I’m not sure how I feel about this. I mean, of all places, a cemetery ought to offer some respite from the inexorable onslaught of commercialism, right? Then again, a guy’s gotta make a buck. I just would’ve liked to have seen a more creative headline. Something like… “Think Outside the Box.” [rim shot]
Time for a little reminiscing. I recently ran across these photos of my oldest daughter, Haley. Just nine months old, she’s sitting in our firm’s second office location—back when we were still known as Anderson Mraz Design. It’s 1992 and she’s pounding away on just the second Macintosh computer we ever purchased, which featured an extended keyboard and a square mouse.
Who would have thought that, 22 years later, Haley would graduate with a Bachelor of Design degree from the University of Washington? (And no, neither of her designer parents ever imagined this). Now working as a graphic designer in Seattle, Haley just celebrated her 24th birthday. And by the way, she still looks great in pink.
HYPERBOLICSYLLABICSESQUEDALYMISTIC
Isaac Hayes
I wanna come back
Cause I like it like that
Your modus operandi
Is really all right, out of sight
Your sweet phalanges
Know how to please
My gastronomical stupensity is really satisfied when you’re loving me
Now tell me…what…I…say
Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic
I can’t sleep at night
But that’s all right
The M.D. tells me
My heart’s on strike
Emanating originating from a love asphyxiation
He said I better slow down before you drive me in the ground
But what he doesn’t know is I want another encore
Now what…I…say
Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic
Let me stop procrastinatin’
Standin’ hear, and narratin’
Find my emancipator, she’s a love educator
Cerebral, cerebellum, a medulla oblongata
A slave’s on a horse, every time she explores
Just heard a discussion about a racial relationship
Now what…I…say
Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic
(1969)
Though we’ve been busier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs around here, I can no longer ignore the pleas of our adoring fans. Here’s a little something that, while it won’t quite make up for the emptiness you’ve been feeling inside, will at least get us back on track.
The politics of dictionaries. Interesting take on the descriptivist/prescriptivist divide, with some insight from none other than David Foster Wallace.
Still thinking about getting an MFA? “We wrote a program to analyze hundreds of works by authors with and without creative-writing degrees. The results were disappointing.”
I’m not about to print the headline of this article. Yes, it’s safe for work. No, I can’t stop giggling.
Speaking of robots…
Finally, “in a crowded press conference in Cairo on Thursday, Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities announced the discovery of…” (You have to click to find out.)
Throughout the week it’s easy to find cool things on the internet. Typically I share them with my coworkers, but busy days have left me with open tabs with no where to go. So here they are, folks. My weekly findings that have nothing to do with anything except that they are fun to look at, interesting to scroll through, or made me happy in some way. Enjoy!
This app was was launched and banned in 7 days after a landslide of 50,000 downloads.
The NY Times just kills it – both with design and content – on these side projects: 25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music is Going.
Who knew black and white tiles in a school could be this awesome!? #yesplease
As a total Manet fan, I can’t help but love this take on art. Who needs pixel art when this clearly blew it out of the water in style and class?
Inspiration comes from everywhere – even if it is in the form of website wireframes.
This font takes me back to when my sister and I would read The Witches.
In a few weeks I will be attending An Event Apart in Seattle and this website gives you as many maps as you want for exploring the city.
The writer and I have constant disagreements on how the en dash and em dash look in a sentence – space before and after–or squished together. Apparently it’s a style thing and not a hard rule.
But I will always trust him with compound modifiers – especially ones that consist of an adverb ending in -ly plus a participle or adjective – as well as suspended hyphens. Producing annual reports for the last few months has kept the writing department hopping.
And don’t even get me started with dangling participles. I’ll leave that up to him too.
Q: Three women walk into a bar. Which one’s the vegan?
A: Don’t worry. She’ll tell you.
There are a lot of equally funny variations on this joke (e.g. substituting atheist for vegan). I imagine the reason it works is because it’s so true. Certain types of people just can’t wait to tell you how special they are.
