Vector magic! from the AI Research Lab at Stanford, because if there was ever a good use for AI it is to eliminate logo-pixelitis. I foresee this horrible problem being a thing of the past in as little as 1 generation! Much better results than Adobe or Corel’s trace tools. I’ve often spent long hours hunched over bezier curves, painstakingly fixing traced jpg logos. One company had a logo that was two fantastical trees surrounding a castle, which took me an unspeakable number of hours to fix. I still see traces of that logo on my retinas if I look at a black wall… Anyway, moving on!

All the science I can handle in conveniently prepackaged forms.

Spare but thorough thesaurus. I heart panlexicon* for exploring and expanding word/concept relationships during my brainstorming phase, but for writing essays I sometimes need a really serious thesaurus. The above thesaurus seems created specifically for writing rather than word-exploring. Most free online thesaurii give you the same 5 boring words for even the most complex concepts, so when I found the above link I bookmarked it so hard the whole internet shook.

Buy vs Rent calculator, (NYT login req) which is a marvelous piece of info design.** So easy to use and clear in its conclusions, you wouldn’t even notice it was designy until you compared it to all the other horrible, confusing, ugly home equity calculators. Yes, I do spend time comparing home equity calculators despite the fact that I don’t intend to buy a house.

Free fonts that are actually well-made. Some display faces, some text. I haven’t tried any of them out yet. District Thin and Diavolo look promising for display, OpenModerna looks like a Helvetica clone but could be useful where you need to have Helvetica with legal, free license for extensive use. Nonprofits, anyone?

*Created by Bec and a friend of hers. Full disclosure: Bec is my bestie but she did not ask me for a plug, I really do think pantextual is amazing.

**Beware: can cause panic and fainting in rare cases of homeownership.

^Ron Terada, a Vancouver conceptual artist
There is ice all over everything this morning, which is unusual in Vancouver. I’m watching out my kitchen window as it sublimes off the roof in the sun. It’s making me think about my upcoming graduation. I know I’m leaving Vancouver, but I haven’t decided where I’m headed. Solid state directly to gaseous state! Anything is a possibility! The world is my proverbial oyster!

I’ve been rigorously reflecting on my experiences, desires, and dislikes in an effort to determine what, exactly, it is that I’d like to do next. This has led me to think a lot about art. I have a case of art-brain and I think it could be developed with practice. That is, I think about and write about things in a way that fits with the contemporary art world. It’s a very particular discourse which many people find unbearable but which I enjoy.

Upon arrival at ECI I had to take a year of general foundation art courses before going into the design program, and I think that’s what gave me art-brain. That was a valuable experience (albeit a sometimes-irksome one, because I really, really wanted to study design). I’m happy with my design degree, it’s taught me some great things. But I still have art-brain, and it confounds my design professors. I can only imagine what clients would think when my first proposal for, say, a theatre promotion campaign is to stage a performance art thing in the downtown core.

Or to take an example from earlier today, the proposed title for my grad project was deemed too “recondite” by my professor, she urged me to think about it for another day. The title was “Sketches For Perspective: developing nonprofit identity.” Which is, granted, rather vague and does not, admittedly, mention that my project is a toolkit in book form. Do you find it too obscure, oh reader? I do plan on thinking about it for another 24 hours and tossing it around in conversation. We’ll see what happens.

On to my point: one of my biggest problems with the contemporary discourse of design is the mystification of  what everyone calls “design thinking.” This is evidenced by the d-school craze sweeping the business world, and it is definitely present in ECI’s design curriculum. It all brings me to this blog post. I strongly agree with the author at graphpaper: what d-school has made into a *huge deal* just seemed obvious to me. The post also made me wish I could go back for a fine-art degree. Because I approach design from an art-brain, rather than from a business-brain, I don’t find anything particularly enlightening about the construct of “design thinking.” If you are an MBA, maybe d-school could blow your mind. Personally, my mind remains unblown. And a little aggravated.

In summary: the most valuable thing I learned at ECI is how to make something which is very personal, but not take it personally when other people critique it. That is a lesson I’m still working on, of course.

 

I’m beginning research for my grad project next semester, which is going to be some sort of city related study/experience. I want to look at many dimensions of cities, contrasting the macro and micro, the personal and the impersonal. It will be emphatically pro-city, and largely inspired by Jane Jacobs. It will use subjective perceptions of value as a lens to examine common experience. It will probably involve making things gold and shiny. (Paving the streets, etc.)

In that vein, here is 19.20.21, an upcoming research project focusing on the future importance of supercities. The presentation is well done, probably one of the best powerpointish creations I’ve seen. The timeline of world city populations is especially revealing. Strangely, it never mentions who is behind the project or who is funding it. This is a very, very large project to undertake, with the corresponding prestige, so the anonymity is unusual.

The Tate Modern’s Global Cities exhibition is over, but all the web resources are all still available. My project will posit the practice of “sitting around” as one of the most important acts within a city; this video from Istanbul shows perceptions of value regarding sitting places. Awesome.

