Former student Alice Woodruff posted this list on my Facebook page.

It’s good thoughts and will probably offend some. Turning off one’s ego long enough to connect with others is often difficult. I have to enact #25 before week’s end. A good, unexpected apology for something I didn’t expect to occur will make someone else’s day. Fingers crossed.

[1]    Most people hide their suffering better than you think, you pass dozens of people a day on the street without any idea how well they’re wearing their tragedies.

[2]    People’s names are the sweetest sounds they hear. You should make a point of being good at learning and using them.

[3]    People love to spread their misery around, but not as much as they enjoy being lifted out of it.

[4]    Being young is not in and of itself an achievement. Neither is being beautiful. But people often treat you as if they are.

[5]    For a lot of people, music is a reflection of who they are and their relationship to life. Remember that before insulting someone’s favorite band.

[6]    The Golden Age never existed. People are always trying to get back to a time when things were simpler and better. The world was a far more dangerous place fifty years ago, especially if you were black or a woman or gay or diagnosed with cancer.

[7]    Most people, whatever their choice of profession, feel like complete novices that are about to be found out as frauds and fakers.

[8]    Most people love quite helplessly, despite what they would have you believe.

[9]    Show me the most beautiful woman in the world, and I’ll show you a man who’s bored with taking her to bed. Show me the most devoted husband, and I’ll show you a woman who feels that he’s just not doing enough. A lot of people are never satisfied because…

[10]    Most people have no idea what they want out of life, let alone how to get it. Most others are still waiting for someone to give them permission.

[11]    Whatever it is about yourself that you’re trying to hide, it’s usually the first thing someone else notices about you.

[12]    You should call your mother and tell her you love her. Like most women who decide to marry and have children or help take care of a dying parent, she probably sacrificed a lot of her dreams to be there for you, and she wishes that you appreciated her more for it. Susan Boyle represented this demographic powerfully, but for every one of her, was a woman like your mother who will never get that standing ovation.

[13]    If you tell a man about your problems, he assumes you want some sort of help or advice. If you tell a woman about your problems, she assumes you simply want a shoulder to cry on. Women rarely want to be told what to do about a problem, and men rarely want to be coddled through a hard time.

[14]    Creative people thrive on feedback. You can never give them enough of it, and you will endear yourselves to them mightily if you do it frequently, thoughtfully, and honestly. They understand far better than most think, the value of time.

[15]    For most people religion is a social commitment more than a spiritual one.

[16]    A lot of people who consider themselves intelligent can’t properly label all the states on a map, or all the countries in Europe, let alone Africa or the Middle East. Most couldn’t list off the ten commandments, five pilars, or the amendments of the Constitution, and feel that politics are too complicated to bother with understanding, let alone talking about.

[17]    A lot of Christians have never, and will never, read the Bible. Most of them will conduct their lives exactly as they would if they’d never attended a single church service. It is nearly impossible to tell a Christian from an atheist by their actions alone. Both Christians and atheists will probably find the previous statement offensive.

[18]    For nearly every crazy idea, you can find a fully credentialed scientist who will back it up.

[19]    People are more frequently kind and compassionate than they are fooled by our manipulations or lies.

[20]    Life often works in reverse. People treat strangers more politely than their family or friends. People will ask a friend’s band to play their party for free, will call their best girlfriend to come over and cut their hair without a thought to payment, but would never dream of calling a mechanic they found in the phonebook and asking them to donate their time and labor to fix a broken down car.

[21]    Everyone has done something they would be desperately embarrassed for anyone else to know about.

[22]    Never joke with a man about his sexual performance, and never joke with a woman about her appearance. No matter how much they make fun of these things in themselves, never, never do it for them. They may laugh along with you, but you’ve just driven a tiny needle into their brain.

