When I looked ahead to 2012, I realized what a big field graphic design is, and how wide my talents and interests spread. When asked what kind of design I do, I usually say, “Whaddya got?”
It’s time I specialized, and also parlay two of my prized skills:
• calligraphy.
• staying married for over 20 years.
In my study of calligraphy, especially during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, before movable type turned important documents into pre-printed forms with blanks, marriage contracts were quite decorative objects, as fitting for their function. The tradition held among Judaism, where it’s known as the ketubah. Except in the case of the Jews, this document is still the fulfillment of an expectation, the observation of a tradition. And so modern corners are cut: some aspects, such as the printing of the wording, are computerized. Some of the design that surrounds the wording are pre-printed (it’s harder for a couple to decide what they want than to pick which one they want).
So here’s what I arrived at: WeddedGlyphs.com. Read More
The world needs less graphic design than it ever did.
It used to be a big deal that I have a computer with design software. But between your general need for a fast computer with Internet connection as a modern business, and the availability and ease of open-source and Web-based software, you do your own design now. And I don’t blame you.
There is so much pre-packaged stuff online, either for free or for pennies, that you’d be a fool not to take that, rather than anything I can custom-make you.
If you feel more ambitious, there are sites with “designers” throughout the world, who will bid for your business, driving the price down, or even present you with a final product on spec, that you can accept or reject with no compunction. I can queue up there, and compete with people with a tenth my cost-of-living, who play fast and loose with ethical standards such as plagiarism. Read More
Dealing with typography as long as I have, I can’t help but ponder the path from smudge on a paper (or clump of same-color pixels on a screen), to brain, to mouth, to ear. Languages that are offshoots of Latin and Greek use each smudge (glyph) to symbolize a single sound, either a consonant or a vowel. This keeps the list of glyphs very short, with complexity gained by stringing the letters together in sequence. Other languages, like Japanese, have each glyph symbolize a syllable, a combination of one consonant and one vowel (a syllabary language). Now there are considerably more glyphs, but words are shorter. This is suitable to spoken Japanese, which doesn’t have more than one consonant in a row (which is why their adaptation of the English word baseball is besuboru, four syllables). Then there’s a language like Chinese, where each symbol is a word (logogram), and there are a bazillion glyphs, and no one knows completely how to write in Chinese. Read More
“The best days of Starbucks are ahead of us.” So gushes the seemingly undercaffeinated Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz in the company’s announcement of the unveiling of their new logo. Like the MTV logo last year, it’s not much more than a crop job. The name that explained who the company is can now be excluded. The message: if you have to ask, you’re hopelessly backward.
Here are my predictions for future Starbucks logos. Study them while you can.
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