This little retreat is located down a largish alley behind a parking garage. Someone (or several someones) obviously put lots of time and thought into this tiny corner, even stealing an extremely heavy municipal garbage can from a nearby street. I love it, it’s my favorite discovery of the week.

Stories that have been covered elsewhere:

MIT sues Frank Gehry: building that looks like it’s falling down is actually falling down. I, for one, am shocked… that this hasn’t happened to Gehry sooner. I can imagine that the entire MIT engineering department is suffering from fits of giggles.

Google is “dangerous,” an outlaw in the “wild west” of online content. Next week: Microsoft is the “fugitive bandit” of the pc world, CocaCola a “desperado” in the soft drink industry.

“We now know the Sun and our family of planets is not unusual.” All this time, thinking we’re the Gehry masterpiece of the galaxy, but it turns out we’re the solar system equivalent of a Vancouver Special.

Trying to decide on a typeface for a big project, and though I’ve gotten headshots from all the hopeful contestants, looking at jpegs online just isn’t enough. I don’t understand how anyone can make a decision based on those things. For display faces, maybe, but complex text work is a whole other walk down the runway. The project will be entirely print-based, and printed samples are so crucial. How else can I tell whether Finnegan is charmingly offbeat or hopelessly twee? Is Alinea a good compromise between conservative and postmodern, or is it just completely cosmetics-brand-identity? (and is the weird kerning just in this one photo, or is the whole face poorly kerned?) Do Avenir and Relato have the fierceness necessary to continue in the competition? Finnegan has won the challenge round thanks to Linotype’s downloadable pdf sample. But the formidable Futura still has the lead, due to its presence in several type galley books on my bookshelf. The panel of judges still hasn’t had the final say. One thing is certain: only one typeface will be declared the winner.

Well, unless I decide to use a pair of them.

“We need design history that does not see itself in the role of a service to the design profession, but as a history of ideas… Bad design history offers us an alternative to having ideas. Good design history acts as a catalyst for our own ideas.”

Tibor Kalman, J Abbott Miller, and Karrie Jacobs. “Good History/Bad History.” In Tibor Kalman, Perverse Optimist.

Pablo Valbuena, Augmented Sculpture. I could watch this over and over again (as long as the sound was off). If I was in the art world I would argue that this is painting, more than sculpture or multimedia. But I’m not, so I’ll leave that aside for today.

Books are wonderful, because unlike laptops you can balance them precariously on your knee while eating and not really worry about it. I’m currently reading two books on branding and marketing, partially as research for projects and partially as tools for my own practice.

I picked up Branding for Nonprofits by DK Holland after an unsatisfying meeting with a nonprofit client. Unfortunate cover design, but it’s full of plain language and good advice for all types of nonprofit organizations. The book breaks down branding into understandable strategies which are less intimidating and “evil” sounding to those who are in this field. I’d highly recommend this book to anyone who spends a lot of time in the nonprofit world. It covers everything from basic visioning and mandate writing to hiring a compatible designer and honing the organization’s personality. It even has an appendix with examples of graphic standards manuals from real organizations.

While much of the book covers territory too basic for a branding or marketing professional, the way in which it goes about covering this territory was very instructive. It helped me understand and sympathize with my client, and helped me develop a strategy for talking to them.

Besides being very useful, it’s entertaining and quick to read, mostly case studies and images.

I’m in the middle of Marketing Your Services: A Step-by-step Guide for Small Businesses and Professionals by Anthony O Putman. This book has already changed my life and I’m only halfway through. The brilliance of it is in how obvious it is. Putman examines the most common misconceptions people have about marketing themselves, and then systematically disproves them while offering immediately useful tools for getting to new strategies. While reading it I’ve had dozens of “aha!” moments. I recognize myself or people I know in most of the case studies.

I borrowed this book from my school library but I’m buying it ASAP. Until this point I’ve been marketing myself mostly by instinct, but now I feel I have real insight into making better choices.* So far the book has motivated me to start this blog, helped me design my business cards and portfolio, and made me rearrange my social calendar. It is going to be invaluable to me when I’m tossed out into the wide world with nothing but my portfolio to protect me from the hungry beasts of the design jungle.

*It’s strange, you’d think this would be the type of thing we cover regularly in class, but self-reflection about what we want our design practices to be has never been mentioned in any design course I’ve taken. We mostly get told what design is and then get told to do it. The first time we’ve touched on personal branding is in my 4th year Professional Practices course (intended to prepare us for the less pretty realities of the design profession: contracts, money, lawyers and intellectual property). This, strangely, is the most inspiring class I have, because it allows for personal agency (definition) and self-determination. I’ll get back to this issue later, when I examine the issue of “next-d” and “design thinking” at ECI.

Just bought one of these and I’m pleased with it so far. I was developing “trackpad hand” so I thought it was time to get something a bit more ergonomic. I still swear my trackpad sketching skills will come in handy someday. The mouse has this zooming scroll wheel functionality which is high on wow factor but not so practical. You just get a closer view of the same number of pixels on your screen.

While at Futureshop I saw the new huge-screen iMac. Oh, goodness gracious it was huge.