George Everet

Conspiracy Theory #158 or why WikiLeaks aren’t real leaks.

2010-12-07T19:10:00.002-06:00

We can stop wailing and wringing our hands over the WikiLeaks of sensitive US government information. The leaks of diplomatic cables are clearly a CIA / NSA / DoD “truth in diplomacy” operation (code named: the rest of the world is a bunch of idiots).

Realistically how could a handful of savvy anti-US computer hackers break into and download secret government documents when foreign governments like the Red China, Russian, Iran, Syria, etal. with thousands of hackers at their disposal can’t? Or conversely, if they could they wouldn’t be able to for very long before being discovered and stopped. The top internet security people in the world work for us since we arrested them for hacking. And when the CIA has been whisking suspected terrorists off the streets of Europe and illegally shipping off to Egypt and/or Guantánamo why hasn’t that happened to the Wikileaks people? Or why haven’t they mysteriously disappeared never to return, died from some horrible disease that no one ever gets or simply had a bad accident? Obviously the WikiLeaks people had inside help and encouragement though they are probably unaware of it. It would be simple for the CIA / NSA / FBI / DoD to find an arrogant nutball dupe who hates the US and has some fatal flaw (sexual appetite?) to exploit like Julian Assange. Infiltrate his followers, plant the idea of cracking US computers and spillling the secrets in his head letting him think he thought of it, then let his arrogance take over. Help the cadre of hackers break in, show them where the documents are —all conveniently available—and sit back and watch the downloading begin. In the aftermath, his usefullness over Assange ends up in a Swedish prison where everyone forgets about him. Even if he figures out he was duped no one will care.

Why would the Obama administration allow the release of secret classififed files? Because when President Obama promised transparency he meant TRANSPARENCY! Open the lid on the secrets and let the American people see what’s really happening in the Middle East and elsewhere. When you dig through the documents the US just looks better and better. The leaks reveal that we know most of the world leaders we have to deal with are not world leader material. World leaders like most politicians are at best mentally unstable and at worst are monomaniacal psychopaths.

The leaks also show that the US takes the blame for a lot of stuff we’re not involved in. It turns out the bombings of terrorist camps in Yemen weren’t done by us but by the Yemeni government and they said we did it — with our approval — to take the heat off themselves. It also turns out that all the scary rhetoric about Iran isn’t about the US but the rest of the Middle East. Iran isn’t going to fire nuclear missiles at us (see my earlier blog about this). They want the capability so they can push the Saudis and others around. Even the anti-Israel rhetoric maybe a façade for Iran. The rest of the Middle East is scared and wants the US to drop the hammer on Iran because they are afraid to do it themselves. We don’t have any reason to bomb Iran into the stone age, our allies just expect us to do them another favor or did you really think the Iraq war was about terror attacks on the US? Now that this is out in the open the American taxpayers don’t have to pay for an anti-missile system to defend us from Iran. We can make the Saudis pay for it since they’re the ones who need it. Maybe Israel will help them out with building it too if the Saudis ask real nicely.

Yes there are names of US operatives in the WikiLeaks which Mr. Assange didn’t bother removing. I doubt that any American agents are in fear for their lives because of the leaks. Imagine a lot of people around the world waking up one morning to discover that a third of the folks they’ve been conspiring with are agents of the US. Might make you mess your pants depending upon what you said to them. Many of those folks are realizing that they didn’t sell their soul to whoever they thought they had. I wonder who’s idea this was? Leon Panetta (CIA), General Alexander (NSA) or Robert Gates (DoD)?

Where’s the proof of all this? One: a small group of hackers couldn’t get into sensitive government computers and download that much data without help and without getting very, very dead.

Two: In an attempt to stop the release of the WikiLeaks the State Dept. wrote a stern letter asking them to stop. A stern letter is something your high school principal sent to your parents when you goofed off in class one too many times. Is it at all possible that all the Navy Seal teams, Special Forces snipers, CIA hit-men and black-ops people are busy elsewhere?

Three: President Obama promised transparency. Could things be more transparent than this?

Four: The leaks reveal all the bad names our government call the heads of foreign governments. If we call him a few more bad names maybe Karzai will ask us to please leave Afghanistan immediately, thus getting our troops out ahead of schedule like the President promised. More name calling might solve even more problems.

Five: There was a memo from Secretary of State Clinton to others in the State department to gather info even from casual meetings with foreign government workers. That is ridiclous. The state dept. doesn’t hire nincompoops, its employees know to gather any and all info they can. It’s their job. Every diplomatic worker in the world knows this. Hillary doesn’t need to send out a memo to remind people. It is clearly a plant, something the Obama administration wanted revealed so the American people will know how hard the government is working. The message is “We trust no one and spy on everyone — friend or foe 24/7.”

Six: Revealing the real relationships between the US and the middle east is Obama’s way of saying: “Guys, we took the hit for you on 9-11. Now it’s your turn.” If Saudi Arabia and the other countries want to stop Iran we’ll help them, but they have to step up now and do the heavy lifting.

Seven: The US looks good in all this. It is obvious our foreign policy problems aren’t internal, they are the result of the mentally challenged crazies running the rest of the world.

The sum total result of WikiLeaks makes the US look good and the rest of the world look pathetic. Thank you President Obama for restoring our confidence.

There are no Iranian missiles.

2010-10-16T14:24:00.002-05:00

Conservatives have a problem in that they have evidently never met a missile defense system they didn‘t like. Part of the new Conservative “Pledge to America” is to build a system to defend us from ICBMs launched by Iran or North Korea. So the Republican conservatives are going to cut taxes, cut spending by a billion dollars and balance the budget while spending billions to build a missile defense system to protect us from a country that doesn’t have nuclear weapons or missiles. This means increasing the deficit as they have already done to wage two wars (conservatives have also never met a war they didn’t like) and causing increased inflation.

Economically this makes no sense whatsoever. And a new missile defense system makes no more sense than their previous missile defense system which President Obama pulled the funding from. It was meant to protect us and Eastern Europe from Russian ICBMs at a time when the US was trading with Russia and while Putin was using his government authority to line his pockets. The last thing the Russians would do is attack us or anybody else. They would lose money if they did. All that arms building and invading countries bankrupted Russia and led to the downfall of Communism. Yet conservatives can’t let go of the “red menace” even though you never hear about protecting us from Red Chinese ICBMs anymore. You don’t even hear the words red and China together anymore since China now owns so much of the US debt racked up by conservatives. So why do conservatives fear Russia and not China? Is it because big business likes the cheap labor in China? Or because they need a bogeyman and we can’t afford to get China mad at us?

The Republicans also claimed that the defense system would have worked against Iranian missiles which it wouldn’t have. A missile defense installation in Poland would protect us from Iranian missiles? No it wouldn’t have because the whole system was aimed at Russia and not anywhere else.

Instead of that system President Obama went with a naval based system of Aegis missiles along with the Patriot missile system which will work on Iranian missiles if there ever are any. Putin liked that so much he let us put some Aegis missile equipped ships in the Black Sea. So we have protection from Iran, North Korea and just about any other rogue state. And all for a fraction of the cost thereby making us all safer and saving us money.

The idea that Iran would build missiles to attack the US is even stupider. If they fired even one missile at America we would obliterate their country. And then take all their oil and gas. No, the Iranians want missiles that can reach Israel and Israel already has the Arrow missile defense system. In addition Israel won’t even let Iran build nuclear weapons or missiles to launch them. Israel has already said it would destroy such facilities. So we are doubly safe already.

So the question is: why spend billions of dollars on such a missile defense system? In all of the cost cutting conservatives have promised they have made it clear that they won’t cut defense spending and said: “When asked to provide our troops with the resources they need, we will do so without delay.” Meaning no debate and no questions asked. Who benefits from uncontrolled defense spending? Those in the military-industrial complex who will line their pockets with taxpayer dollars and build things we don’t need.

One of the last great Republican presidents, Dwight Eisenhower warned us about all this just before leaving office: “Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

“But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future.”

He also warned citizens about the dangers of the influence of the military-industrial complex which conservatives are planning on throwing money at without question.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Hibernation

2010-06-18T12:44:00.006-05:00

I've been telling people that I'm hibernating; actually I've been working in the garage preparing to start painting again. I started painting seriously when I was fifteen and did it continuously up until the late 1980s. I didn't really intend to stop, we bought a house and I didn't have studio space. Eventually my teaching duties took up more time and energy and I never got around to seriously looking for space. Since going to Wyoming to help my brother hang an exhibition of his work (photos here) I've been energized about making art again. A cursory search for studio space near home has been fruitless. There isn't much in the way of suitable non-commercial space at anything like a reasonable price. There is studio space in Chicago and some in Evanston, but I want something closer to home so I don't have an excuse to not paint. So I decided to paint in the garage while I kept looking for something.

This is the easel I built mostly out of standard 2x4s. Originally I was going to mount it directly on the garage wall but it was a very hot day when it came to drilling holes in the cement black so I added two legs so it could lean against the wall. I also mounted wheels — non-rotating — so I could move it around some. It can hold work up to 7 feet high and whatever width.

This is the first stretcher 5 x 5 feet, 2.5 in. deep, solid poplar and despite all the hassles I've had building it better and cheaper than anything available. It's heavy since it is only one part of the entire work. There will be other parts that mount to it so it is the main load bearing element. It could be a little lighter in construction and weight but I didn't want to make a light one and find out it was too light. Although making it lighter might require renting a table saw. Standard lumbar sizes are based on on the lumber but on wall thickness so the 1 x 3 in. boards are actually 0.71 x 2.5 in. as is the bracing. It really needs some true 2 in. stock but I haven't found any so may have to make it myself.

I've also been buying a lot of paint, some new brushes, and have organized a work area in the garage so I can still park the cars in it at night as they don't allow overnight street parking here. Next stop is sanding it then stretching and gessoing the canvas which I hope to get done today except it has turned out to be another hot one so I may wait for a cooler day or try to do it in the evening. More later once the painting starts.

Sketching Creativity

2010-03-10T12:58:00.001-06:00

One of the primary ways to enhance creativity is by sketching. This seems simple, too simple to work, but it is very effective. However it isn’t the sketching itself that enhances creativity, it’s the looking, the seeing. When you sketch you are forced to really look at things in more detail, to take note of them. In everyday life people don’t do this, they don’t recognize details in the world around them unless forced to. Sketching forces you to pay attention to details you otherwise would skip over visually.

But what if you can’t draw? Over the years many people have said to me that they didn’t understand art and design and they couldn’t draw. Yet they can draw, anyone can. Drawing is not very different from driving a car, they both rely on eye-hand coordination. Steering a car is much the same as pushing a pencil around on a piece of paper. I used to tell my students that once they learned how draw really well, they could draw using a pickup truck and a wheat field. And learning to draw really well just required practice like learning to drive a car. Like drawing and sketching driving requires a different form of seeing. We call it “paying attention” meaning paying attention to details. In driving the details are dynamic but this has less effect that one would think. Like creativity sketching and drawing would make one a more capable driver.

Anyone who wants to draw just has to practice it over and over. Put a vase of flowers on a table and draw it every day. Eventually you will be very good at it. You’re developing your eye-hand coordination. Your eye sees the vase and your mind sends information to the hand which puts lines on paper, then the eye provides feedback so you can compare the vase of flowers with your drawing of it. The feedback information goes to the hand continuing the process. For artists and designers this is a much easier process, they learn it much faster and with less work. This is mainly because they can already see in the necessary way, they don’t have to learn that. They also possess one other skill that the average person doesn’t have. If you take away the vase of flowers they can still draw it. This is because they can see it in their mind, they are able to visualize it.

This skill extends out allowing them to see and draw things that aren’t there. This is the key to their creativity. Instead of direct eye-hand drawing from a subject artists and designers use a mind-hand-eye drawing. The feedback from the eye compares the image already in the mind with the image they see and the mind sends the information to the hand. The ability to see like this is the creative part, not the drawing or sketching. The sculptor Richard Serra once said something to the effect that you climb a mountain because it’s there and you make a work of art because it isn’t there. And the way you enhance that creativity to to look for what isn’t there. Sketching helps by providing a record for contemplation, but sometimes just visualizing works better because one tends to visualize what isn’t there along with what is.

Maps and email and iPods oh my.

2010-02-25T11:17:00.004-06:00

Yesterday I was thinking about maps. The day before I skimmed an article blaming email, texting, etc. for the decline of the art of conversation. Which led me to think about Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes.

Many months back curmudgeonly Andy was complaining about iPods and how they isolated people from one another. That was when I knew he didn’t get it. When we moved to the suburbs I started commuting downtown on the train. It was the second or third day I realized I had to get an iPod. First there was the inevitable person discussing their medical problems in messy detail, then a guy negotiating a home loan along with the usual daily chatter between passengers. I didn’t want to hear any of it. I wanted the iPod in order to isolate myself from it. The fact I could choose my own playlist made it even better. Plus for the first time I could walk across the Loop not listening to a lot of noise and completely ignoring all sorts of people, especially panhandlers. Interaction with people around me was the last thing I wanted. Isolation was good, it allowed me to think with relatively few disturbances. And that I think is the key. I was able to shut out a lot of disturbances; my boundaries were under my control.

I use email most of the time, and I prefer it over calling people on the phone. I don’t like using the phone since I’m talking to someone without being able to read their facial expressions which is important in a conversation. Email also induces succinctness in communication. It is far easier to email a coworker in their office than to walk down to their office and have a chat. In an email you can drop the chat — How do you like the weather? Have you heard this joke? — and get to the point. It isn’t a loss of civility since you can chat with them when you see them. ln fact most of my conversations with coworkers took place in hallways or elevators rather than an office. We also got a lot of work done in those hallway conversations, sometimes more than we did in committee meetings.

Email also made counseling students much more efficient. Frequently students would email me for an appointment and I would reply by asking them to email me their info. One foreign student I counseled during his whole time at college without meeting him until he came by my office to thank me as he was graduating. Most students had similar concerns and problems and it wasn’t necessary to waste time talking to them in person, or delaying things by making an appointment when I could generally solve whatever difficulties almost immediately. Some students did take advantage of this by emailing me for help or advice at odd hours, but I didn’t mind. After all the internet is open all day, every day, everywhere so it wasn’t really an imposition.

The internet has changed things by eliminating distance as a barrier. It no longer matters where anyone is if they can email. And time is virtually meaningless because the internet is always on everywhere your 10 am is someone else’s 10 pm. More importantly the internet has reorganized the world forcing users to reorganize their thinking. Andy Rooney hasn’t done that and probably won’t unless he has to. Which brings me back to maps. Early maps were drawings of what people thought things looked like. Later systems of subdividing maps into grids made them more accurate and usable. It is imposing a geometric system on an organic form which can be useful. Road maps work because you can use grid references to find various places. Except more and more people aren’t using those maps, they’re using Mapquest or Google Maps or something else on the internet. Those maps don’t need grid lines. The software finds places for you and then shows you how to get there. If you’re interested, and there are photos, you can see the exact place you’re looking for and the terrain, roads, traffic, etc as well. It is useful to zoom in on an intersection and determine whether you have to turn left or right to access the highway and which side of the overpass it is on. You can also scan up and down streets looking for visual landmarks. Grid lines are useless because we have gone back to accessing the information organically and more directly.

The only thing I haven’t been able to do is see what equipment is being used to take the pictures. I’ve tried catching its reflection in store fronts but it apparently doesn’t have one, and it can’t look at itself. Since it’s being done with declassified government hardware maybe there is no “it” to see.

So are we isolating ourselves? Only when we want to or need to. Are we losing the art of conversation? No, we’re merely skipping most of the meaningless chit-chat. We have begun to think in a new way in which we are able to ignore or create boundaries between ourselves and everyone else. Anything that happens in the world, big or small, important or meaningless, you can ignore it or be part of it and meet everyone else who is part of it regardless of where or who they are. And you can see people face to face and talk to them in real time if you want. Or not.

I can't find the marmalade!

2010-01-18T16:17:00.002-06:00

I have some untypical tastes which is actually something of a family trait. For example my mother was a fan of Prince, jazz and various kinds of World music. She also ate butter. Not just on toast but with a fork. Family members tend to be very individual with different predilections. One of mine is lime marmalade.

Many years ago I had some Dundee Lime Marmalade and loved it. I have been eating lime marmalade ever since when I could get it. Lately I can’t get it at all. Apparently the only company still making it is Roses in England, but it is almost impossible to find in the stores. One store nearby carries it but only carry the key lime version not the regular lime. There used to be several English companies that made lime marmalade like Dundee, Robertson’s, Wilkin & Sons and a few others, but they all seem to have stopped making it or at least importing it to the U. S. A very few gourmet companies produce lime marmalade at ridiculous prices and someone told me of a place in Galena that has it.

When it comes to lime marmalade I understand there isn’t a lot of call for it, but in light of what stores do carry I don’t understand why. Besides the obvious preserves like grape jelly there are some odd ones like gooseberry marmalade for instance. I had some once and it was like eating soap with sugar. Someone must like it though because it is available in most stores. Then there is jalapeno. It is readily available in most of the stores in the area. Are there really more people in the world who eat jalapeno marmalade than lime? If so I want their names because I really don’t believe it. There are some things I have found during my for lime like ginger, rhubarb, pineapple, bramble — I assume there are some kind of berries on bramble otherwise ouch — pomegranate, peach & lavender, quince, green tomato (?), carrot (??), coconut, onion, chipotle marmalade and something called yuzu marmalade. But not lime. There are all kinds of orange marmalades including Seville orange, thick cut orange, golden shred, shredless, oxford (Seville oranges) , vintage oxford, fine cut oxford, tawny orange, orange and tangerine, blood orange, dark navy orange, no peel orange, mandarin orange and orange combined with just about everything else except rhubarb.

So now I am searching for recipes for marmalade though this may end up like the search for good espresso or wine — you may have to be fanatical about your limes, what kind they are, where they come from, what the soil and climate are like, when they were picked, etc. Imagine a connoisseur sitting at a table full of limes saying: “And this is a 2009 Persian lime from the Chateau Linden personally picked for me by Monsieur Bob.” That won’t be me. Instead I will be the guy sitting next to him eating the lime marmalade.

I don't like it.