[23]    Most women get married because they want to have a wedding, most men get married because they are ready to settle down with a woman for the rest of their lives. Women, statistically speaking are more likely to suffer clinical depression if married, and initiate upwards of 80% of all divorces citing irreconcilable differences. People expect a significant other to change their lives and make them happy without any conception of how this change will take place. Sort of like assuming a college degree is going to guarantee you security in life without ever thinking of how this can be practically possible. I call this the ‘If you build it, they will come’ approach to romance and one out of every two times it ends in divorce.

[24]    Most people are worried they’re not having as much fun as they should be. This usually makes men cheat and women nag.

[25]    When you insult or offend someone, always admit it and apologize promptly, even if it wasn’t your intention or you had no idea. It is always better to be a penitent villain than to appear so socially inept as to not recognize when you’ve hurt the people around you. An evil genius is someone to bring to your side, a blundering fool is someone to keep as far away from you as possible.

Sketches by Alice Woodruff

Here’s a roundup of advice graphics.

I’m always frustrated when beginning students give up prematurely, when there are those who see being ‘creative’ as either a job or something not important and/or not realizing the more a creative works at what they’re doing, the better they will get; collaboration is great, rules get in the way, others will never understand you and that’s okay, work should be fun (especially hard work), breaks are important and a zillion other things.

Click to view larger/jump.

Found via hyenabonz

Many creatives are introverts – some famous ones include J.K. Rowling, Eleanor Roosevelt, Clint Eastwood, David Letterman, Howard Stern, Steve Martin. The trick is most introverts are annoyed just enough by the banalities of everyday societal demands that one typically doesn’t want to get bogged down by the bullshit. Introverts have important thinking to do – typically, introverts are out to change the world in one way or another.

There’s a graphic that’s been bouncing around the interwebs (below) that doesn’t quite hit the mark. Shyness is something totally different.

Above, a list that nails it (and yes, the type is stretched. Typographers: Deal.) – it came from this cool post. And here’s an article with more detail (book available too).

When I’m in quiet mode, I’m busy. Then I come out and play when in a classroom or social situation. Even though the second part is a learned behavior, it is also quite fun and a great balance. Wouldn’t change it for anything.

Bullshit

Found via Lindsey, Jes

‘Perfectionism is exhausting’

I’ve watched my students push themselves so hard to get an ‘A’ that they’ll overlook what it really takes to come up with creative work.

Here’s another take on the concept – by author Michael Nobbs, with a pitch for his book Sustainable Creativity.

‘Creative people across all genres, it seems, have this reputation for being enormously mentally unstable  . . .  [and we've] accepted collectively the notion that creativity and suffering are somehow inherently linked’

Creativity = a horrible life? Anxieties, fear, alcohol – ?

In her TED Talk from 2009, Author Elizabeth Gilbert throws out some diversionary concepts to keep going – be undaunted.

What really motivates us to do the things we do? I’ve read studies like these over and over – it’s not quite money. And it’s not very simple either.

Found via Bill Mead

‘For our first release, Alphabuild for iOS, we wanted to pay tribute to the process of building letters (which is the other fun work we do here at our studio). We wish building letters for our clients was as zany and colorful as it is in Alphabuild. On the other hand, we’re glad we don’t have aliens, glue bottles and sawblades trying to mess up our letter drawings.’

Featuring types from the great Psy/Ops library (including my own Jeanne Moderno) as well as a few tikis (see below) – James Beall’s Alphabuild is a fun, quirky educational alphabet game for iPhone, iPad and iPod.

Snag it in the App store. Website here, Twitter here. And free goodies here.

Happy alphabuilding!

Found via Library of Congress

‘Between 1939 and 1944, the OWI and the Farm Security Administration made thousands of photographs, approximately 1,600 of them in color’

Despite what my dad told me, the 1930s and 40s were actually in color.

More pics here, here, here and here.

Film for the New Zealand Book Council, produced by Colenso BBDO and animated by Andersen M Studio.

And you can snag a copy of Maurice Gee’s Going West here.

