Q&A With Caneso

Yesterday's installment of the CoinOp blog (from Pinball Publishing) had a great Q&A with Otis alum Mark Canes0 ('04 Communication Arts). Touching on his graphic and type design the interview is a nice snapshot of Mark's creative process and how he's been making his way in the world post-Otisland.

You can read the full interview here. To learn more about Mark's work go here.

(Full disclosure- I've worked extensively with Mark on projects he completed on behalf of the Admissions office so I know him well and am a fan of his work.)

*image of Mark Caneso from CoOp blog

When it Comes to Social Media Otis is Out There

I started this blog just over three years ago. Back then Otis had a Flickr profile (having published it's first photo in October of 2006), and a MySpace page (that we've since decommissioned) and that was about it. Of course since then the social media world has exploded and what a difference a couple of years makes!

As I was preparing some tidbits for a meeting I figured out that among other things:

• Otis' YouTube profile(started in March 2007) has uploaded 173 videos that collectively have been viewed over 600,000 times. The most popular one having been seen over 100,000 times all by itself.
• Otis' Flickr profile now has over 700 photos uploaded that have been viewed over 91,000 times. The photo on this post just passed the 2000 view mark and is the most viewed on the profile.
  
• The College Facebook page (started in February 2008) has 1911 fans from over 20 different countries)
• Our Twitter profile (created in October 2009) has nearly 300 followers
• The Otis Blogosphere now includes over 20 different blogs

So you can see, the College is out there! Have a suggestion about a social media site Otis should be a part of? Ideas for how to improve our existing sites? I'd love to hear from you.

LA Lauded Again

The Calendar section of today's Los Angeles Times had an interesting piece about the upcoming ARCOmadrid art fair and the fact that Los Angeles will be the "focus city" (rather than an entire country has been the case before). It appears L.A. is on a bit of a roll when it comes to interest from the international art community. Just last fall the city was honored by the International Book Fair in Guadalajara.

I won't be lucky enough to attend ARCOmadrid but I was in Guadalajara for the Book Fair and related exhibitions and if the buzz from Spain is the same as it was after Mexico then more recognition for the Los Angeles is likely to follow.

Otis alum Gajin Fujita '97 was one of four artists whose work was used in the article along with Raymond Pettibon, John Baldessari and Don Suggs (who had a major retrospective exhibition on campus in 2007).

You can read the entire article here. You can see a wide range of photos from alum Mark Dean Veca's exhibition in Guadalajara that was part of the Book Fair here.

*Image of "Fearless" by Gajin Fujita from L.A. Louver Gallery by way of the Los Angeles Times

Digital Media Gem Via Google Alerts

I've written frequently about how helpful Google Alerts are in keeping track of Otis in the news. Much of the time the notifications are about some recent event or activity but now and again there will be something that, while not new, is still a great find.

Take this week for example when I received an alert for a YouTube video that had been posed to the site WhyNotPhotoshop.com. While post was new, the video, by two of our Digital Media alums is from 2007. It's a great little piece about Los Angeles that is a nice example of the work created in our Media in Motion class.

I've embedded it here. Enjoy!