‘I’m a Sexy Font’ poster, created by Obtenebratio
Back in the early 1990s, the Carol Twombly-drawn Adobe Caslon was one of the first font packages I ever purchased.
I’ve been in love with it ever since. I use it on just about everything – including this blog’s title, my own logotype. I’m a font designer myself, but still don’t consider my own letterforms to even come close to what was accomplished with this particular interpretation of Caslon. [Read more →]
‘The things your teachers tell you in class are not gospel. You will get conflicting information. It means that both are wrong. Or both are true. This never stops. Most decisions are gray, and everything lives on a spectrum of correctness and suitability.’
‘Realize that you are learning a trade, so craft matters more than most say.’
‘Libraries are a good place. The books are free there, and it smells great.’
‘Don’t become dependent on having other people pull it out of you while you’re in school. If you do, you’re hosed once you graduate.’
‘Everything is interesting to someone. That thing that you think is bad is probably just not for you.’
‘Think of every project as an opportunity to learn, but also an opportunity to teach.’
A few pieces of good advice for design students from the Office of Frank Chimero.
Read all of his advice here.
Found via Saawan Ebe
So I’m pretty much out the door right now – driving down to TypeCon.
And this Thursday morning I’ll be speaking as an ‘icebreaker’ in the Type & Design Education Forum. I’ll be going over a bunch of things I’ve learned while teaching; things that I’ve discovered work very well in a creative classroom. [Read more →]
I have my social side, and my quiet side. Need both. My quiet side results in new fonts and other creative endeavors.
Visual poem (above) by Tanya Davis.
Found via Porcelain Grotto
‘I could not be happier about this, or any more proud to live in a city that recognise the importance of preserving this kind of work.’
Vintage signs unearthed and preserved in Copenhagen. Details here.
Found via Martin Klasch
Art by Patrick Drayus
The great Jennifer Jacobsen has kept me in the loop on this: The Corporate Wrath Art and Poetry Show at the Marco Fuoco Gallery in Sacramento. The show starts at 7 tomorrow night, Saturday July 24, 2010.
Artists featured include Brianna Lea Pruett, Keely Sadira Doran, Sue Dedina, Patrick Drayus, Bari Kenned, Willie, Sir Lucy Foot, Marco Fuoco, Shaw Reed, Gene Avery and more. Spoken word, music, interactive, live art . . . .
‘For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong – and how we can fix it.’
Great article in Newsweek. Read it here.
I have my own take, which has to do with how difficult it actually is to be creative. How society does its best to discourage and strip creativity from us so we can be good worker bees. Sit down, shut up and do your job.
what is creativity
As the article mentions: ‘To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).’
Today, divergent thinking is often discouraged – but if it does take place, it can be so divergent, it can’t be implemented as a convergent – or coherent – plan.
And at the college level, I’m at ground zero teaching this stuff.
Sometimes it creates wonders, sometimes it only goes halfway. Other times, it’s so frightening to attempt something new . . . creativity finds itself at a standstill. The work veers back into mediocrity. Because that’s safe.
Pictured above: The incredible work of Graham Roumieu, visit his portfolio site here. Twas more creative than the trite crayon flag that came with the Newsweek article. Found via swissmiss. Article found via Adam Helweh.
‘The 40-hour workweek was born in the industrial age, when people made widgets in factories. The modern world is a much different place than the one we used to work in, and smart individuals are discovering that time doesn’t equal productivity.’ -Everett Bogue
Was in the North Bay recently and picked up a copy of the North Bay Bohemian. Great article by Leilani Clark on simplifying one’s life.
Read it here.
Resources mentioned include NEF’s 21 hours report, the books Plenitude: The New Economics of Truth Wealth by Juliet Schor, The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard and blogs by Tammy Strobel and Everett Bogue – plus Shareable.net.
Above: Illustration by Yamauchi Kazuaki; which had nothing to do with the article, just liked it a tad better than the stock image they posted. Found via Pomegranita.
Laurie Anderson’s spoken word performance on Letterman. From last Thursday.
Poem by Todd Alcott, kinetic type by Beth Fulton.
I’ve known Marian Bantjes a few years – mostly thru emails and online notes. I found her work years ago, it blew me away so I put it in an exhibition.
And in watching her recent TED video (above), I’ve noticed some career parallels. Though I’m not looking at a parallel of work (not even close), what I see is a parallel of thinking.
design rut
I’ve been a designer working ‘behind the scenes’ for over two decades.
I was a paste up artist and I have the scars to prove it. My first graphic design courses were part of a drafting program – no computers – and today I’m shocked at how important work habits developed during that time have become. I don’t consider my work innovative or new – simply bulletproof. And I’ve made a lot of money for a lot of other people. And mostly, I’ve never quite fit in with my contemporaries. And the battles that come from this have raged on for a long time.
A few years ago I had to ask myself this tough question:
Why the fuck do I no longer enjoy what I do??
The answer was telling. And not very simple. Part of it involves the temporary nature of my field. Most of what I’ve designed, doesn’t exist anymore.
But most of the problems I saw came from letting too many other people have control over what I do and how I do it. Working within perceptions of how others see my field – graphic design – really took the wind out of my sails. For this simple reason:
Graphic design can be so much more than people who work in our field think it is.
I seem to see this. But not many others do.
turnaround
About two years ago I made the conscious decision that I will only work on jobs that I enjoy.
This is a key decision, in that I’d reached a bottomed out, enough is enough point in my career. I had some serious work and financial setbacks and had to put a stop to the . . . bleeding. For lack of a better term.
And the work I have in right now, I love doing.
I love teaching, so I just took on SEVEN classes (all typography, one design history course) and this was one of the most fun quarters/semesters I’ve had. And in my spare time, I draw fonts, design really goofy stuff and post whatever inspires me to this blog. Because I love it.
Will it lead to something else? Who knows? Who cares?
But enough about me. Watch Marian’s talk. She’s figured it out, mostly. And what she does – what all visual artists do – is very important.
Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
My wife is a Scrabble phenom. And one of her hush-hush strategies is the legal two letter words one can use in play.
For one of my specimens for my Chandler 42 fonts (above), she created a connected word chart listing these and a few others.
Lonesome Road: Dean Elliott & His Big Band
Birds absolutely LOVE Dean Elliot’s 1962 track, Lonesome Road. Cluck always sings along.
Photos by mehallo
‘Creative people, like those with psychotic illnesses, tend to see the world differently to most. It’s like looking at a shattered mirror’ -Mark Millard, UK psychologist
Interesting BBC article: ‘Creative minds mimic schizophrenia.’
Found via Jeanne Mehallo, Nikoletta Kanakis
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