Found via Daniel Will-Harris

‘Watch the definitive documentary on the husband-wife design icons’

A new biography on Charles and Ray Eames is airing on PBS this week. Powerful and unflinching, more than just chairs. Playful optimism, powerful clients, amazing budgets, odd obsessions. Narrated by James Franco, titles feature the incredible Eames fonts.

Watch it online here.

Above, the IBM Pavilion at the 1964 Worlds Fair.

Below, Eames’ complete short film The Information Machine. Commissioned in 1958 by IBM, it was designed to get a fearful population to trust this perceived-dangerous, unknown mechanical variable: Computers!

‘The rectangles on top of each label represent main ingredients, and bars on the bottom provide a quick thumbs or thumbs down for a breakdown of fat content, carbohydrates, etc. Icons of spoons and scoops are used to supplement serving size since no one knows what 182 grams looks or feels like.’

Above, Renee Walker’s food nutrition label redesign, winner of UC Berkeley School of Journalism’s Rethink the Food Label competition.

Her work was originally part of an interdisciplinary topic studio focused on contemporary health issues; she has her original versions posted here.

Below, a few of my favorites from the competition:

Corinne Pritchard

Fabius Leineweber

Bradley Mu

Found via FlowingData

Final project from my beginning typography course at American River College: Futura Condensed Extra Bold, crafted as iced chocolate cake by student Lilie Matyuk.

Food-based type is always a tricky undertaking, but luckily we had Teresa Urkofsky teaching next door – in the culinary classroom. Teresa had recipes and techniques ready to advise.

I’ve been drawing some form of type since the 1980s. And have been teaching type for several years now.

It’s hard to ‘go digital’ when introducing typography, since letterform history goes back hundreds (and thousands) of years.

So I still use 15th century era handtools in my introductory type courses.

Good fonts still contain elements from long ago – and today, all we really do is recreate what was once done with broad pens – using digital tools.

font games!
To get a taste of how ‘us professionals’ render type these days, check out Mark MacKay’s brilliant Shape Type (pictured above) and Kern Type. Both are nutshell adaptations of today’s process – kerning being a majorly overlooked, but necessary typesetting skill.

digital type tools
Fonts today are vector-based, so a mastering the basics of Adobe Illustrator is the start.

Beyond this, there are a bunch of applications on the market for drawing fonts. FontLab is the big one, Fontographer is the old one with the easy interface – and TypeTool is a barebones student-discounted alternative. Unlike Illustrator, these font tools take into account how letters are drawn, with built ins that make it easy to adjust edges. Karen Cheng’s Designing Type is also a must resource to have.

And I do all my logo drawings directly in FontLab – after multiple sketches in pen and ink. It’s just easier that way.

Shape Type found via Mark Nutini

Change to Win’s animate of ‘The End of the American Dream?’ – done in the style of RSA Animate.

Found via Occupy San Francisco

‘What role we are playing. Making the filthy oil company look ‘clean,’ making the car brochure higher-quality than the car, making the spaghetti sauce look like it’s been put up by grandma, making the junky condo look hip. Is all that okay, or just the level to which design and many other professions have sunk?’ –Tibor Kalman

I first discovered Tibor Kalman’s work sometime around 1990.

He was doing something that most everyday graphic designers seemed to be avoiding. Questioning things.

His adeptness at social change – being a responsible human being, helping others – happened by working within the system. First at Barnes & Noble, M&Co., then Interview, Colors magazines. And as a teacher.

Before he passed in 1999, Kalman was the facilitator of what I see as a great awakening in our industry. And those who were part of his circle – such as his wife Maira, Stefan Sagmeister, Scott Stowell, Alexander Isley – have made graphic design much more than pretty brochures and generic logotypes.

Good design for good purposes is good. Making shitheads lots of money thru questionable practices is bad. Seems simple, right?

It isn’t.

I posted this because the rest of the world is waking up just about right now. And this past week, Steven Heller wrote up a great piece on Kalman.