2009-12-19T21:13:00.002-06:00

There are always ads on my facebook page with pictures of young women. This time it is an ad for joint pain relief showing a young women with very large breasts. Usually there is an ad that says "Guess who's been looking for you?" with a picture of a similar young woman. No one is looking for me (the currency violation thing in Chile got cleared up), and I suspect the only reason people (read "guys") click on the ads is to see a larger picture of the woman — and of course her breasts. Is internet advertising only working by relying on sex to attract people? Is that what Google's empire is built on? And why would an ad for joint pain relief use a picture of a young person who has never experienced joint pain instead of an older person who actually has joint pain? I don't really care, I just find it annoying that this shows up on my facebook page. It's gratuitous pandering and I don't like it. Guess I've become a curmudgeon.

And if the pessimist in you thinks I mentioned this so you would go look at my facebook page, don't go look. Really.

Now that everyone is talking about Tiger. . .

2009-12-14T11:02:00.002-06:00

Now that the hysterics about health care have quieted down while newspeople pontificate on the issue of Tiger Woods and his alleged girl friends I thought I would discuss healthcare reform.

In 1896 Henry Ford completed his first automobile known as the "Quadricycle." It had a chain drive, a two gear transmission and had a top speed of 20 mph. It was basically a buggy with a motor and a tiller to steer with. It didn't have heated leather seats, windows or doors, didn't need a sun / moon roof since there wasn't a roof, had no radio, heater, air conditioning or cup holders and the fuel tank was under the seat.
It wasn't very comfortable, efficient or safe. Through a series of partners, investors and advice givers like Thomas Edison, Ford maintained his vision of an inexpensive automobile. Today our cars have everything the Quadricycle didn't have and more. Ford's idea was simple, make an automobile people could afford and pay his workers enough money that they could afford it.

The history of human invention has followed a simple path: people invent something which doesn't work all that well and is difficult to use. People adapt to using the new invention and then, over time, they adapt the invention to fit themselves. Cars didn't have cup holders until recently — and Europeans still don't quite understand them. We now look at things like GPS systems, heated seats, defrosters and the like as necessities. But they weren't there to begin with. If someone had stopped Ford from producing the Quadricycle and his later cars because of the cost, the difficulty, public objection, lack of a roof or anything else we probably wouldn't have automobiles at all.
One of the primary considerations in designing anything is whether it would be better to wait for newer and better methods, materials and technology. Yet we don't do that, we don't wait. Taking the first step in developing something, no matter how flawed or incomplete, is the first step to the final product. You can't make things better by waiting for them to get better or by keeping things the way they are until they somehow get better or even trying to fix problems that may or may not exist. You develop the thing, then see what needs to and can be done to improve it. If you keep trying to make improvements to something before it's finished, it won't get finished because it can always be improved.

The situation is the same with health care reform. Politicians should pass what they can and come back to fix any problems or correct any flaws in the future instead of arguing about what the flaws and problems might be. They don't have crystal balls to consult and they can't foretell the future. We should demand that healthcare reform be passed in whatever form it currently exists. Over time we will fix it as it needs to be fixed since no matter what healthcare bill is passed it will require future changes to make it better. This is what we have been doing in this country for several hundred years, making things better as best we could. So far it has worked pretty well and no one has come up with a better way of doing it. Our founding fathers understood this when they created the United States Constitution, a unique and difficult document that had no real precedent. They were working from scratch to develop a vision which even they knew they could not deliver. They created a plan and I doubt that any of them came away satisfied with the result, but they provided for ways to change it and improve it. Thomas Jefferson even recommended that the constitution be completely revised in the future because he saw that it would need to be changed.

We can't make health care reform work until we have some sort of health care reform to work with. The alternative to passing health care reform now is everyone sitting on their hands complaining about health care until their insurance company — if they manage to have one — cuts off their benefits.

Pens and then there are pens

2009-11-05T12:35:00.003-06:00

A 0.7 pen tip is usable but too large. I'm picky about the pens I write with and prefer a 0.5mm tip. I had been using a Pilot V Ball Grip Extra Fine and like the pen before that and the one before that, I had trouble finding more. Pen companies, like razor blade companies, keep coming out with new things and stop making the one I'm using. So I'm constantly looking for pens. Trying other pens resulted in this: Pilot P-700 Fine—all right, but doesn't have the feel I want and Pilot doesn't show it on the web site, Pilot Precise Grip Extra Fine—adequate, but they seem to dry out quickly and you have to constantly keep the cap on, Uniball Vision Needle Micro—pick of the litter right now, but immediately couldn't find more. Office supply stores didn't have them anymore and the web site only has 0.7mm as the smallest not the 0.5mm. In looking for them online I stumbled on the Pen Addict. He evidently reviews nearly all the fine point pens available.

None of his top five pens were in stores either so I went to Jet Pens on his recommendation and was knocked out. They carry pens I have never seen anywhere before specializing in Japanese pens. I ordered a handful of different pens including some Uniball Signos with tips as small as 0.18mm and some of the Pilot Drawing pens. I don't know who actually writes with a 0.18mm pen, you have to go a little slow with it and keep it upright. I can't write slowly at all and the upright pen position isn't comfortable for me so I need something a little bigger. The drawing pens however are perfect except for one slight drawback which all these pens seem to have, they make a scratchy noise—at least they do for me—which can annoy people around you especially when they're trying to sleep.

Now the question is do I order a dozen or figure these will go out of production soon and order six dozen?

Yes, I have been busy

2009-11-04T21:55:00.005-06:00

I really have been busy, with not a lot to show for it yet. I have never been a very organized person so getting organized in order to get things done is a little more difficult than I had thought. It's one thing to say which days are work days and which aren't, but getting that achieved is another task. Things don't fall into place by themselves. I have been researching different software packages—more on this later—to organize things on the computer, but all the non-computer stuff remains kind of messy. Before it was a matter of too many things on my plate, not it is too many things in my imagination. Pragmatic things have to come first even though they are the last things I want to be doing right now. Once they're out of the way I can move forward on more of the creative stuff. Once these were separate activities but now that I'm retired it is all one big rolling monster of things to do. As I have found you can't have hierarchy until you have categorization. Categorization requires structure and structure requires direction, and direction requires. . . well, when I get that sorted out I will let you know. Right now it's too many ideas, too many urgencies. I may sleep in tomorrow to clear my head.

I promise I will have more soon. And no, this won't be one of those "I promise. . ." sites that's 3-4 years old. I often wonder what happened to those folks, but I think I have an idea. As Goethe said: "Life is short, art is long." or something like that. I'm stuck in the short life lane, trying to get into the long art lane.

Okay I'm old

2009-09-16T22:16:00.002-05:00

One of the things that many find distressing in elders is that they tend to tell meaningless stories about their past. Well, meaningless to you maybe, not to them. So here's one of mine:

When my brother and I were in college we decided to get a cat. A grad student couple was getting rid of one due to graduation — all white, blue eyed. They had named him "Cotton" but he didn't answer to his name. Turned out, like most white, blue eyed cats, he was deaf. Then my mother got us a white cat she found in the middle of a parking lot in a driving rain. She opened the car door and he jumped in without hesitation. He became "Baby." Later we gave them more elaborate names: Sri Rabindranath Tagore and Norman Mailer.

Baby was so delighted to not be wherever he had been that for several weeks he would get into bed with me at night and start cleaning my beard. Not something you want when trying to fall asleep. When John moved to Wyoming he took both cats so I didn't see them for a few years. When i came to visit Cotton barely looked up from his napping on the couch and Baby took one look at me and flew out the door. I was disappointed until I later went out to get stuff out of my car. On the porch was the head of small yellow-black bird carefully placed in a neat ring of grass clippings. A weird but heartfelt present from him to me. Miss both the guys. Don't miss white cat hair all over everything.

Never sit next to old people on the bus, train, etc. They will begin to tell you their life story in detail. Very important detail.

Green House in progress

2009-09-02T21:55:00.003-05:00

Here's an interesting blog on building a green — as in eco — house in Chicago. Looks like an interesting project. Hope it turns into a good resource for others.

Click the title above.

Retirement is a mental state

2009-08-22T22:29:00.000-05:00

I was already off from work for the summer so going from working life to retirement seemed simple at first. I just had to clean out my office and go home. In the end I left about half the stuff in my office as resources for the department. There were a lot of things I had collected over the years and used in teaching, but faced with hauling them home I realized I didn't really need them for anything. Teaching was my excuse for getting them and / or keeping them. There were three litho stones, slabs of German limestone, that I got from a fellow student in college circa 1968. I kept them for reasons that were never clear even to me, but when i started teaching design history they were great for show and tell. Now I really have no use for them and no attachment to them after all these years of dragging them from residence to residence. I did keep type matrices for no particular reason other than I might find a future use for them.

In discarding these things I realized that I wasn't truly retired yet, that I was still in a transitionary phase and the transition was in my thinking. My whole way of doing things was changing and this would have large effect on what I was going to do. Even buying supplies has changed. At the office supply store I didn't buy any new notebooks since I don't know what kind I'm going to need now. I was using 6" x 9" ones that I could carry around with me. Now I won't be traveling downtown as much as before so I don't yet know what kind of notebook is going to work best.

This transition has also given me an opportunity to organize things, something I never had sufficient time for before. Discarding some things is part of that but just gathering things together and deciding to keep them and where they should be kept now has become important. I spent this morning sorting out paperclips and staples which seems like a very minor thing but has been an annoyance for years since I keep buying more when I can't find the ones I have. As a result I had multiple boxes of them in different places. When I cleaned out my mother's house I found so many boxes of paperclips it was maddening, but now I think I know why she had so many — she couldn't find them when she needed them so she had some in every room. She also had magnifying glasses in every room, sometimes two or three. It reminded me of sculptor Alexander Calder's answer when asked if fame and fortune had changed his life. He said now he owned two of every tool so he could find them.

There is also going to be a big lack of creative input, no colleagues to regularly chat with, no students with interesting stories, no strange posters appearing on walls and definitely no one with green hair — here in the suburbs its mostly pale ink and violet and confined to young girls. There will more opportunities to visit museums and galleries so I am going to join both the MCA and AIC. I'm also going to buy more art books rather than design books. Art books were an expense I couldn't justify as something I needed like design books. Now the reverse is true. I really need the art books so I can go ahead and buy Stuart Davis' Catalogue Raisonné —three volumes and over 2000 photos.

It will be fall by the time most of this works itself out and I'm interested in seeing what other things are going to change. It won't be like it was and it will be different from most of what has preceded it. I can hardly wait.

Formerly of Columbia College

2009-06-23T17:32:00.010-05:00

After my last sabbatical in 2007 I realized I was burned out with teaching and now I have officially resigned. No more whining students, crappy projects, last minute pleas for mercy, etc.

I'm working on two books, one on typographic space and composition, the other on the history of sans serif type. I'm also nearly done with my first OpenType font family which contains an extended set of characters including Greek and Cyrillic and a wide range of Latin. Once that's done I will convert most of my existing fonts over to OpenType with the extended characters sets.

I hope all this brings in a little currency as the price of gin keeps going up. I swear I'd rather eat dog food than drink cheap gin. And I may start a gin related website. I will also have more time to post on the blogs.

Less hysteria, more thought

2009-03-18T20:43:00.004-05:00

Here's a response from someone who stepped back from the rhetoric and thought about the AIG situation: Eye on the ball.

Disclaimer: I do have a connection with Mr. Krames. He is the father of my grand children. Doesn't mean he's not a very smart man.

Competitions are for horses...

2009-03-16T20:26:00.003-05:00

...or so said Mme De Stael and I agree wholeheartedly.

I've always avoided those "What five typefaces would you take to a desert island?" and "What are your ten favorite typefaces?" My reply is always the same: all of them. There are faces I prefer, but I could never narrow my favorites down to a two-digit number. Not even a three-digit number. What you like in typefaces has no bearing on anything but your own personal taste. There aren't enough typefaces as is so making a hypothetical list based on whimsy strikes me as pointless.

If you're old enough to remember the Bogart-Bacall movie Key Largo you might recall the scene where Bogart challenges the gangster Johnny Rocco, played by Edward G. Robinson. Bogart says: "I know what Rocco wants. He wants more." Robinson's face lights up and in a gravely, threatening voice he says: Yeah, that's it! I want more!"

That's what I want in typography: more, much much more.

User Interfaces at High Speed

2009-03-16T20:20:00.003-05:00

This came from Greg Hay, a colleague of mine. I had been waiting for awhile for the paddle shifting interface to become standard and though it's arriving slowly, it will be the standard. These are some more looks at what the average auto steering wheel will look like in the near future. Imagine having all the vehicle controls and information just under your finger tips.

Formula 1 User Interfaces

Recent type questions — well, two but related

2009-03-15T09:59:00.005-05:00

One
First a colleague asked me if I thought Century Gothic was an acceptable typeface for running book text. No. The typeface is a redesign of Sol Hess' knockoff of Futura, Twentieth Century Gothic, but even stiffer and more geometric. The art + design department did have some drawers of Twentieth Century in metal along with some Vogue which was also a Futura knockoff. They are all geometric sans serifs and you can set text in them, but you wouldn't want to have pages of it, and especially not Century Gothic since it is more geometric than the others. Short pieces of text are fine, but Futura works best since it has some very subtle modeling so the geometric quality isn't too oppressive.

A geometric sans is readable but takes some extra leading to be really comfortable and reading a lot of it is more tiring. And if you do set a lot of text in a geometric sans serif, later on in life you will regret having done it. I know because I did and I do. I once set an entire annual report in Herb Lubalin's Avant Garde typeface which was never designed to be a text face —despite the fact that ITC produced a text version — and is hard on the eyes after a short time. My only excuse is it was the 70s and it seemed like a great idea at the time. I also have an art book on Stuart Davis — one of my all time favorite painters — set in Avant Garde and I hate reading it. The pictures are nice though.

Two
Another colleague asked me if there was a Herb Lubalin of today. After thinking it over the answer was "no." Lubalin was an extremely gifted designer who questioned the traditional rules of typography. His work is important because he did things you weren't supposed to do, like setting text all caps in an extra bold weight type with negative leading like this, and in doing so invented some different approaches which were quickly copied by other designers and became standards of the day. Some of his typographic manipulations also became design school projects, some still in use today. His typographic puns with headlines showed up in student work for years. But Lubalin wasn't doing any of this out of whimsy, he was very conscious of doing things that made the text more readable even if it was harder to read. Sometimes you would read the text just to see what was going on. His work was always exciting and that excitement drew readers.

Most young designers today are too trend conscious and most of them wouldn't know how to break any design rules because they don't know there are any. It seems like all the rules have been discarded to the point where few designers can produce something new and different. There is too much amateurish, thoughtless and pointless design work that exists mostly because it can. And a lot of old ideas are getting rehashed by a generation of designers who don't realize these are old ideas because they slept through most of their design history class. And the internet has made it possible for designers all over the world to jump on the latest thing and overuse it to death within days where it used to take months or years for a new trend to run its course. The swirly curls that were popular — I hope it's "were" — lived on long after they were unique. Once someone had a tutorial online that should have made it clear this was a dead trend.

Twelve Birds

2009-02-21T18:31:00.004-06:00

I learned the Twelve birds technique from one of my design teachers: Victor Papanek. I've used it over the years pretty successfully, though it only alleviates part of the problem of students not participating in class discussions. In art and design most of your students won't respond to questions or comments at first and a simple way to establish some rapport is to ask "Who can name twelve birds?" Of course, no one raises their hand or occasionally one student will tentatively raise a hand then pull it back down when they see no one else is raising a hand. Students don't raise their hands because they know you will ask them to name twelve birds and they don't think or don't know they can. Then you start naming birds and get them to join in. It is obvious anyone can name a lot of birds especially if you start with edible ones like chicken and turkey and move on to pigeons, eagles, woodpeckers, etc. This creates an opportunity to talk about anxiety and openness in class. I use it to impress on students the fact that they are smarter than they think they are and shouldn't be afraid of making comments in class. It works for about half a class and the other half continues to keep silent during discussions and critiques. Those students are usually still unsure or feel everything is over their head or think they aren't talented / intelligent enough.

I'm amazed how many students question their abilities even after several semesters of classes. Once, at an orientation for new students one asked: "How do we know we have the talent and ability to do this?" I was really surprised since this was coming from someone who was already enrolled. My response was they were obviously talented enough to do it since they were in the room. If they weren't talented enough they wouldn't have even considered pursuing it. Students do vary in how much talent they possess but I've had very few over the years who didn't seem capable of being successful designers. The biggest shortcoming I found was a lack of prior education or at least a broad enough education. Many weren't familiar with art, film or literature to any degree due to an absence of it in school or at home and it was important to make them aware of that so they could correct it. Though again the twelve birds techniques applied to art and literature often provided surprising results even to the students.

A New Post Finally

2009-02-21T18:16:00.003-06:00

If you surf through blogs you will come across some where the most recent post is one apologizing for not having posted for awhile and promising to post soon. The last one I found — last week — was dated 2006 which is one of the older ones. People start blogs, then get busy, discover they don't like writing and stop posting, leaving that lonely empty promise as their final comment.

I haven't posted for awhile because my mother passed away shortly after the last post and I've been dealing with that as well as being the executor of her estate which has been more fun than a barrel of dead monkeys. I've finally reached the point where I'm reigning in talking about it all the time. At first people ask how you are and they really want to hear how you are, whether you're dealing with it or need help. That fades eventually and everyone goes back to asking how you are merely as a greeting and aren't interested your tale of woe anymore. This is the point where you have to stop talking about it or people will start avoiding you. And you should stop talking even if it is only to begin moving forward. I've found you don't stop grieving with any finality after losing a loved one so if you continue talking about how you feel, you get caught in a feedback loop of unending sorrow. Not good.

So more posts coming. I not only promise, but here's one.

Jim Ford's Captain Quill typeface

2008-11-18T21:53:00.004-06:00

I sent an email to all my students about this, but forgot to mention it here. A former student and Columbia College Chicago alum, James Ford, works for Ascender Corp. a company that designs typefaces. Most of their work is contract for clients like Microsoft (X Box) and Nokia, but occasionally they release some of their designer's personal work. Jim was a great student and was interested in typeface design early in his studies and I'm happy to see his work get recognition.

