After touching on Kendrick Lamar's "Pop Out" 🤦🏽‍♂️ I talk about Grand Theft Auto V Online, particularly GTA RP, and how it may be the closest thing we have to Ready Player One right now.

In this episode I take on the Drake vs Kendrick Lamar..."debate" from the perspective of them being brands or products.

...Even though these two new standalone AI devices (Humane's AI Pin & Teenage Engineering's rabbit r1) have been getting HORRENDOUS pre-launch reviews, I try to see these groundbreaking devices as they may become...today's versions of the original mp3 players 🤔

This episode's Tangent "STEMs" from a interview/conversation that I had with a good friend regarding why I gravitated to STEM fields as a professional. The question forced me to answer something that I've never really thought about, but definitely wanted to explore further. The result is an interesting Tangent that slightly changed how I view myself and may cause viewers to give themselves a second look too.

These Office Hour Tangents jumps around a bit due to the nature of what's being taught in class. I being with how I used the solar eclipse to jumpstart a design thinking course. I then follow up on the "Who's The Next Face of the NBA" episode with Nike premiering Victor Wembanyama's new brand mark. The rest of the time is dedicated to how student's responded to my questions about "the algorithm" as it pertains to music generation, traditional TVs, and how they consume media. It's a diverse, yet interesting journey if you're down to ride.

D'ondray McRay and I catch up while he joins me for this ep of Office Hour Tangents. We have conversations about how it was like to be a student in my early classrooms, his journey to founding his own business (Direction Branding), our sons playing basketball together, and future plans. He was sitting in the first classroom I entered as a full-time professor about 15 years ago so he definitely has an interesting perspective.

X: https://www.x.com/brandancrafthttps://www.brandancraft.com

These Tangents go all over the place, probably because the class truly went all over the place. I begin with talking about how the casual design tool Canva may become a true Adobe competitor after their acquisition of Affinity. I also briefly talk about my current obsession with stand up comedians and how they help me in the classroom. I end things by continuing a conversation I had with my boys regarding the "Big 3" MCs in Hip-Hop: Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and J Cole. Tangents upon tangents upon tangents, let's get it!

While selecting all of the March Madness teams to record on YouTubeTV (via team logos) and listening to the morning sports talk fallout from an historically MONSTROUS dunk in the NBA, I decide to attack who may be the next face of the NBA...based on player logos. I also talk a little about branding in general and, you know, go off on a couple of other tangents.

Macromedia had Adobe shook back in the day just like Figma has them shook now, and a follow-up to the Requiem For A Dream episode as I show how one of the DOPEST and most inspirational websites EVER, Neostream, inspired one of the first websites I created using Flash.