I started Ironic Sans as a place for me to write all the creative ideas I have that don’t relate to my career as a photographer. The topics I write about here run the gamut, but I primarily express myself through photography, and I figure that some of you might like the projects I’m working on. So I’ve decided that it’s about time I start a blog about my photography.

The new blog is called DFP:BLOG, and its launch coincides with the redesign of my photography portfolio site.

Currently on the blog, you can see some of the people I’ve photographed for my ongoing series of inventor portraits, like Tony Pagoto, seen below in his living room, who invented a gadget for keeping the wires under your desk tidy.

And, from my archives, I’ve posted a seldom seen photo essay I shot in a denim factory in Kentucky. If you’ve ever wondered who the people are who put the holes in pre-distressed jeans, this will answer the question.

I haven’t yet figured out what the frequency of posts will be at DFP:BLOG, but when I do, expect to see more work along these lines, as well as occasional one-offs, and links to other work that inspires me.

(And don’t worry — Ironic Sans isn’t going anywhere).

Posted by David at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Filed under: General | Photography

Thank You to the New York Sun for the very nice article about my 60 Second Films in yesterday’s edition.

Posted by David at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Filed under: General

I’m not one of those bloggers that just links to stuff I like on other blogs, but after 2+ years of relying on exactly those kinds of sites for traffic, I figure it’s about time I return some love. So I’ve finally added a blogroll in the sidebar of the home page, listing some of my favorite blogs. I thought a blogroll would be a good opportunity to highlight some underrated bloggers, but then I realized that most of the sites I read are already pretty popular. So I tried to order them roughly from least-to-most likely that you’re already reading them.

So what are the most underrated blogs that you read? Who are the bloggers whose blogs most reflect their personal creative vision? I call those people blogeurs, after the auteur theory of film, which holds that a movie reflects the director’s personal vision as though he or she were the primary author. Make a recommendation in the comments, but keep it to one link only — any more and you risk triggering my comment spam filter.

Here are some lesser-known highlights from my new blogroll. They aren’t all necessarily everyday must reads, but I like them:

Animation Backgrounds:
Musician Rob Richards has a hobby. He digitally removes the animation cells from cartoons, revealing the background art beneath. The result is an often surreal empty house, forest, construction site, etc. He also stitches together frames from panned shots, showing the entire panoramic painted background in its entirety. Animation fans may also like Rob’s other blogs which focus just as much on the cels as the backgrounds.

The New York Public Library:
Yes, the library has a blog. It’s a group blog, actually, by several of the library’s curators, highlighting items from the library’s collection as they relate to contemporary topics. I think each blogger is meant to be covering a specific subject, but I find some overlap. There’s also an interesting blog at the NYPL Labs, which “provides a window into the overall digital experience of The New York Public Library.” It’s as easy to lose time browsing through the archives of these sites as it is browsing the library itself.

Ponoko Blog:
I first read about the Ponoko Store in Wired magazine. It’s a fabrication-on-demand service that will laser-cut your design in a variety of flat materials (wood, plastic, etc) and send you the pieces for assembly. I’ve been trying to come up with a good design for a product that could be made out of flat pieces, and I have something in mind that I may work on soon. In the meantime, I’ve been reading their blog for inspiration, which is all about laser-cutting, fabrication-on-demand, and anything that can be made out of flat pieces of material. It seems that a lot of people are making 3-D art from 2-D pieces.

The Everywhere Girl:
Several years ago, this girl who is not a professional model participated in a photo shoot. The photographer Douglas Menuez licensed the photos as “Royalty Free” stock, meaning that once a person pays to use it, they are allowed to use it as much as they want without paying further royalties (a business model I don’t recommend, incidentally). As a result, this girl’s face has been widely used wherever a “hip college girl” was needed. People noticed. Now she has a blog that’s partly an ongoing documentation of places people have spotted her face (most recently on the wall at a restaurant in Phoenix) and partly a look into her life.

