There’s much to disagree with in this interview with Wordnik founder and CEO Erin McKean—like when she says, “I truly believe that if something is used as a word, it’s a word.” But there’s also a lot to commend it:

Sometimes it seems as if people think that words just go into dictionaries to be preserved indefinitely, like pressed flowers. The dictionary is seen as this arbiter of the One True Answer to any question about a word, instead of a buffet of possible (and delicious) answers.

To fight this mistaken belief, I try to change the conversation from “is this word in the dictionary (and therefore a “good” word)?” to “what information is available about this word, and how can you use it to make a decision about this word’s fitness for your purpose?”

McKean makes a great point. And a bunch of others, for that matter. Read the whole thing.

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

“I read somewhere that 77 percent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I’m more intrigued by the 23 percent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves.” Jerry Garcia

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

Over at First Things, David Bentley Hart has written something of an homage to Amanda McKittrick Ros, author of such turgid prose as “Speak! Irene! Wife! Woman! Do not sit in silence and allow the blood that now boils in my veins to ooze through cavities of unrestrained passion and trickle down to drench me with its crimson hue!”

That’s from Ros’s 1897 novel Irene Iddesleigh, a book that Ros herself considered a masterpiece, but was published only when her husband paid a Belfast printer to do so. Hart’s appreciation makes for a delightful read—if only to be reminded that there have been far worse writers than I.

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

Anyone who has ever worked with me knows that I am infamous for misspelling a word in a design project. A word. One. It will never be seen by the client, of course, thanks to my helpful teammates who love to point it out. (And thankfully so, since my pride is far less important then product perfection.)

Meanwhile, in an effort to continue to hone my professional skills—like learning how to spell restaurant without auto-correct jumping to y rescue (as it just did)—I’m always on the lookout for helpful tips and articles. Like this one, for example, which helpfully asks, “Should designers care about typographic mistakes?”

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

The author Jonathan Franzen was recently asked what he thought about the “uptick” of grownups reading YA (Young Adult) fiction. He tried to brush it off—”I don’t care what people read,” and “If it’s a loss, it’s their loss, not mine”—but his interlocutor was having none of it. So Franzen responded as only Franzen could:

Most of what people read, if you go to the bookshelf in the airport convenience store and look at what’s there, even if it doesn’t have a YA on the spine, is YA in its moral simplicity. People don’t want moral complexity. Moral complexity is a luxury. You might be forced to read it in school, but a lot of people have hard lives. They come home at the end of the day, they feel they’ve been jerked around by the world yet again for another day. The last thing they want to do is read Alice Munro, who is always pointing toward the possibility that you’re not the heroic figure you think of yourself as, that you might be the very dubious figure that other people think of you as. That’s the last thing you’d want if you’ve had a hard day. You want to be told good people are good, bad people are bad, and love conquers all. And love is more important than money. You know, all these schmaltzy tropes. That’s exactly what you want if you’re having a hard life. Who am I to tell people that they need to have their noses rubbed in moral complexity?

Read the entire interview here.

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

So. Valentine’s Day is coming up. If we’re to believe conventional wisdom—which, let’s be honest, is a pretty safe bet on this particular subject—men are, at best, apathetic about the holiday. (They’re probably too busy applying beard oil.)

Fear not, ladies: Charles Sackville’s groundbreaking 1713 book, The New Academy of Compliments: Erected for Ladies, Gentlewomen, Courtiers, Citizens, Countrymen, and All Persons of what Degree Soever, of Both Sexes : Stored with Variety of Courtly and Civil Complements, Eloquent Letters of Love and Friendship : with an Exact Collection of the Newest and Choicest Songs a la Mode Both Amorous and Jovial*, offers up some advice on how to get your man in the mood.

For instance, in the chapter entitled “Complemental Expressions towards Men Leading to the Art of Courtship,” Sackville suggests the following come-hither talk:

“Sir, Be confident of my Affection, while I have room to lodge You in my Bosom.”
“Sir, my appetite is sick, for want of a Capacity to digest your Favors.”
“Sir, I shall study to Chronicle Your Vertues.”

If none of these work, you can find more here. And if you still come up short, well…I’m afraid it wasn’t meant to be.

*Yes, that’s the title. All of it.

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

Having firmly established myself as something of a curmudgeon, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I found Idina Menzel’s Super Bowl performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” somewhat less than satisfactory. Better than Carrie Underwood’s jaw-droppingly stupid theme song, to be sure, but that’s admittedly a pretty low bar.

At least Menzel had some respect for our national anthem, though. The fine folks at Popbitch have analyzed some of the more memorable performances over the last 25 years, and, well…let’s just say that restraint doesn’t come immediately to mind when describing them.

Here they compare Mariah Carey’s 2002 performance with what Christina Aguilera unleashed on an unsuspecting crowd nine years later:

“Look at that. Just look at it. Mariah Carey is not shy about altering a melody line, but Christina Aguilera is shameless. There’s one bar left unmolested at the start of it, and then Christina starts rubbing herself all over it like she’s being sent away for a 25-to-life stretch. Triplets, quintuplets, mordents, trills, turns, six-note slides, grace notes. There’s barely a technique going that Aguilera hasn’t shoe-horned into it before she’s even got halfway through. It’s borderline obscene.”

To be fair, looking for musicality within the ranks of pop music is like looking for integrity in a politician: nobody really expects it. So let me retract my earlier statement about Menzel’s performance. Sure, she was flat toward the end, but at least she didn’t treat “the well-established and well-loved melody of the American national anthem as her plaything.”

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

Sadly, we lost an important member of our design community a couple of weeks ago: Monte Mindt, most recently creative director with Quisenberry Marketing, and for many years prior with Hanna & Associates. Monte passed away January 12. He was 49 years old.

I knew Monte for more than 20 years. One of my favorite print pieces we ever produced was a promotional brochure for Johnston Printing’s new six-color press. It featured the work of six prominent local designers. Monte was among that group.

I ran across his work from time to time and I always admired it. And every year when I attended the local advertising awards show—where his name would often be called—we would warmly greet and catch up with one another.

Thank you, Monte, for your creative contributions.

posted by: CK Anderson  |  category: the design life  |  make a comment