Sub/Conscious Meanderings

After read­ing another blog about the upcom­ing show, I was appalled by the severe lack of design finesse pro­fess­ing to search out America’s top designer. So…I wrote a quick email express­ing my distaste.

I find it intrigu­ing that a real­ity show sup­pos­edly search­ing for “America’s Top Graphic Designer” has lit­tle con­cern for how it rep­re­sents itself visu­ally and yet expects to attract the afore­men­tioned top designer. The iden­tity is, at best, sopho­moric, with a weak con­cept and def­i­nitely not an “out-of-the-box” execution.

For an indus­try that prides itself on allow­ing for clear, sim­ple com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the web­site does not pro­vide a com­plete pic­ture of the com­pe­ti­tion itself. For exam­ple, who are the spon­sors and why would the win­ner want to work for them? How much of the $50,000 is cash vs. prizes?

Cheryle R. Reynolds, the founder and pro­ducer, is not even a reg­is­tered mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Graphic Artists (AIGA), the largest pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tion for graphic design­ers in the United States. Her 20 years of expe­ri­ence in the indus­try have def­i­nitely not instructed her where to find the best design­ers, as pri­mary and “cut­ting edge” design cen­ters like Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle and San Fran­cisco are not included in the audi­tion locations.

The most com­pelling con­cern is that “America’s Top Graphic Design­ers” already have amaz­ing careers and would in no way sub­mit them­selves to any kind of far­ci­cal and inac­cu­rate depic­tion of their trea­sured pro­fes­sion. The mere idea of this show is offen­sive and will only demean and dilute the value of excel­lent graphic design.

The insight­ful truths of Keith Olbermann.

So I finally heard from the gallery this week. The exhi­bi­tion is Octo­ber 20–31. I’m excited, but also a lit­tle stressed. I still have quite a bit of work to fin­ish up, but things are close. I’ll be prepar­ing the poster/specimen for press this week­end. I’ll also be tak­ing my cam­era with me to cat­a­logue the print­ing process and the exhibit, so look for those images soon. I’ll also have printed sam­ples avail­able after the the 20th, so if you’re unable to attend the exhi­bi­tion and want one, just email me with a cur­rent address and I’ll mail one out. Unfor­tu­nately, print­ing spec­i­men books ended up being more costly than I antic­i­pated, so I’ll have a pdf avail­able on my website.

I’ve received two notices within the last two days that I’ll be fea­tured in two pub­li­ca­tions: 1. Graphis New Tal­ent Annual and 2. Design School Con­fi­den­tial, by Stephen Heller and pub­lished by Rock­port (I’ll keep you posted when it’s avail­able). Between the two pub­li­ca­tions, 10 of my 12 class­mates will also be fea­tured. I’m just a lit­tle excited. Woohoo!

Typhotheque, a foundry based in the Nether­lands, just released a pretty inge­nious sys­tem of dis­play fonts that span the course of type his­tory. It’s called His­tory. Check it out.

The time is rapidly approach­ing for me to show my stuff. Daphne: Unrec­i­p­ro­cated Love is finally sched­uled to hang at the BYU Har­ris Fine Arts Cen­ter at the end of Octo­ber. Now the time crunch begins. Know­ing how I respond to tight dead­lines I’m hop­ing that this will moti­vate me to get more done than what seems humanly pos­si­ble. I’ve still to set the kern­ing, design two posters and the spec­i­men book, then get it printed and hung. I’m hop­ing to have invi­ta­tions ready to go out by next week.

That’s the sound of nearly two months fly­ing by with­out a sin­gle post. So here’s a quick update about what I’ve done. The move went very well. Austin and I are pretty set­tled now, with lots of odd jobs in the queue. We’ve already made new cur­tains, a table cloth and place mats. The next project is a lit­tle more daunting–find the right old chan­de­liers to hang in the liv­ing room as a gothic/modern blended sculp­ture thing. Need­less to say, it’s still in the plan­ning stages.

Work is treat­ing me rather well also. We’ve been swamped with projects and the days have been a lit­tle longer on aver­age. After an excel­lent three-month review I received a pretty com­fort­able pay raise that will help with the repay­ment of stu­dent loans. Hint has also hired a new designer, one of my for­mer class­mates and now my “under­ling”. He’s very tal­ented and it’s a new chal­lenge for me to man­age another designer.

I’m finally wrap­ping up my BFA and might have an oppor­tu­nity for dis­tri­b­u­tion sooner than I antic­i­pated. Daphne, for­merly Marua, has nearly 500 glyphs and sup­ports many lan­guages I could never hope to pro­nounce, read or oth­er­wise under­stand. But they sure do look pretty. I’m final­iz­ing some pro­gram­ming things to make the final font func­tional. The goal is to have every­thing com­pleted by the end of the month. (Fin­gers crossed.)

Austin started school this week, so my sleep sched­ule has been inter­rupted by NPR at 5:30 a.m. Not that there’s any­thing wrong with NPR or 5:30 a.m. I’m sure I’ll start to get used to the early morn­ings and fill them with some new project.

As of 10 July 2008 Austin and I have re-addressed our liv­ing arrange­ments. We’ll now be liv­ing in a mar­velous house (con­verted into a triplex) upon on Capi­tol Hill. We’ll be offi­cially moved-in by the end of the month. Woohoo!!. And here are some pic­tures of the empty house. I’ll post more as we get things settled.

Ebbs and flows seem to appear in every aspect of my life. The last few months have been event­ful and tran­si­tional with so many new and inter­est­ing things hap­pen­ing, that I have neglected to acknowl­edge how won­der­ful the hum­drum can be. Moments of ‘silence’ really do help me appre­ci­ate the ‘sound’, and they offer more clar­ity of pur­pose and mind to digest the ‘sound’.

I tend to iden­tify myself—as I think most peo­ple do—with the stages of my life that are filled with change and ignore the times when monot­ony dom­i­nates. But, just like the chang­ing times, the monot­ony can be filled with pos­i­tive experiences. So how­ever bor­ing or short this next por­tion may be, I thought I’d high­light the sim­plic­ity of my life right now.

8:30 wake up and get ready for work
8:50 ish leave for work — I walk every day
9:15 ish arrive at work
9:30 emails have been checked, daily sched­ule estab­lished, and I’m ready to get started
12:00–2:00 i usu­ally have lunch between these hours, it varies every day
6:30–7:30 head home from work. this also varies
6:45–7:45 arrive home, give Austin a kiss and hug
the rest of the evenings are usu­ally filled with mind­less activ­i­ties like watch­ing movies, cook­ing din­ner, maybe meet­ing friends if it’s closer to the week­end, play­ing games, and read­ing about type. (I still can’t get away from that part of my nerdiness.)

Jenny would prob­a­bly call me ‘borarlo’, which trans­lated means bor­ing arlo. Which reminds me, I have a whole series of adjec­tives that apply only to peo­ple named arlo, I’ll have to post that another day.

And there you have it, my hum­drum life.

After a brief hia­tus from design out­side of work, I’m back with some updates to Marua. I think she’s shap­ing up rather nicely, but of course still needs some touchups. I’m almost to point where I feel com­fort­able design­ing sup­port mate­ri­als for the exhi­bi­tion. As things get pro­duced I’ll make sure to post updates.

I think there’s enough promise for Marua that I’ll be includ­ing a cou­ple weights and an italic. These addi­tions are prob­a­bly a few months away, but plan on it.