(re)TOUCH ME!!

I was doing some research for a project and got slightly side tracked and found this.





Why even bother? I have nothing to say about this other than that it is no wonder that girls think they are so ugly, and that they want to have perfect skin and hair, just like, oh, Madonna.
It reminds me of the Dove commercial, which I am pretty sure most of you have seen it by now.

For those who have not seen it, or would like to see it again, here is the link.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hibyAJOSW8U

and, just for fun, and to prove that people still have a sense of humour, take a look.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7-kSZsvBY-A&feature=related

re: "washrooms" ARE... according to Spiekermann

I have simply copied his article. I thought you might find it interesting.

———


With the invention of “desktop publishing”, designers found themselves setting type on their computers for the first time. Until then, they had made type specifications for typesetters and left the job up to the professionals. As a result, you can still see classic inaccuracies in typesetting, even in top-quality printed matter. Here you will find some tips from Erik Spiekermann, designer of FF Meta®, Meta Design founder, co-author of “Stop Stealing Sheep”, and a FontShop founder, which will prevent some of the more obvious blunders.

1. A CAPITAL MISTAKE
NEVER use CAPITAL letters to accentuate words in running copy. They STICK OUT far too much spoiling the LOOK of the column or page. Use italics instead. If you have to set words in capitals, use proper small caps with or without initial capitals.

2. Connections
There are three different ways to connect or separate words: the hyphen -, the en dash –, a little wider than the hyphen, and the em dash —, wider still. The regular hyphen is easily accessible on any Mac or PC keyboard, whereas the en dash needs the combination option-hyphen on the Mac. The em dash is accessed by pressing option-shift-hyphen on the Mac. The use of these dashes depends on house styles and tradition. The em dash with no space around it is traditionally used to separate thoughts—like this one—but I think its length is a distraction in running text. Try using the en dash to separate thoughts – like this one – with a character space on either side. En dashes without space on either side are also used between numbers and compound words as in: the shop is open 10–7, while you can take the New York–Kansas City train or the New York–Baltimore train only 8am–3pm.

3. “ & ”
A dead giveaway for unprofessional “desktop typography” are wrong quotes and apostrophes. Quotes can have different shapes. They generally look like “this”, and can be remembered as beginning and ending quotes by thinking of “66” and “99”. Beginning quotes are found on the Mac by pressing option-[; closing quotes, option-shift-]. The apostrophe is simply a raised comma, the shape of a ’9 in most typefaces. It is identical to the closing single quote, while the open single quote looks like a ‘6. Beginning single quotes are found on the Mac by pressing option-[; the apostrophe and closing single quote, option-shift-].

4. Figuring It Out
Good text typefaces have “old style”, “text”, or “lowercase” figures – 1234567890 – instead of “lining” ones – 1234567890. Lining figures were originally designed to be used with setting of all capital letters. Lowercase figures blend in better with the text settings, as the figures behave like lowercase letters with ascenders (6 and 8) and descenders (3, 4, 5, 7, 9) and x-height-only characters (1, 2, 0). While they fit in text very nicely, the good looks have one disadvantage: each of the figures have individual widths, meaning they won’t sit directly underneath each other in columns. Their descenders may also clash with ascenders when the columns sit closely on top of one another, as happens quite often in tabular settings. Lining figures are, however, all the same width, making for a somewhat uneven appearance, as the 1 takes up the same space as the 8, but in tables, they are much easier to add up. Some fonts offer “tabular oldstyle figures”, which will allow table setting.


5. Joining Forces
A ligature is defined as the visual or formal combination of two or three letters into a single character. They consist of letter combinations such as ff, fi, fl, ffi. Ligatures keep letters from overlapping and improve legibility. For example: affluence, configure, deflate, affinity.

6. Not Justified
Avoid flush settings! Most applications create justified text by hideously stretching and squishing words and spaces. Note that it takes many hours of tedious work to typeset justified text that is truly well-proportioned and legible. For this reason, professionals prefer to use ragged-right composition, either with or without hyphenation, depending on how much line-length variation they wish to allow. This gives the text a more harmonious appearance and makes it easier to read, since all wordspaces have the same width.

