B-A-N-A-N-A-S

The other day, while moving the fruit bowl aside on my way to the dish of Almond M&Ms, my eye got hung up on the slight difference between the two blue stickers on the bunch of bananas. One was the Chiquita logo, one was a little message to me. At first I thought it was yet another manifestation of the Relevancy Shuffle, invented that one time people started to tune out traditional media. A nice example of the Relevancy Shuffle is the hubcap ad. It's a medium that screams "last ditch!" I actually, physically can't hear the message of a hubcap advertiser over the sound of traditional media drawing its last, ragged breath. You: "Oh here we go again, another 'web is the future' speech." Me: "Whatevs!" I'm not against traditional media (mostly because I don't want to hack-off the traditional agency people I hope to land freelance work with while I can, before they go the way of the slap bracelet). I am against super-intrusive advertising. I'm against media sales forces making an medium out of everything not nailed down, or spinning, as it were. But I was happily surprised to find the person trying to reach me from the peel was ol' Chiquita herself. And tastefully so, I might add (or ad?). While her website commits the near-unpardonable sin of auto-play music as well as the on-Charlie's-last-nerve effect of gradient-ing a solid color out into a photo (a scathing write-up of this effect, among others, is coming to a blog near you this Fall.), she has some sharp folks in the print department. So, barring Google ads on the peels of electric bananas, this is one "new" medium I can dig. Chiquita's one resourceful chica.

Land Developers, Broadband Providers and the Puny Concerns of the Everyman

I just got my internet set up yesterday and found out that, instead of being DSL, it would be dial-up, because no one had run any broadband abilities into this community yet because it was too new. So, until broadband adoption climbs from it's apparently too low percentage of 42% of middle-income Americans, it will not have proved its marketability/market penetration to the providers enough for them to run a little wire out this way. They are wise business people, those broadband providers. The water and power companies just go 'round willy-nilly with their pipes and cable, placing the risky bet that the community will be inhabited. Horse Hockey. Welcome to the 21st Century, land developers. Why should you bother yourself with the technological abilities of your communities? You are only building future cities and expanding the inhabitability of a nation. Don’t sweat the small stuff; you can get in and out of a land development deal with your sack of change without giving societal advancement a second thought. That’s easy money. Social responsibility is for suckers. And here’s an “Atta kid!” for the broadband providers. Way to play it safe. Don’t take a chance on being the only available high-speed internet provider in a new community. Cornering the market by getting there first is just a bunch of people talking. Wait ‘til you can start making dimes the same day you run wire. That’ll create good will. It's cool though; living at Colonial technology levels is a real novelty. Which reminds me, I gotta run help Maw churn the butter, then go carve Paw some new wooden teeth before I lose the daylight.

Blueprint

If you care at all about setting your peepers on tight, beautiful typography, you will love, LOVE reading Blueprint. It's Martha Stewart's new magazine and it's impeccably designed. The typography is as bang-on as it can be and it's chock full of great ideas for designing your living and work space. I'm a big believer in designers being designers in every aspect of their lives. We all do it anyway. We design our living space. We design our work space, whether it's a tiny cube or a home office. So why not subscribe to a pub or two to get some great ideas? There's no reason not to, especially when you can get your first one free. Run out to your nearest grocery store or Barnes & Noble and at least pick up this month's issue of Blueprint (blue cover with pretty lady in a yellow shirt and gray suede skirt and a little dog on a stool) and leaf over to the "How Suede It Is" article on page 106, (look at what a good little helper I am!) lay eyes on that left facing page of pure typographic beauty and I defy you to put it back on the shelf and walk away. You will not! Not if you've ever even cared a little about typography. Do it.

A Typographic Grudge

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Originally uploaded by typeiswhereitsat.

Well, I just recently moved my office and family out to Fort Worth (Fowert Wuth to the natives). My brother-in-law flew down to Tampa to help me with the drive back and we decided to take in some sights along the way.