Captain Quill

Secretary of State Clinton

2008-11-15T19:45:00.004-06:00

When President Elect Obama and Hillary Clinton met after fighting it out in the primaries my first thought was "Hillary for Secretary of State." I went around saying this to people — right after I said "everything will be fine once Presdient Obama is sworn in." This was before the primaries (giving my self a little pat on the back). Now it's in the news all over the world — The Guardian, Washington Post, Huffington Post among many — that she's the front rummer for the job. I think Obama offered her the job months ago and she already agreed to take it. Some are worried about Bill Clinton lurking around the White House, but it's obvious Hillary has him under control so I doubt that would be a problem. And whatever friction there was during the primaries wasn't personal, just electoral rhetoric. They are both realists and astute people so working together won't be a problem. I always thought Hillary would be better as Secretary of State than as President. Imagine some world leader getting out of hand and President Obama calls them up and says: "knock it off or I'll put Hillary on your ass." Trust me, they would knock it off. And I'm suggesting Colin Powell for Secretary of Defense, but I don't think he will take the job.

Someone has to lose an election in order for someone to win.

2008-11-11T21:55:00.001-06:00

I hadn't visited for awhile — busy with other things — so to my surprise there was another candidate for president I would have considered voting for. Sadly he, like Arnold, can never be a U. S. President.

Pooch and Toad for President.

Typography advances maybe

2008-11-11T21:29:00.003-06:00

A couple of interesting typographical discussions that have been going on lately:

On the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) discussion list is news that there may be another new font format for web browsers. The new software engines for some web browsers includes the ability to specify any typeface in existence in a web site. The up side is designers don't have to depend on what the individual user has on their own computer. The browser will go looking for the font on the internet. The down side is that most fonts aren't free so someone has to pay for the fonts or steal them.

Right now discussions are taking place about EOT or Embedded OpenType format developed by Microsoft that would allow fonts to be embedded in web pages. How this will work and how font developers will be compensated are still big issues. The fact that this is effectively controlled by Microsoft is of some concern to folks as well.

The other discussion on the OpenType list itself is about how software handles small caps. Right now OpenType fonts allow the user to choose either lower or upper case and change them to small caps. This requires that there be two sets of small caps in the font though, one for each use. There are two separate features — which are really instruction sets that tell the font what to do — one called SMCP for changing lower case to small caps and C2SC or caps to small caps for upper case.

What is somewhat distressing is that typeface design used to be about design, but with the advent of computers it is more and more about software and programming. Type designers are wondering what to do and a few are thinking about getting out of the business is this keeps up. The large software companies like Adobe and Microsoft can do what they want and call it a "standard" which smaller independent designers have to then follow.

The initial burst of freedom and creativity in type design that came with Fontographer is going away. I think there is currently much less experimentation that there used to be — even though much of it resulted in bad or sophomoric typography — and less innovation. Overall I believe typefaces are getting blander and too similar.

Both of these discussions make it clear that the big companies run the business and the small independent type foundries and designers are being slowly eased out.

My Presidential Choice

2008-11-04T20:35:00.001-06:00

I have avoided naming my choice for president in front of students although most of them figured out who I favored because that's who they were voting for. So here's my view:

• Old white guys have not been doing well for us as leaders. If they were a baseball team we'd be looking for new blood. We'd be looking for a talented new young guy.

• After the candidates issues and agendas I want a president who looks presidential, not one that looks like an old teddy bear with the stuffing knocked out of him.

• I prefer to have leaders who know as much or more than I do. I can name a Supreme Court case besides Roe v. Wade — Brown v. the Board of Education — and I'm not a politician. When the candidate for Vice President can't name more than one I'm certainly not voting for them.

• We need fixes for a lot of current problems, but we also need a new vision for the country, one that goes beyond solving our current problems. We haven't had a leader with that kind of vision for some time.

• When the opposition tries to slur a candidate using religion, ethnicity, and color they don't get my vote.

• I voted early, voted a mixed ticket and for President I voted for Obama.

Scary Conspiracy Theory #1

2008-10-31T16:18:00.002-05:00

When Richard Condon's 1959 novel "The Manchurian Candidate" was made into a movie in 1962 the Chinese high command's response was:"Why didn't we think of that?" So they decided that when the next opportunity arose they would try brain-washing a captured American soldier. From the outset of the Vietnam war they were reviewing POW records looking for suitable candidates. Imagine their glee when they found a captured firghter pilot whose father was an admiral. If the brainwashing worked they thought they could get some useful military intelligence, but when the pilot got out of the military, then was elected to the Senate, and turned into a Republican aparatchik they were disappointed. Then an opportunity arose when the brain-washed fighter pilot / senator started a relationship with a woman who was involved in special education for people with disabilities. By sheer coincidence she had met Deng Pufang, the oldest son of former Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping, who had been crippled by the Red Guard for supposed "capitalist" thinking. Through Pufang — who was always a staunch Communist — they were able to monitor and influence their brainwashed pilot / senator and using his girlfriend, later wife, they found they could influence his activities.

When the pilot / senator turned out to have Presidential aspirations they got really excited and began formulating a plan to take over the United States. The Chinese government began remaking its image. Very quickly they were able to get the media to stop using the term "communist" and portray them as nice people despite the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Then had already secretly financed and promoted an opera about President's Nixon's visit to China, portraying themselves as right-minded but misunderstood. This was followed by a series of extensive trade agreements with major American companies like WalMart. They also began expanding their trade zones within the states since a foreign trade zone is effectively considered outside the country.

Using the enormous profits from this trade they started buying up American debt. Through bribes and blackmail they forced the Olympic committee to pick China as an Olympic site, then pretended to adopt a more capitalist economic system while maintaining an authoritarian dictatorship. They were able to infiltrate the U. S. banking system and through various corrupt and greedy bankers, starting with the Keating Five — associates of their brainwashed senator, to shape American economic policy. The Chinese engineered the war in Afghanistan and Iraq in order to run up the deficit so they could buy more U.S. debt. They engineered the resulting deregulation and exploitation of greed in the banking system that led to the near collapse of the U.S. economy. With American on the verge of bankruptcy and without many countries to depend upon the Chinese are poised to buy up the rest of the country once their brainwashed fighter pilot / senator / president takes power. He will tell the country this is best for us all as Communist Chinese troops arrive on our shores to take over.

Publishing How-To info

2008-10-17T21:51:00.006-05:00

Since I've been working on a book about typography (there's something else?) searching for information on publishing and writing non-fiction texts, especially more theoretical ones, has been a necessity. This is one source that I read all the time for useful information: Jeffrey Krames blog. As a disclaimer I will admit that I know Jeffrey, but I respect his opinions and ideas since a) I think he's right, and b) he's very successful as a writer / publisher. Though his area of expertise is business books, much of what he has to say applies to a variety of subject areas not just business. I not only read his blog I have also been reading his books and more importantly, books that he's been reading so that I can understand what he's saying and why.

I've been recommending his blog to people so I thought I should mention it here. If you're a writer or thinking about being a writer — especially non-fiction — you should read what he has to say. The backward / forward writer article was a wake up call to me and the other articles on writing a book proposal and approaching a publisher are very useful even if you're not writing a business book.

My only car event this year.

2008-10-11T20:19:00.007-05:00

I promised myself I would get to as many races and car shows as I could, but circumstances decided otherwise. The only thing I got to was the Barrington Illinois Concours d'Elegance at the Arlington Park horse track. It was a lousy day and started misting on the way there. I managed to get some photos before it started raining. We waited around hoping it would stop, but the rain kept up so we left without seeing most of the vehicles there. I was just about to photograph a Mercedes 300 SL gull-wing when the owner threw a plastic sheet over it. About 6:00 pm it quit raining and the sun came out, after the show had closed. Maybe next year then. I had decided to retire the end of this school year — read my earlier post about burn-out — but with the economy tanking I may have to keep working. That's assuming there will be a job.

This is one car I had hoped I would eventually see. It's a Scarab, a sports racer built by Lance Reventlow. He was very wealthy and funded the operation out of his own pocket, something that's almost impossible today. His parents were Count Reventlow and the actress Barbara Hutton. They later divorced and she married Cary Grant. Though he never got into the movie business himself he was around it most of his life. Lance's first wife was the actress Jill St.John.

Eventually he lost interest in auto racing and sold everything to Carroll Shelby. He was later killed in a small plane crash. The rest of the photos are here on Flickr.

Yes I haven't.

2008-09-26T12:37:00.003-05:00

I haven't posted for awhile due to lack of time and energy. Between school starting and my mother being ill it has been impossible to find the time, or if I have some time I'm too tired to do anything but sleep. There will be posts soon, I promise. This won't be one of those blogs where the last post is the blogger promising to post soon and it's dated 2006.

Didn't Make It. . .

2008-08-07T12:48:00.005-05:00

We didn't make it to Typecon after all. My mother was diagnosed with a serious health problem and we had to cancel the trip. She's feeling better now and we're getting ready for her 88th birthday in a couple of weeks.

I heard Typecon was excellent though and I'm sorry I missed it. The next conference is ATypI in St. Petersburg, Russia not Florida. The airfare is too expensive for me so looks like I will miss it too. What am I going to do without my annual dose of type people? Guess I will watch Helvetica over and over until the withdrawal passes.

Typecon 2008, Buffalo

2008-06-24T17:32:00.003-05:00

Yes, I know Buffalo doesn't sound like an exciting place to go, but this is Typecon! I plan on spending most of my time sitting in a dark room listening to people talk about typography. What could be better? Or more important to the future of the world? Go here for all the info: Typecon 2008

The speakers list includes Chuck Bigelow of Bigelow & Holmes / Lucida fame, David Pankow of the Cary Library at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Ted Harrison (from physician to font software guru), Akira Koybayashi who's one of the most interesting guys to listen to, Matthew Carter, Adam Twardoch, any many more. If there was a mafia in typography, this is it.

If you think you're interested in type and you've not been to Typecon you need to go. What's more fun than being in a room with 400+ people who share you obsession with type. If nothing else you get to chat with Erik Spiekermann.

Nietzsche had a typewriter?

2008-06-17T18:45:00.004-05:00

Among other things it now occurs to someone that technology may shape how we think. Friedrich Nietzsche's typewriter.

And here's a nice picture of it. Not what you would think of as a typewriter necessarily.

Business discovers typography as business

2008-06-17T18:38:00.003-05:00

As the word "font" passes into the general lexicon more people are paying attention to typography. Of course most only see it through their own area of interest, but any recognition is welcome. Here's CNN's article on Bitstream Corp. as a successful small business.

Somewhat disappointing day race-wise

2008-05-25T17:29:00.003-05:00

Got up early to watch the Monaco Grand Prix. Monaco is usually a good race and this was no exception. It started in the rain and finished in the dry so there were lots of pit stops for tire changes. Felipe Massa did an great job of driving, but Lewis Hamilton won in the end. Robert Kubica took second for BMW Sauber and Petronas which was great to watch. Nick Heidfeld had a bad day and seemed to spend almost as much time in the pits as on the track.

The really disappointing aspect was the India Force driver Adrian Sutil getting rear ended by Kimi Raikkonen while he was running third. That would have been the best finish ever for the team and would have given them some tremendous publicity. At least a lot of people in the racing community have taken note of Sutil's drive. And Sebastien Bourdais crashed out through no fault of his own which also held true for the Indy 500.

Several drivers came out of turns a little too high and hit the wall for no other apparent reason, Tony Kanaan being the real heartbreaker. He may have inherited the Andretti luck at Indy. The only person who felt worse than he did was Sarah Fisher. As Kanaan came back down from the wall she had nowhere to go and ran into him. Danica Patrick also got hit by Ryan Briscoe in the pits. She was where she was supposed to be while exiting and Briscoe either lost control or wasn't paying attention. Afterwards Danica was marching down to the Penske pits to give him some advice but the security people convinced her not to.

The best part was Vitor Meira finishing second driving for Panther racing. This looks like it may be a good year for both Meira and the team.

Oooh, and it's May!

2008-05-19T15:57:00.003-05:00

What I am looking forward to is the Indianapolis 500 this weekend. My wife knows I'll be glued to the TV and radio and internet most of the day. Looks like it's going to be a good race. Danica Patrick has shown she can win a race, and she qualified well. The front rows are full of top notch drivers young and old so there's going to be some racing. I'm just hoping there isn't a rain delay. We're having company over Monday and I'm cooking.

Things so far...

2008-05-19T15:32:00.002-05:00

The semester if finally over and I'm glad, glad, glad. I've been so tired this spring first with the harsher winter than usual, and then getting two bad colds in succession. I missed graduation since I was coming down with a third one. Now I just have to finish my grades.

The basement project is going along pretty well except for a problem with the carpet. The granite counter tops were installed today and look great so all that's really left is the painting and finish work. I'll be happy when it's done. It turned out to be more stressful that I had anticipated and having workmen in the house made it difficult for me to get anything done. There will be some pictures as soon as I get around to posting them.

Most of the stuff in the basement before had to be boxed up so I can't get at half my books and there are a couple of things I assume are in boxes since I can't find them. Very frustrating, but it all should be finished by the end of May — fingers crossed.

Pundits are still ranting about the Obama / Hillary situation like it is a major crisis. It is interesting that Howard Dean and other high up in the party don't seem to be tearing thier hair out over this. And with all the hand wringing not much notice has been given to the fact that vote turnouts for the Democrats are much higher than for Republicans. McCain was on Saturday Night Live recently and did a joke about letting both Hillary and Obama run on the November ballot. It was good for a laugh especially since either one of them would still be able to beat him based on the vote totals so far. It was also a little embarrassing that he didn't seem to be able to read a sentence out loud.

It will be interesting to see what the conservatives do four years from now. Romney threw money around and couldn't get elected dog catcher so despite what some conservatives think he will never be president in 2012. He may look the part but I don't think people really trusted him. When Kennedy was elected President people were worried that he would do what the Pope told him to and he worked very hard to convince people that wasn't the case. Religion is a touchy subject when it comes to electing a president and it hasn't helped the Republicans that instead of representing the people as he was elected to do Bush imposed his own religious-moral imperialism on the country.

I'm tired, can I go home now?

2008-04-05T17:26:00.003-05:00

During my sabbatical I was truly excited about getting back to teaching. But it's past the middle of the semester now and I'm not excited at all. I think I've burned out. For several years now I've had some form of administrative duties — program coordinator, associate chair — and I'm definitely burned out with that. It's the teaching that I don't find engaging now, I seem to have lost my passion for it. Before classes were always interesting, working with students was satisfying and even fun, the student's work was often surprising and creative. Now I feel like I'm just going through the motions. I still have good students, they're doing some good work, but at the end of the day I can't wait to go home.

I'm still whittling away at the book on typography and should have a revised draft by the end of summer or sooner, and I'm getting very antsy about getting back to working on my typeface designs. Those things I'm passionate about and I don't have any trouble working on. I even resent days when I can't work on them. If I stopped teaching tomorrow though I don' think I would really miss it. Next fall will probably be the last time I teach History of Communication Design class and I'm a little sad about that, but I've been asking to step away from it for awhile. We're in the process of interviewing potential art history / design history candidates That will give the department two full time faculty and one adjunct who can teach the course besides me. My degrees aren't in design history anyway. Twenty some years ago when I started full time I was offered the opportunity to create the course. Design history was new then and there were very few design historians, especially in advertising and graphic design, so there were a lot of design educators in the same situation. The first design history conference I attended — Eclecticism & Modernism at the School of Visual Arts — had a lot of people like me, working designers who were teaching a design history course along with studio classes. Many were going around asking to see each other's syllabi since no one was sure of what they were doing. I was enthusiastic about it and spent several years educating myself in design history in order to teach the course, reading everything I could and going to conferences. I'm still very interested in design history though I'm more and more focused on typography now.

My father was a high school athletic director and my mother told me this is about the time he burned out. He spent his last few years toughing it out until he could retire. I had planned to keep teaching past retirement age, but now I'm thinking of early retirement. There's been talk of an early retirement option at school. Right now I will be back teaching in the fall and maybe I will feel differently then. If not I will probably start looking for something else. Maybe if the book gets published and takes off I'll be inundated with speaking engagements (ha). I'm planning on converting my fonts to OpenType this summer so they may suddenly start making me tons of money (ha, ha). Or maybe I can get a barista job at Starbucks. Just something with health benefits and enough money to pay the mortgage.

President?

2008-03-31T20:01:00.006-05:00

Let me make this clear, John McCain will never be President. He simply isn't presidential, he doesn't look or act presidential, plus he has all the charisma of white flour. And he's boring. His handlers leaked it that he has a temper but no one ever sees it even though he once snapped at a reporter. Considering that Ann Coulter compared him to Hitler he should be spitting nails and breathing fire instead of snapping at a reporter who annoyed him. Coulter also said conservatives shouldn't vote for him and he doesn't seem to be upset about that. If he has a temper it's apparently in a little jar on a dark shelf in his basement.

Listening to the pundits and commentators wringing their hands over the situation the Democrats are in has become truly tiresome. They keep whining about how damaging it is for Barak and Hillary to be going at each other. They must not be prize fight fans or else it would be obvious what's happening. Barak and Hillary are are fighting it out for the nomination like Ali and Foreman in Zaire. They should sell tickets, people would be lining up. Unless one of them pulls far ahead in the primaries from now until they get to the convention they will get most of the publicity and attention. People all over the world will be holding their breath to see which one wins. Most Americans will barely recall there is a Republican candidate much less think of voting for him. McCain's best shot at getting media attention will be getting Barak or Hillary to talk about him. And the only possible way he could get elected is if absolutely every other candidate dies in a plane crash.

Champ Car & IRL Merge !?!

2008-02-23T12:30:00.006-06:00

What some people thought would never happen finally did, Champ Car World Series and the Indy Racing League have agreed to merge (see the story here). The last signature went on the contract Friday. The employees at Champ Car found out first when they were all fired. Andretti Green Racing announced Tuesday that it had hired "Ziggy" Harcus, Champ Car's Director of Racing Operations as a team manager so people began to suspect this was coming. There have been meetings before without any results so Harcus' hiring signaled that maybe it was really going to happen.

Of course, amidst all the congratulations and relieved sighs was no mention of what happens to the schedule. Both IRL and CC have schedules in place that don't mesh, and these include some international dates: IRL in Japan, and CC in Belgium, Spain, and Canada. The big conflict is April 19-20 with both the Twin Ring Motegi race in Japan and the Long Beach Grand Prix. The Long Beach race has been around longer and will be easier for everyone to get to, but I don't think the Japanese will move the Motegi race. One way or another there will be a lot of unhappy people. The CC race June 1 in Belgium will have to change — no one is going to finish the Indy 500, then get on a plane to Europe and expect to be able to race. Besides the Milwaukee race has always been the week after the 500. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. I hope I can get tickets.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

2008-02-23T10:13:00.001-06:00

I was looking forward to being back at teaching this semester and for the first three weeks it has gone pretty well except for a few small things — I just got my office key and I still don't have a phone. Then I got home last Thursday and the first thing my wife said to me was “You're never going back to school again.”

