Plays In Traffic

Al Michaels is showing his age

jsl — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:36:14 +0000

Watching the Super Bowl, I just heard Al Michaels make a comment about Chad Ocho-Jerko — that up til this year, his career has been “all headlines,” and that this year it’s been “agate type.” Now, being 1. A student of typography, and 2. Old, I knew what he meant, but isn’t that expression rapidly fading in the mists of time? In the world of fixed print, agate type is a unit equal to 5.5 points or about 1/14 of an inch. But in a world where more information is consumed digitally, and (if it’s been coded right) the text is zoomable, is this still an effective expression? Or is it so distanced from its origins as to be unusable? Like one I use a lot; I usually say I don’t make a profit from my jewelry work, but it’s nice to have the pin money.

Holy excess, Batman!

jsl — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 19:13:17 +0000

The 60s were truly the era of “too much is never enough,” even when it comes to labeling. My question is why Bruce’s name tag is higher than Dick’s. Is it just because he’s taller? Was he leaping straight into the tag and getting paper cuts on his face?

Which pole is mine again?

You get what you pay for (redux)

jsl — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 19:10:24 +0000

A couple of months ago I mentioned the dubious practice of crowdsourcing; on a related note, there is the sphere of prefab logos being sold for a set price. As Jeff Fisher has documented, many of these designs are ripoffs or barely modified versions of original work done for others. Brandstack was one of these companies who thought they could get rich off other people’s creativity – but it didn’t last.

Clip art has its place, certainly – but it’s no way to create an identity.

I (heart) Palmer

jsl — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 18:58:55 +0000

When I read articles about the debate over whether or not cursive handwriting should still be taught, I can’t believe anyone doubts its value. The memory of my teachers correcting my Palmer Method exercises still stand out in my mind – telling me to open up my loops and take more time with my lowercase ‘z’ (which I still speed through). I actually did a science fair project in grade school about the science of graphology – handwriting analysis. How much context can there be in a tweet? How is any extra personality expressed in printing?

Cursive handwriting allows you to use a different part of your brain, and aside from the fine motor skills, good cursive means you’re also practicing good design as you pay attention to spacing between letters and between words, the contours of individual letters and words as a whole. In short, you have to THINK more – and that’s always a good thing.

Then again, maybe if cursive becomes some obscure skill, international spies could just exchange notes written in cursive, rather than stored on microfilm in a hollow tooth. You could breeze through airport security with a big notebook full of handwritten items for how to overthrow the government, and the TSA folks would just think it’s some kind of new abstract art.

You get what you pay for

jsl — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:33:55 +0000

As a professional designer, I try not to do work “on spec” much anymore. Spec work is work done for a client who may or may not hire you, based on your initial offerings. I did it when I was a student and I thought anything would be a portfolio-building opportunity, even if I was never paid. But it turns out that in reality, spec work is rarely useful for a portfolio, since it’s fairly underdeveloped, and you end up cheapening your services by offering them for free.

In the 21st century we now have “crowdsourcing” for design work, which this article summed up nicely.

The gist of it is, real design is a conversation, not a series of multiple-choice questions, and if you’re spending the time to have one or more extensive conversations with a client, you should be compensated for your time and expertise.

Design police blotter, Presidential edition

jsl — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 21:42:26 +0000

Just went to look at Jon Hunstman’s site, as he launched his presidential bid today. What’s the first thing you see? A Flash movie! I’m guessing Jon’s advisor for these matters is over 60, and not working in the web design field anymore — nobody who cares about getting traffic delays people with an annoying Flash. I couldn’t hit the “skip” button fast enough to avoid the music that started blaring either. Have a look for yourself, if your blood pressure needs a boost.

I still can’t figure this out

jsl — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 18:50:55 +0000

I only set up a feed reader for myself a few months ago (welcome to five years ago, right?), but one of the things I initially feared was that I was setting myself up for an isolation bubble, where I’d only see things I expected. Nice, safe, thought-provoking but still predictable things.

Then today I saw something totally unexpected in my feeds, and even after clicking through, realizing what’s going on, I’m still not sure it isn’t a joke. David Rees, whose “Get Your War On” comic I love, is apparently striking out in a new career direction: Artisanal Pencil Sharpener. Even after clicking around his site and reading an article about it, even though I am the last person to mock an odd choice of career dream (I long to put “Paid Spelling Vigilante” as the occupation on my tax return someday) — I can’t figure this out. Really? Some of his other side projects are obviously satirical, but he’s outdone himself in giving this project every trapping of respectability. But…hand-sharpened pencils for $15 each? I mean… *really?*

Anyone with an extra $15 is encouraged to engage Mr. Rees’s services, and report back. And even then, I probably won’t believe it.

It’s not just the athletes

jsl — Wed, 11 May 2011 20:14:35 +0000

It’s the whole culture of sports that applauds criminality; and I say that as a sports fan. Why do I bring this up? Since baseball season has started, the radio broadcasts have been promoting the TV network that carries the Indians games, SportsTime Ohio. Two of STO’s call-in shows are “All Bets Are Off” with Bruce Drennan and “Last Call” with Chuck Galeti. Am I the only one who thinks it’s weird that these guys’ shows are named after their respective past crimes? Drennan spent a few years in prison after a conviction on a federal illegal gambling charge, and Galeti has been convicted of three DUIs. I don’t have any insightful comment, really, just a hearty “What’s up with that?!”

Where does the money go?

jsl — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 00:22:31 +0000

If you woke up yesterday realizing it was a day past Tax Day, you have another day to file – at least that’s the case for your federal and state taxes. Our city taxes were still due on April 15, and since those were the most difficult, they were the last ones done. Even the payroll guy I work with thinks that the city goes out of its way to make its tax instructions confusing.

And if you’ve ever wondered where your tax dollars go, there’s been more of an effort lately to break it down for people. This Slate article details some of the organizations who think that an itemized tax ‘receipt’ would go a long way toward a more informed debate about how America spends its money. I did mine at Third Way’s site and it’s an interesting look at what goes where.

If everyone had the ability to move their money around in these different buckets, as if you were managing your stocks or your Facebook settings, wonder what the budget would look like? My first move would be to make Congress self-funding – 44% of the members of Congress are millionaires (compared to just 1% of the entire American population).

Design police blotter

jsl — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 18:00:29 +0000

Since we’re already a quarter of the way into the year before a presidential election year, campaign season is gearing up! I know, I know, it never really ends these days.

But I don’t actually want to talk about politics — I’m a designer, and I ran across these two sites that started me wondering, how important are they to candidates? The one for this guy in Montana is pretty obviously an afterthought; the rampant spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes are enough to make you cry, not to mention some of the odd navigation goofs. And in this (possible?) candidate’s case, it looks to me like someone made the beta site live before he decided which office he’s actually running for. Hot tip to his tech staff – keep things on the testing server, guys!

But really — in my particular world all I hear is how crucial it is that a website be professional, with every comma in its place and every paragraph wordsmithed to perfection. There must be nothing confusing or ambiguous or your users will never spend more than five seconds on your site before dismissing it as unprofessional and unworthy of their time or money (which I’m told are the same thing). A friend who was talking about her days as a hiring manager said that just one misspelling on a resume was reason enough to send it to the trash – her reasoning was, if someone doesn’t take the time to proofread a resume, how intelligent/professional/attentive to detail could they possibly be?

I know there are different kinds of intelligence – politicians in particular may likely have more of the ‘emotional intelligence’ required to spend so much time glad-handing strangers and kissing their babies – but it still seems like they should also have enough intelligence of the sort to hire a proofreader. Makes you wonder what else they’re not reading very carefully.