We stopped in Mobile, Alabama to see the USS Alabama. I highly recommend your stopping there if you are passing through. Most people want to get a long road trip over with as fast as they can, but if we don't stop and smell the History, we'll miss some really cool things.

Anyway, I like taking photos of typography in all its forms, so I was happily snapping placcards on the ship when I came across this little ditty. That's a very suspect choice of line-break there. There are leagues of room on the last line to fit all of "Japanese Navy", maybe even enough to do it twice. So why break it at Jap?

Maybe the curators are harboring more than the battleship.

Better Type-Setting Through Clean Living

After reading this excerpt from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, you may, like me, be newly-curious to have a look at books printed in London in the early 1700s to see if they look like they were type-set while drunk. "At my first admission into the printing-house I took to working at press, imagining I felt a want of bodily exercise I had been used to in America, where press-work is mixed with the composing. I drank only water; the other workmen, near fifty in number, were great drinkers of beer. On occasion I carried up and down stairs a large form of type in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands. They wondered to see, from this and several instances, that the Water-American, as they called me, was stronger than themselves, who drank strong beer! We had an ale-house boy, who attended always in the house to supply the workmen. My companion at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon about six o'clock, and another pint when he had done his day's work. I thought this a detestable custom; but it was necessary, he supposed, to drink strong beer that he might be strong to labor. I endeavored to convince him that the bodily strength afforded by beer could only be in proportion to the grain or flour of the barley dissolved in the water of which it was made; that there was more flour in a pennyworth of bread; and therefore if he could eat that with a pint of water it would give him more strength than a quart of beer. He drank on, however and had four or five shillings to pay out of his wages every Saturday night for that vile liquor, an expense I was free from. And thus these poor devils keep themselves always under." (near the end of Chapter III) Read books.

Michael, the 80s hate you back.

