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The Sesaon Finale
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.
The Sesaon Finale
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.
Remember the heartbreak when Garry Kasparov lost his epic man-versus-machine battle against the Big Blue supercomputer?
A back-and-forth game of strategy, foresight, indirection, and creativity had been reduced to an algorithm. It wasn't so much man that lost that match as the game of chess itself.
No such worries with the world's other great game of mano-a-mano pure intellect, Layer Tennis. Computer programs can generate beautiful imagery, but they cannot play this game. No way, no how.
It isn't enough merely to take your opponent's previous play, clone and manipulate some visual elements, add something new, and put it together in a visually pleasing way. It has to mean something. The visual aesthetic, yes, that comes first -- a shot that doesn't look good is going nowhere. But that's the baseline. That's just treading water.
A good shot succeeds not just visually but conceptually. You suss out the meaning of your opponent's incoming shot and subvert it or twist it or mock it. And you have to think ahead, too, and express your own idea in such way that makes it difficult for your opponent to subvert/twist/mock in response.
Layer Tennis, in short, is a game played on, well, two levels.
Both players in this match understand this. In week one back in September, Inman dug himself a deep hole in the early rounds of his match against designer-illustrator-suspected-felon Kevin Cornell. But he came roaring back in the second half, his comeback effort falling just short. Note in particular volleys 6 and 8 by Inman, two of the best plays of this entire Layer Tennis season.
Three weeks later, Glass came out strong and never let up in his photography-heavy week four match against Naz Hamid. His first two shots, volleys 2 and 4, set the tone for the match and painted Hamid into a conceptual corner he never got out of.
Both players published insightful postmortem analyses regarding their previous matches (links: Inman, Glass), laying clear the twisted multi-level thinking that drives the game. But this week's simultaneous match format takes the meta game to a new level. Inman and Glass are playing a one-on-one match against each other, but if either can manage to work in elements from the Koxvold-Hutchinson match on the other court... well, that's just the sort of razzmatazz that drives the crowd -- and perhaps the judges -- wild.
Shaun Inman is a designer and programmer in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His web stats app, Mint, is both exquisitely clever and exceedingly popular. It's like crack for bloggers. His personal web site and weblog is shauninman.com, which Inman redesigns -- splendidly each time -- on a seemingly weekly basis.
Chris Glass hails from southwestern Ohio, the only state in the union that is round on the edges and "hi" in the middle. He's also a part of the crew at Wire & Twine, purveyors of exquisitely clever t-shirts and industrial-grade toilet paper holders. (Not a joke.) He takes photos and writes a splendid web site at chrisglass.com.
John Gruber publishes Daring Fireball, an intelligent and opinionated journal devoted to geeky things like operating system interfaces and just about anything that has to do with Apple. John has the ability to make complicated things simple and the enthusiasm to cut through the noise and get at what's what.
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.