I was on the train so I hadn't yet heard about the tragic events in DeKalb. It is always upsetting when someone dies, but it is heartbreaking when young people die. You can only think about what their lives might have been like, about what they might have achieved. And the loss of a student is upsetting for college faculty even if the student wasn't theirs. Part of the reason someone teaches is a sense of the promise and possibility inherent in each student. Seeing that possibility lost is very disheartening.

Violence like that at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech keeps college administrators and faculty awake at nights because there is no good way to prevent it. There isn't a practical way to have tight security on a college campus, they are open and really have to be. Checking student identification or having metal detectors at building entrances has been tried and it just leads to long lines like those at the airport. All a college can really do is prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Events like this have been happening for decades on college campuses; they never got a lot of attention because they weren't terribly violent or didn't result in anyone being harmed. College years are a stressful time for students, they are going through a transition to adulthood without a sense of what the outcome will be. College serves to give students an opportunity to see what their own possibilities are and figure out what they plan on doing, but having to make major life decisions at such a young age is like trying to predict the weather fifty years from now.

In the Feb. 17 issue of the Chicago Tribune Eric Zorn’s column had several letters he receoved in response to a column asking what was going on in America. The letters were a long list of blame: it's the fault of the permissive 60s, the Reagan 80s, parents not hugging their children enough, and of course lax gun laws. Rather than stop and think about recent events everyone had an agenda and something to blame. We're quick to try and place blame when terrible things happen, we want to fix whatever was wrong. But violence has always been a part of human experience. Over the centuries we seem to have reduced it, but violence has never left us. Whether it is in DeKalb or Baghdad or Darfur or anywhere else, horrible events continue to occur. Blame isn't the point in any of this, and trying to affix it only delays solving the problem. People want a quick solution because we don't want to think about events like this, and we don't want to remember them. But we have to remember them even if only to keep those who have died in our thoughts. All of them.

Coincidence No. 2 (perhaps)

2008-01-20T17:14:00.000-06:00

A few days ago a former student of mine got in touch with me asking for a letter of recommendation which I'm happy to write. As it turns out she is working in a job that I once —many, many years ago — interviewed for. I didn't get the job because it was partly managing designers and I was only interested in designing at the time. My former student currently feels the same. From her comments the nature of the place has changed a lot and her job doesn't involve any managing so she's pretty satisfied with it. Most creative people don't really want to manage but it eventually becomes necessary in order to advance the profession. Sooner or later you have people you have to direct, advise, guide, etc. So I ended up teaching which is as close as you can get to managing without really managing. Teaching is also as close as you can get to being self employed and still collect a paycheck.

I had been thinking more about the whole issue of coincidence and how things are connected. I do think everything in the universe is connected, but only structurally. I don't believe the idea that the flapping of a butterfly's wing on the other side of the planet has an effect on everything else, not do I believe in astrology. Both are based in a connection between events and as far as I can tell this isn't viable. Events do occur and they do have consequences, but I think it's obvious that events occur all the time without having any discernible effect on the rest of the universe. And any event driven connection would be relatively limitless in its influence in order to have any effect.

The connection has to be structural, meaning that things exist along a set of tendencies that exert an effect. These tendencies are the structure that determines the direction of things and events which is why events and their consequences sometimes appear to be connected. So what does this all mean? Mostly that you can affect change on several levels but not at all levels of existence. And that the nature of any effect will be determined by the general tendencies being exerted at the time. If you think of it as "a body in motion tends to stay in motion" and extend that to "a tendency in a certain direction will stay in that direction and will be diverted only in response to the force of a certain event."

I have to start thinking about school as I'll be back in class next week so this is as far as I've gotten with coincidence and connection. So that's my thought for now. Just the one.

Coincidence???

2007-11-27T21:23:00.000-06:00

When I was younger I thought coincidences were portents of something or imbued with some kind of meaning. Then I realized they were just odd confluences of events, facts, whatever. After thinking about these things for many years I don't believe in fate nor in determinism or a variety of other explanations that posit you don't have any control over your fate or that you do have control over it.
Then a couple of weeks ago my wife mentioned hearing about a stand-up comedian named Eddie Brill who does the warm up for the David Letterman show. I Googled him and found his web page and his MySpace page. On the MySpace page he had a song, "Trouble with Dreams" by the Eels. It sounded interesting so I checked for some more songs on iTunes.
A few days ago my brother emailed me about an article in the latest issue of Scientific American about the physicist Hugh Everett who came up with the Mutually Assured Destruction concept and evidently convinced a lot of cold war hawks not to attack Russia. He was the man who came up with the theory of many-worlds or relative state in response to a fundamental problem in the superposition theory in quantum mechanics. This has to do with discrepancies between classical physics and quantum physics about events that happen at the subatomic level and don't in the larger world. Physicists don't really know why certain events can occur in one realm and not the other.
I don't think I can explain the theory adequately so you'll have to read the article, but basically it's his theory that gives rise to the idea that there are parallel universes. This idea was the basis of his doctoral thesis in 1957 and had to be amended because most physicists at the time, especially Niels Bohr, didn't agree with it. Everett referred to Bohr's answer to the problem as "a mess." Years later physicists came to appreciate Everett's idea, though it's still not fully accepted. The many-worlds theory is a mainstay of science fiction though: the idea that there are multiple versions of the same reality with different outcomes.
Everett died in 1957 of a heart attack. His son Mark — here's the coincidence — is the lead singer for the Eels. So in the space of two weeks I hear about a band I'd never heard of before from two divergent directions.
What connection is there, if any, between a stand-up comedian and a physicist? How is a warm up joke for the Letterman show related to a theory of multiple universes? My brother said it's merely a matter of probabilities. After going through it he's probably right, but I started thinking about the idea that there are multiple universes and that there is a certain amount of bleed over from one universe to another and that coincidences are evidence of this bleed over effect. If there are multiple universes we're probably passing back and forth between several of them all the time without noticing. The difference from one to another has to be very slight and since it involves the entire universe the difference betwwen the one we're in and the one next to it might be millions of light years away from us.

Ooh, Leopard

2007-11-16T21:16:00.000-06:00

Got Leopard and installed it. Everything went fine for awhile then Scrivener wouldn't work. After tearing out my hair for most of a day it turned out to be a font conflict problem. The Linotype font manager won't work in Leopard and switching to FontBook screwed some fonts. There were duplicate .dfonts in two different folders, one fine, the other corrupt. Fixed the problem, went to sleep, next morning same problem until I weeded all the questionable fonts out. Now it's all fine. I hope. I've been doing so much work on Scrivener that losing it would set me back months. It's a great piece of software for writing so I've been doing more and more in it. The guy who wrote it actually identified the problem for me. Given the time difference between England and Chicago he must have been up very late helping me so I'm trying to figure out how to thank him.

Many people have been complaining about the transparent menu bar in Leopard which I found bothersome at first, but now I'm used to it. My desktop changes every 15 min. (pictures of race cars), so the menu bar is always different and I like it. Someone already has a utility — Opaque Menu Bar — to change it if you want. My biggest issue is the ugly folder icons so I've been collecting new ones. However, changing them isn't that easy. The new stacks feature means the icon in the dock is whatever is the first file in the folder. Want a different icon in the dock? Create some artwork, make it first in the hierarchy and it's the folder icon. With all the other icons stacked up behind it. The downloads folder icon changes depending upon what's in it. You can only keep the original icon if there's nothing in the folder. Makes me wonder how this stuff gets tested. Apple is supposed to be using graphic designers for this kind of thing, though it doesn't look like it.

Otherwise Leopard is working fine. It won't run on the desktop machine, only on the laptop. My G4 has a 3rd party accelerator that hangs the install which is what I expected. Planning to phase the G4 out and make the laptop the primary machine anyway. So how many predatory cat names are left and what kind of odds are they giving in Vegas for which one is next?

Hmmm. . .

2007-10-07T09:47:00.000-05:00

June 23? I hadn't realized how long it's been since I posted. I've been busy working on a book on typography and space — Gutenberg's Box — and working on finishing some fonts. I spent most of yesterday rewriting my encoding file. Seems Adobe has been using duplicate glyphs for some Unicode points so that Acrobat can. . . Well, it's technical. I understand the reason, but I don't think it's a big concern. I added them to the font anyway. So now I have an "fi" uniFB01, and "f_i" ligatures. Fontlab flags the names are a problem but it shouldn't be once the font is generated. I think. I also changed the names of the small cap characters, but it doesn't really matter as it turns out. I was hoping to only have one run of them, but there's the same problem with Acrobat mentioned above. At some point software applications have to understand what the original character was which means there must be two separate small cap glyph sets, one for UC and one for lc.

I'm resisting adding much more like Vietnamese or polytonic Greek. Don't have the time. It's taken me this long just to create monotonic Greek and the Cyrillic characters so I don't want to go to any deeper in the pool.

I also started another collection. When I'm rich and famous (any minute now) I'm going to collect antique race cars — I definitely want a Ferrari 512 and a Birdcage Maserati and . . . So I was at Target some weeks ago getting toys for the grandsons and spotted a Hot Wheels Ferrari 512 for $1 and bought it. Then I made the terrible mistake of looking on eBay. Now have the following: Ferrari 512, 333, 575, 3-60s era Ferrari F1 racers (anyone remember Phil Hill?), several sprint cars, 2 Panoz roadsters, 2 Riley Scott cars, and so on. I have one stock car, the Target Dodge which came in a cereal box. I'm not a stock car fan and I'd give it away but that's now the car Dario Franchitti drove in the recent ARCA race at Talladega. So it stays. Just got one of Sammy Swindell's WOO cars, and a Doug Wolfgang is on the way. And happily won a very nice Leader Card Watson Indy roadster. And there's a Miller too. I missed out on a set of two early Indy cars which went for much more than I thought they would. I'm evidently not alone collecting these things.

More later.

Scrivener software

2007-06-23T19:46:00.000-05:00

Currently I'm on sabbatical and writing a book on typography (there's something else to write about?). I have a lot of difficulty organizing things so I've been searching for software tools to help me do this. I'm still searching for a database application that will accept everything I have and get it organized in such a way that I can locate everything that's related to a particular topic. No such animal though. Nothing I've tested will work with all the different file types I have.

What I have finally found is a piece of writing software, Scrivener, from Literature & Latte that has helped me get all my notes organized so I can easily access them in the writing process. I was using Copyright from Bartas Technologies which is similar and dos a pretty good job of organizing written material. The difference is that Scrivener let's me separate my notes into sections, but will then let me see them together in one document. I have difficulty moving back and forth between different sections which I tend to do a lot. I write in bits and pieces making notes as things occur to me. Then I organize everything thematically. Sometimes it takes multiple passes through a text to get everything in order and this is much easier in Scrivener than anything I've used.

The only thing Scrivener doesn't do is word processing. You have to export the document for that. At first I found it annoying, but Scrivner is a writing tool, not a word processor. And the difference is important. The fellow who's written the program decided to focus on that and let other programs do the word processing. There's also a user forum with a place to request features as well as ask questions. Very nice touch and the author explains his rationale for adding or not adding particular features.

More race cars

2007-06-22T11:33:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite car sites is supercars.net where they post pictures of different auto events, mainly races and auto shows both new and vintage. Someone just put put pictures from the 24 Hours of LeMans and this is one of my favorites. I love shots like these; it's a perspective you almost never get to see of a race car. Auto racing is about the cars and the drivers and the crews and gives you, I think, a better sense of how it works.

I also love the vintage stuff like this Ferrari, and even earlier race cars like this one. When I'm rich, soon I hope, I'm going to collect old race cars.

Oil, coal, gas and Iran

2007-06-19T16:29:00.000-05:00

One of the interesting things I learned not long ago is that nuclear power supplies less than 5% of the world's energy. Hydroelectric about 6%. The majority comes from oil, coal, and natural gas in that order. Nuclear's advantage is over coal — nuclear doesn't have carbon emissions. Of course there's the problem of nuclear waste for which our best technology is to contain it. The other thing I recently found out is that Iran is sitting on one of the largest reserves of oil and gas in the world. The reason they have an energy crisis is they don't have sufficient refinery and production capacity.

The point of this is that if Iran spent their money on oil and gas production they wouldn't have a problem. Spending it on nuclear doesn't have any economic advantage for them, and no advantage at relieving carbon emissions since they don't use coal. Their money would be better spent on more oil refineries and gas processing plants.

So why are they doing it? Manufacturing bomb grade materials for use in nuclear weapons seems to be the logical conclusion. Economically, manufacturing plutonium doesn't make much sense even if you plan to build more nuclear plants. It's to long term a plan when you're sitting on energy sources you can develop faster like oil and gas. I guess the politicians are right on this one. Iran wants bombs and nuclear power is just an excuse.

All auto racing all the time

2007-06-17T13:12:00.000-05:00

I caught the beginning of the 24 Hours of LeMans Saturday, then did some errands, watched more of the race, had dinner, watched more of the race until I couldn't keep my eyes open, then woke up Sunday morning and watched the end of the race. And I loved it. I wish there were a cable channel that had nothing but auto racing all the time so you could turn it on at anytime and see a race.

I also think there should be a cable channel for typography too, but that I'm not even hope for. The couple of thousand people in the world who would watch it isn't enough. The Puppy Channel — all puppys all the time — didn't make it and people loved it, but not enough.

And then we tagged . . .

2007-06-11T19:33:00.000-05:00

Sometimes everything is normal despite whatever political forces are at work.

Iran Graffiti

Makes me wonder what the penalty is for graffiti in Iran.

Okay, Paris

2007-06-11T17:38:00.001-05:00

Okay, everyone has weighed in on Paris Hilton and her jail stint so here's my opinion: I feel sorry for her. I don't feel sorry for her being in jail, I feel sorry she doesn't seem to have the inner strength and fortitude to deal with her circumstances. At first I thought her parents must be to blame for raising her in such a way that she apparently has never known any hardship at all. Thus rendering her helpless when faced with her current situation. Then I began to wonder about her intelligence level. There hasn't been any event the public is aware of that would indicate she is very intelligent. I never watched her reality show so maybe she did something intelligent while on it, but I think it would have been major news if she had.

She may in fact be challenged in some way that isn't apparent. Perhaps she has the IQ of a hamster which would also mean she can't cope with being incarcerated. Without knowing why she's the way she is I think we should reserve judgement on her. Making fun of the disabled isn't nice.

We do however have an opportunity to judge ourselves. Several people have complained that too much attention is being paid to Paris and her situation instead of larger problems in the world like global warming, the fighting in Darfur, the Middle East situation, and so on. Why do we pay so much attention to Paris and not to those things? Because the major problems of the world are beyond our control. By "our" I mean the average person. I can't solve the problems of the Middle East nor can you, that would take the efforts of several million people, not one. And I couldn't even begin to try and influence that many people, or even a small percentage of those people. It's already been tried by people who were capable of persuading some of the participants in the conflict. The major problems of the world can't be easily solved by experts so all the average person can really do is listen to the news and hope for the best.

In the case of Paris — or Brittany, Lindsay, et al. — and other celebrities whose lives seem to be spiraling downward, we're interested because subconsciously, and maybe sometimes consciously, it makes up feel superior. Paris Hilton appears to have everything a person could want: beauty, wealth, attention, lots of expensive stuff. Yet, her life doesn't seem to be going very well for her. For the average person who isn't beautiful or wealthy this is good news. It makes them seem that much more capable. If you're unhappy with your job, struggling with a divorce, having trouble making car payments, then Paris Hilton's problems make it seem you're not as bad off as you think. And the fact that Paris can't stand even one day in jail probably makes every person who's ever spent even the smallest amount of time in jail chortle in contempt. They managed to get through the experience and she can't do it for a day.

Makes me think of the guy I happened to bump into in a store once who almost immediately mentioned that he'd spent a nickel in Joliet. He had a pretty positive attitude under the circumstances. He's really the kind of person the media should be talking to. Someone who can tell us what it's really like in jail if you're not a big celebrity.

Missing the Milwaukee Mile race

2007-06-03T13:45:00.000-05:00

I can't get to the Milwaukee Mile race this weekend due to other commitments so I have to content myself with watching it on TV. Helio Castroneves took the pole, which most people expected, though we were reminded at Indy that it doesn't automatically mean a win. I'm also not a big Penske team fan unless they're the underdog as in ALMS racing where the diesel powered Audis have been running away with races. There the Penske Porsches have finally been doing well and beating the Audis for overall wins. It was nice seeing the Audis win at first, but once someone starts winning all the races it gets kind of boring fast.

Today I'm rooting for Franchitti to take it, putting his name in the record books for back to back wins. I think he deserves it and more publicity for open wheel racing would be nice. People are getting tired of hearing about Danica Patrick for the umpteenth time.

Another type video

2007-06-03T11:01:00.000-05:00

Here's another type video I ran across. Good primer for those new to type.

Typographics-by-Boca

No. 5 of things I meant to blog about but haven't gotten to

2007-05-31T11:58:00.000-05:00

If you think of what cities are hotbeds of creativity Pittsburgh doesn't spring to mind. In fact it probably wouldn't make anyone's top ten list. Wall to Wall Studios should change your thinking. I initially found out about them when they got an award from Print magazine for a bit of video they did promoting downtown Pittsburgh. It's four over and five down on the palette on the left side of the page. I really liked it and showed it to all my students in hopes of inspiring them to think about using typography in more unconventional ways.

Wall to Wall's work is pretty eclectic running from logo design to print, video, advertising, web site, and even some commercial interior work. They don't seem to have a particular style and their clients range from Carnegie Mellon University to the Pittsburgh Steelers. In fact the Steeler fan site was impressive, avoiding typical sports team cliches and doing something very entertaining with the Steeler Baby doll concept. The links on the left, including the team ones, make the doll talk. The comments about the opposing teams is hilarious. Steeler Baby says for the Bengals: "Their locker room smells like cat pee."

The "BYE" link on the Steeler web site takes you here, where there are videos with the doll. "Bada bing" is my favorite, watching the Steeler Baby drive around Pittsburgh to the stadium is fun.

Their offices are nice looking too (lower left corner of the palette). Is that an espresso machine at the end of the counter? Seeing their work just makes me what to quit teaching and get back into the design business again. Oh, wait, it's a little late for that isn't it?