Pictured from top down, advertisements and promotions for NYC’s Restaurant Florent. With Alexander Isley, from 1985–88. Found via Tibor Kalman: Design and Undesign and MoMA

‘Drop caps not bombs’

An anonymously-created stencil interpretation of myself – spotted last quarter on the wall at the Art Institute of California Sacramento.

(Okay, I know which student made it, but I ain’t tellin)

‘I’ve been doing posters for tons of cities across America’

In the past few weeks, one of my former students has found herself cast as the visual heart of the Occupy movement. Raina Dayne started with offering to do a poster and it’s blossomed into something much bigger.

Raina’s images can be downloaded for use at the Occupy Together website. Facebook page here, shirts here.

‘Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.’ –Steve Jobs

Intuition is very powerful, once one knows how to trust it. It involves turning off the insecurities of ego and concentrating on pure feeling. And it works wonders.

The news of Steve Jobs’ passing came in via social media. I saw a Facebook post right after I gave a design history lecture on early modern artists and how they’d managed to change the world.

I was fortunate enough to both go to school and work in and around Silicon Valley where Jobs’ approach reverberates and inspires. Playing it safe, following the status quo will not lead to new things, will not improve life as we know it – and Jobs knew how to get the best work out of Apple’s creative team.

He knew that details are excruciatingly important. Leveraging design, using good typography, giving us what we really want – instead of what we think we need – was all part of the package.

Thinking different makes the world a better place. That’s the legacy he leaves.

Image by Dylan Roscover, using Apple’s suite of fonts from over the years

‘handprinted and unique posters in A0 format, printed and digital invitations and adverts in various Dutch magazines   . . .   woodcut printed.’

E-flyer for Alban Schelbert and Christopher West’s End Exam Show at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. From 2009.

Found via manystuff

‘Having many food and chemical sensitivities has been a largely trial-and-error process for what can be tolerated and what can’t, and has resulted in many creative kitchen science experiments’

Web designer/cartoonist (and former student of mine) Annie Hero has developed some major health problems. Recently, she’s taken to blogging about her approach to reclaiming her life from years of processed food intolerance.

Annie’s WTF are you eating? can be found here.

‘Spice up your design’

Hanging on the walls at Ai Sacramento: AIGA poster, designed and photographed by student Devon Cloutier.

At one point, there was a text change and in lieu of starting over, Devon fixed it – orally, swallowing a lot of the saucy rooster.

Designers do suffer for their art.

From earlier this year: Behind the scenes with third generation heiress/model/designer Margherita Missoni. Includes footage of Missoni’s famed knitting equipment and production processes.

Found via Vogue Russia

Art Nouveau meets Russian Constructivism. Motion design by Matt Duplessie.

‘A typeface designed to reflect the aesthetic qualities of Soviet Union product design and manufacture. The typeface uses a unilateral x-height, cap height and faux Cyrillic to create a blocky, angular and awkward response. To allude to the dated methods of production, I produced the entire face as printing blocks.’

Andy Barnes’ Eastern Block typeface. Website here.

Found via Arts Thread

‘Avant-garde German artists were now branded both enemies of the state and a threat to German culture.’

In 1937, the Nazi party hosted ‘Entartete Kunst.’ This traveling exhibition showcased modern art as the work of madmen, ‘degenerates’ out to destroy the world.

Confiscated art – works of Kirchner, Nolde, Beckmann, Ernst, Chagall, Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh, Dali, Klee, Kandinsky, Lissitzky, Grosz and many others – filled the show. After, the pieces were either destroyed or auctioned off.

For more about Entartete Kunst, read here or here. Exhibition catalog here.

Art, ideas, original thoughts: All dangerous.

This past weekend I watched a documentary on The Inquisition. Things such as inquisitions, persecutions – Entartete Kunst, McCarthyism – cycle throughout history.

What beliefs, doctrines and laws exist today that limit freedom, individuality and progress?

