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What's All This Then?
This is Layer Tennis, a live, weekly series of design competitions, presented by Adobe® Creative Suite® 3. It was created by Coudal Partners. We've made lots of other stuff too.
What's All This Then?
This is Layer Tennis, a live, weekly series of design competitions, presented by Adobe® Creative Suite® 3. It was created by Coudal Partners. We've made lots of other stuff too.
Never before in my fifteen years of announcing Layer Tennis have I seen such bitter rivalry, such utter hatred, such unmitigated animosity as I’ve witnessed between these two players during the preparation for this landmark match.
Scott Hansen, notorious for his controversial and dangerous left-handed mousing. A loose cannon with a lightning-fast triple Raptor SATA2 RAID 0 swap disk array to boot. And Rob Cordiner, who has publicly admitted to his cavalier use of Command-Z. Prone to street fights of drop-shadow boxing in dark alleys.
During this week of warm ups, a war of words has surged like bad blood between these two unorthodox competitors. At the press conference Wednesday morning, the world watched in shock as Scott spat out the ultimate insult: "I like Rob's minimalist approach and the sort of hand-made aesthetic of a lot of his designs." Rob growled back, his voice heavy and dirty with sarcasm: "Scott seems like a seriously talented dude both in the realms of graphics and music."
I tell you, the smack these men talk is enough to make me want to walk away from this Layer Tennis microphone for life.
Indeed, this rivalry runs so deep that our players refuse to compete on the same soil. Scott will be playing from an undisclosed location in the Dolores Park neighborhood of San Francisco, while Rob will be sequestered in an abandoned World War II bunker below the streets of London. Herein lies yet another set of potential time-zone handicaps sure to make these volleys even more surly. Scott will play in the inky blackness of a fog-socked Bay Area just before lunchtime and will suffer from dangerously low blood sugar, exacerbated by his typical pre-match fasting regimen. Rob will play in the inky blackness of a damp London evening, and may very well be drunk.
I'm getting a report that Scott has won the coin toss, so Scott will position himself for the serv --oh, wait, now Rob is disputing that coin toss because we didn't use an English pound. We'll let the line judges at Coudal resolve that. As for me, I've locked myself up here in the booth next to a microwave and a mini-fridge stocked with a week's worth of DiGiorno Ultimate Four Meat pizzas in case things get ugly. I suggest you do the same.
This San Francisco-based artist and producer actually goes by two more names: ISO50, a graphic designer who creates dreamy visual landscapes, and Tycho, a musician who creates dreamy sonic landscapes. His work has also grown to encompass a blog, clothing line and shop selling prints and other objects. Scott has worked at agencies (including Adobe, judges are you reading this?) and as a freelance designer, but now tries to focus solely on the work that gives him the most freedom to express his own style.
An Australian-born graphic designer, Rob has worked for a variety of clients in both studio and freelance roles, including, currently, Task-Forced Design and The Ebeling Group in London. He is also a founding member of Hellavate, an artist collective focused on showcasing local artists and musicians. In April 2007, he launched Peer Pressure, a line of t-shirts, prints and objects that sit casually on the fence between art and graphic design. His artwork has been published in One One Nine, Sneaker Freaker, The Guild and Arkitip.
Coming to you live from sunny Hollywood, California, Alissa writes about design for a myriad of publications, and is the editor, along with Coudalian Steve Delahoyde, of the design blog UnBeige. She reminds you that it's not delivery, it's DiGiorno.
Here's how the game works. Jump into the Layer Tennis Forums, we'll be taking the pulse of the conversations there to declare a winner. You can also subscribe to our Layer Tennis RSS feed and follow along via Twitter.
Congrats to totopromo, the in-forum contest winner, and Operator, the remix winner. We have some Jewelboxing and Swap Meat items to send out to you. We're also sending packs of Field Notes to reo5th, BMB and naamyo. Email your shipping info to dawson at coudal.com.
Today is your last chance to sound off about who won Friday's Layer Tennis Matches and to post your remix/contest entries too.
On the last Friday of the season we played two matches at the same time, Koxvold vs Hutchinson and Glass vs Inman. There was a lot of action on the court and a lot in the forums too.
All matches took place on Fridays, live at 2pm Chicago time or GMT-6.
January 25 - Match 1 | View Match
Chris Glass vs Shaun Inman*
Commentary by John Gruber | Forum
January 25 - Match 2 | View Match
Jason Koxvold* vs James Hutchinson
Commentary by Rosecrans Baldwin | Forum
January 11th | View the Match
Veerle Pieters* vs Cindy Li
Commentary by Kevin Guilfoile | Match Forum
December 14th | View the Match
Matt Owens vs Jason Gnewikow*
Commentary by Joshua Allen | Match Forum
December 7th | View the Match
Jason Koxvold* vs Bran Dougherty-Johnson
Commentary by Matt Haughey | Match Forum
Match was played using Adobe® After Effects®
November 30th | View the Match
Trevor Van Meter* vs James Hutchinson
Commentary by Bryan Bedell | Match Forum
This match was played using Adobe® Flash®.
November 16th | View the Match
Aaron Draplin* vs David Nakamoto
Commentary by Steven Heller | Match Forum
November 9th | View the Match
Scott Hansen* vs Rob Cordiner
Commentary by Alissa Walker | Match Forum
November 2nd | View the Match
Marian Bantjes* vs Armin Vit
Commentary by Heather Armstrong | Match Forum
Match was played using Adobe® After Illustrator®
October 26th | View the Match
Brian Taylor vs Jason Santa Maria*
Commentary by Matthew Baldwin | Match Forum
October 19th | View the Match
Naz Hamid vs Chris Glass*
Commentary by Rosecrans Baldwin | Match Forum
October 12th | View the Match
Steven Harrington* vs Chuck Anderson
Commentary by Jason Kottke | Match Forum
October 5th | View the Match
Neil Duerden vs Mathew Star Thomas*
Commentary by Debbie Millman | Match Forum
September 28th | View the Match
Kevin Cornell* vs Shaun Inman
Commentary by John Gruber | Match Forum
* =winner
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Layer Tennis was created by Coudal Partners in Chicago. We also created Jewelboxing for making awesome disc packaging and The Deck, an ad network targeted at creative folks.