Dario Franchitti wins the 91st Indy 500!

2007-05-27T18:24:00.000-05:00

The rain finally did in the Indy 500 with Dario Franchitti leading at the end. This was one of the best races in recent years with 24 lead changes and some tremendously competitive driving. The Andretti Green cars were dominant during the race with Tony Kanaan, Danica Patrick, Marco Andretti, and Franchitti all vying for the lead at various times. The Penske cars while they were strong were always playing catch up. Dario's wife, actress Ashley Judd, wearing a flower print dress, jumped out from under her umbrella and got soaking wet in the downpour. At the end people mus thave been holding thier breath. The rain was so heavy cars could spin out even going slowly.

Kanaan, who had what was probably the strongest car out there, spun late in the race either bumped by another car or running over debris from a crash, but his shot at the lead was done, then Marco Andretti didn't see Dan Wheldon, tapped him and spun out, going up side down through the air before coming down hard. The video footage from his crash is truly unbelievable, but Marco walked away from the wreck.

Michael Andretti, taking what maybe his last ride at Indy, finished 13th. Castroneves and Hornish finished 3rd and 4th, Danica Patrick 8th, and Kanaan 12th, in front of Michael.

Despite probably being the best prepared race team at Indy Penske driver Helio Castroneves‘ car failed to start at the beginning, then had a loose winglet on the side pod which was held on with tape, and later had a fuel valve fail during a pit stop. Marco Andretti looked the best at the beginning, passing a lot of cars, and leading several times. Tony Kanaan‘s car seemed to be the strongest one running. It handled better through the turns than any other.

The Venezulian driver Milka Duno discovered how difficult it is to drive at Indy and how quickly things turn against you. Indy is a hard track because it's not really an oval, it has a short straight at each end, between the curves, so you have to make four turns each lap. Driving in the middle of the curve isn't hard, it's driving into the curve, coming out, going in again, then coming out. The curves themselves are short and going into each one is vital to a good lap. Duno found out what a lot of rookies do at Indy, the car doesn't work quite the same way as it does on other tracks.

She got in behind several other cars which fouled her air, then she had to let off the throttle because the guy in front of her was going slower and lost her rear end. Forty laps later the same things happened to Phil Giebler.

This was a great Indy this year, proving the nay sayers wrong. Danica Patrick had one of the strongest cars on the track, and the Penske drivers, both former winners, didin't run away with the race.

Typographic Widgets for Mac OS

2007-05-26T13:53:00.000-05:00

Ran across this collection of Mac Dashboard widgets. The site is in German, but the widgets are pretty obvious. If someone knows of more let me know.

Die besten TypoWidgets für Mac

There should be a law with a very stiff penalty

2007-05-25T20:44:00.000-05:00

Proofreading is a lost art or editors are getting really lazy and / or stupid. Here's a nice article explaining that there won't be a extension of the Metro line from Maryland to Washington D.C. And why not? Well, the typography of the land has something to do with it. Heavens now letters are interfering with transportation! Or maybe this is another conservative plot to eliminate the news media by blaming typography for everything from transportation woes to the lack of progress in Iraq.

Or maybe someone needs a new job, but not in the news industry please.

http://www.gazette.net/stories/052407/carrnew230139_32333.shtml

Indy 500 thoughts & rants

2007-05-25T20:14:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago a Chicago Tribune columnist complained about the lack of support for women drivers at Indy, even saying that Danica Patrick would get lessor equipment than the other drivers on the Andretti Green team. I said that was ridiculous then and it still is. Danica is 8th on the starting grid, ahead of Marco Andretti, and even Michael Andretti. Yeah, she must have second class equipment to put her ahead of her team owner and the owner's son. Danica is the first woman driver who has shown that she can actually run this race and even win it. No one is stupid enough to short change her on equipment and support. Michael Andretti didn’t hire her to drive out of the kindness of his heart, he wants to win races. He hired top talent and supports them. No one takes a back seat.

It infuriates me when sports writers who aren't familiar with auto racing decide they have to say something about it and choose to say be negative because they can't think of anything positive to say. On the radio this morning it happened again when the sports guy lamented that the women drivers were getting a bad deal. Yeah, 8th on the starting grid is a bad deal for a woman driver. Being in front of Scott Sharp, Buddy Lazier, John Andretti, and A.J. Foyt IV is a bad deal. Even Sarah Fisher is 21st on the grid in front of Lazier and John Andretti as well as Al Unser Jr. Milko Duno, the South American woman driver, is 29th ahead of Richie Hearn. She’s the only one who appears to be suffering and that’s more about having problems getting sponsorship than driving ability or team support.

The commentator on the radio went on to say how NASCAR had totally taken over auto racing and that no one cared about the Indy 500 anymore. I guess that's why drivers from all over the world are trying to compete at Indy. I wonder why there aren't a lot of European, Asian, and South American drivers desperately trying to get into the Daytona 500. Could it be they realize that stock car racing is mostly about the spectacle of cars banging into each other rather than racing? Or maybe they think pushing an overweight, clumsy race car around a track isn't really racing. NASCAR is on the verge of becoming the pro wrestling version of auto racing. A lot of fans are already complaining about it being fixed for some drivers so how much longer will it be before it is entirely about spectacle and not about racing? And since crashing competitors and cheating seem to be the norm how long will it be before fans wake up and realize it's about the same level of integrity and sportsmanship as roller derby?

A currency symbol for the Ruble

2007-05-25T20:01:00.000-05:00

Just what we needed! Another currency symbol! Now the Central Bank of the Russian Federation has decided that since they've become a bunch of capitalists they need a symbol so their currency can be listed on the world's exchanges. To bad they didn't feel it was necessary to consult a graphic designer for this. Instead they cobbled together a half baked doodad using an uppercase R and the strokes from the Euro. They obviously didn't stop to notice that the double strokes of the Euro don't work particularly well. What can you say, design by government bureaucracy. Even design by committee is better.

http://english.newslab.ru/news/215574

http://www.kommersant.com/p-10761/Symbol_ruble/

Chicago Tribune Books

2007-05-18T10:16:00.001-05:00

Now that summer's here and I have time to read the Chicago Tribune's Books section is only getting worse. In what must be a ploy for increased sales the book section will no longer appear in the Sunday paper, but in the Saturday. This means I'll never see it again since we only get Monday through Friday and Sunday. We stopped getting the Saturday edition since it was basically the Friday paper with a different front page. Not much point in spending either the time or the money on it. The Tribune promises to have more book related features during the week though I'm skeptical that there will be much substance or breadth to them.

So I will probably subscribe to the New York Times Book Review. It does tend to review New York authors more and ignore Chicago writers pretty much which is annoying. One author in particular — I'm not going to mention the name — they've hyped over the years and I've found his stuff to range between mediocre to college student level. The guy just isn't a very good writer, yet he keeps getting published and reviewed. He has some interesting ideas, but he doesn't explore them or even figure out what to do with them sometimes. At least the last review wasn't particularly positive or negative and didn't urge the reader to run out and get the book as some of the past have. I regretted spending time and money on them as well.

Class is officially over

2007-05-14T16:11:00.000-05:00

Classes finished last week, we had graduation Saturday so now all I have to do is finish some paperwork and then begin the slow torture of grading. I have told anyone and everyone within the sound of my voice how I hate grading. I think college students should be in school only until they learn what they need to — whether it takes 8 days or 8 years — and then ushered out the door. Instead we have this highly artificial system of semesters which makes it necessary to attempt to divide everything into a series of steps regardless of whether or not it can be. And then we are asked to rate their class performance under the supposition that it is a gauge of future performance which everyone in the creative arts will tell you isn't true. Some of the best graphic designers in the world were lousy students, Herb Lubalin being a prime example. The same is true in other arts. The list of great artists who left school, dropped out, did poorly, or otherwise weren't interested is huge. I think students would be better served if there was a two grade system: "time to leave" and "you need to stay."

I had one student this semester who could have finished the class about 4 weeks before everyone else, and a few students who need another couple of months of effort to get to where they need to be. Reviewing the senior show all the students I saw had very strong work in their books, but some clearly had just reached their strength and could have used another month or two to work on their books. All in all, I'm happy with the results of the semester, but unhappy with having to make value judgments that aren't relevant to much of anything.

Heated seats!

2007-05-02T21:13:00.000-05:00

I'm now officially one of those guys you see driving with the convertible top down when it's in the 60s. It's really not that cold driving and having heated seats helps a lot. When I told our real estate agent — childhood friend of my wife's — that I was getting a convertible she immediately said: "Get the heated seats." She's got a nice red 325 BMW.

Barcelona Report #1

2007-05-02T21:09:00.000-05:00

Spent a week in Barcelona, Spain accompanying the wife on a business trip. She was working most of the time so we didn't have a lot of time to sight see, but I did get to see the Sagrada Familia, the famous church that Antonio Gaudi worked on. All the history books refer to it as "uncompleted" leading you to think it's nearly done. This is not the case at all. It's been under construction for 125 years — since 1882 — and isn't even 2/3 done yet. I doubt it will be finished in what remains of my lifetime unless someone steps up with a billion+ dollars to finish it quickly. The big delay is the money; it's entirely funded through donations which includes the 8€ to get in to see it.

The interior hasn't been started yet, large portions of the roof have not been built, and most of the windows are not in. The public area consists of a long passage around the main work area so you can see the church and what's going on, but nothing seems to be moving very quickly. I didn't get to see the spires up close as the lines for the elevators were very long and I didn't want to spend 1-2 hours waiting. The elevators themselves only held a few people — they're temporary — and then you had to walk down. If there had been stairs going up I would have taken them instead, but it was never really planned for sight seeing.

I didn't get as many pictures as i wanted since I took the small camera, not the Nikon. There was story after story on the internet of people having their cameras stolen in Barcelona that I decided not to. Could have taken it though as there were tourists with cameras everywhere. More than enough for thieves to choose from.

More pictures on Flickr are here.

Trib fails again

2007-04-15T20:31:00.000-05:00

I've been reading the Chicago Tribune since childhood — my folks were Republicans — and not a week passes that I get more disappointed by it. The Book section has shrunk to 12 pages, two of which are announcements of writers giving readings. For a paper that supposed to represent one of the largest cities on the planet it's an embarrassment. Really an embarrassment next to the NY Times Book Review.

The sports page is just as bad when it comes to auto racing. I've written them before so I don't even bother now. Today's paper, April 15th, had one little editorial on auto racing. This weekend there was a major American Le Mans race, Formula 1 in Bahrain, even NASCAR, which ran a 1/4 page ad in the paper, and the paper couldn't be bothered to have one article about any of it. Worse yet, the paper evidently even pretend to care enough to have decent writing. The editorial had a piece on Danica Patrick getting second rate equipment from the Andretti Green team. She inherited Brian Herta's position on the team and that's second rate? When did Herta become a second rate driver? And he didn't leave the team, he's just driving sports car events, not open wheel, and doing a very good job.

Of course I'm delighted the paper has been sold. I'm hoping there will be some changes, but I'm not holding my breath. Sam Zell isn't known as a benevolent guy. But maybe there will be some new people who will respond to my suggestions.

It's nearly May and I'm counting the days

2007-04-14T08:32:00.000-05:00

Ramping up for the end of May there are 38 entries for the Indianapolis 500 with 25 drivers and 69 cars so it looks like this will be a very good race this year. Andretti Green team even entered 10 cars for Tony Kanaan, Dario Franchitti, Marco Andretti, Danika Patrick, and Michael Andretti. I was rooting for Marco Andretti last year who was passed at the end by Sam Hornish and finished second.

One of the most interesting milestones that may be made: both Danika Patrick and Sarah Fisher are entered and expected to make the field. This will be only the second time two women have competed in the same race, the first in 2000 when Fisher in her rookie outing and Lyn St. James both raced. Both went out early in accidents. But a third woman, the impressive Venezuelan race driver Milka Duno, is entered. If she passes her rookie test and makes the field, which everyone expects her to, it will be the first time three women will race in the 500 and the first major U. S. race with three women in the field. Duno's original Indy 500 deal fell through and the Grand Am team she drives for, SAMAX, bought the equipment and plans to run at least 10 races in IRL. Perhaps this is the year a woman will win the 500.

Once I had a lamp

2007-04-13T21:52:00.000-05:00

I just sold a lamp I've owned for over a decade. It was a retro art deco glass lamp that supposedly was made from original Daum Nancy molds. Daum was and is a major maker of glass art objects based in Nancy, France. Their work during the 1920s is outstanding. I've loved art deco furniture for years, the original French stuff, not what passes for deco most of the time. French deco is ornate, expensive and sumptuous stuff made with exotic woods and other materials like sharkskin and intricate patterns. I bought every book I could find on art deco including some in french. I went to exhibits in Chicago and New York and I used to subscribe to the Southeby's and Cristie's auction catalogs. I even went to a couple of auctions in New York. Of course I couldn't afford the stuff — a Sue et Mare piano bench was valued at $5,000, and the really good stuff was in the tens of thousands. Even the original poster from the 1925 exhibit was $2500 back then. I managed to collect a few retro deco things, the lamp being one, and some quasi deco furniture from Thayer Coggin. I still have a Thayer Coggin dining set, but most of the rest of my retro stuff has gone away.

We've ended up with mostly modern furniture, some with a slightly deco flair. But the lamp didn't fit in anymore. Art deco and modern styles are very different things, though some times they overlap. Modernism tends toward simplicity while deco was decorative, hence the name. Deco was the last of the great styles while modernism had a manifesto and was much more political. It grew out of leftist leanings and utopian ideas about how design could solve problems for people while deco, like most styles, was more about who could afford it. Even the Arts & Crafts movement, triggered by the work of William Morris who posited a socialist utopian vision, was for rich patrons and largely elitist.

So we have furniture that is upholstery and wood, metal and glass, and some upholstery and metal. It's all comfortable and maybe I'll win the lottery and be able to afford some real art deco furniture.

Espresso update

2007-04-06T18:33:00.000-05:00

On the espresso font I've been getting some excellent espresso now that I've got a good grinder. It's not great espresso yet — I'm using Starbucks beans — and I'll have to try different beans. The beans also don't last more than a week after they're opened before they turned sour. Right now everything is on hold since we've got the contractor working on our kitchen so the espresso machine is in the dining room and the grinder in the family room while we're waiting on the backsplash tile. We have new under cabinet lights and we're getting a pot filler faucet next to the stove. We also got more can lights in the house and the electrician fixed the problem with the light in the foyer.

On the pod front I really thought I could find some espresso pods that were good, but not so much. Most were sour which tells me why I've occasionally been getting lousy espresso at some restaurants. Illy was especially sour which surprised me. So it's grind, dose, and brew for good espresso. I even took pictures of the various pods to use in the blog but I'm not going to bother now since the results are so disappointing.

So we're just waiting for the tile to come in so we can get our kitchen back and I can start brewing espresso again.

My brother's new house

2007-04-01T21:10:00.000-05:00

My brother and his wife are building a new house in Wyoming. They've been living in an apartment since they sold the old house and have been working with a prefab house builder. Basically you pick out where you want stuff in the walls, etc. and they put it together, then haul it to the site and assemble it. You have to hire folks to do some of the detail work or anything special or very custom you want, but it turned out to be a pretty good deal. Any level of wiring costs the same, and they don't charge an arm and a leg for every can light you want. John designed the house based on one of their existing modules, added on what he wanted.

The only hitch at assembly time was the truck arrived with the second floor first so they had to park the truck overnight on the fairgrounds. My brother said a lot of people came by the next day to tell him they'd seen it sitting there and were excited to watch it being put together. It was a big deal of sorts having the crane come in and put the house together. He thinks they should be in the new house by tax time so everyone cross your fingers. Oh, and here's a shot of espresso central at the apartment they're staying in. An expensive grinder and two espresso machines. He's been buying and selling them so I think he may turn into an espresso dealer any day now.

No. 17 of things I haven't gotten around to blogging about

2007-04-01T11:11:00.000-05:00

Gin. I was going to start a website about gin called "Empire of Gin," but never found the time. Maybe later, when I retire. For now I'm just trying different gins intending to write more about the experience, etc. In the course of looking for gins I discovered a Chicago area micro distillery that makes some excellent gin North Shore Distillery. I wandered into one of the liquor stores I frequent and was looking at the gin selection when the sales person recommended North Shore's Distiller's Gin No. 6. They also had an open bottle left from a recent tasting at the store and the stuff was very nice straight. It has a different makeup of botanicals with a little spicy / peppery bite at the end. Made great gin and tonics though the lime in the gin gimlet brought out some very different flavors, especially anise which I'm not fond of. Way back in my pre-legal drinking days I got very drunk on anise schnapps and have shied away from both anise and schnapps ever since, though I'm still fond of licorice and black jelly beans.

The distillery has been getting some good press and TV in the Chicago area which I'm happy to see. They now have a new gin, Distiller's Gin No. 11, which isn't available in stores — I hate that — but only in restaurants, so I have to find out which restaurants and go try it. They also have the No. 6 infused with dates or Ceylon tea. Dates never appealed to me, but tea infused sounds interesting enough to try. Have to find some bars that have it as I've already got too many bottles of gin at home. Or perhaps I should just buy several more kinds of gin and have friends over to drink it all up.

They also make several vodkas, but as I've said before I'm not a vodka fan. Mashed, baked, fried, cottage fried, frenched, string, etc. are excellent ways to have potatoes with flavor and taste instead of distilling them into something that lacks flavor to such a degree you have to put stuff in it for flavor. May as well buy grain alcohol, it's cheaper. Although some of the nicest people I know are vodka drinkers so perhaps I shouldn't mention this anymore.

No abusing Bodoni please.

2007-03-31T20:07:00.000-05:00

We went out to dinner with friends at a pizza restaurant downtown last week and across the street was a 3 story high banner for the tv show America's Next Top Model. There's a lot of bad typography in the world but I always cringe when someone screws up Bodoni or Didot. The Didone typefaces are elegant and classical and work just fine if you don't screw around with them. They don't react well when you do screw around with them. I really don't mind people screwing with type if the outcome works, and in teaching it's part of my job to get students to experiment with type and find out what they can do with it. But that doesn't justify making it look bad.

Squashing letters together like this works sometimes, Herb Lubalin did it a lot and made it look easy as well as made it work. Normally I would say doing it with elegant, detailed forms like this is stupid, but whoever did this wasn't stupid. Likely it wasn't something the designer even particularly wanted. Make the type big and squeeze it in is a client thing and most designers run into it sooner or later. But someone needs to sit down and explain to clients why they shouldn't do this and smack them if they don't listen.