The concept of salad dressing – oil and water – is the basis for the magic we call printing. I learned this a long time ago, in a class. Or something.

Also, years ago, learned that this stuff is pretty much one of the few things that will remove printing ink from skin.

Pictured, the typographic work of UK-based Craig Ward.

Harry Potter makeup tutorials. Drag option at bottom.

Found via Trendhunter

Above, advice from artist Tom Sachs for anyone starting work in a studio. Interns, PAs, gophers. Art, design or otherwise.

Below, Sach’s iconic Prada Toilet, Chanel accessories and the Hermés Value Meal.

‘Vorticism was a radical art movement that shone briefly but brightly in the years before and during World War I.’

A few months back, I picked up Black Sparrow Press’ reprints of Wyndham Lewis’ Vorticist journal Blast Magazine. Vorticism was the British entry into the realm of modern art.

There were only two issues – which ‘blasted’ old Edwardian forms in favor of the new machine aesthetic that was about to take over the world.

Out with the old, in with the new, as it were.

The two issues of Blast – there were only two – are available for browsing at issuu. Check them out here and here.

I see a connection between Lewis’ work and the original production design of TRON. But that may just be me.

There is also a retrospective now going on at the Tate. Video referencing the work of Vorticist practitioner Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915), below.

‘Before there were photocopiers, scanners and printers, there was the Ditto Machine (a.k.a. spirit duplicator), produced by the Illinois-based Ditto Corporation; originally introduced in 1923.’ -mnn

Clifford the Big Red Dog was supposed to be red. But in the handout I got in kindergarten, he was purple.

So was my introduction to the Ditto Machine – a device used to replicate most of the paperwork I’d used in elementary school.

Some of my earliest experiences as a ‘graphics’ guy was playing with one of these machines – seeing what it could reproduce and what it couldn’t. It couldn’t reproduce much. The copies were so smudgy, Dittos were grunge before grunge was grunge.

And the smell of the purple ink was incredible. Fruity and chemically at the same time! Tho it turns out ink ingredients – isopropanol and methanol – are toxic substances. Who knew?

Cept for a few high school teachers who were holdouts (‘I don’t trust that newfangled photocopier thing’) all the dittos in my life were gone by end of grade 12.

Snag a tee here.

Images found via They Always Come Back, a tree grows in brookline, Zazzle, Jean&Vic

‘Paul Renner’s Futura interpreted in metal’

Handmade model with engine. Cesar Santos Perez’s final project from my most-recent experimental typography course at Ai Sacramento.

‘What I did on my summer vacation’

Last week, I spent four full days with a handful of some really cool teens.

I found myself saying, ‘Yes, I’ll do it. What is it?’ to teaching a week-long Summer Studio workshop at Ai Sacramento.

I called the whole thing ‘Designer Mashup’ – and set about having my students mix contemporary designers with historical luminaries.

Design history, research, handmade collages, form studies and handing work off to other students (to reinterpret) were part of the process.

Pictured, some of the final pieces.

Designers studied included Paula Scher, Georges Braque, Josef Albers, El Lisstizky, Rick Griffin, Jessica Hische, Raoul Hausmann, Marian Bantjes, Hannah Höch, Alvin Lustig, Shepard Fairey and David Carson.

The original, above. Here’s a short history of the computer mouse.

School children in Quebec are asked to guess what these odd, old technologies may be.

Found via Alice Savoie

Vintage western-influenced Japanese matchbox cover.

Article here.

Video for Pig With The Face Of A Boy’s A Complete History of the Soviet Union as Told by a Humble Worker, Arranged to the Melody of TETRIS. Directed, animated and edited by Chris Lincé.

Sybil Andrews’ Speedway (above) is a linotype print commissioned by the London Passenger Transport Board in 1934 to advertise what was a new spectator sport, Speedway Racing.

The final piece – like the famous ‘keep calm’ poster – was never used for its intended purpose.

