Designer, Brand Thyself!

I finally got a custom header put together for this blog. Truthfully I didn't mind the "generic" Blogger layout at all. I like what they came up with a lot, and it was no chore for me to keep my musings under their very well-designed header while I figured what I should do on my own. It's much easier for me to design a look for someone else than it is myself. My sis can probably relate; it's similar to her hiring a professional organizer to help her clear the clutter. Hire someone who isn't ATTACHED, who can just get the darned job done. I'm much too aware of the huge list of fonts on my system and I want to try each one. Does it REALLY express what I want to say? Do I want to wear that as a brand, all the time? This process becomes a great exercise in learning empathy for my own clients.

The font I used this time is an old one, Lubalin Graph. It's not what I was planning to use at all; I was planning more of a hand-made font, maybe a very-slightly-funky sans serif. This one I just tried out and it sat there properly. For now. It may change. Right now it's just a header, I'm not calling it my brand.

The art is a painting I did called "Bright People." It's in oil, which is not a medium I use now (too messy!); I just really like the imagery here. What are those colorful people talking about? Why is everyone else blandly staring off in another direction? I would hope to be one of those bright people.

Now if I can just find a type face I feel that way about.

Blowups and no sense of proportion!

I can't get over how few people seem to understand the concept proportion. No drama, and nothing abstract or conceptual here, just the literal ratio of height to width. I get a lot of requests to enlarge a photo or piece of artwork to fit a certain area (usually to fit a standard-sized frame), and the toughest concept for people to GET seems to be this: if I enlarge it one direction, it's going to be enlarged the other direction too. Either that, or it gets stretched or scrunched. I'd think that anyone who works with images would have a good grasp of this idea, but apparently not.

I dunno if anyone will ever see this, but I'm going to make a recipe to follow here.
Divide the desired width by the original one. Take that number and multiply it by the original height. If that result is the same as the desired height, then you've got an original of the same proportion as the new size you want, and you can enlarge it without having to crop it. If not... guess what. Something's getting cropped off.

The options:
1) "float it" -- sort of like the "window box" that movies sometimes use if they are being shown on a TV screen.
2) Distort it -- if it's scanned digitally for enlargement, it CAN be enlarged more one way than another to fit; sometimes you can get away with it if it's not to drastic. Don't try it on a portrait though. Yuck.
3) Get a custom frame made.

Random graphic communication

I've been keeping watch lately for communication graphics without words that just show up as part of a day-to-day routine. It's actually trickier than I might have imagined to find them. A red octagonal sign at an intersection communicates "STOP" even before you notice the word printed on it... but the word is still printed there. Some of the nonverbal graphics I've been consciously aware are arrows (up and down buttons on an elevator. A severe bend in the road. More info on the back). I also will count the striped crosswalks painted at intersections; those have a pretty clear meaning without need for explanation. But I'm disappointed; it seems there would be more examples than that. I'm either seeing them but am so used to them that they are only registering subconsciously, or I live in such a small town that there just isn't much need.

There is one thing I remember from one of my previous jobs though -- it was in the pressroom, which was full of all sorts of big heavy equipment. One machine had a couple of huge rollers that paper fed through, and there was the silliest graphic stuck to it as a warning... it was a silhouette of a guy with long hair, and the hair was caught between the rollers. Silhouette-guy's mouth was wide open; I could practically hear the yelp. It was an effective graphic, I must admit, even though it would never win any design awards.

Who is using a contemporary iconography now? The search continues.

Accessible Info

In the last week I've been asked twice what exactly a graphic designer does. I'm sure there are graphics professionals who would define the role differently, but as far as I'm concerned, it's my job to make information visually accessible (as well as unique and attractive). The old Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes entry packages are an example of anti-design (my opinion). I suppose they served a purpose; miss putting one sticker in place and your entry is probably disqualified ("You may already be a sucker"). On the other hand, the early church had developed a whole iconography to make information accessible to even those who couldn't read (man with a bee hive? That's St. Ambrose. Saint with a palm branch? One that was martyred). Iconography is a little different now. Today if you see a symbol surrounded by a red circle with a diagonal bar through it, you know that you are not supposed to do something (don't smoke, don't enter here, no ghosts allowed). These are pictures that might save a thousand words, even if they don't necessarily paint as many.


