What kind of design blog would this be

if I didn’t say anything about the iPad? I guess I don’t have too much to add to what you’ve heard already, except to say that most reviewers—with the possible exception of the Times’ David Carr—have misunderstood the nature of Apple’s innovation behind the device. It’s actually this:


…the ability to appear as casual as most people actually are when using the internet.

Jobs doesn’t harp on this in his presentation (except to say that the iPad provides an “intimate” experience with the internet) in much the same way he didn’t dwell on the fact that the iPod’s earphones are white as well—as crucial as that is and ended up being. What he doesn’t say is that, barring some unforeseen issue with the device, the iPad is really the computer we’ve all been trying to use for the past ten to twelve years, that it doesn’t seem revolutionary because—like so much good design—it’s not actually new so much as seem like the way things should have always been.

Changes, Normandy

dirodrig.blogspot.com is now the design blog. All art-related inquiries and considerations now at flamingosilk.blogspot.com as they should have been since the beginning!

Maybe it’s self-aggrandizing, but sometimes I think of what I do as “triage design”, as in, I may not be in a position to prevent clients from putting their own horrible design out there for the world to see, but maybe I can mitigate the damage, or otherwise resuscitate the design to some kind of minimal, brain-dead state.

Don't get me wrong. I am always pushing for the best design possible, under any circumstances. But most circumstances—and this is due to the nature of my job—do not allow for the kind of creative mobility that enables truly great design. Ninety percent of the time, the client has already has a "logo", or a previous ad, and in the interest of time I must base a new ad on the old design. I will do my best to rectify any typographic or design no-nos without altering the design dramatically, lest the client think I’ve made an entirely new ad subject to a fresh round of endless approvals and decision by committee. In the end I often achieve dramatic improvements over the client’s old design, and the client loves what I've done, even though I still don’t, since there are still significant issues, like that "logo" for instance, that I cannot change.

Is there a tangible benefit to what I do? Or should there be no distinction between bad and “could have been worse” design? It's not like people seeing bad design give the benefit of the doubt to the designer. And why should they? One design, one opportunity, and it did not turn out well. Who cares about process or what might have been?

That bad design is as natural as the air we breathe is not something I am ambivalent about so much as accept. It's not even that I think, if all opportunities for design were undertaken by a competent designer, the world would somehow be a totalitarian, thoughtless place, because the world needs some measure of imperfection to sustain itself. It's simply recognizing the impossibility of a designer being available or deemed necessary for all the times people put text, images or both to paper and screens. In fact, the only way everything could be designed is if everyone were a designer. There's your insufferable world.

So is making sure the Comic Sans is not stretched kind of like flanking the enemy in a battle I am certain to lose? Is it even a winnable war, and if so, which war is it anyway? On good days it can seem like I'm in the Alamo, successfully buying time against Mexico, but other days it seems like I’m taking part in the Allied invasion of Italy, where no matter how brave I am I’m almost certain to die in vain. Sure, there will be plaques for me in Italian villages, but the popular imagination, in the future, will be with Normandy.

…with the lights ON! (A Design Odyssey)

I’ve definitely had a thing for Eye for awhile now, but the most helpful it’s ever been was when designing my sister’s business card. This sounds boring as shit so far, but hear me out. In Eye #58, Abbot Miller describes the typeface Didot, which is used in the logos for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, as coming to define a certain kind of femininity by the way it has been used historically. The contrast of thick and thin bars and serifs “just feels right for women” is one line from the article, to paraphrase. Where was the client to hear that rationale?

Chanel’s butch sans-serif typeface is the counterpoint to Didot. It’s “the little black dress” amidst all the ostentation. This might at first sound pretentious in its own way, but really the Chanel typeface is great because just looking at it reminds you of Jean Seaborg with Jean-Paul Belmondo in bed, smoking a post-coital cigarette in Breathless. Generally speaking, that whole logo says “fuck me” and this makes it a good logo indeed.

I wanted to use both typefaces in my sister’s business card. Anyone who has met my sister would understand the classical beauty implied by Didot, but “Chanel” also gets at the part of her that’s flipped off one cop, refused to apologize in court for almost hitting another with her car, and slammed a door or two in the occasional face. Authority unto itself.

Unfortunately, I discovered the “Chanel” in the Chanel logo is commissioned design, a proprietary part of the brand that’s not available to anyone. So where to find some kind of replacement? That’s right, Barack Obama.

Ok, this seems like an unfair compromise at first. Yes, Obama is the Sexiest Black American President Alive, but the success of Obama’s campaign has made Gotham very trendy right now (see the latest ads for Pepsi), and this threatens to overshadow the beauty of the type. On the other hand, Obama has made this type the ultimate choice for “open, comfortable, approachable, confident”. And these are all fine qualities for anyone to have.

Ultimately, typefaces are defenseless against the myriad ways people might abuse them, infuse them with perverse meanings. But although each is comprised of tiny symbols we normally call ‘letters’, as a whole typefaces do seem to be able to resist the ignominy wreaked on them by history better than symbols alone. The Nazis had their way with German Blackletter after all (Nazi branding was very consistent), but you can still use it in the signage for some bar in downtown Philly and reasonably expect people to think you’re referring to traditional German heritage. The swastika could not do this even if it had been used to symbolize Germany prior to the Nazis, just as in this country the Confederate flag is no longer first seen as a symbol of Southern pride and so now can never be a symbol of Southern pride, and the logos for Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns no longer refer to banks (the words don’t either, for that matter) but financial crisis.

The logos for Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers are actually interesting because they show how type can be co-opted as symbol, can become the “golden chalice” for content that Beatrice Ward cautioned against, but is really okay in this case because in a logo typeface is content. It’s like drinking the wine, and eating the glass after! (Ok, so I’m terrible at analogies, and even elaborating on good ones.)

In the end we would like to control the meaning of images, but it just doesn’t work that way. Whereas with type we have the mixed blessing of not being able to attach any meanings, only history. Didot and “Chanel” have the potential to remind you of different images of women, feminine or butch, as determined appropriate by others over time.

Which means type speaks only for itself, and that’s really all you can ask it to do.

A real part of me is serious.

Commute today was awful. Besides the pouring rain, I discovered it is not a good idea to hold your coffee in the same hand as you hold your umbrella, and try to get into a car. Also, when you then have to change pants, don’t lose your keys—you have nothing to gain by this. Actually this is all technically pre-commute, but really it counts because it’s part of my “mental commute” to work which may begin as soon as 6pm the previous day, depending on how bad a week it is. But the moral of the story is that I could have spilled twice as much coffee on myself and not changed the fact that it’s Friday.

Not sure if the previous should be the first entry in another blog, or if the minutae is ok. Don’t want to place too many filters on myself since, as Sagmeister has it Trying To Look Good Limits My Life, but I find if I’m not careful it’s easy to confuse nothing with sweet nothing.