Maybe it would help if we started explaining to people that space is the most important issue in type and that you have to respect it. Type doesn't work if it doesn't look good to someone. I suppose most people looking at this aren't paying attention to the type. They're looking at the models.

Number 23 of things I wanted to write about but haven't gotten to yet.

2007-03-28T22:07:00.000-05:00

Awhile back I ran across mention of an album called "Typography" and searched it out. I found Candy Chang and Red Antenna then bought the LP even though I no longer have a record player — got rid of it when we moved and sold off my old LPs for $$$$. Though I'm still steeped in 60s rock I like this kind of synth music, not too spacey or self conscious. I downloaded the mp3 versions of several songs including Rodchenko in my Bauhaus which was great. Now I know what my students are doing in my lecture class, makes design history much more interesting. And handling typography never sounded better. Of course it doesn't make much sense if you don't know design history, so it's another reason you should.

Let's turn the lights down low
Combine your art with my technology
Light the candles real slow
And put your hands on my typography

I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus
I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus
I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus
I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus

I'm hot for your marchine aesthetic
Let me Gropius your Stenberg brothers
I'm going to need a graphic medic
Because you turn my angles like no others

I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus
I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus
I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus
I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus

I'm going to comrade on your architecture
When you Lissitzky my Moholy-Nagy
Let's werkbund up a steamy lecture
It's time to make a love collage

I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus
I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus
I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus
I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus

An art form bold and clean
You're a hot design machine
For the comrades we were born
Now put your function in my form
Now put your function in my form

I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus
I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus
I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus
I want your Rodchenko in my Bauhaus

Do I need more shoes?

2007-03-22T10:19:00.000-05:00

I've had several students in the past few semesters who were shoe collectors, one guy had over 100 pair. Another student used his shoe collecting as a topic for a book design titled "Obsessive Shoe Disorder." Then there was an article in the Sunday Tribune by a guy who said he can go three months without wearing the same pair twice. Of course all this became my excuse to go out and buy two more pair of shoes — Gordon Rush and Cole Haan. I only have about 20+ pair at this point but I'm already running out of space for them. My mother-in-law used to kid me about how many shoes I had, 15 pair at the time, though I never thought I had that many. When I was in high school I saw a picture essay about two brothers who were auto racers and one had a closet the size of our living room and the floor was covered with shoes. Since then I've wanted to own a lot of shoes. The brothers also owned a lot of Ferraris.

I do have about 80 ties and probably 60+ pair of socks. And as long as I was getting shoes I got another tie and three more pair of socks. This was in addition to two computers with printers — a new iMac for my mother and a 17 in. MacBook for me — and some long sleeve t-shirts. The guy who wrote the Tribune article blamed his shopping fetish on his wife who started taking him shopping with her. He learned the fascination of looking for bargains. My mother is responsible for mine and my brother's shopping fetish. When we were little she used to take us shopping with her all the time so roaming stores looking for bargains, especially clothes, comes naturally for us. When I used to live downtown I was cruising stores everyday on my way home.

Whenever I travel I always go shopping, though I don't always find things. Mainly I look for interesting socks and / or ties. By interesting I mean colorful patterns. Asian countries have some really interesting things, and some European countries have nice things. Just recently friends gave me two pair of Duchamp socks from England, one pair pink with two color polka dots, the other a series of rectangles in various colors, mostly red. I see Duchamp ties on eBay all the time, but I'd never seen their socks. Now I'm looking for more, but they're hard to find here.

The bright spot in all this is that I'm averse to paying retail for anything anymore. If I can't get it on sale, at discount, or marked down I generally don't buy it. I can't pass a Nordstrom Rack without stopping and I'm surfing through eBay every day for stuff. So far I haven't bought shoes on eBay, but my brother does and I recently found out my son-in-law Jeffrey does too. So now I guess I'm going to be looking for shoes there too. That's in addition to all the books I buy. I've been sucking up typeface specimens like crazy. Reminds me of an old saying amongst letterpress enthusiasts: He who dies with the most type wins. I'm not rich and probably not fanatical enough to win, but I'm hoping for a top ten finish.

Incidentally, if I win some major money in the lotto I'm planning on collecting race cars and French art deco furniture. Not too much of either one on eBay though.

Mosley on brass & copper type matrices

2007-03-21T20:17:00.000-05:00

James Mosley's recent article on Typefoundry is very interesting. He points out that early type matrices — the molds for the individual letters — were made from copper since it was relatively soft and the steel letter punches were easily punched into it. Modern matrices, cut for casting machines, were brass or brass with copper inserts. Brass is harder and was seldom, if ever, used with punches. Yet he shows an example of a brass matrice from the 16th century (a capital 'G' no less).

Evidently punches were used to make molds for brass castings which were later sharpened with the steel punches. This was evidently done only for larger sizes which would have been harder to drive into brass.

Besides the beautiful matrice there's also a nice photo of a steel punch even more beautiful.

Your Middle Name

2007-02-22T18:30:00.000-06:00

I started a blog about peoples' middle names at http://my-middle-name.blogspot.com/. Please take a look and leave a comment about your middle name — or lack of one — and how you feel about it. Just click any one of the comment links and I will convert your comment to a post. Try it, you'll like it. If you don't want your full name published then sign the comment with the name you want to appear.
George

Stafford Papers at Optimism of Modernity

2007-02-22T18:22:00.000-06:00

A while ago I mentioned that Petra Cerne Oven and Paul Stiff had started a web site called "The Optimism of Modernity" which was going to delve into the modernity of British typography during the post war era. Other than recognition of Johnston's Underground lettering and Eric Gill's Gill Sans and Perpetua typefaces British typography in the 20th century has taken a back seat to German and American typography. The transition from the Bauhaus to post war American design has been portrayed as a nearly straight line glossing over Tschichold's more humanist design work in England and ignoring modernist efforts in England. It isn't until the mid to late 1970s that English design gets some notable press in the U.S. and even then is usually viewed by ideas prevalent in American design.

The latest result of their effort is the publishing of the Stafford Papers a series of papers on typography published by the Stafford College of Art & Design. These are being republished as downloadable PDFs, the first two papers by Peter Burnhill concerning text composition, one of which appeared in the journal Visible Language in 1970.

Rancilio Rocky

2007-02-15T21:07:00.000-06:00

A doser Rancilio Rocky grinder arrived last Tuesday night. I worked late and didn't get home until 9:30 and was so tired all I could do was haul it in off the porch. My brother sent it to me for the cost of shipping. It's nice having sibs with the same manias, though now I owe him some more shoes.

Though I've been looking at grinders I'd never seen a Rocky before only pictures and it's bigger and much heavier than I expected a coffee grinder to be. Guess I've been working with wimpy under-powered machines too long. So much for trying to get off cheaply. Right now I'm trying to figure out where to put the thing so my wife doesn't complain about it being in the way. There's already the espresso machine, a coffee maker, toaster oven, dish drainer, phone, cookbook holder and assorted pot holders on the kitchen counter so there's not a lot of space.

I've been using it with Starbucks beans and have been getting some excellent espresso with it. The doser is something of a pain though as it's hard to get the size of the doses exactly right. I eyeball it and since I'm always doing a double it works. I'll have to try some other roasters to see if I can get even better espresso.

Espresso!!!

2007-02-14T21:36:00.001-06:00

I’ve turned into an espresso fiend. I’m on my third espresso machine and have finally found one I’m happy with. Now I’m looking for a grinder, preferably a Rancilio doserless Rocky. I thought maybe I was getting a little obsessive until I found out my brother is knee deep in espresso machines (two Gaggia’s, two Starbucks Baristas, a Francis X5, and a Pasquini) and he’s looking for a $400 burr grinder. Why the obsession? For me it’s about an espresso I had about 2 years ago at a restaurant near Devon and Lincoln. I used to order coffee after dinner whether there was a dessert involved or not. But coffee quality in restaurants is very iffy and I’ve become very particular as I’ve gotten older— one of the effects of old age I gather. So I switched to a double espresso. This particular restaurant was one we had frequented when we lived in the area until the food quality declined somewhat. One night I ordered the usual double espresso, and it was great — better than great. It was like a bitter sweet chocolate, rich, flavorful, bitter without being too bitter. I loved it, but I’ve never had it since, not even when we went back to the restaurant.
I’ve been searching ever since for the great espresso. My brother got me a Gaggia Espresso and an inexpensive grinder, but they were a disappointment. The espresso was weak and watery, and the grinder either was too fine, making the espresso very bitter, or too coarse making it thin tasting.
The search for a good espresso machine led me to a Breville 800. It's stainless with Italian innards. Several places in town carry Breville machines and the user reviews I read were very positive except from the espresso snobs who insisted one must have the more expensive machines to get good espresso. But I didn’t want to throw money at a machine without some assurance it was going to make good espresso, nor did I want to spend $500+ for it. I got a deal on the Breville at Abt Electronics (it’s a family name, not initials so it’s pronounced like ‘apt’, not a-b-t) and got very good results. I started with Starbucks ground espresso and the results were good, but it was obvious I needed a better grinder.
After reading multiple reviews and looking at what was the best bang for the dollar I settled on the doserless Rocky. Doserless means that it grinds directly into the portafilter (the thing with the handle on it) for the espresso machine, not into a compartment. Rancilio makes a doser version, but people complained about grounds getting stuck in the doser compartment. Now I’m constantly searching eBay for the best deal on one, though I may end up ordering it online from www.wholelattelove.com. The best deal is about $285 and I may not be able to do better.
In the meantime I got a sample selection of espresso pods from Podmerchant and I’ve been trying them out. Most are pretty good so far, which makes me wonder why I’ve been getting mediocre espresso at restaurants that use pods. I think they’re probably using a one dose pod for a double espresso instead of using two pods. Cheap bastards. I’m keeping a record of the different brands and when I’ve gone through them I’ll post the results. If you’re in a hurry or just don’t feel like dealing with the mess, pods are a good way to go.
Meanwhile I have an excuse to have multiple espressos during the day. Is ten too many? There’s no problem with caffeine since the darker the roast, the less caffeine, and it doesn’t bother me unless I drink a lot more. It usually takes more than ten cups of anything caffeinated to keep me awake and I’ve spent years drinking coffee before going to sleep with no ill effects.
Now I’m getting closer to espresso perfection.

IndyCar 2007 Series

2007-02-14T21:34:00.001-06:00

Sat 24-Mar Homestead-Miami Speedway - Homestead, FL (night race) ESPN2
Sun 1-Apr Honda GP Streets of St. Petersburg - St. Petersburg. FL ESPN
Sat 21-Apr Twin Ring Motegi - Motegi, Japan ESPN
Sun 29-Apr Kansas Speedway - Kansas City, KS ESPN2
Sun 27-May 91st Indianapolis 500 - Indianapolis, IN ABC
Sun 3-Jun The Milwaukee Mile - Milwaukee, WI ABC
Sat 9-Jun Texas Motor Speedway (night race) - Fort Worth, TX ESPN2
Sun 24-Jun Iowa Speedway - Newton, IA ABC
Sat 30-Jun Richmond International Raceway (night race) - Richmond, VA ESPN
Sun 8-Jul Watkins Glen International - Watkins Glen, NY ABC
Sat 14-Jul Nashville Superspeedway (night race) - Nashville, TN ESPN
Sun 22-Jul Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course - Lexington, OH ABC
Sun 5-Aug Michigan International Speedway - Brooklyn, MI ESPN2
Sat 11-Aug Kentucky Speedway (night race) - Sparta, KY ESPN2
Sun 26-Aug Infineon Raceway - Sonoma, CA ESPN
Sun 2-Sep The Raceway at Belle Isle - Detroit, MI ABC
Sun 9-Sep Chicagoland Speedway - Joliet, IL ABC

Champ Car 2007 Series Schedule

2007-02-14T21:32:00.000-06:00

Apr 8 Streets of Las Vegas - Las Vegas, NV
Apr 15: Streets of Long Beach - Long Beach, CA
Apr 22: Reliant Park - Houston, TX
May 20: Zhuhai International Circuit - Zhuhai City,
Guangdong Province China
Jun 10: Portland International Raceway - Portland, OR
Jun 24: Burke Lakefront Airport - Cleveland, OH
Jul 1: Circuit Mont Tremblant - St. Jovite, QC Canada
Jul 8: Exhibition Place - Toronto, ON Canada
Jul 22: JAGflo Speedway at City Centre Airport - Edmonton, AB Canada
Jul 29: Streets of San Jose - San Jose, CA
Aug 12: Road America - Elkhart Lake, WI
Aug 19: Streets of Denver - Denver, CO
Oct 21: Gold Coast - Surfers Paradise, Queensland Australia
Nov 11: AutÛdromo Hermanos RodrÌguez - Mexico City Mexico
Dec 2: Streets of Phoenix - Phoenix, AZ

F1: Abu Dhabi Confirmed for 2009

2007-02-14T21:31:00.001-06:00

It's finally official that Abu Dhabi, capital city of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), will host a Formula 1 Grand Prix in 2009. The official announcement came from his Highness Crown Prince. Abu Dhabi has been transforming itself into a tourist / leisure destination with a tremendous building boom of hotels and resorts. Abu Dhabi city is actually on an island in the Persian Gulf surrounded by smaller islands creating a vast natural shoreline of beaches. Though the region was first settled as far back as the 3rd millennium BC it's one of the more progressive arab countries. A large percent of the population are foreign and English is widely spoken there.
The race track is already under construction on it's own island and given the kind of money the government has been throwing around — the Emirates Palace hotel reportedly cost over 3 billion USD and is the most expensive hotel ever built — the track may well become the benchmark of track design in auto racing.

Designing Type(faces)

2007-02-14T21:29:00.000-06:00

Since the release of typeface design software Fontographer by Altsys back in 1985 designing typeface or fonts on the computer has been relatively popular. Before software very few people did it or knew how to do it. However, simply having the software to design type doesn't make one a type designer. There are very few people who are serious type designers and even fewer who design type full time. By serious I mean those who are committed to designing usable fonts and not how to make a font that looks like a string of car doors.

With this popularity there have been a lot of books about computer typefaces and some about designing typefaces. There isn't a good how-to book on the subject because typeface design really is the "black art" it's been referred to for over 500 years. Type design is complicated and broad enough that getting all one needs to know into a book is difficult. Even with many people interested in it, there aren't that many who would buy a book about doing it. There aren't even many design schools with programs in type design. As a result most books on the subject are either software manuals or more general books on typography and typefaces rather than complete manuals on the process of designing type. The two books I'm reviewing here, David Earls "Designing Typefaces" published by RotoVision and Karen Cheng's "Designing Type" from Yale University Press fall into the second category. While not specifically about to design a typeface or what software to use they are useful for prospective designers.

David Earl's book is more a review of the work of a few specific and well known typeface designers followed by a 12 page tutorial on designing type which covers the basics of the process. The book is useful as a beginning text for a prospective type designer. Earl's book won't turn one into a type designer overnight, but it is a good place to start.

The sections on the individual designer aren't consistently presented which would have been helpful in comparing their work. The examples and presentation emphasize the differences in the various designer's work and were apparently provided by the designers themselves as many of them have appeared elsewhere. The difference in presentation of each designer's work makes more obvious the different approaches and styles inherent in type design. The designers and their work are a good cross section showing functional faces for text setting to trendier display faces. From this the reader can get a sense of the spectrum of possibilities in designing a typeface.

Despite its title Karen Cheng's "Designing Type" isn't a text on designing type at all. It is however, an important text that any serious would-be type designer should not only have, but should read and reexcelsread. Cheng spends a few pages on basics like letter stress and the names of parts, then jumps into a detailed analysis of individual letterforms. One of the first things graphic design students have to be taught is how to see type. They need to be able to distinguish between different styles of type and recognize individual typefaces. In turn what a type designer has to learn is to see the details of the type, the small characteristics that make the diverse group of letters or glyphs look related. These details are also what give a typeface its sense of visual personality or voice. Cheng's book excels in this aspect. Each letter is analyzed with examples from various typefaces and explanations of the differences and similarities between them. There are also examples of how each different glyph fits into the overall design of its typeface. Showing details of the same letter or glyph in various typefaces is invaluable. It demonstrates how different designs and designers reach the same objective and how that creates the overall form of the typeface.

The different sections cover serif upper and lowercase letters , sans serif upper and lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation, and 2 more complex items, diacritic marks or accents, and spacing. The section on spacing covers the basic theory as well as a practical system of application to a typeface or font. This one of the most difficult parts of type design both to understand and to do.

Anyone unfamiliar with the various diacritics used in European languages will find this part of the book invaluable. With the development of the OpenType standard which allows typefaces to have larger character sets, having a full set of glyphs for various European languages is pretty much mandatory. However Cheng has only included the more common Western European diacritics and not Eastern European ones like the ogonek. It would have also been helpful to include a chart showing which diacritics were used in which languages. More extensive information on diacritics can be found at the Diacritics Project of Filip Blažek.

In recap: if you're just starting in type design Earl's book is a good place to start, and once you're starting to work on a typeface design Cheng's book is a necessity. And Fontlab is the place to start if you're looking for type design software.

Philip Meggs, History of Graphic Design

2007-02-14T21:28:00.000-06:00

Shortly after the first edition of Philip Meggs History of Graphic Design was published I attended a Modernism & Eclecticism conference in New York City and Meggs was there as a speaker. Visual design history was relatively new and those of us who were teaching it at the time weren't design historians. In fact there were hardly any design historians. Most of us were designers and design teachers trying to figure out how to effectively teach design history. We had spent hours reading various books on everything from Gutenberg to Bruce Mau and the "Meggs," as it became known, was our guidebook.

When the current publisher, Wiley, refers to the book as "unrivaled" and "seminal" it's not hyperbole. Since it's original publication there have been other design history books but the "Meggs" remains the standard reference and the benchmark. Since Philip Meggs sadly passed away in 2002 it has fallen to others to carry on with updated versions of the book. The 4th edition has been taken over by Alston Purvis, Chair of the design program at Boston University. Purvis has already written several excellent books on early 20th century design and Dutch graphic design. Especially welcome for me is his book on the Dutch designer and printer Hendrik Werkman one of my all time favorites.

