Sub/Conscious Meanderings

Prime Objec­tive 16 is to pub­lish Gray­mat­ters, a peri­odic pub­li­ca­tion that serves as an incu­ba­tor for ideas, a sound­ing board for rants, a cel­e­bra­tion of excel­lence, and a lab­o­ra­tory for typo­graphic experimentation.

This post is the first article/essay in issue 1. The plan is to have peri­odic arti­cles posted here and on a com­pan­ion blog, that is yet to be designed. In the end I’d like to have each edi­tion printed and sold, but we’ll see if that get’s off the ground.

A man­i­festo seems appro­pri­ate at the start of this par­tic­u­lar new ven­ture. This man­i­festo does not pro­pose to become the source of a rev­o­lu­tion­ary new art form or polit­i­cal move­ment, nor does it assume its exis­tence will make any sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the his­tory of the world. Its only sup­po­si­tion is that of indi­vid­ual quality—specifically of thought, of pas­sion, and of action. I applaud those who gov­ern their lives by these three quin­tes­sen­tial human qual­i­ties and seek to asso­ciate with them. How­ever, a decrease in their appar­ent­ness within mod­ern soci­ety has cre­ated a need for resur­gence.* Too many care­less wan­der­ers have taken the places of mind­ful labor­ers. Medi­oc­rity rules where excel­lence once did. Rather than accept­ing com­pla­cency with bowed head, I pro­pose a return to cre­ative exis­tence; a return to self-initiated value of integrity and virtue—not dic­tated by another man’s con­science, but by my own. No longer will I be weighed down by any­thing other than my own expectations.

Thought, pas­sion, and action have recently become the dri­ving forces in how I approach most things, not just design. The inter­play of these three attrib­utes, prop­erly bal­anced allow for immense growth. As I look back on times when I have felt a great sense of accom­plish­ment, these three have been per­fectly bal­anced.
Each cor­re­sponds to a part of liv­ing: men­tal, emotional/spiritual, and phys­i­cal. The three are depen­dent upon each other and I upon their col­lab­o­ra­tion. When one out­weighs another, I find myself less than my best. Their order is impor­tant also. My father used to say some­thing that has stuck with me: “Thoughts lead to actions, actions lead to habits, habits cre­ate a char­ac­ter, and char­ac­ter builds a life.” The most key part of that process lies within thoughts to actions. Thoughts ini­ti­ate pas­sion which dri­ves action, and the sub­se­quent sum of actions cre­ate a life. My aim is to cre­ate one worth remembering.

Gray­mat­ters is intented to serve as a cre­ative out­let for all three. First, and fore­most, this pub­li­ca­tion is intended to be thought-provoking, both for me, as the author, and for what­ever read­ers are per­suaded to pick up a copy and peruse. Sec­ond, Gray­mat­ters pro­vides a source of explo­ration within my pas­sion for design, and more specif­i­cally typog­ra­phy. Third, I hope that in some way, Gray­mat­ters will inspire another to fol­low their thoughts and pas­sions and act on them.

*A friend of mine, after read­ing this, com­mented that per­haps, it is not so much a decrease in the level of qual­ity in the world, but more likely an increase in my recog­ni­tion of what has always existed—that qual­ity is rare.

Austin and I have been order­ing gro­ceries for almost as long as we’ve been with­out a car. The dis­cov­ery came after a cou­ple months of walk­ing to and from the store, back­packs and bags in tow, laden with too many pounds of food for our poor backs to han­dle com­fort­ably. The 10 block walk started to become drudgery. Need­less to say, the $12 deliv­ery charge became a wel­come expense. The one set­back is that the web­site (albertsons.com) some­times isn’t so friendly. Most fruits and veg­eta­bles are divided by unit for order­ing, but there are a few that are delin­eated by pound. Car­rots fall into the lat­ter category. Anybody have a juicer?

Now the my BFA is finally fin­ished, I have free time to fill. Luck­ily I’m good at that. In fact, I already have a cou­ple projects I’ve added:

1. I’m a con­trib­u­tor to a new blog called ‘the syl­labus’
We’ve just started get­ting con­tent together so we have a good launch. It’s focused on graphic design stu­dents and young graphic design pro­fes­sion­als, their unique con­cerns and things that will ease the tran­si­tion between school and work. I’ll be the con­tribut­ing typog­ra­phy expert (what­ever that means) with a weekly blog and more infre­quent arti­cles. I’m rather excited about it.

2. I’ve started a new type­face. Granted, it’s still in the incu­ba­tion stages, but I feel like I have a solid design brief/concept that fills an area that seems to be need­ing filled within the realm of type design.

3. I’ve also been toss­ing around another idea for writ­ing, mostly just a fun way for me to jour­nal and incu­bate ideas. It’ll be called Gray­Mat­ters. I’m so clever. I’m hop­ing that I’ll be able to get some funds to pub­lish every year. I think after I incor­po­rate Type­caste at the begin­ning of the year, I might use it as the basis for my annual report. Who knows?

One lit­tle caveat on #2. Austin made me promise that I’d take at least a month off before start­ing another type­face so there prob­a­bly won’t be any updates dur­ing the next month.

Just because I laughed out loud. A lot.

After a very long (and some­what rainy) day, my back is tired and my eyes can barely be kept open. Here’s the lat­est ver­sion of Daphne. I’m start­ing to lose track of all the glyphs, but I think it’s some­where around 650. Any­way, the end of the tun­nel is near. Enjoy.