David Horvitz:
I like the way David Horvitz thinks. He’s some combination of photographer, performance artist, conceptual artist, and something I can’t quite put my finger on. His series Things For Sale I Will Mail You is a good place to start in exploring his site. I think this is a guy to keep an eye on.

As long as I’m linking to things, here are a couple sites that aren’t blogs but deserve appreciation. They’re both apparel sites by people I know and I think they deserve a plug. It’s t-shirt season, so maybe you’ll find something you like:

Unhappy Animals:
If I were ten years younger and female, I would totally be wearing these shirts. Since I’m not, I simply admire their creativity. They feature unhappy animals like the lactose-intolerant mouse (“The heart wants what the heart wants, even if it’s going to leave you clutching your tummy curled in pain”) and the fish who swims in a bowl of its own tears, its sadness the only thing keeping it alive. Nice.

Ciara Elend:
Ciara block-prints by hand every one of her high-end t-shirts, using linoleum blocks that she hand-carves, and the results are fantastic. She also sells more moderately-priced shirts, but I think it’s her “couture” line that really shines (I don’t know where she gets the shirt material, but they seriously feel great). I especially like the “Bad Apples” design. A lot of work has gone into making sure these are high quality products.

And that’s it for the outbound links. Let me know what underrated blogeurs you like that I should be reading (reminder: one link per comment please). I’ll occasionally update the blogroll as my own list changes.

Posted by David at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Filed under: General

If you’re one of the thousands of people attending SXSW Interactive this weekend, you can come see me pitch one of my ideas live on a panel called Worst Website Ever: That’s So Crazy It Just Might Work.

Andy Baio will serve as moderator, as eight creative people each take turns pitching their worst possible website ideas to venture capitalist David Hornik, who would probably be crazy to provide funding for any of our proposals. But who knows? Maybe he’ll decide that one idea is so crazy that it just might work.

I’m sure the competition will be tough, as the full panel also includes Lane Becker, Jeffery Bennett, Ben Brown, Katie Spence, Michael Buffington, Lia Bulaong, and Merlin Mann. All are smart people with smart ideas. But whose smart idea will be the worst?

Find out this Saturday at 5:00 in Room 9, wherever that is.

More info here.

Posted by David at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Filed under: General

When I started this blog, I never imagined that the silly things I post here might one day end up in a printed anthology alongside writing by Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker, federal judge Richard Posner, and the New Yorker’s Alex Ross. But we all have blogs which, along with 24 others, have been anthologized in a new book out this week called Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks From the Wild Web compiled by former New York Times reporter Sarah Boxer. I’m flattered!

The printed page might seem like an odd way to read blogs, but the compilation actually makes for good reading. And the fact that the book features relatively short entries that can be read in any order makes it an excellent bathroom book. (I mean that in a good way.)

You can read reviews of the book on-line for a better idea of what the book is like and what’s included. Here are a couple of them: LA Times, Newsweek.

Note: Sarah Boxer selected the posts that she feels work best in her compilation. But they aren’t necessarily my favorite posts from my blog. I do maintain a “Favorites” list that can be found among the Categories list in the sidebar, or by clicking here.

Posted by David at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Filed under: General

New to the Ironic Sans shop are T-Shirts emblazoned with the NYC Skyline Histogram from this post I wrote a few weeks back. The design is available in a range of attractive products and sizes.

All your old favorite items are still available, too, including T-shirts From Conventions That Never Really Happened, the “Hello My Name Is John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” shirts, the Ascent-of-Man Crossing Abby Road items, an Orange Clockwork, and of course the Pre-Pixelated Clothes For Reality TV Shows (featuring the return of the Pixmas design) as well as a few other items.

They make excellent gifts!

Posted by David at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under: General

PC Magazine has just named Ironic Sans one of their Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites for 2007. Thanks, PC Magazine! If you’re visiting for the first time by way of the article, welcome to the site. You can click the “Favorites” link (which can also be found among the categories in the sidebar) to get a good sense of what this site’s all about, or just keep reading the front page to see what’s been on my mind lately.