Like those of us who make our livings as “creatives”—a loathsome term that, Scout’s honor, is used in this industry without irony. (If we’re so creative, maybe we could come up with an actual noun instead of co-opting an adjective, mmmkay?)
Let me back up. When I started in this business, I was appalled at the egos surrounding me. I’d never been around so many people so supremely confident in their own abilities, so convinced of the inherent virtue of their craft, and so bent on telling me how awesome they were. I chalked it up to arrogance and a natural competitiveness, and silently plotted my escape toward a career path populated by fewer narcissists. (There isn’t one, by the way. Designers are just more honest about it.)
Then I happened upon something Alice Rawsthorn said:
“Design has always been a culture of plenty, intellectually and commercially. The underpinnings of design have been about this belief that the new is almost always better than the old. There is a solution to every problem, and everything can always be improved upon. That lends an almost moral imperative to design that makes designers feel happier about the virtuous part of what they do.”*
I asked around the office, and everyone pretty much agrees. So I’ve come to the realization that what separates the sheep from the goats in this business isn’t a clash of personality types; it’s a difference in Weltanschauung.
In other words, I see the absurdity of life, shrug, and tell people that’s just the way it is. Meanwhile, my coworkers are looking for a way to fix it. Neither is necessarily correct—but the designers I know are right far more often than I am.
*Helvetica/Objectified/Urbanized: The Complete Interviews (Hustwit, 2015).
I am not dyslexic, and until this morning, I could only imagine what it would be like.
Thanks to this amazing link, everyone can feel the frustration that dyslexics suffer from on a daily basis. And poof! Just like that, I’m in awe of the power of the internet once again. Brilliant!
I had braces in high school. And I loved them.
Every day I could see my teeth moving from huge and bad to straight and normal – which meant that the occasional associated pain (outside of that first throbbing week) was practically enjoyable. Even today, I love putting on my retainers after a few weeks (or, more often, months) of neglect. Maybe I’m weird, but there’s just something wonderful about biting down and feeling your teeth move.
Because I loved my braces so much – and, let’s be honest, there’s good money in it – I figured a career as an orthodontist was exactly what I should study for. So I started at EWU with a packed schedule of chemistry, anatomy, and physiology.
And cadavers.
Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m a squeamish person (unless we’re talking needles), but dead bodies? That’s a whole different ball game. Every lab period, when we had to enter that smelly white lab and see those people just…lying there, was a struggle. Hence my career in graphic design.
However, I recently stumbled upon a Kickstarter campaign that quite possibly could have changed my course in life. The Virtuali-Tee is a T-shirt that uses virtual reality to enable people to view and explore human anatomy on a live person. No more smelly lab, no more bodies. Behold, learning tools of the future… today! Talk about the perfect mashup of technology, design, and learning.
I wouldn’t change my career for anything, of course, but that T-shirt definitely would have helped me pass all those science classes!
When we complete one of our environmental graphic design projects, we often arrange for them to be photographed. And over the years, one or both of my two daughters would play the role of visitor—pretending they were interested in the subject matter while providing much-needed photographic scale. It helped that they were available, worked cheap, and would listen to most of my instructions. They even learned to always wear the proper camera-friendly clothing. I’d still be using them for scale if they lived nearby.
Having worked with lots of talent over the years, I definitely have my two favorites. So in honor of one of those two, I’m sending birthday wishes to my youngest, who turns 22 years old today. Happy birthday, Hannah! Now, if you could just move to your left slightly…no, no, your other left…
CEREMONY
Richard Wilbur
A striped blouse in a clearing by Bazille
Is, you may say, a patroness of boughs
Too queenly kind toward nature to be kin.
But ceremony never did conceal,
Save to the silly eye, which all allows,
How much we are the woods we wander in.
