I make things on the internet
My copy of The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst arrived with the mail yesterday. It came rather quickly, just ordered it online a few nights ago.
I used a gift card that my parents gave me for finishing the masters degree, figured it was only fitting to pick up a type related book. I splurged and spent a few extra bucks for the hardcover edition, complete with a little red bookmark ribbon sewn in.
About this time last week, I finished up my dissertation and handed it in. That explains the complete lack of internet presence this month. I’ve been down in Bristol for the last few days, hanging out and catching up.
As of this afternoon, I’m off to the contintent to bum around Europe for a month and a half. If you’ve got a spare bed or a couch, drop me a line and I’ll stop by. Posts may be sporadic, they may be much more frequent than usual. Onward, I’ve got a plane to catch.
Notes from a discussion with Derek Birdsall on book design, part of an essay found in TypoGraphic Writing. The comments are circa 1978, but still entirely relevant today. A few choice bits from the end of the essay:
The whole satisfaction with designing is to get better at pleasing yourself — to get better at developing your own taste so that your own taste is more demanding. I just don’t agree with the philosophy that the solution has got to be self-evident. That would make it meaningless — a cliché.
What really matters is how you think it should be, and how good you are at getting it right and convincing others by your conviction and professionalism that it is right.
One of the most original things today is to produce work beautifully. Most people seem to have forgotten how to do it.
It applies to writing, design and artwork — create beautiful work that will make you happy. If you’re passionate about what you produce, it shouldn’t be too hard to bring people around. As artists, we have the tendency to be our own worst critics. It’s not worth it, the effort can be better applied elsewhere.
If you get the chance, flip through a copy of Birdsall’s Notes on Book Design. He explains his grid systems and methods for proportional representation of artwork. When you see how the various pieces relate to each other, you get a better sense of scale and scope.
Tankbooks are the same size and format as cigarette packs. Marketed under the banner, “Tales to take your breath away,” they arrive fresh on the heels of the recent UK smoking ban.
It’s hard to say what sort of readability these things are going to have, considering the small form factor. They are pretty cool as objects, but I’d probably feel a bit poncy reading such a tiny little book in public. That said, if you can pick ’em up for a few quid, it would be worth considering. Especially if they’re available from a cigarette machine.
The stuff that I usually have in my pockets or bag, my contribution to Naz’s flickr group The Items We Carry, for posterity’s sake.
My list includes: wallet, Oyster, rail card, moleskines, iPod nano, keys, change, Motorola L6 phone, pens, gum and Canon camera. I forgot to include sunglasses, but we’ve been having miserable weather lately.
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.
The harddrive in my MacBook decided to die on Saturday afternoon. Wasn’t doing much — had a few programs open and was in the process of checking out some books from the British Library. Tried to load up some bibliographic software, got the spinning beachball and most of the programs locked up. So, I did a hard reboot. After turning it back on, I received a grey screen with a blinking folder containing a question mark.
It would have been nice if it was some sort of minor system glitch, but the harddrive is making that ticking death-rattle. Apparently, this kind of failture seems to be a somewhat common problem with MacBook users. The laptop is still under warranty for another month, so I should be able to get a free replacement. Although, there is the problem of the sales receipt being physically located in Canada. I have a Genius Bar appointment Monday morning at the London store, hopefully all goes well.
I had a complete system backup from a few weeks ago, so I’ve only lost two week’s worth of dissertation research. It could have been much worse. My computer is currently operating via the backup on my external drive. SuperDuper is a godsend and is well worth the expense, it allowed me to make a bootable clone of my harddrive. Senuti is also a handy little utility if you want to retrieve music from your ipod.
Let this be a warning to all of my fellow masters students (and everyone in general), make sure you have reliable backups. At least it happened now and not in two months when the dissertation is due.
Update: The Apple Store was willing to replace my harddrive, but I would’ve had to leave the laptop with them for 3-10 days because they didn’t have any 60gb drives in stock. Couldn’t really afford to be without my machine for that length of time, so I decided to replace the harddisk myself.
I picked up a Hitachi Travelstar 160gb drive, installed it in about 15 minutes, and restored from the three-week-old full backup. Everything is up and running again, but I’m now completely paranoid. In the process of making sure that I have copes of photos, music and school files on my web host.
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.