Posted by David at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Filed under: General

I don’t usually write about things going on elsewhere on other blogs. I pretty much just write original stuff and let other people link to me. Well, this week has been extremely busy and I haven’t had much time to write anything, so I figured I’d take a moment this morning to acknowledge and thank some of the websites out there that have linked to entries I’ve written on more than one occasion. Thanks goes to the following blogs, which you should check out if you don’t already. In no particular order:

Design Observer • Gawker • Gothamist • Adrants • BoingBoing • Metafilter • Jason Kottke • The Nine at Yahoo! • USA Today’s Pop Candy • Waxy.org • TVGasm • Mental Floss • Cynical-C Blog • Washington Post’s Celebritology • Wired’s Table of Malcontents • Growabrain • Coudal Partners • Consumerist

Apologies to those who I’ve overlooked.

Hmm. Now that I look at the list, those are all pretty popular websites anyway. They probably won’t benefit that much by my listing them here. Well, since I’m taking this rare moment to link to other blogs, here are three lesser-known blogs I enjoy and recommend:

• You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice - A website trying to call out those who are ripping off other people’s designs.

• News From Me - Mark Evenier’s blog could be described accurately as being a great site for finding entertaining video from yesteryear. It could also be described as a site that keeps you updated on animation industry greats as they pass away, including illustrators, voice actors, and others. It could also be described as a place to find occasional insightful political commentary. It’s all these things and more.

• Dave Greten’s Blog - His reviews of movies he hasn’t seen are highly entertaining, and his description of his hike up Mount Kilimanjaro had me ready to tie on my hiking boots and book a flight to Tanzania.

Posted by David at 5:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under: General | Lists

I feel kinda cheap pointing out that the 2007 Weblog Awards are open for nominations until January 10, and humbly noting that Ironic Sans would make an excellent nominee for the Best New Weblog or Best-Kept Secret Weblog categories. But it does give me a good excuse to review some of the highlights of the past year, as Ironic Sans approaches its first anniversary. It all started with one little idea and has grown so much from there.

A particularly nice accolade came recently when Gawker Media’s founder Nick Denton e-mailed me. He wrote, “Can’t believe I’d never seen your site before… spent half an hour browsing around. Thanks for wasting my morning!” A comment like that from Nick Denton made my day almost as much as the post I saw on one reader’s livejournal page. She wrote, “I went to the site to dip my toes in, and came out an hour later soaking wet.”

Ironic Sans was put on the map when I posted my idea for pre-pixelated clothes for reality TV. I thought it was a funny idea, but I didn’t expect all the attention it received. I was taken completely by surprise when it got mentions by MSNBC, USA Today, Wired, Entertainment Weekly, Defamer, Fark, Digg, Kottke, Consumerist, the Morning News, Boston.com, C|Net, New York Magazine, and even Stuff Magazine, which recently asked for photos of the shirts for an upcoming issue. And next month, the shirts will be seen in a new book called The Big Book of Irony by Jon Winokur.

Here are some of this year’s other entries of note:

The ones that got the most attention

• Overview of celebrity patents
  
• Idea for a building shaped like Godzilla
  
• The Ant Desk
  
• The Google Maps Guide to Ghostbusters
  
• The Mr. T Virtual Playset
  
• Logos with Pictures as Letters
  
• The Art of 1010 WINS
  
• New York City in Animation (an ongoing series)
  
• Interview with Louis Klein, the man who has seen almost every episode of Saturday Night Live in person
  
• Interview with Seetharaman Narayanan, whose name I’d been staring at for years on the Photoshop splash screen
  
• Agassi vs. Pavel vs. Agassi vs. Pavel
  
• A parallel istaverse
  
• Lexidiem, the word of the day
  
• 60 Seconds in the Life of a Staircase
  
• 60 Seconds in the Life of Landing Gear

A few that I thought deserved more attention

• Idea for a World Trade Center monument
  
• The Ishihara Triptych
  
• Michaelangelo’s “David” meets David’s “George Bush”
  