Let her be some Sabrina fresh from stream,
Lucent as shallows slowed by wading sun,
Bedded on fern, the flowers’ cynosure:
Then nymph and wood must nod and strive to dream
That she is airy earth, the trees, undone,
Must ape her languor natural and pure.
Ho-hum. I am for wit and wakefulness,
And love this feigning lady by Bazille.
What’s lightly hid is deepest understood,
And when with social smile and formal dress
She teaches leaves to curtsey and quadrille,
I think there are most tigers in the wood.
(1948)
Last week I got everyone to take an interactive version of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory—a test developed in 1979 “for the measurement of narcissism as a personality trait in social psychological research.”
For this particular version of the test, a maximum of 40 points are possible; the higher the score, the more narcissistic the individual. The average U.S. college undergraduate scores 15.6; U.S. adult, 15.3; U.S. celebrity, 17.8.
Going in, I had a pretty good idea how my esteemed coworkers would do. But there were some surprises. Let’s see how you do. Match the following people…
CK
Linda
Shirlee
Aaron
Courtney
…with the following scores:
1
7
12
13
16
Submit your guesses, along with your own scores (if you dare), in the comments field below. The first to answer correctly will win…something, I’m sure.
Soon, Microsoft is going to be making things easier for all of us.
“By designing with the disabled in mind, we can create products that are better for everyone else.”
Forget the making forms more user friendly, these people are creating “a font and system of text wrapping that makes reading easier for dyslexics – but also faster for those without dyslexia.” Check out the article from Fast Company introducing the genius and thinking behind these great ideas. I’m more then excited for you to get through the article and discover what they’re doing for GPS apps and women (hint: It’s GENIUS).
“After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that had been hidden from one’s tears. I can fancy a man who had led a perfectly commonplace life, hearing by chance some curious piece of music, and suddenly discovering that his soul, without his being conscious of it, had passed through terrible experiences, and known fearful joys, or wild romantic loves, or great renunciations.” – Oscar Wilde
(Now listen to Prélude in D Flat Major (“Raindrop”), from last year’s The Chopin Project, then read the above quote again.)
In my family, when you get married, you get a cookbook. Not just any cookbook. The cookbook. It’s filled with recipes from my mother’s side of the family, dating back about three generations. Like the amazing ham sauce that’s changed Easter for me forever. Or my great grandmother’s sticky buns. (They. Are. So. Good.)
This is clearly a gift to be coveted. But if you’re like me (unmarried), then you’re out of luck. The closest I get to The Cookbook is over the phone with my mom, asking her to read me the ingredient list from her copy. I know I could always just snap pictures of the pages when I’m at a married relative’s house, but it’s just not the same.
A little about me. I’ve been dating this guy Joel for seven-plus years now. In no rush to get married, I’m in limbo regarding The Cookbook – which is obviously annoying – but I respect tradition…sort of. After a crazy 30-person Christmas dinner this year (my family’s huge), I proposed a gift idea to my Granny. (Every year she puts a lot of time and effort into a special gift that everyone gets – one year it was a bound book of her and my grandfather’s story, another, it was a CD of my great-uncle’s collected piano recordings.) So I suggested that, since her talented granddaughter (that’s me) is a graphic designer, why not give her The Cookbook (see where I’m going here?) so that I could redesign it for 2016! I could give it an index, fix the typos, format the recipes, and make it a better visual piece overall. I could also have it printed it to give it the professional and cherished binding that it deserves.
But she, being my smart Granny, said No. Not because she caught on to my plan, but because she thought that the typo-filled pages gave it personality and authenticity; that the Microsoft Publisher borders give it a “Granny” feel. Bless her heart.
Though I didn’t receive the go-ahead, I still love the idea. And then, earlier today, I stumbled upon this: Choosing and Pairing Typefaces for Cookbooks. Whether this is the universe telling me to go over Granny’s head, I’ll never know. But for now, I will keep in my Pocket for when she changes her mind.