7. Bite the Bullet
Use bullets or centered points instead of hyphens (-) when you list items. Bullets are part of the standard character set and are located in the following positions:
• option-8 (Mac), ALT+0149 (Windows)
· option-shift-9 (Mac), ALT+0183 (Windows)






taken from http://www.fontshop.com/fontfeed/archives/erik-spiekermanns-typo-tips/

More than meets the eye. -pt.2

I forgot to mention another huge trend in Personal Publishing.

Blogging


Blogging is still on the rise. I never thought I would ever enjoy doing these posts, but it seems like much less of an assignment and a fun way to extrapolate the way that I feel about certain issues, and to share things with classmates that I would probably forget about during the day.

Poor Verbiage. WHAT does it "mean"?

I was at Wal-Mart yesterday in my hometown, where they are currently doing renovations to make it into one of those Super Wal-Mart stores where they will have a full grocery, lottery, and who knows what else section.

I looked across the hall where the washrooms used to be and read a sign saying that the washrooms had been relocated. That, in itself, would have been fine. Here is what the sign read. (I am doing it letter for letter)



"Washrooms" ARE located in the "back" near the "shoes"


What does that mean?

Is this a euphemism? Are the washrooms simply imaginary? and, what do they mean by "shoes"?

ARE? I know that I am guilty for using uppercase as a way to emphasize certain points, (much to the chagrin of Erik Spiekermann) but at least when I do use it, it makes sense on the words that I emphasize.

More than meets the eye.

In such a visually communicative society, advertisers need to think of other ways to connect with prospective customers and clients. Amid the posters and billboards and junkmail and eye-trash, Communication Design works beyond traditional print media. Communication Design includes verbal, musical, general auditory sounds, and even dance and theatrical performance.

Because of the global marketplace we live in, awareness of local and international events is more important than ever. We, as advertisers and designers need to know of any cultural no-no's and faux pa's as well as what really connects with different people.


In doing some research for this blog, I have found a listing of forecast for 2007 trends.

Video
Online Advertising
Online Music Listening
Personal and Independent publishing
Web Conferencing and Video Collaboration
Mobile Content and Delivery

The 7 items I listed above are all different, but share a good deal of attributes, so I will essentially describe them all in the next little blurb.

Youtube, revver, and a number of other free, public access video sites have been around for a while, and in the last year or two they have exploded into the mainstream. (see my post from earlier this semester with the Weezer video for Pork and Beans)
Advertisers have seen this increase in popularity and have taken advantage of it. Rather than just individuals using youtube as self expression, Universal Music Group, EMI, and other record labels have released official videos to youtube accounts to promote new artists, or new releases.
One company who I really love, and have watched all of their video posts, is Harvest Films. Baker Smith is a genius director. For the most part they are commercials that make you wonder what is going on. Some of them I am sure you have seen on TV, or been attached in an email. (check out http://youtube.com/user/harvestfilms)


The only point I didn't really touch on is mobile content and delivery. Currently we sent sms text messages back and forth from phone to phone, but in the very near future we will be getting advertising on our cell phone screens. Small scale spam.
While this advertising isn't happening all that much so far, Communication Design is very evident in cell phones. We have tetris and pinball on our phones, as well as customization options like color and background images. One very popular trend in Communication Design is the ability to have customized ringers. Aside from the handful of generic, none-to-interesting ringers that come from the factory, you can purchase snippets of the current top 10 hit songs for your ringer, or with certain companies, you can create your own ringer from any audio files you might have.


These items are all a result of cultural awareness and knowing about the local and global economy and trends, as well as political viewpoints. Without a knowledge of 'The Joneses', we would not know who to keep up with.

Great graphics software. (for PC?)

I remember hearing of this technology a while ago, and it is absolutely incredible. The way that a small company can grow and then be swallowed by Microsoft is sad, but the technology is great.

It is great to look at a photo album of a family trip, but imagine looking at a 3-d image of places that you have been to, as a reminder of how incredible it is, or even as a tour of some place you want to visit.

