Gay and Lesbian Marketing (Diesel Logo)

Original logo

So I've visited the Castro, a neighborhood in San Francisco, most famous for being well known as a gay village and it's working class background during the 60s and 70s, at a time when LGBT activism was on the rise post-Stonewall (June 28, 1969), which also pertains on the last week of June that SF Pride occurs.


Anyway, I retooled this logo with the help of Illustrator by copying the design of the logo in terms of shape, text, size, and used similar schematics of the original logo to create what I have above.

I replaced the primary word in the logo, which was "DIESEL" to "ANOREXIA", which I did as a response to the advertising of the clothing to only associate the fashion and clothing style towards people who are likely to be skinny or slender. The bias towards this is that I only mention anorexic people, assuming whether or not they might be healthy or not, regardless if they're ectomorph (characterized by long and thin muscles/limbs and low fat storage; usually referred to as slim) in terms of the people who wear the clothing or people who associate themselves with it.


On the bottom, I replaced the phrase "FOR SUCCESSFUL LIVING" to "DIE BEAUTIFUL INSTEAD OF AIDS". Now this is only intentional to a certain location and audience, I want to jam this logo somewhere in the Castro, where they currently have a Diesel clothing store, which apparently held a radio broadcasting show called Hibernia Beach LIVE, which was a gay-themed call-in show from October 1989 to 2000, which was named "the longest running gay-themed show on commercial radio".


I love to read up on reviews of store that are of interest in what I have currently researched in creating this logo. According to reviews on Yelp, the general sense of the Diesel store in the Castro is mixed, faired with some reviews, according to one review saying the store had:

"...so many snobby employees!!!! I don't know what their problem is, but I don't think there in any position to treat people like crap, when they are making minimum wage. These bitches need to check the attitude at the door. Also, their clothes are too expensive, can easily find the equivalent somewhere else and cheaper."

Other reviews rate the store in a positive sense, such as having a variety selection of clothing, good-looking employees (most or almost all of them are apparently males), and durability of branded clothing, at a steep price to pay.

As for retooling the logo to say "DIE BEAUTIFUL INSTEAD OF AIDS" on the bottom is mostly to give the message that anorexia seems to be more culturally accepted to keep up appearances in the gay male community if you want to be identified in terms of being attractive and looking for sexual partners as a means of creating a physical appearance that is apparently borderline accepted.

End of the World

California Conceptualism

SOMArts

934 Brannan Street

San Francisco, CA 94103

info@somarts.org

(415) 863-1414

On April 14, I attended the SOMArts, where at the time, they held an artist talk & reception, with all of the artists who had their works showcased. One person in particular that led me to go to the event was George Legrady who was previously a professor in the Conceptual Information Arts [CIA] program at San Francisco State, part of the College of Fine Arts & Humanities which I'm currently in now. I was curious of what sort of work he displayed in the show and if his work relationship with Steve Wilson, former head of the CIA department.

Some of the works he featured were a computer displaying interactive photos displaying text about some real world event that I can't recall. Another work he displayed included a platform with wheels with nothing on top, with head lights a top from the ceiling shining down upon the display; a projector displaying photos of people who submitted their photos onto a Twitter account; and a television displaying the geographical locations of certain events like robberies, stabbings, with the help of Google Maps and possibly their photo search engine.

I got a chance to briefly talk to George and he was a pretty nice guy. I mentioned that I was currently a student in the CIA program and after we talked for a bit he briefly mention Steve and said that he and Steve pushed the CIA into a more technological-oriented program and the fact that Paula Levine, now head of the CIA program (if that is correct), took over Georges' teaching position in 1996, which they both worked together for a bit, but then took a teaching job at UC Santa Barbara and is currently the Professor of Interactive Media, and director of the MAT Experimental Visualization Lab.

The entrance of the SOMArts Gallery:

The panel with all of the artists' explaining their works being displayed. George Legrady is the sixth person from the left of the panel:

The display displaying nothing:

Projecting pictures submitted via Twitter:

Pride Tower

Introduction and Background:

Seeing as how San Francisco is considered to be the city with a reputation of being friendly to all people of different backgrounds; from race, ethnicity, sex, religion, or skin color to name a few. The city is especially known for being a tolerant city in terms of it's urban gay population.

A quick view of the tower:

My proposal is to put the install the current six representative colors of the pride flag onto the outer shaft of the Coit Tower. The tower would be a commemoration to the creation of the pride flag, created by Gilbert Baker, who in June 25, 1978 debuted the pride flag, although the flag originally included eight colors. Lines 1[Hot Pink] and 6[Turquoise] were taken off as time passed on due to the lack of availability of the two colors as the flag started to become a popular symbol of gay pride, as Baker calls the current pride flag, "The commercial flag."

Original LGBT pride flag with 8 colors:

Something interesting to note is that Coit Tower is named after a wealthy socialite woman named Lillie Hitchcock Coit, which her fortunes funded the monument four years following her death in 1929 and took five years to construct. She also fancied the city's firefighters, from their clothing to their helmets, it was almost as if she too wanted to become a firefighter, trousers, and disguised herself as a man to gamble in the gambling halls in North Beach even before they were sociably acceptable for women to do so. She eventually married Howard Coit, who worked as a caller at the San Francisco Stock and Bond Exchange. She later divorced to Howard Coit and never remarried. Unfortunately, she suffered a stroke in 1929 and the Park Commission proposed to build a tower with the funds from her estate, which is today the Coit Tower. Although the tower resembles a fire hose nozzle, the architect of the tower, Arthur Brown Jr., denied the claim that it resembles a nozzle, although the context brings up a good point of Lillie's love of firemen and firefighting.

Monument:

The monument will basically consist of the 6 colors from the pride flag plastered only onto the outer shaft of the tower, which the colors will wrap around the tower. A visual is provided as to how the described monument will be [although the image may not give a realistic interpretation of the envision of the proposal, it gives the viewer a sense of what the proposed tower would look contextually]:

Benefits:

-Awareness of gay identity among international audience on a landmark, where tourists would usually visit, for example.

-To encourage a safe environment where equality among the LGBT community is a standing symbol for a safe environment, however it may be in a limited space.

-Another benefit to this monument would be good to establish the monument onto a certain time and month. Since 2000, former President Bill Clinton declared Gay and Lesbian Pride Month on June, which the month was also chosen to commemorate the Stonewall riots in the same month.

Improbable?:

What makes the monument almost improbable is that the intention of the monument is that the colors are suppose to be permanently fixated onto the shaft of the tower, which is unlikely that the city would ever commission a project to change a monument's meaning or aesthetic per se. It challenges the notion of changing a monument's physical features and it's reputation for being homogeneous among its surroundings, changing the aesthetics of the monument.

Estimated Costs/Tools/Instruments:

-Paint: $35,000

-Labor/Manual Labor: $5000

-Paint Rollers: $1000

-Commission: $25,000

Estimated expenses: $66,000

I have also found a Sketchup model of the Coit Tower, which you can also download a kmz file of the retooled tower:

Retooled Coit Tower [Viewable on Google Earth]

Viewable Presentation on Youtube:

Change The World With Google Earth with Google Map Maker