have cornrows for a few days…until I started feeling gross and getting headaches.

So, all that said, I think as more and more young people grow up with many profiles and understanding the many dimensions of their online experience, they’ll naturally think about themselves as brands. They’ll know that while there are many profiles and dimensions, there is only one them (ME)—there is not your personal persona (friend one is different from family) and your business face, which you can present to each appropriate audience. And they’ll learn quickly how to and be equipped to manage their brands. And yes, they’ll probably have logos (and the skills sets and tools to make their own). So, I still want mine…and perhaps a more unique photo while we’re at it.

Tags: brands, logo, obama, personal

My First Rehearsal

I’ve been hesitant to write about this—in fact, even thinking about writing gives me butterflies. Well, first I wasn’t going to tell people that I was trying out (or in more proper but less macho terms, auditioning) because I didn’t think I would be selected. They gave options. Write and read a less than 5-minute piece about your Birthright Israel experience or perform a memorized piece about anything. Oh, and send in your theater resume if you have one. Huh? I almost gave up there, but decided that opportunity to work with Vanessa Hidary (a Def Jam poet) was a potential experience worth the embarrassment. So on I wrote, read, and received – an email back stating that I was selected.

Tonight’s the first rehearsal and it’s fair to say I’m scared shitless. I don’t know if the fact that it’s a group rehearsal makes it better or worse. I guess it depends on how many of these people have that theater resume they asked for.

I’m not ready to share that piece yet, but maybe I’ll feel differently after tonight. I’m not sure if that’s what I’ll be performing or if I’ll be asked to write something else. I guess I’ll just have to see. I’m not ready to send out the performance info either…but that I’m sure I’ll pass on close to the date in early November. And lastly, far be it from me to give advice, but I do want to mention two things:

1. As uncomfortable as this whole process (mostly, the idea of performing spoken word poetry) makes me so far even the act of auditioning was rewarding. It felt like pretty good public speaking practice if nothing else. So, I’m of course not the first to encourage anyone reading this to try things outside of your comfort zone, and I surely won’t be the last.
2. The process of creating something from scratch was extremely rewarding. Every once in a while I’ll start with a blank piece of paper, word doc or powerpoint for work, this blank blog post rectangle even. But even in almost all of those cases I have an idea of what I’m going to write – some slides to recycle from presentations past, google to search for topic pov’s, a link or video to embed. I don’t draw or sew or build (Ikea furniture doesn’t count, and even if it did, I don’t think I could count it), and I only had my own mind as a resource/to get me through this exercise. It was worth it even if I hadn’t gotten picked (but then who knows if you’d ever know :)).

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted but in the meantime would love to hear any similarly rewarding stories (comment or shoot me an email – seth.gaffney@gmail.com).

Tags: birthright, jewish, personal