I went to a design presentation some time back during which the speaker was disappointed in the lack of a contemporary iconography. Whatever Hieronymous Bosch might have been trying to say in his bizarre artwork is mostly visual gibberish now. And while this type of symbolism isn't quite as necessary now that more people are able to read, I think it is still possible to remind an audience an entire story with a recognizable picture. Our iconography has just changed from religious symbols to fantasy symbols: Indiana Jones with the bullwhip, the Jedi with their light sabres, Mary Poppins with an umbrella and really weird shoes. Or one of the bread and butter jobs of a designer now: branding. Red and white concentric circles for Target, a bloated check mark for Nike -- calling people to our new religion of commerce.


Those are my first thoughts on accessible information as a designer's job. I'm on the watch for examples of good communication and of buried communication. I'll see what I can post here.

Technical Hiccups

Cooooooold snowy day -- 27 degrees and windy. Whitecaps on the bay. Best gas price $1.67. Got let down by technology twice today... I have pretty snow pix to upload to my Facebook account, but all attempts at uploading have failed. On a lower-tech front, I have some sewing to do, but I seem to have bobbin issues today. Bobbin wants to tie knots under the fabric. Arg. Well, could be worse. Just found out another friend has been without power for 4 days... while my lights are on and my heat works! So not so terribly miserable. I'm wondering about motivation these days. So much I want to do, and don't. I think it's partly being lazy and partly being overwhelmed! Really do need to chomp things into smaller pieces and have some small successes, I think. Let's see if the Blog will let me upload some pix!! ***

Well, yes, there they are. Not gonna to the right-side align next time; it's not great. Pix are taken December 14 around March's Point. I dunno what the seagulls were excited about but they look good in the photo.

Holiday Music. Yech.

Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Filled up the truck for $1.79/gallon. Love the price drop, but hate what it's taken to get it.

On my mind now -- Christmas music. Ug. My graphics dept. is upstairs from a retail shop, and we have a holiday radio station playing non-stop. Does anyone really need to hear "Jingle Bell Rock" again in their lifetime? One of the gals downstairs really likes it. I, on the other hand, think it's some of the lamest music that could be foisted on us. I wouldn't object if there were some really grand music like Handel's "Messiah" or maybe Benjamin Britton's "Ceremony of Carols" -- but no, that sort of thing isn't anything that you can play at a retail shop, I suppose. Maybe if I had a passel of little kids that I adored coming to visit every Christmas, I'd have a different attitude toward this genre, but I don't... so it just makes me grinchy. Wasn't that how they forced Noriega out of hiding... by playing music at him that he didn't like, all the time?

Where in the world are my headphones...

Dream Teams

Tuesday nite, crazy windy. Best gas price $2.15 (!!).

I've been watching the "extras" on the Star Wars DVDs over the last few days. There's a running theme on the "making-of" featurettes included with a lot of the most amazing films (LOTR trilogy and Serenity are two more that come to mind) -- and it's how mindful each person in the production is of the vital contributions of the rest of the team. There's a huge amount of appreciation and respect shared among the crew members, particularly when they are working on a project that they are outrageously passionate about, and which is almost too doggone hard for them! It's wonderful to watch the special effects guys raving over the composer, the producer gushing about the costume designer, the director thrilled over the prop makers... all of them saying pretty much the same things: couldn't do my job without those guys ... exhausted but excited... wouldn't miss this for anything...

This looks like creativity at its absolute best. What a pleasure to be a part of that sort of team! And yet I hear and experience a much different thing back here in the real world -- many more stories of frustration and friction than camaraderie and mutual inspiration. What might the elements be which change a work environment from a dehumanizing place into an exhilarating one?

The first thing that comes to mind is a leader for whom everyone concerned has huge trust and respect (George Lucas, Pete Jackson, Joss Whedon... yeah, those would be folks you could probably trust to get it right...). Another thing is a project that's truly worth doing (will there EVER be another Tolkien?). And another thing would be a team of folks who know their job so well that they can work with confidence (as opposed to ego, which I think is a fraud's way of faking confidence). Must be a tough collection of things to put together. I wonder how rare it really is?

Well, as they say on the LOLcats web site... "want."

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P.S. Happy Birthday, mom...
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