Found via Gunther Stephan

The work of Natalya Goncharova (1881-1962).

‘Metzinger celebrated the salutory effects of exercise on the male population in his ‘Cyclist,’ which focused on a sport that historian Eugen Weber has described as a French creation, and one affordable to the French working class by 1900.’ -Mark Antliff, Patricia Leighten

In 1913, Jean Metzinger (1883-1956) created his Cubist Cyclist to depict audience, participant and the interaction involved.

(Been doing a lot of reading on early modern art)

‘Does the venue make the music? From outdoor drumming to Wagnerian operas to arena rock, he explores how context has pushed musical innovation’

Found via Lucy Cook

‘For his thesis, Dong Yoon Park, a Masters student at Parsons, built an iPad app designed to teach pros and novices alike the arcane world of typography.’

Details here.

Found via Taxi

Designing for use is something often overlooked by designers. What happens once the design is in the hands of actual people?

Stewart Brand takes a long look at design AFTER it’s implemented – in this case, the design of buildings. Does ‘form follow function?’

6-part, 3-hour BBC Documentary. Based on Brand’s book. Music by Brian Eno. From 1997.

Posted in its entirety on Google. Part one above. For part two thru six, go here.

‘it took a week to do it’

For anyone who’s taken an intro to typography course with me – there is a fair amount of stippling involved as part of some really complex letterform studies.

And one of my former students – Freya Kiessling – who dotted her way thru letters – has gone national with her work.

Her color Conan O’Brien pointillism illustration (above) was used as a bumper on Conan’s show, April 11, 2011. The drawing was submitted thru their Coco MoCA page (many, many images abound).

And today – per show request – a print hangs in the show’s green room at Warner Bros. in Burbank.

Below, another Freya-produced Conan piece – from a beginning animation class.

Tonite this link just sort of popped in from former student Campbell BrownKorbel. It’s secrets that every creative – from illustrator (the focus) to designer to comedian to (hell) anarchist – should know.

Phil McAndrew’s Super Obvious Secrets That I Wish They’d Teach In Art School. Read the whole thing here.

Dmitriy Antropov’s final project was a Gill Sans maze, hand crafted from foam.

After we tried to actually do the maze (and failed), Dmitriy reached down and carefully removed a small partition – near the bottom of the a – and we were able to complete.

‘escaping the norm’

Just finished up my Friday night beginning type course – and final projects can take any form. Last night, Christopher Gianni-Embrey showed up for class with an old computer monitor.

Inspired by a recent viewing of The Shawshank Redemption, Christopher visualized the word ‘escaping’ using Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic.

Not on screen, but in screen.

The final piece was Christopher’s first ever attempt at model making. It was crafted from mostly found materials. As he put it, ‘driving around town, there’s a lot of stuff people throw away.’

In the process, he ended up with a bunch of dead computer monitors – just in case the first attempt didn’t pan out.

My next Friday night type course is scheduled for Fall 2011 at American River College. Course number: ARTNM 303.

‘For less than the price of a design textbook, a student can now have a sturdy and contemporary humanist sans serif family that fits pretty much any design application, and will remain useful long after academic studies and well into a professional career in design.’

Gibson is a humanist sans serif honoring designer John Gibson, designed by Rod McDonald and digitized by Patrick Griffin and Kevin King.

And it’s available at student pricing: Eight complete fonts for $48 (that comes out to six bucks a font). With revenues benefiting The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC).

Details here. Snag it here.

‘Depero Futuristi is a team at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center re-imagining Balli Plastici, the ‘plastic dance’ created by Italian Futurist Fortunato Depero in 1918.’

More info here.

Copies of the final project are available for educational/promotional purposes, contact the team for details.

Nicky Bradwell survived my typography and design history classes and is now making music. Each month, he’ll have a new FLAVOR on Soundcloud.

Facebook page here.

MarchFLAVOR by superhumanyouth

TripleRainbowMix by superhumanyouth