The other day during one of our weekly coffee sessions, my buddy and I were venting about poorly treated 80s kitch. The latest offense being the still-in-production Transformers live-action movie. From the production photos on the intertron, it looks bleek and unfaithful. So, as our angst grew, we imagined what it would be like if our youth culture avenged itself in semi-tarantino-style. This is what we came up with. It made us feel better. I hope it makes you feel better. *********************************************************** A pack of top-brass movie execs walk down the hall of the studio headquarters on their way to a meeting about yet another 80s revival movie, the very timely, live-action Captain Planet: Inconveniently Yours, staring Andy Serkis as Captain’s body and Al Gore as his face. They all pushed through the doors into the dark boardroom and the last exec flipped on the lights. They jumped back, startled, and one of the men let out a sharp, high scream and immediately regretted how womanly it sounded. They all stared in disbelieve at the entire pantheon of 80's Pop Culture, some sitting, some standing, at one end of the long conference table. But something was different about them. They were older, and looked mean and worn, and from the way they were standing together they looked like so many primarily colored Corleones. They scanned from side to side with an increasing wonderment at how they all fit in the boardroom: K.I.T.T, the TMNT, Corey Feldman, Gary Coleman, who was carrying Emmanuel Lewis on his front in a Baby Bjorn™, the Copper Kid who, before this little meeting would end, will have used a red-hot coat-hanger to perform a no-anesthesia frontal lobotomy on one of the more nervy executives to make an example out of him, Punky Brewster and Daphney from Scooby Doo. The doors slammed shut to reveal Sloth and Robocop blocking the way. The high-back chair at the far end of the table, and in the middle of the 80s Pop Cast, slowly turned and was empty, save a pall of smoke that rose from the seat just below the table. Coleman reached down and flipped the hydraulic handle and the chair raised slowly to reveal Papa Smurph, wearing Armanni (he had been smart with his money), holding a smoldering Cuban and nursing a highball glass of Jack, straight. There was silence. "Have a seat," said Coleman at Papa's right hand. No one moved. Raphael looked up from the three lines of blow on K.I.T.T's hood and sent a Sai whooshing past one of the execs' ears and into the wall behind him to show they meant business. They all sat. Finally, the lead Studio Brass mustered all of his Old White Guy fortitude and, jowls quivering with the anger of the publicly usurped, brought his great ham-fist fiercely down on the table and demanded an explanation. At the Brass's brazenness Corey Feldman and Donatello burst into a simultaneous and identical laugh that stopped abruptly as they looked at each other with an I-know-you-from-somewhere expression. Coleman calmly explained, "We're here to see that we are no longer raped of the charm of our 80s context and amended with the shiny and the new and the more-marketable. Our revival is not for today's youth. It is for yesterday's. That the current population of teenies can't relate to us as we were is something we, and our venomously loyal fans, simply can't be bothered with." With many a scandalized "HARUMPH, HARUMPH!" from the pack of suits, the jowly leader barked, "We don't know what you're talking about!" Papa nodded at Punky and Daphney, who stood at his other side. They reached under the table and came up with a large jar, which they slid down the conference table like a pint down a bar. It spun to a halt in front of the execs as the cloudy fluid inside settled to reveal Michael Bay's severed head and few hard-boiled eggs. The Brass, knowing exactly what it meant, turned a deeper shade of red and bellowed, with spittle, "DO YOU KNOW WHAT CHEVY PAID US TO MAKE BUMBLEBEE A CAMARO?!?" Papa Smurph, speaking for the first time, guessed, "Thirty pieces of silver?" Papa then cut loose with a heat of invective that turned the air so blue you could only see him when he smiled. After about an hour, he stopped, straightened his suit and took a puff of the Cuban to calm himself. Punky wept lowly. “Axel F” began to play suddenly and loudly in the room. It was Robocop’s cell phone. A compartment in his thigh whirred open and he handed the phone to the Brass. "It’s for you," said Coleman to the Brass. Shaking, now less with anger and more with fear, and shame from having wet himself, the Brass answered the phone. "We have your wives and children," announced the altered-yet-unmistakable voice of Max Headroom. So, at the beginning of what would become three days locked inside that boardroom, Coleman read aloud their demands and reluctant phone calls were made. Production on Transformers was halted until they got a response from Volkswagen. Superman Returns was jerked out of theaters and rewritten with a Superman who knew way better than to pre-maritally relate with, impregnate and abandon an apparently-illiterate Lois. Dolf Lundgren was found and shot where he stood for his involvement in Masters of the Universe. Leaving Coleman, the TMNT and Robocop there to wrap things up, Papa got in K.I.T.T with Punky and Daphney and retired to his beach-house, where he threw a fabulous after-party. And Yesterday's Youth lived happily ever after.

Form and Function

The other day, while I was surfing one of the design forums I frequent, some one posted a link to an article called The Surprising Truth about Ugly Websites. If you like feeling industrially undermined and marginalized, read it. If you are trying to justify having not so much as Googled the word "design" before uploading your electronic dry-heave of a website, read it. But don't read what's below. This guy would have you believe function cannot exist if form exists. Form and Function are not mutually exclusive and anyone who says so is selling discount services to pay off gambling debts. That writer is saying beauty cannot be simple and simplicity can only exist where there is no beauty. Preposterous. If he told that to God, He'd thunder down a belly laugh that would make his face glow brighter than a post-commandments Moses. The idea is inconsistent. If the wisdom of function over form is true for websites, it has to be true for everything. Imagine our world without it. If function was all that mattered, all that sold, then why don't we all drive the same car? One car. One color. Function galore! Only a handful of assembly plants would be needed and only one kind of machine would be needed to make it. In fact, let's don't even paint them. It's only one more step we can eliminate. What about clothes? Why not have one type of garment, in one color, for everyone? We would only need one pattern and we could do away with that awful functionality killer: dye. Never mind creation. Sincerely, look to God for the answer to this form/function riddle. He did it with all of creation; the Universe is a seething, pulsing, chugging, steam-belching train called The Evidence of the Existence of Balance in Form and Function; it's bright red and charging through space and time, wheels spinning with a rhythmic FUNC-TION-N-FORM-N-FUNC-TION-N-FORM! Utilitarianism is only ever adopted out of convenience, and it is never committed to. Believe that.