Does the Meggs book have any drawbacks? Mostly price; it's hard to get students to buy any book over $25-30. And the illustrations could be larger — I especially wish the Lucian Bernhard-Priester Match poster were larger — but then the price would probably be even higher.

With any survey text like this some things get left out or glossed over, and one might disagree with the presentation, arrangement, or focus of the text, but these are minor complaints. A survey text is just that, a survey, an overview of the subject that provides context for further depth and exploration. There are still some small things that annoy me, the biggest (of the small) is the oft-repeated myth that Nicolas Jenson, 15th century Venetian printer, was the French mint master at Tours. We can't say with certainty he wasn't, but there's no record of this and it's very unlikely that it is true.

The bibliography is comprehensive enough if you want to dive deeper into a particular area and if you're using the book as a classroom text the publisher, Wiley, has online resources including synopses of the chapters — for those of us who dutifully read the previous 3 editions and don't want to wade through it once more just for the new bits — and example test questions. I found both useful, though both have some annoying typos. The example questions were useful because they gave me a different view of the material, what someone else thought was important as opposed to what I did.

I could go into more analysis of the book but I don't think it's necessary. If you're a graphic designer, illustrator, or art director you need to read this book to see where your career came from. If you're a student you especially need to read this book, even if you're not required to. I have always found students work always gets better just from reading the text and seeing the images. And I think it's useful to know about those who came before as well as some of the odder characters in visual design history. There's some interesting stories you can tell at cocktail parties and impress your fellow designers who haven't bothered to read it. And occasionally you can pull out some factoid in a client meeting and impress them as well.

Alvin Lustig

2007-02-11T12:03:00.000-06:00

I've always been a big fan of Alvin Lustig's work. He started out working with letterpress, doing really interesting abstract things that no one else was even coming close to. His work was very influenced by Surrealism and Dadaism, but his use of symbols surpassed anything the Surrealists themselves did in terms of communications. I remember being knocked out by his book covers when I saw them. The cover for Kafka's America, a very under read and hilarious book, beautifully evokes the tone of the novel.

In my design history class I show students a picture of his design studio and tell them if they were wondering what to get me for my birthday that's it. I love the shade of green, the slight black / white striping, and the use of wood. It's a nice design space without looking too much like an office or an industrial space dressed up for a party. There's a web site, alvinlustig.com devoted to his work where you can see black & white photos of the Los Angeles office. Admittedly it's a very 50s look, but I grew up with it as the ideal as opposed to the fake antique Queen Anne style which was the dining room set in our house so it still looks good to me.

The site even has some nice prints of Lustig's work available for sale, and they're gorgeous, but when I saw the price, $100, and the edition, 100, I decided not to buy one. I'm put off by what I think is excessive elitism of the limited, somewhat high priced edition. Instead of creating more precious design objects, especially ones that recognize extraordinary design work, we should be creating more affordable and available design. Obviously the folks behind the website figured their audience for the posters was other designers, not the general public and that's what I really find disturbing. The design profession keeps talking about the importance of design and educating people about design, yet too many designers are intent on only talking to other designers. While I think it's important for designers to carry on a constant discussion about design, it's also important to have a public discussion about design that is accessible to the average person. We live in a time when there is tremendous focus on what doesn't work and it is imperative that we engage everyone in the process of design in order to make things work.

Minnesota Public Radio recently had a show about this very subject. The point is that users of design clearly recognize the flaws, mistaken assumptions, and non-usability in the things around them. We make jokes all the time about people not being able to program the VCR-DVD player and other devices. Yet we don't give the users a method of providing feedback about those flaws. The design profession, through it's overly elitist attitude of "you don't understand design so don't tell me what to do" denies people access to the process when it should include them. I admit I dislike having clients tell me what to do and I'm the first person to defend designers and their "you don't understand attitude" because it's true. People don't understand design, how it works, or how it's done. But the reason they don't understand isn't because they're stupid or they don't want to understand, it's because there's no method by which they can come to understand it.

All right, so maybe I'm laying too much emphasis on a limited edition poster, but I'm a big fan of Alvin Lustig's work and I'd like to see more people know about it and understand it even if that means having to explain the history of Surrealism, Dadaism. and Modernism to them. I see this as another missed opportunity to educate the public about design. So why don't we do something to really expose people to design in a way that they can begin to understand it? It doesn't have to be some high minded campaign to educate users and consumers. It can simply be making Lustig's work readily available so we can make people aware of it and start to demonstrate how it has already affected their lives. If it means Lustig's Rimbaud cover on a t-shirt then let's make them. In fact I'll be the first to get one — now that I've said it I really want one, maybe a whole set of the covers. Even making a cheaper, mass market version of the posters would be great. We could start putting them up all over the place. I wonder what the licensing costs for the images, hmmm. When's my next paycheck now?

Barack or Hillary

2007-02-10T16:12:00.001-06:00

Barack Obama only minutes ago announced his candidacy for President. He used the word "audacity" in referring to his run and addressed his (supposed) lack of experience by saying he had enough experience in Washington to know that it needed to change.

When the Democrats took Congress in the past election and Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the house without much comment — except from foaming at the mouth conservatives who tried to portray her as a big giant head — I thought that Hillary Clinton would easily take the Presidency. Women in government has become a total non-issue and a woman liberal Democrat as Speaker of the House was hardly worth commenting on as far as people were concerned. But now I think Barack Obama has got a tremendous shot at being President. If the nomination does go to Hillary for 2008, then, like John F. Kennedy who failed to get the Vice Presidential nomination when he campaigned, then came back the next election year to become President, Barack will get it and win in 2012. It might be a momentous time for the history of the country if Hillary Clinton becomes the first female President and Barack Obama becomes the first African American President. Either way we're going to see history made in the coming months.

The reason I think Barack has an excellent chance is the Super Bowl. I'm old enough to remember when people said African Americans didn't make good quarterbacks, and after there were black quarterbacks, people said they wouldn't make good coaches. Seeing Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy standing side by side in Miami made it clear that what an shrinking group of wrong headed people think about color isn't what the rest of the country thinks.

So far the Democrats have two strong contenders in Clinton and Obama while the Republicans don't have any. John McCain would have been a contender once, before Bush and his crew made him look bad during the campaign and then in the aftermath McCain swallowed his integrity and followed the party line. And among the techno community McCain is persona non grata for getting legislation passed preventing the government from funding research into nano technology putting us behind the rest of the world. He used fear mongering to convince fellow legislators that we might accidently destroy ourselves. This despite the fact that it's been the Republicans who are responsible for the proliferation of nuclear weapons — even when some of them can't pronounce the word. If it's a weapon they like it and if it's science, they don't.

I don't think former Mayor Rudy Guiliani will even make it to the convention since most people will look back at him dumping his wife and his health problems and not consider him. And most people can't name the other Republican wannabes. So strap in, this may turn into a really fantastic ride. I'm certainly looking forward to it.

Ennui, boredom, suicide, and creativity

2007-02-09T14:50:00.000-06:00

From "The Crack-Up" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work –the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside- the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within –that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick –the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but it is realized suddenly indeed."

Everyone struggles with personal demons. By that I mean the host of past experiences, failures, pains, regrets, and so on that one builds up over their lifetime. But I think creative people have more difficulty with these things because creatives understand the meaninglessness of rules. One of the attributes of creativity is knowing that rules, the ones we make as part of socialization, are arbitrary and often stifling. They're a direct deterrent to creativity of any kind and it's the job of creative people to work beyond those rules, or in the buzz phrase "think outside the box." Creative people, whether they're artists, inventors, or designers understand there is no box to think outside of. The box exists only for those who've been taught to believe there is a box, that there are "rules" to be followed and obeyed. They believe that things have to be a certain way and they're unwilling to question that.

Creatively we are always questioning things around us. This is how art gets made, how new things are created, even new inventions; people question the reality they are presented with and try to change it. Sometimes though it can't be changed because the universe runs on logic. A peculiar form of logic at times, but logic none the less. This logic means there are rules that cannot be avoided or broken or even bent a little like illness, death, pain, and suffering. After awhile it becomes more and more difficult to deal with that reality, that sense that some things are inevitable and ceaseless like illness. A sense of boredom, and a repugnance towards that boredom becomes one's natural state. One understands that though things change and seem to improve, they don't truly get better. They may be more comfortable, and in some respects less distressing. People don't seem to suffer less than in the past, nor do they seem to be demonstrably happier than in the past. As we eliminate or nullify one form of suffering, another one takes its place. We eliminate typhoid and plague, then suffer more from cancer and heart disease. Reality remains a difficult and harrowing proposition to the extent that one becomes tired of going on with it.

I don't mean that a person grows suicidal from this outlook, though that can happen, rather one simply is tired of the struggle to deal with what's going on around them. As Fitzgerald says the big things one can work with, the smaller things, the everyday and its everydayness, turns to something intolerable. As one gets older the big things get fixed to one extent or another while the small things that dogged one earlier continue. Yet we have to tolerate it and continue to tolerate it as each moment passes because there is no alternative. Hopefully you don't finally get so worn down by it that you give up trying to work against it because then you turn bitter and bitterness is all you have left for yourself and the world around you. When that happens nothing feels better, nothing seems to be what is once was. Any joy one has disappears and where something tasted good, now it tastes like ashes and disgust.

"All in the same month I became bitter about such things as the sound of the radio, the advertisements in the magazines, the screech of tracks, the dead silence of the country –contemptuous at human softness, immediately (if secretively) quarrelsome toward hardness- hating the night when I couldn’t sleep and hating the day because it went toward night. I slept on the heart side now because I knew that the sooner I could tire that out, even a little, the sooner would come that blessed hour of nightmare which, like a catharsis, would enable me to better meet the new day."

In the face of this there are all sorts of homilies about perseverance, endurance, and keeping up hope. But little homilies don't work, and perseverance is never truly rewarded. There are the finalities of death, decay, erosion, and entropy. Everything dies, everything ends, and everything in one way or another turns to sadness and loses all meaning. We know that it will happen, and we go around telling ourselves that it won't happen to us or in our lifetime or in the near future or to anyone we know yet we also know this is a fiction we tell ourselves hoping it's true. We worry about it while lying to ourselves that we don't worry or don't need to worry. We really don' t need to worry; what comes to pass will come to pass.

One day the earth will come to an end though we don' t know how and when that happens all the things we hold dear, even if they continue to exist, will mean nothing without us. This is because the meaning doesn't lie in the things, but in us and when there is no one to be moved by a Van Gogh's "Starry Night" or Muddy Waters "Nine Below Zero," or any one of a million other things, everything we will have done or created or believed will be nothing. Our only remaining hope is that we somehow continue on and even this becomes suspicious when, in the midst of a low point in the daily struggle, you wonder if continuing on actually means it gets better even momentarily. What happens if you don't continue on? What happens if you come to a halt and refuse to go on?

If there is a heaven or paradise is that the reward? Is it that there is no longer any boredom, no longer any entropy grinding things down? One of the rules of the universe is that nothing is created or destroyed merely transformed, that everything here has always been here in one form or another. Does that mean that boredom, ennui, pain, and suffering continue on in some other form? And if they do is it a better form, the opposite of their current form, or is it just another version of the same thing? Is boredom always boredom whether it's here or somewhere else?

In "The Crack Up" Fitzgerald refers finally to "vitality" as the necessary natural force to overcome this and that one either has it or doesn't. I don't think this is true though; I don't think it is a matter of not having something to overcome this state, I think it's the ability to pretend that these things that wear one down don't exist. It's not possible to overcome them, only to, for a time, ignore their existence and pretend it has nothing to do with you.

Woody Allen said:
"It's very hard to keep your spirits up. You've got to keep selling yourself a bill of goods, and some people are better at lying to themselves than others. If you face reality too much, it kills you."

Why is it necessary to sell yourself a lie? Why must you ignore the terrible aspect of life in order to go on? And why does it seem to affect creative people more than everyone else? In articles about creativity it's often said that there are perfectly "normal" creative people without metal problems, drug or alcohol problems, without lives out of control. I've never met them and I don't know anyone who has. I suspect it's a fiction, another patent lie that has to be told in a false attempt to give creative people hope that they can continue on. And so we go on, dragging ourselves forward to something in hopes that it may be better or that we may learn something that will help. In the end the only thing that really carries us forward is the idea that we have not yet created everything we can, that there is more for us to do, to make. And if we run out of things to create, well then we're finally done.

George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak company, inventor of roll film and the Brownie camera committed suicide on March 14, 1932. He was suffering from spinal stenosis, a very painful and crippling deterioration of the bone. Reportedly his suicide note said "My work is done. Why wait?"

Why designers don't always think much of (some) writers.

2007-01-28T14:57:00.000-06:00

or Pretend writers walking off into the sunset.

There are a lot of people on the web who think they're pundits and many of them also think they are writers when they're not. It's inevitable I suppose when you open up the media to everyone. The problem is some of them have the gall to complain about how they get no respect from designers. Umm, perhaps because you're not a very good writer? Could that be it?

Here are some words from a person purporting to be a writer with significant corporate experience — I don't know how — and why they get no respect.

" It is a shame that people from the creative industry do not know what we writers, do, may it be the role of an editor, copywriter, novelist, poet or copyeditor, when they are the very people who needs us, when our art complement and strengthen theirs."

"...writers, do," Huh? Why do you need a comma here? Has the use of commas become the infield fly rule of grammar? Then "... novelist, poet or copyeditor," This is where one of the extra commas could go, after poet. Unless they mean that poetry and copyediting are the same thing or that being a poet makes you a copyeditor as well. But no comma after copyeditor please. I'm not an English major but even I cringe at "...the very people who needs us..." People need because they have needs. Who needs you? People need you if you could write, but people certainly don't "needs" you if this is your typical work. And "when our art compliment and strengthen theirs." Well, maybe if your art did compliment instead of looking really stupid people from the design industry would want you to compliment what they were doing. Evidently they're running away as fast as they can from you looking for a good writer.

One of the follow-up comments to this particular blog was: " With a picture and some choice words put down on paper pushed together, Copywriters can sell ice to an Eskimo." I don't know anyone in the advertising business who would think this is true. About the words I mean, how pushing paper together sells anything to anyone is beyond me. The idea that all you need is some good copy and a nice picture for an ad died a few decades ago. This is why advertising agencies have creative teams pairing copywriters and art directors together. Or maybe you've never heard of Bill Bernbach one of the people who invented this process. He and another guy named Paul Rand made it clear that what sells anything isn't good copy or good art, but good concept. The three most important things in an advertising campaign today are concept, concept, concept. I would have thought this was obvious to anyone who's watched television. A few choice words won't even make for a good poem these days much less a good advertising campaign.

There's more nonsense about the role of the copywriter and a few of the criteria they need to follow: - to pick the exact germane vocabulary and un-overpromising adjectives. Huh? And the inexact germane would be what? Oh, and wait a moment and I'll get my overpromising removal tool from the garage and we can "un" it together.

- to compress the knowledge from the extensive research They don't mean the marketing research here which is dismissed as useless. They mean the copywriter's research which is never actually defined.

- to miniscule the understanding of both the product and the targeted consumers

All this, with a limitation of 3-5 words. I'll have to remember that "to miniscule" thing. It'll come in handy when a client wants to shove more copy in at the last minute. No, no, we have to miniscule it not majuscule it!

I suppose I should be polite like my mother wanted me to be, polite even to people I couldn't stand to be in a room with, but I teach. So I refuse to have students see this crap on the web and then come to class thinking it's okay to write like this. If you want people to take you seriously you have to write coherently even as a graphic designer, even if all you're doing is writing a brief or a memo.

Learn Cyrillic type design

2007-01-27T23:03:00.000-06:00

The Type Director's Club of New York, TDC, is sponsoring a series of weekend workshops on non-Latin type design. The first is on Cyrillic with Maxim Zhukov former type director at the United Nations, and teacher at Parsons School of Design and Cooper Union.

With the development of OpenType by Adobe and Microsoft having fonts that contain both Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic, along with Latin based characters for other languages like Vietnamese is not only possible, it's becoming the standard of typeface design. The workshop will cover the history of Cyrillic alphabet as well as the design of individual characters including variants for Bulgarian and Serbian.

The workshop is March 2-4, 2007 at the TDC conference center in Manhattan. The workshop costs $495 USD, is limited to 20 participants, and includes a reception on Friday the 2nd, and continental breakfast Saturday and Sunday. Find the info on it here, and the pdf here.

Ilene Strizver and Gourmet Typography

2007-01-26T10:00:00.000-06:00

Ilene Strizver used to work for ITC, International Typeface Corp., the entity Herb Lubalin and Ed Rondthaler set up to license typefaces in the wake of the loss of typeface copyrights back in the 1970s. She oversaw the design program and is an expert on type and working with type.

Since leaving ITC she's written a book, Type Rules! The designer’s guide to professional typography which is an excellent text and very accessible. She has a Q & A column on CreativePro.com, and has a series of articles on typography at Fonts.com.

She also does training presentations: Gourmet Typography. I wanted to give her training a plug since I think this is what the design profession needs more of. And I don't mind that one of the bad examples she's been using was something I did. Learn from your mistakes especially when someone else fixes them for you and there are few better than Ilene.

Gourmet Typography 2007 Schedule
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gourmet Typography Training is held throughout the year in many locations in North America. The 2007 schedule includes:

Philadelphia, PA / AIGA Philly
February 2

Boston, MA / AIGA Boston
February 23

New York, NY / TDC
March 16

Westport, CT / The Type Studio
March 30

For an updated schedule, click here.

Moore, Christopher

2007-01-26T08:48:00.000-06:00

The past couple of days I've been reading You Suck by Christopher Moore. It's a sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends which is the first thing of his I read and which started me on reading vampire fiction. It was on display at the local Border's where employees can recommend books. It looked funny — imagine a funny vampire story taking place in San Francisco involving frozen turkey bowling — and I needed funny at the time so I got it. It's about a young woman who inadvertently is turned into a vampire and then has to struggle to keep from being really killed by the vampire who turned her and in the process finds true love.

Liked it so much I bought a pile of his other books as well: Practical Demonkeeping, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, and The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove. They were all pretty inventive and funny with some strange twists and not a few people dieing unpleasantly. One review likened him to Vonnegut, but that's reaching a bit. Vonnegut's work has always had broader implications and a morality play undertone to it where Moore's is on a more personal level, ie. people trying to do the right thing in face of unbelievable events.

