I like data. Do I love it, though?! — as in, do I sit on a beach and parse spreadsheets of zeros and ones? Nah. I’ve made a living running the Datalabs Agency for a decade or so. Big projects, visualizing data in interactive websites, analytics dashboards, and all kinds of video, online, and flat image forms. 

Then I’ve got this brand or what I call my artistic love affair, Oddtoe. I don’t have to be PC. I can illustrate, caricature, and spoof my way into whatever topic I want. I think of a joke, something that amuses me and I can design it and push that idea out into the world safely. Except for a few years when I worked at National Geographic, I’ve had a ‘firewall’ between my professional life and my artistic one.

Not anymore. I’m bored with playing it safe. I realize I’ve got an opportunity to not give a crap as to what a corporate HR executive will ‘action’ once he or she sees ‘moderately off-brand material’ on my other site. 😉

First off, as a solo visualizer/cartoonist/animator, I’ve always been jealous of musicians and their ability to jam with others. To come up with album and song titles. To name their bands. So this merger of my work (at least on YouTube) starts with a band name: Oddtoe & the Datalabs Agency.

So what does a merger of Oddtoe & the Datalabs Agency look like? Two things: 1) That’s a really good question. 2) Stop being so nosy. 

All advice leads to designing new types of animation and data-driven storytelling. As my great-grandmother used to say: “The best way to figure out where you want to go in life is by designing YouTube thumbnails.”

I don’t want to put my face in places where it does not belong. But I’m in these thumbnails. With the onset of AI video slop that I want to steer away from, I heard that having you — your human-ness shown in your thumbnail — that gets more engagement.

Avatar head? Check.

I love a giant-sized font. These thumbnails got that…Check.

And the image has to be quirky — weird angle, maybe a “What the #$%^!” is that?! kind of shock value. Check.

Essentially, I ask myself: Can I trick some gullible person to pause their life, click on my thumbnail, and entrust their limited intelligence to me? Check.

So I designed up two thumbnails. Hand-crafted, artisanal thumbnails to get the ball rolling. I’ve set up to start filming this week. So, subscribe to my new Oddtoe & the Datalabs Agency YouTube channel and get on board at the ground level.

Any topics or subjects you want me to tackle? Get in touch with me — love hearing new ideas that I will most likely ignore.

Just kidding. But, I’m not…