so worth skipping science

this happened last thursday, but i want to go back in time to it anyway because it was just such an awesome event. in celebration of their new book, lettering & type, bruce and nolen (of post typography/double dagger fame) organized a book launch/lecture at mica with 26-ish artists & designers each tackling a letter of the alphabet with 5-ish minutes each. i laughed. i cried. i learned about the alphabet. and saw it with the fresh eyes of a 5 year old watching sesame street. definitely check out their website for the book. or better yet, buy it!

in defense of comic sans

art school does things to you. no matter how humble your roots, you'll inevitably start to scoff at the scrapbook section at jo ann's that you once loved and poo-poo fonts that every one else finds perfectly fine. like papayrus. (rightfully so...) or comic sans.

still, i have to wonder if we aren't being too harsh. now, i'm not completely clueless. anyone who has taken a typography class (or is aware of this radical movement) can give you easily a hundred reasons why comic sans is horrible. at the end of the day, it's just tacky type. but, in certain contexts, i'm willing to argue that it might just work. (form vs. function)

case in point: my mom, who happens to be a preschool teacher. she diligently pecks away at her keyboard one letter at a time and uses clip art gratuitously in microsoft publisher. (love you, mom.) but what she manages to do with such skills is more than commendable. for the past few years she has toiled away at her laptop before school ends to produce a book for each one of her kids documenting their year. she uses pictures from pajama day and snack time and everything in between. she saves attempts at name writing (where capital e's sprout horizontal lines like centipedes and spelling is somehow only mastered when letters are laid out right to left) and drawings of family members. starting from the first day of school to conge, just about every adorable moment is captured. now, her layouts don't use a grid or the golden rule. sometimes she stretches type (shock!) and uses comic sans. the pages are laminated and they're spiral bound together. but i'm willing to overlook all of those things that make a graphic designer squirm knowing the gift she is giving to every single student.

as someone who just found this fourth grade masterpiece, i don't mind at all. we all have to start somewhere.

view from above

a few things lately have me thinking about this easily accessable sense of place (and subsequently self) that strangely comes from the macro method of google mapping. (i've got ideas formulating for a summer project exploiting google maps with the pen tool...) apparently, the latest news from australia is that "a melbourne man has completed a six-month-long quest to turn topography into typography" with a google maps alphabet. some of the letterforms are much more successful than others, but the idea of being able to totally re-interprete places that we traverse daily (or places we'll never actually visit, for that matter) within minutes from such a radical birds eye view is certainly enticing.

(it actually reminds me of some arial photography from a professor here at mica. some of those prints are hanging in the lobby of the gateway, and i was puzzled for so long trying to figure out if it was a painting or something digitally manipulated. turns out it's neither...)

brain shopping

a recent assignment from my type 1 class. the task was to create a large poster (18 x 24) that would both be satisfying from far away, and draw you in closer. the text was given to us, ellen's "40 tips and tricks for getting in the mood to get ideas."

our next, and final assignment, is to design a type specimen! should be fun...

new york times boot camp

today in type we did a little something ellen likes to call "the new york times bootcamp." the idea is that we come into class, and she gets a call at 10 am from some one at the new york times who tells us the topic of tomorrow's op-ed article. and then we design a black and white image to accompany the piece. by 2 pm. things were a little less stressfull this time around, ellen actually found out last night that we would be illustrating for letters readers sent in responding to an editorial about genetically altered animals. ("Coming to a Plate Near You.") it was really quite fun to work on something with other people around, and with a real world deadline. check out the class flickr to see what everyone else came up with. ellen should know tonight what design has been selected for print!

glass half full

i was assigned this quote for a little alignment study in typography. the document had to be 8.5 x 11 with 2 inch margins, a standard red background, and only 24 point futura book. elements to play around with? the text can be black and white, and use different weights. i was bummed that i got a quote that seemed so negative. (and inaccurate. i like to think that all graphic designers love what they are doing.) but i went with it.

by the time i got to version 18, i was starting to loose my ability to distinguish between arrangements that worked well and arrangements that just work. cathy came over last night, so i snatched the opportunity to show them to another set of eyes. (it's important to seek the perspective of a sculpture major every once in a while...) and when i told her i didn't like the quote, she was suprised. she said that wasn't how she interpreted it at all. she thought it was really empowering. that it wasn't accusing designers of secretly hating design, but instead that they want their design to be doing bigger things. hmm. i hadn't thought about it like that. my glass was half empty.

after that i figured i should probably google scott stowel. (i don't know why that wasn't the first step. sometimes adobe just sucks you in and you forget about things like, say, research.) turns out he's the owner of open (um, internship! please!) the group responsible for the design of my favorite good magazine. (which, on a side note, now has mini good "field guides" each week at starbucks that you should check out...) and just like that, glass half full.

some typography

this is my typography assignment from earlier today. we're working with a four letter word given out in class and a 10 by 10 dot system. (which proves particularly difficult with angles/curves.) the critique was pretty fun. we got to talk about things like kerning and lowering crossbars. and weigh the pros and cons of changing a single dot. a far cry from the critiques of foundation year. (during which, according to bernard, we all "held hands and sang kumbaya.")

the next step is to test the strength of our letter face and give it a bit of a beating, using the type as the basis for an image.

helvetica!

mica gd majors and closet typography enthusiasts from the community gathered tonight to, in the words of ellen lupton, "celebrate and worship our favorite typeface." helvetica. this was my first time seeing the documentary. i've been waiting. (all i wanted for christmas was the helvetica gift set... but unfortunately the helvetica coffee cup was sold out. caffeine and typography... i really cannot think of any better combination.) and waiting. (i had to live vicariously through tara when she watched it in her first intro to gd class.) & i've been told by so many other graphic designers that it will explain "why you are the way you are." (so true...) the documentary thoughtfully covers both sides of the helvetica debate. & it is as much of an investigation/appreciation of visual society as it is an investigation/appreciation of one swiss typeface that has rocked the world of graphic design for fifty years. such a fun night.

here's some hard core helvetica links if you want to turn up the typographic heat...
helvetica, the film
the history of helvetica
happy birthday, helvetica!
helvetica: homage to a typeface
quiz: helvetica or arial? (very tricky. thanks for showing me this one, dan.)

creatives understand

my t-shirt order from veer.com came in today! (i had been anxiously waiting for 5 days!) a black t-shirt that says "creatives understand" in white, and t-shirt like the jpg above that says "baseline." they had been on my wish list for forever... so when i finally got my own credit card-thingy (it's not really... but i like to call it that) & was able to make online purchases with out parental approval, i just had to have them. but i still have my eye on the helvetica notebook & kern jacket...

& coming soon: some more "life art." i've been having way too much fun with the scanner...

dumb serifs

my addendum to ellen lupton's (love her!) dumb quotes theory, as documented in the ralph lauren department of macy's (my mom likes it... ok.) i'm calling it "dumb serifs." i hope ellen would approve.

go to this universal resource locator for the original "making the world safe for typography" presentation. http://www.papress.com/thinkingwithtype/resources/images/Safe_Type_AIGA.pdf

seriously so funny. laugh out loud.