About a third of the way into You Suck though I was disappointed since it seemed he had just dashed off a sequel to the first book, but half way through I wasn't disappointed anymore. It just took awhile to get into the story, I think because it kept stopping to fill in what the reader needed to know if they hadn't read the first book. As it turns out the novel ends in a very similar way to the first one so there's room for another sequel to the sequel. I can't wait.

The thing that really seems odd to me is that I got the book at Costco of all places. Normally I would have waited for it to go into paperback since I like to carry books around to read on the train, but couldn't pass up Costco's price for the hard cover.

Mr. No

2007-01-19T15:37:00.000-06:00

Here's grandpa relating the tale of Mickey and his flying lessons for the third time to Mr. No, aka "nony." The twos aren't so terrible at the moment and his "no" is usually firm, but polite.

"Don't you want a different book?" says grandpa.
"No."
"But I've read Mickey to you twice already."
"Mickey."
"Don't you want to play with the trains?"
"No."

Espresso Mania (or is it madness?)

2007-01-09T20:29:00.000-06:00

Good (not helpful) Design Advice #1

2007-01-09T13:31:00.000-06:00

One of the standard pieces of advice that designers always hear is "learn from your mistakes." This really isn't useful advice because when do you not learn from your mistakes? And learning from mistakes generally involves having one of two insights: "Well that doesn't work," and "I'm not going to do that again." Both of these responses close off any further exploration of why something didn't work or how it might be made to work.

To learn from your mistakes you have to manage your mistakes so they become learning experiences.
First, make as many mistakes as you can in school where the penalties aren't as great. A poor grade is nothing compared to screwing up a paying job or some aspect of your life. Besides design history is full of people who screwed stuff up in school and succeeded despite it. Once you're working you don' t want to make any mistakes, none. You don't want to be the person who screws up a client's annual report or new packaging, etc. because the first words out of the client's mouth when they find out is "I want that person fired." And you probably will be — it's happened before to designers and it will happen again. No one wants to be known as the designer who screwed up, instead of the designer who's learned from their mistakes.
But how do you not make mistakes while working? Human beings make mistakes and you're going to make mistakes on the job. Build time and safety mechanisms into each project for finding and fixing the mistakes, and develop methods of identifying potential mistakes so you can prevent them before they arrive. One designer I used to work with always came into work early and reviewed what he'd done the day before. This technique saved him on several occasions when he caught something that was wrong and could fix it before anyone else saw it. As a result he consistently outperformed his coworkers.
Experimenting on your own is the best way to make mistakes when you're working. Don't have a good idea and then wait for a client project to use it on. One of the designers I always point students at is Lester Beall who was always trying new ideas, new techniques, making images, collages, all sorts of things in order to extend his abilities and his creativity. He wasn't standing in a rut trying to refashion the same idea over and over. He was constantly working to not be in a rut. He was also playful about it, so that it wasn't work for him, and it didn't matter if something succeeded or not. He was doing creative things outside of his work demands and there was no pressure to be right. What mistakes were made were in the experimenting so that when it came to applying what he'd learned to client work it wasn't an experiment anymore. He learned not just from mistakes, but from taking risks as well.

And pay attention to other people's mistakes as well. The idea that the person who makes the most mistakes learns the most isn't true at all. It's the person who learns from the most mistakes, not necessarily their own, that succeeds in the end.

Pretend-Designers wandering off into the sunset

2007-01-06T20:33:00.000-06:00

We're coming out of — supposedly — a slow economy but there are still a lot of designers complaining about the paucity of work and new clients. I keep telling them this is a good thing — for awhile anyway. It's a good thing because there are a lot of people out there calling themselves graphic designers who really aren't graphic designers. Many are not even trained as designers. Some of them are programmers who think they know how to use Adobe Illustrator; some are just misguided folks who once owned a wood burning set and decided they had artistic talent but don't. Some got a nice liberal arts degree with one course in art appreciation. This situation wouldn't be a problem if clients knew the difference, but they frequently don't. Clients don't for the same reason these pretend-designers don't either. Design talent is hard to understand and harder to recognize. It's especially hard for non-designers and nearly impossible for people who aren't creative and don't understand creativity. I know that sounds elitist, but it's true. Non-creative people don't understand how creative people work. It's that simple. Ever try to explain to your grandparents just what it is you do as a graphic designer?.

Some years ago at a design conference a colleague said to me: "Designing for a client is like making a suit of clothes for the invisible man. The client comes to you and describes the invisible man and you make him a suit." He had used this metaphor to explain to clients what he did. Basically creative people invent something from nothing, they clothe the invisible man. That's how it works. People who aren't creative don't understand how that happens and it's not something that can be explained to them. This is one of the primary reasons clients are so difficult to work with; they're afraid of creatives because they don't understand what creatives do or how they do it. What this means is that it's relatively easy in a boom economy when there's a lot of work for someone with little or no talent to go around claiming they're a designer when they're not. In some cases they're not even a mediocre designer, they can't design at all, but they're not smart enough to know it. They think if they can arrange some stock photo and some copy in their software they're designing things. And in a boom economy clients frequently make decisions by throwing too much money at things. They also fail to understand the importance of good creative design. They think that if they throw money at someone they will get good design without having to actually determine what good design is. So pretend-designers are able to get work, sometimes a lot of work.

What's really troublesome for me is that many of these pretend-designers are working in interactive media or the internet. I think this has to do with the fact that it's difficult to pretend to be a graphic designer in the print media, where there is a specific body of necessary knowledge. Print has a long tradition, several hundred years, so mediocre and poor designers standout pretty easily and quickly. It's easier to masquerade as a designer in interactive media because it's a much more fluid arena in terms of knowledge and skill. Since the internet is still rather new, people can get away with pretense easier. There hasn't been the long sorting process that identifies what good design is and how it's created. And there are also clients who haven't come up through a business process where they learned how to hire and work with creatives. (There is also an embarrassing number of people creating web based enterprise who can't write a business plan either.) If you think I'm wrong about this start looking at web sites and see what percentage of them a ugly, hard to read, hard to navigate, hard to understand. Do you really think those were designed by someone who knew what they were doing?

Being able to write a nice CSS template does not make one a designer. Nor does being able to write good html, XML, etc. A good programmer, maybe, but designer, not at all. So it's not a mystery why so many web sites are ugly and difficult, no designers were employed in creating them. And even many good web sites are knockoffs of knockoffs of well designed sites. Some pretend-designers simply lift someone else's ideas — often more than one someone — and make a few changes, mash things up and have a web site. They end up with something that makes their clients happy, but ultimately required little or no talent on their part, and very little thought other than "what can I steal?" Recently Information Architects posted an essay on their blog about the importance of typography on the internet. IA got a lot of criticism from people who know little about type and yet claim they're designers. These critics overlooked the fact that graphic design is based in typography and has been for several hundred years. And if you spend an hour or two surfing the internet you can see the result of their misguided attitude towards type: some of the worst looking, most unreadable typography imaginable. There are even articles on all the awful things one can do with html and CSS to make type more unreadable and uglier. So tell me again how are these people designers when they don't know the first thing about using type?

If I sound like a curmudgeon it comes from many years working as a designer and having to put up with various pretenders and nitwits in the business. Whenever a economic slowdown happens and designers start having to work harder to get business I always remind them that this is a good thing. All those would be, wanna be pretend-designers leave the business. They can't compete when clients really start looking at how their money is being spent and begin recognizing that some people don't know what they're talking about. I don't know where these pretend-designers go and I don't care, but maybe this is part of the explanation for the proliferation of gourmet coffee shops and boutique bakeries — out of work pretend-designers. Or is that being unfair to coffee shops and bakeries?

Not much done today

2007-01-03T21:08:00.000-06:00

I'm tired and it's been a rather long day despite the fact I didn't get all that much done. The contractor came over and I showed him everything we wanted to do in the house besides finish the basement and everything seemed doable so that's done. Took two hours though. I'm working on some more items for the blogs, but haven't gotten them done yet. Writing isn't very easy for me so it's time consuming to write stuff.

I sold a bunch of Fiestaware on eBay and made $600+ so far today. Tomorrow I'll photo some more stuff and put it up. The ball candle stick holders didn't sell and I wonder why. They're rare and I was only asking about half what they are worth. Had the same problem with the Mickey / Minnie cookie jar which didn't sell. Managed to buy some more type specimens though I missed out on the sign letters I was bidding on. I only went to $25 and that wasn't enough.

I tried out the online postage printing system for USPS and got hosed. The extra charge is pretty outrageous in my opinion so I'm hauling it all down to the post office in the morning. I have to ship four items tomorrow and several more on Friday. And there's another raygun in the works too. I'm trying to think of all the things I can make them out of. When I was little we used to make a great one out of cardboard. You could vaporize anything with it, though it was only temporary. All the neighborhood dogs would vanish for a few days and then come back. Everyone assumed they had merely run away, but we all knew better.

Reading fiction new and old

2007-01-02T21:26:00.000-06:00

We took my mom out for dinner on Christmas eve and while digging around in her basement — there's still a lot of my stuff down there as well as some of my brother's and my dad's which I will have to do something with eventually so whenever we go out there I go down to the basement and look at it — I found two paperback books of mine, a Raymond Chandler and William Gibson's "Count Zero." I started to reread "Count Zero" but the pages had really darkened and the print is harder to read now due to my much too quickly advancing age so I decided to go to the book store and get new copies. Border's only had "Neuromancer" so I got that and then also got a new copy of Pynchon's "V." I started rereading both of them (I do this a lot, read more than one book at a time. At the moment there's about six.) and noticed that both books begin like an old joke, with one of the protagonists going into a bar.

Case / Benny Profane walks into Chatsubo / Sailor's Grave and speaks to the bartender Ratz / barmaid Beatrice. So two guys walk into a bar and one eventually meets Wage and Armitage while the other meets Stencil and Trench. I don't know that this means anything; I'm just one of those people who thinks everything is connected to everything. While I believe that the flap of a butterfly's wing on a planet on the other side of the universe — 13 million light years away give or take — I also know that even if it does, it also has no effect at all due to the uncertainty principle. So maybe this is coincidence or maybe it's of massive importance and great meaning and that if we could figure it out would alter the course of all life. Or not.

Don't look back

2006-12-29T08:03:00.000-06:00

Nearly everyone is doing a year in review, looking back at the best, worst, and whatever else. Please don't do it. The year is coming to a close and there's little to be gained by looking back at it. If you didn't learn from your mistakes and everyone else's then you're not going to now. If you don't know by now how to get out of a car while wearing a skirt and no underwear you're not going to learn it by reviewing the antics of Ms. Spears and / or Ms. Hilton. And whatever stupid thing you might have done you can't look stupder than Mr. Gibson / Federline / Richards. Let’s please not even get started on the politics or the greed, power grabbing, and hate mongering pretending to be politics of the past year. The ship of state has already begun changing direction and will continue to do so despite the hurrahs and wailings of those who thought it was important. It comes down to this: some people screwed up, some succeeded, some did bad things, some did good things, a few did some really great and wonderful things. There were people who died, many of them needlessly and uselessly. There were things that happened, big and small, that will or will not affect us for a long or short time.

No, let's not look back, let's look forward. I don't mean in that "new year resolution" kind of forward either. Resolutions are like little rules you make for yourself so you can feel bad about breaking them later. Instead look at the things you're trying to accomplish and think about how they're going to move forward in the future. Don't obsess over what hasn't been finished or accomplished, that just delays getting it done that much more. Don't obsess over all the things you did wrong in the past, especially anything that happened more than a year ago. What's done is done and if you haven't fixed it, apologized for it, or paid someone to do something about it, then stop thinking about it. Time is running out and there's only one place you and everyone else is going: forward. So don't look back, look ahead. That way you won't plow into anything by accident.

A Pel Gun

2006-12-28T15:14:00.000-06:00

So I was a little ambitious trying to have one raygun a day. So now it's whenever I get to it.

A Pel Gun model #234250289345-2390845-2390845 used by the Krel beings on the planet Mel. The Krel are large jellyfish like creatures who are not aquatic. The discovery by Del Oel Pel that certain kinds of wave forms homogenized their flesh made the Pel Gun a very deadly weapon. That was offset by Del Oel Pel's constant upgrading of the weapon, sometimes several times in one day. Each upgrade meant that production was halted on the previous model resulting in some models existing in the hundreds and others in only one or two examples. This particular model is differentiated by the first redesign of the Vel fitting which had been the same on all previous models since #234-5890209485.

Why I hate Times Roman

2006-12-28T13:39:00.000-06:00

Some people rail against Comic Sans, some hate Helvetica, and a few dislike Univers (too cold). I hate Times Roman in all its forms, new. old, and knockoff. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so ubiquitous. Every time I see it used I assume the user didn't bother to think about a font choice. If I catch one of my students using it I know they weren't paying attention to their font choice at all because they're not allowed to use it.

I understand why it made sense as a default font back in the days of 300 dpi laserwriters, but that's not true anymore. The reason it worked for laserwriters is because it was supposedly designed for newspapers. I say supposedly because there's been some controversy about who actually designed it and why. Regardless of who it was it's an ugly, amateurish design, lacking soul. Helvetica at least has soul even if it's been wildly overused. If Stanley Morison did design Times I think he did a lousy job for someone who was supposed to know about type. If he didn't design it then he still should have known better and fixed it.

My basic complaint about Times is that it's ugly. I mean really ugly for a typeface that's supposed to be very readable. Here's a comparison with some other faces used for text setting to demonstrate what I mean. The lowercase letters in Times are too narrow, spaced poorly, and the serifs are too sharp. The fact that it's supposed to be a newspaper face is the excuse for these things, but that's not enough of an excuse. Newspapers want to get the most amount of letters on a line that they can so Times was drawn narrow. But it's an ugly narrow, not an attractive one. It looks like a student's first attempt at designing a traditional looking typeface before they've developed an eye for the details. Something which Morison was supposed to have as typographic consultant to British Monotype.

And the angle of stress isn't consistent. Back in the 1500-1600s a designer could get away with that, but not in the 20th century. It's just sloppy design. The stress problem wouldn't be so bothersome if the lower case 'e' weren't so far off from the other letters. It sticks out like a bent nail in vinyl siding. Ugly on top of tacky about every fourth or fifth word.

And since it's my first initial I'm very conscious of the design of the letter 'G' in a font, all fonts. And Times has one of the worst looking ones on the planet. The horizontal serif is much too high making the letter look deformed like a bulldog with way too much chin. Here's Times on the left and my alteration on the right. Just lowering the horizontal a little makes it much more attractive. Of course the uppercase 'T' just makes me cringe every time I see it. It's too stiff and haughty looking. The uppercase 'E' needs work as well. The bottom serif angles out too much making the letter look like it needs serious orthodontia, and the center bar sticks forward too far as well.

Supposedly it's Steve Jobs fault that we got saddled with Times in the first place. Happily the newest incarnation of Windows OS — Vista — has a group of new fonts designed to take advantage of computer rendering technology so perhaps we have seen the beginning of the death of Times Roman. I've got my fingers crossed.

The Browser dilemmia

2006-12-26T22:02:00.000-06:00

I'm on a Mac and I prefer using Safari for my browser. I like Safari. I’ve used it for a long time and I'm happy with it. It doesn't interfere with the way I work or browse the internet and it's not too slow. Despite all the hype about plug-ins I don't like Firefox, and I really don't like Camino. Firefox isn't happy with the way I work and often crashes or freezes, and Camino doesn’t let me set up my bookmarks bar the way I like it. And they're both kind of ugly. Safari is much nicer looking. Maybe you don’t think that's important, but it is, not just to me. If you're going to design a browser then it should be better looking than it's competitors shouldn't it?

I mention this because I'm going to have to stop using Safari for some things and use one that I don't like. It seems that with the latest update to OS X and Safari Apple changed something involving Safari's cache. As a result I can't upload pictures, not to eBay, not to Flickr, not to anything. At first I had the same problem with Firefox because I had the cache set to 0, nada. Once I reset it things went fine. By that time though I was already using Camino to upload to eBay. For Flickr I got a utility specifically for that. Because I'm on a Mac I don't have the opportunity of using the many pieces of software designed for eBay buyers and sellers because they're Win only. So now I'm really peeved. A computer is a tool, and it should work like one. Your claw hammer or power saw wouldn't suddenly become unusable due to an upgrade, so why a browser?

What makes this even more annoying is eBay itself. I sent them several messages when I first encountered the problem before someone got back to me. When I explained the problem in detail that was the last I ever heard from eBay. Of course they're still collecting money from me for listing things, but they're not helping at all. I had to do some searching to find out what the problem was, and even now I haven't found a fix for Safari that works. I downloaded a utility that was supposed to help, and did some fiddling with Terminal that was supposed to help, but nothing.

I've never been happy with the restrictions presented by computers and for the most part I've held programmers to blame for them. Well, short sighted programmers anyway. There are still too many stupid things that show up in programs. Not long ago I worked with a friend of mine, David, on developing a web site. David is primarily a salesman, not a programmer, yet when we sat down to develop the site he made all the diagrams for the user interface. He plotted out where someone might go when they came to the site. I was impressed because I still run into sites that are so obtuse they're unusable. They appear to be done by retarded head lice rather than human beings, and here was David knocking out user interface diagrams that really worked. When we built the web site it worked fine. All our testing resulted in a few tweaks, but the user interface and experience was well covered. So why is it that some many web sites and programs have such awful user interfaces? Is it merely that some programmers can't think beyond their own limited viewpoint? You see, that's unacceptable in the graphic design profession. It's part of the job requirement that designers be able to adopt other viewpoints because graphic design is about communication and communication relies on viewpoint.

So I'm not a happy surfer until someone fixes my Safari and I don't have to keep using a piece of software I don't like.

School's Out!

2006-12-18T19:34:00.000-06:00

Classes are finally over, meetings concerning all the things that didn't get done are done, meetings about all the new things we've thought up to do are done. All that's left is the grading so I'm slogging through research papers and late projects. I had intended to have it all done today, Monday, but blew by that already.

The research papers are generally better than expected in that there are more of the better papers. So as soon as I'm done with grading there will be more posts. I promise. So much stuff is going through my head at the moment.

Raygun #3

2006-12-02T22:22:00.000-06:00

I just started this and I'm already behind. Maybe I'll have to have a page just for these.

Here's a Naug K, once the scourage of six galaxies, and now banned pretty much everywhere. They were surprisingly cute for a deadly weapon and surprisingly powerful for their size. It's been said that one unlucky space traveler accidently blew off part of a small moon when he dropped his weapon.