on things i don't know

i was frustrated at work today and all i wanted to do was step outside and take a smoke.

(i did get to take a nice, brisk 7-block walk. but this was pre-frustration.)

this obviously stems from my inability to express — either verbally or visually — something that adequately represents heavy metal bands from sweden outside of outright mocking. but isn't that the appropriate response? let's just slap on some blood and some rips, tears, and dirt, and we've got a veritable work of art.

today was one of those days where i retreated into my armor of elitist tendencies; my inability to connect to the essence of teenager idiocy was masked by a marc by marc jacobs jacket. taste, i have it, and i wield it with maniacal force. that is, until it strangles my job performance. the role of any graphic designer is to understand the visual minutae of some particular substrata of society and to reproduce it in some way. i'm failing on both counts right now.

i understand beautiful jackets and mocking irony; i just can't get behind reproducing the spirit of an album cover with man floating with one hand dipped in blood.

at the end of the day, i can't really complain. i'm not trying to boil down the essence of a third-world dictator who murders babies in 2500 words; i'm just monkeying around with a couple of pages on a bunch of scandinavian guys who like to play really, really loud music