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).

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the design life the writing life  |  make a comment

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!

posted by: Courtney Sowards  |  category: random thoughts the design life  |  make a comment

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)

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

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).

posted by: Courtney Sowards  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

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.

posted by: Courtney Sowards  |  category: random thoughts the design life  |  make a comment

After becoming frustrated by the lack of help received by the internet in naming my new puppy (oh yeah, did I mention that? I have a new puppy. She is adorable.) I went to our resident wordsmith, Aaron, for some advice. She is a Japanese breed, a Shiba Inu, yet I couldn’t seem to narrow down any Japanese names that fit her personality. Aaron quickly jumped to his shelf and pulled out a book of untranslatable words.

Though none of those names became that of our new pup (we landed on Remi, a French name, a few days later) it did get me thinking about the awesomeness of this concept. This morning my internet scour (check out my post yesterday for a more in-depth explanation) led me, as usual, to swiss-miss.com where I found this gem of a link rounding up just that: untranslatable words! My favorite of the bunch is number 14:

Check out more here, or when Aaron gets back from Greeley, Colorado I will post the title of the book he pulled out in the comments section!

posted by: Courtney Sowards  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

shih (noun; Chinese) An insightful, elegant kind of knowledge.

Though she considered him ill-bred and loutish (if not a downright cad), Courtney had to admit that there was a certain shih about Aaron—the kind, she noted to herself, that might come in handy the next time she attempted a crossword puzzle.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment