Dave Kellam

From an interview with Rob Weychert:

If you think of the two media as people, print is a wise old man who is set in his ways, whereas the web is still a child, unformed and full of potential.

The web is about to turn 16 next month, wherein it will come to the conclusion that no one understands it and everyone sucks. It will then proceed to dress entirely in black, listen to angsty music and write bad poetry.

It’s becoming a bad-habit to write an entry at the end of the month — just to make sure there’s one full-size journal article for the monthly archives. As usual, there’s a slew of excuses for my poor performance (final project displays, flat-hunting in London), but they’re not entirely valid given the host of busy people that are more prolific posters. Not that quantity necessarily equals quality, but nothing is kind of pathetic.

The reality is that I just haven’t been taking an active role in my own website for the last year or two. It hasn’t been part of my life in the same manner that it was. Eightface used to be more personal, a digital playground of sorts. But somewhere along the line, it changed. I stopped offering my opinion, I stopped being funny, so it stopped being fun. The site became a giant sanitised turd, if such a thing can exist.

Anyway, that’s enough ripping into myself for poor performance. I’m off to a goodbye party for Marvin, he’s heading back to Canada in a few days. He’ll be getting married later this month, and I wish him all the best.

I’m working on a new design/layout for the site, that should be finished in the near future. It’s actually happening behind the scenes, and is a little bit more involved than my typical ‘live’ redesign. Keep an eye out for the announcement.

Started running/jogging again a month or so ago. The primary reason was to get myself in better shape (increased stamina, energy, etc.). Combined with an active effort to eat better, it’s making a difference. I can run further/faster than before and I’ve dropped a little over ten pounds in the last five weeks — that’s like strapping a good four or five bags of sugar to my gut.

The Nike + iPod thing makes the whole experience relatively easy, essentially turning physical activity into a video game. About a month ago, I set a goal to run 75km in four weeks, something that seemed almost impossible at the time. Anyway, it happened and didn’t kill me too much. Here’s proof that I achieved my goal, as well as my run from earlier today:

I’m not on the road to becoming one of those crazy health nuts, but it does feel good to get the heart rate up. As far as eating better goes, it’s mostly trying to avoid snacking. Well, that and fast/pre-packaged food — it can be so easy to eat terribly in the UK. Overall, I’m feeling heathier and better.

The folks at smashLAB and ideasonideas have started a new initiative called Design Can Change. The flash presentation focuses on the impact that designers have on the environment and their role in sustainable development. It’s primarily targeted at print designers because they have the largest ecological footprint… think pollution from the pulp and paper industry.

As a book design student, I’ve done a lot of printing over the last six months and am probably responsible for the destruction of a small forest. It’s hard to avoid, things just don’t look right on-screen. I’m almost ashamed to admit that our typography department didn’t even recycle waste paper until about a month ago. Seeing bins full of paper trimmings every night was kind of depressing.

The presentation will take some time to go through, it’s not overly short. The interface is a little bit awkward, but I’m not overly fond of websites that are completly constructed in Flash. They also seem to be focused on the North American market, it would be nice to get a list of eco-friendly European paper suppliers.

You can read more about the development and impetus for the project at ideasonideas. It’s also worth giving 1000 Words: A Manifesto for Sustainability in Design (at Core77) a quick read.

Just starting to decompress after the end of the semester and a whirlwind typography department tour of Rome and Florence. I’ve started to go through my photos, but need to clear up some harddrive space to get at some of them. There are a few posted in my Italy 2007 set on Flickr, including a full-res version of the above panorama from the forum, but it’ll will still be a little while before the rest go up. I’m also frustrated with iPhoto, and will likely switch over to managing my photos manually in combination with Lightroom.

In the meantime, some of the other students have started to post photos. First and foremost, check out Chris Hill-Scott’s photos of Rome and Florence. He’s a great photographer and managed to take some amazing shots, despite having course-work to do as an undergrad. Flickr is serving as the defacto post-grad repository, so far we have photos from Alice, Dan, Hans, Jasso and Jenni.

I’m off to the continent for a week, so there won’t be any posts for the next week or so (not that anyone would notice). I intended to a better job posting this month, but ended up bogged down with school-work. There were many a long night spent in the department during the last few weeks. The project was a lot of fun though — working with John Morgan, designing a hypothetical book series. We spent a day in London with Derek Birdsall, having an extended lunch with altogether too much wine. That project was topped off with a three-thousand word paper for an experiment that we had to design.

The trip to Italy is offered through the typography department. Technically, it’s an undergrad course, although it’s predominantly post-grad these days. Upon my return, there will be many nerdy typography related photos, and many of the more general variety. I will attempt to post some updates via my twitter account, provided my phone functions properly. See you on the other side.

I’m currently knee-deep in the latest project at school — designing a complete system for a line of paperbacks, hardcover books and a magazine (including the covers, interior type treatment, etc, etc). On that note, Arctic Paper is amazing; they delivered dummies and sample paper inside of 48 hours.

These days, it feels like the typography department is my second home. Here’s a quick run-down of the other people at school with an online presence, most of them are in type design:

Tim Ahrens
David Březina
Gerben Dollen
Nicole Dotin
Marvin Harder
Rob Keller
Jasso Lamberg
Ian Moore
Dan Rhatigan
Alice Savoie
Fernando Vargas

If I’ve left anyone out, drop me a line or punch me in the hallway. And now I should stop procrastinating.

I’m currently knee-deep in research concerning the use of grid systems in design. Specifically, whether their role is paramount to the content or if it’s more subservient in nature.

A bit of light reading (from top to bottom):

• The New Typography – Jan Tschichold
• Stop Stealing Sheep – Eric Spiekermann
• Thinking With Type – Ellen Lupton
• The Elements of Typographic Style – Robert Bringhurst
• Book Typography – Michael Mitchell
• Asymmetric Typography – Jan Tschichold
• Typographie – Emil Ruder
• The Typographic Grid – Hans Rudolf Bosshard
• Designing Programmes – Karl Gerstner
• Type & Typography – Phil Baines
• Designing Books – Jost Hochuli
• The Designer and the Grid – Lucienne Roberts
• Making Books – Alan Bartram
• The Grid – Allen Hurlburt
• How to Draw Layouts – Jan Tschichold
• Grid Systems – Josef Muller-Brockmann
• Notes on Book Design – Derek Birdsall

Links will be added when I need to procrastinate a bit more.

Updated the flickrRSS plugin for WordPress. Flickr altered the urls for static photos. It affects those using the image cache. If you want to fix the plugin yourself, open flickrrss.php and find the following line:

and alter the code, so that it reads:

Thanks to jrsmith for the fix.