Welcome to Room557

The Wine Mom Font

It's no secret that your instructors — including myself —have a value-based point-of-view about aesthetic things that surround us. That's our job: to maintain a level of aesthetic and functional appropriateness and pass that along to our students. We are in one of the professions where "being judge-y" is part of the job. That's what you're paid to do: to have an experienced point-of-view and hopefully charge handsomely for that.

To that point, the ubiquity of things on the internet — whether it is free mock-ups or free typefaces come into play... enter: The Wine Mom Font. I did not name it, but was keenly aware of it even before it was parodied on national TV.

Can you separate the art from the artist?

It's no secret among my students that I'm not a fan of Gill Sans.

I speak openly about the topic to my students, but this semester, I had the time to codify it. My ire for Gill Sans is three-fold:

How can I improve my grade?: 10 steps to improvement

We often get the "How can I improve my grade?" questions at at grading periods. It's not that hard for the most part:

1. Submit your assignments on time.
2. Submit your participation elements early.
3. Ensure your assignments are complete.
4. Ensure your assignments meet the assignment parameters.
5. Review at the examples provided — learn from them: be inspired, but don't emulate.
6. Listen to your instructor critique: "applying feedback to improve your work" is a grading point. Get on that.
7. Listen to all of your peer-critique: absorb > synthesize > apply ...
8. Watch all of the requisite videos and read all of the relevant posts: leverage that wisdom.
9. Ensure your projects are complete, meet parameters, and are on time... Did i mention that one already?
10. Ensure your projects leverage what you've learned in your previous classes — these baseline learnings are table-stakes. We can't re-teach Type-1 in Type-3, for instance... it's a given that in Type-3, you're doing all of what you learned in Type-1 and Type-2 and building on that. Otherwise, you're literally not evolving... growing... learning... thriving.
    
    

Branding Inspiration from Hollywood

Inspiration for developing brands can come from the strangest places. I'm watching a scene from Iron Man 2 and am struck that this is an amazing lesson about the history, hopes, dreams, and limitations of brands.

Howard Stark breaks scene and faces the camera:

"Tony ... you're too young to understand this right now, so I thought I would put it on film for you. I built this for you — and some day you'll realize that it represents a whole lot more than people's inventions... it represents my life's work. This is the key to the future... I'm limited by the technology of my time — but one day, you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What is and always will be my greatest creation... is you."

[As a dad... I'm not crying! You are!]

You can't say you're sexy

When you’re looking for a soul — or crafting the mission statement — of a brand, keep a few things top of mind: there are things that you can’t say — and there are some things that are simply expected.

My old creative director Paul Bennett used to say: “You can’t say you’re sexy… you just have to be sexy”. What he meant by this is that some things have to be shown — and saying them is not only weird but kind of invalidates them.

What makes "It" it?

I was reading a review of the upcoming movie “It” (Stephen King) which contained the following line:

Muschietti (the film’s director) understands the Spielberg-ian rule that creating a recognizable and convincing backdrop makes the payoff moments of coulrophobic terror and supernatural awe feel tangible and believable.

— Peter Hartlaub

It’s a bit of a reflection back on the discussions we have in our classes — specifically branding classes where students are challenged to recast the mythos of an existing brand — about the role of the believable being the foundation of the unbelievable is a good thing... or if you tell a far-fetched story, having ties back to things that are tangible and recognizable today can help to engage your audience a good bit more.

Liz Lemon and The Ilusion of Choice

If you haven't seen it, the TV show 30ROCK is worth binge watching. It’s a great take on pop culture and entertainment as mixed with modern day life and the compromises we have to make.

In the 5th season (2010), an episode called Brooklyn Without Limits (BWL) features a fictional brand (think: TOMS shoes, American Apparel, etc.) that the show’s protagonist, Liz Lemon (a TV producer for a comedy sketch show), falls in love with.

A letter to a student about their future referencing my past

The below is an excerpt from a round of correspondence with a student this semester. The student was having a hard time connecting the great ideas tin their head with a way to properly communicate them through design... as well as how to get the most out of the in-class critique.

Upon reflection, I thought that some of the sentiments might be beneficial to a wider audience, so here you go:

...

"... you have so many excellent ideas kicking around in your head (and you’re so anxious to get them out) that pacing them is hard.

I know it can be frustrating when someone tells you to slow down and take your time — or worse when someone might overlook something that you think is important because cause they’re not able to dive into the details… but, as you can imagine, these are lessons hard-earned myself. As someone who was also once young and full of good ideas — and also anxious to get them out — it took me a while to understand that not everyone was on the same page.

In fact, I remember exactly when that was:

Listening to Understand

Listening is a skill. As a designer, listening is as much of a skill as picking the perfect typeface… more so, really. But when we say “listen”, we often forget that the concept has many facets.

Like George Nelson showed us in his book How to see, listening — like seeing (vs. looking) — can have very different outcomes depending on how you approach it. More often than not, we approach it from the wrong angle.

We listen to reply.

We need to listen to understand.

Keeping yourself honest

When you're working on a project, it's easy to get distracted... and even procrastinate. It's important to keep yourself honest along the way. There will always be bad days and time will slip away, but it's important to know where you are and make realistic plans. Conversely, don't try to fool yourself.

For instance, If I was a field hand and I needed to shovel 50 pounds of grain per week, I might look at it this way: If the week started out rough, Monday might be a wash. Tuesday and Wednesday might also suffer... But on Thursday, I might kick it into high gear and finish out the day ahead. For this, I feel really good about myself and the overall scope of work — and I worked hard, so there should be some satisfaction there. On Friday, still feeling good, I treat myself to a slight break... hey, it's Friday, right? I finish out the week feeling pretty good and enjoying the break I gave to myself. Sound familiar? Of course, it does... we all do it. Of course, we also fail to go back and look at the reality of the math and see that we're nearly a day behind schedule.