• The Pacifist Chess Set
  
• 60 Seconds in the Life of Steam
  
• 60 Seconds in the Life of the Apple Store Stairs
  
• Boris Vallejo’s Palette
  
• A Remake of “Fred Ott’s Sneeze” (one of the first movies ever made)
  
• Commemorative t-shirts for fictional events
  
• Interview with Adam Rex, author, illustrator, and generally funny guy with a great book out.
  
• How Ironic Sans got shut down by one man who sent one e-mail (this will always deserve more attention because I want everyone to know how awful Doteasy is for web hosting before giving them a dime).
  

In all, it’s been a good first year. I try to periodically feature some of my favorite entries in a Favorites page, so if you’re new to Ironic Sans you can check there for more highlights. And you can browse the complete archive for the rest of this year’s 150-or-so entries.

When I started this site, I had to figure out what exactly I want it to be. I thought about all the blogs that already exist. There is no shortage of excellent sites that just point to all sorts of interesting things on the web. The world doesn’t need any more of those. Instead, I aim to be one of those interesting things on the web that all of those sites can point to. So far, I hope I’m off to a good start.

Posted by David at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Filed under: General | Lists

Today, Ironic Sans had its 100,000th visit, to be commemorated in this post, reflecting a long-standing tradition of posting about your 100,000th hit.

I consider the site as having gone live on March 11, 2006, even though the archive has a few earlier posts, which I needed to have so I could figure out the site’s design. But March 11 was the first day I considered the site finished and posted something that I thought might attract people to my site. The next day, March 12, I started using SiteMeter to keep track of my visits. And according to SiteMeter, I had my 100,000th visit at 4:29:17 PM today.

So that’s 100,000 visits in 43 days. Not bad!

The top three pages in the first 100,000 hits:

1) Pre-pixelated clothes for Reality TV Shows

2) The Google Maps Guide to Ghostbusters

3) 60 Seconds in the Life of Landing Gear

Thanks for helping me hit this milestone, everyone!

Posted by David at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Filed under: General | Technology

My entry about Pre-Pixelated Clothes generated a lot of traffic this week, thanks especially to links from the following websites: TVGasm, Defamer, MSNBC, USA Today, Wired, Entertainment Weekly, Fark, Digg, Kottke, Consumerist, the Morning News, and about a hundred other blogs.

I didn’t really expect that much attention. Thanks for putting my little blog on the map!

Posted by David at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Filed under: General

Announcing the first inductees to the Hall of Fame Hall of Fame:

Rock and Roll • Inventors • Women • Country Music • Cowboys • College Football • Cowgirls • Rockabilly • Volleyball • Science Fiction • Bowling • Aviation • American Police • Robots • Texas Rangers • Automotive • Ecology • Thoroughbred Racing • Motorsports • Radio • Songwriters • Gymnastics • Amateur Softball • Agriculture • Wrestling • Bicycling • Clowns • Hockey • Fresh Water Fishing • Hackers • Ukelele • Toys • Pirate Radio • Anagrams • Computers • Teachers • Mining • Figure Skating • Ad Slogans • Explorers • Motorcycles • Astronauts • Quilters • Dance • Snowmobiles • Polka • Flight Simulator Scenery • Hawaiian Music • Kites

Posted by David at 12:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Filed under: General | Lists

Thinking about different fonts one day, I decided that “Ironic Sans” would be a good name for a serif font. Maybe one day I’ll get around to designing it. In the mean time, I think it makes a good name for my blog.

“Ironic Sans,” the blog, is a place for me to write about art, culture, technology, law, politics, current events, critical thinking, and other topics that appeal to me. I will have a number of regular features on this site, and various articles long and short as they come to me. I hope you enjoy.

Posted by David at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Filed under: General | Ideas