fivefeettall

Skulls Unleashed

At the 2009 HOW Design Conference in Austin, Texas, I sat in on Noah Scalin's session Making A Living as a Socially Conscious Designer. And that's exactly what Noah and the staff at Another Limited Rebellion in Richmond, Virginia do—rather than choosing clients based on who has the biggest pocketbook, they choose clients who have a greater positive impact on their community. It's quite commendable.

But that's not what I'm going to write about today.

Instead, I'm going to talk about skulls. Not in a fascinated by death manner. Nor in a "I keep dreaming about Johnny Depp dancing around skulls in an underwater cave" guise. But instead, out of admiration for a brilliant creative challenge.

Noah Scalin is the creator (and accidental mastermind) behind skulladay.com. On June 4, 2007 Noah cut a skull out of orange paper, posted in online and wrote, "I'm making a skull image every day for a year." And he did.

He had no real reason to do this. But he also had no good reason not to. And people loved it. Strangers were inspired and began sending him skulls they had made. It was 2 years later when I first heard about the project, and I too was inspired.

Along with 11 of my colleagues at Reagan Marketing + Design, LLC, we set out on our own year-long challenge that we dubbed Weekminds. Each artist chose an item* and, for 52 weeks, were set with the task of making an image of that object. Today marks Week 51 of our 52 committed weeks. Preparations are being made for year two—stay tuned for more details.

In 2008, a book was released, SKULLS, showcasing 150 of Noah's skulls. The original 365 can be viewed on skulladay.com along with all the Bonus Skulls that have transpired since.

*I choose a monkey because I opened a dictionary and pointed at the word kinkajou. And a kinkajou is kinda like a nocturnal monkey. Which really also kinda describes me.