I've been playing around on Instagram, where a new friend (@ashcroft54 who blogs at http://ashcroft54.com) posted a picture of a Starbuck's coffee cup and invited edits of the image. We call these invitations "challenges" or sometimes "pimps." It's a social media game that has been nourishing my soul lately. Here are a few of my edits:




My first inclination was to transform the logo into something else. The first thing that came to mind was the biohazard symbol. Don't know why, exactly. I like coffee. But it sometimes seems like a "toxic brew" to me. What followed? Well, something mutant-like, of course. Tentacles made sense. And from there, it only seemed right to tweak the visual style toward comicbook.




The next day, I was still captivated with the idea of tweaking the logo and seeing where that took me. I also felt the need for a visual pun. I grabbed an open source image of Kara Thrace (a.k.a. "Starbuck") from Battlestar Galactica. I then tweaked it into a few shades of green and a coffee-chain-esque art nouveau style. A few Cylon light-effects later and I had my take on a Starbuck Starbucks. So say we all!




Next day and I felt the need to keep the logo but lose the cup. I spent a lot of time isolating the logo and looking at it. Finally, the idea of plankton came to me, and I knew I had an idea worth playing with. It was also fun adding some different colors and offset depth to the flat green Starbucks logo.




Today, I started an edit based on removing the cup entirely and working with the grid pattern on the table top. Once I had the empty plane, I was at a loss for what to put on it. Then I happened to turn the logo upside down, and I saw the pig face in it. The rest was simply a matter of pulling that image out and giving the overall composition some engaging texture.

I am finding as the semester winds up that digital graphics are a way to relax and get out of my school brain. I'm loving the edit communities on Instagram. It took a while to find them, but now I am addicted -- which may or may not be a metaphor. But I love the touch screen as a tool and toy for seeing and re-seeing with my fingers. And in the end, they take me to magical places where creepy is most definitely cool.