I think that in the near future, with this software, the Seadragon team could probably even compile all the photo's of a specific place (Sistene Chapel) and actually do a 3d walkthrough of the entire environment. From the walkway, to the entrance of the main doors, and inside, looking up toward the ceiling and all the way through.

The most incredible concept is seeing a 3d image on a flat monitor. I can't wait till it goes public.

I love to use google earth, and looking at the profile of the geograpy, but with integration of Photosynth, the possibilities of seeing the ACTUAL geography of an area would be intense.

Today is messy and tomorrow is confused.

I found this great thing a few months ago and I have been checking it out and keeping a file on my desktop. It is a great concept, and so fun, and relatively easy to do.

This is called the Human Calendar. Each month, a different calendar comes up BUT each day, the people change poses to keep an eye on the person who represents today's date.

Just kind of good, clean, silly fun.

Check it out.



http://www.humancalendar.com/

I wanted people to see this. (my comments are at the bottom)

High school student expelled for short story

February 4, 2008 | 4:34 PM | By Nathan Whitlock

From The Globe and Mail:

A 17-year-old student has been expelled from his Brampton, Ont., high school for a fictional essay he submitted in a creative writing class about a disgruntled student who murders one of her teachers.

Brendan Jones, a Grade 12 student at Heart Lake Secondary School northwest of Toronto, was expelled last week, leaving him facing an uncertain future. Brendan is just three credits shy of graduating from high school and was hoping to study criminology at university next fall. But it is not at all clear whether he will be able to transfer to another high school in the province.

[…]
The five-page, handwritten essay, entitled “School’s Out,” is narrated by an unnamed Grade 10 student who stresses that she likes all of her teachers with the notable exception of Mr. Adams, who teaches science and has an “intoxicating odor.” The controversial part of the story happens near the end when the student manages to trap the teacher in the basement of her house, picks up a bat and gives him “some final words.” It ends ominously with: “Sorry, Mr. Adams, but schools [sic] out!”

Brendan said in an interview that he never imagined the essay would provoke such a reaction. He said there is nothing gory in it and the characters are fictitious. He has also written a letter of apology to both the school and the Peel Board of Education.

As if this weren’t strange enough, here’s the kicker:

The essay is sprinkled with comments from the creative writing teacher, including “show, don’t tell,” and “cliché.” But by the time the teacher got to the end of the essay, alarm bells appear to have gone off. She scrawled “inappropriate subject matter!” but she also tells him to work on his sentence structure and dialogue. There is no grade on the essay.

[Emphasis added.]

*END ARTICLE*


Any thoughts? I think that in today's world, you cannot get away with anything if it makes someone feel uncomfortable. Unless it is nudity, then it is fine, apparently. If this student has a history of violence, or aggression in school, then I understand the concern. BUT, if the teachers are all being hypersensitive and paranoid, they are in the wrong line of work.

Kids have anger and aggression. It is a fact of growing up. 95% of them never act upon what they think, because they know the repercussions. I think a more appropriate response to this essay might have been a sit down with the school psychologist or nurse or ?? to discuss the paper, and talk about why he wrote what he wrote.

Maybe I am blind to what society has become.

FORE!!

This past weekend, my family had a golf tournament. While I did a lousy job, I realized something very interesting about design. What I am referring to, is the layout of the course. How many different ways can you hit a ball, and put it in a gopher hole? Some holes are par 3, some 4, and some are even a par 5. And, although the course we played had very similar appearances in holes 5,6,and 7, they were very very different. Sand trap here, water hazard there.

I played at Balm Beach Golf Course on Friday, sort of as a warm up round, and then Saturday was the tournament at Brooklea Golf & Country Club. Both places are so different. They have the same amount of yardage, but the holes at Balm Beach are significantly easier to play.

On another note, design plays a big part in the golf balls. Small dimples for control, Large dimples for distance, micro dimples within the large dimples for a faster ball. At least this is what THEY claim. For me, I could probably get away with using a ping pong ball, and my game would not get any worse.

I suppose that the purpose of this blog was simply to emphasize how design is all around us, in things as large as geography, and small as a golf ball.

PS - I am intentionally not posting my score on the game. Maybe I should consider using a ping pong ball.