The Campaign Stickers For Colossus/Guardian 2020 Have Arrived ...

3519A.

... and they look pretty spiffy.

As any designer or artist I imagine would tell you, it's one thing putting together a work of art, commercial or otherwise. But to have someone produce it so slickly, especially since you love pop culture and being a part of it is a real high - well, that's truly something other than else.

A few missives ago I explained how the Living Computers: Museum + Labs, in Seattle, was having a First Thursday free showing of one of my favorite movies, Colossus: The Forbin Project, and wanted a free giveaway and stumbled on my Colossus/Guardian 2020 campaign sticker design and offered to buy rights. And they did. And they gave it out at that First Thursday showing.

I asked for a handful of the stickers, and they said okay. And yesterday, they showed up.

I got about ten of them. The actual sticker itself breaks out of the backing as an oval 3 and 1/3 inches long by two inches high. And don't they look subversively cool?

As can be seen I didn't just get that. A little promotional collateral came with, including a handout that illustrated some trivia pertinent to the movie. And do you know what else is cool here?

I got credit there for designing it. I'll tell you, I was lucky that LCM+L stumbled on me. They believe in paying for your design, they believe in dealing on the level, and they believe in also giving credit for what you did. 

They do things the way they should be done.

Oh, and vote Guardian/Colossus 2020, because they'll do a better job than humans. Though I understand that the conservatives will be running on an MCP/Sark ticket, though that's just a rumor at this point.

In Which I Sell A Design. As In, Get Paid For It.

3517A.

So, some time ago, during the last year of this time of extreme dexterity, I thought that the chances of being Presidented over by one less-than-impressive Republican vs another less-than-impressive Republican meant that maybe D.F. Jones had the right idea all along, and I created a graphic.

This graphic:

Doesn't it just kind of speak to ya?

Last week, I was contacted by a representative of an organization in Seattle called Living Computers: Museum + Labs. They're doing a showing of Colossus: The Forbin Project for First Thursday and they wanted to do a limited run of stickers as giveaways to people who came. And after they checked all the stuffs to make sure everything was on the level, we came to an agreement.

There is money resting in my PayPal wallet as a payment for the use of the design for the sticker giveaway. They are also looking into using it for other things, and I will keep the errant reader posted on that.

But it's nice not only to get paid for something, but to interact with a group that understands that, if you want to use something, the first thing you do is ask. From what I'm hearing out there, that's getting rarer and rarer. So these are indeed sterling people.

If you go see Colossus at the museum in SoDo you might not meet me, but you'll meet my work. It'll be fashionable, too. Who knows where those stickers will show up?

Yeah. I'm happy here. Thanks, Living Computers!  

One Way In Which Oregon Is Different From California

3536.

Here's one from the Dept of Hometown Pride Dept, seen in a cold and wet shopping center parking lot sometime last week:

Even though the thought behind this is rather nuanced (and the graphic approach both simple and sophisticated), please ELO's "Down Home Town", please and thank you.

[design] Return To OryCon: The OryCon 37 Souvenir Program

3446.

I return to revisiting my program design work for OryCon with the design for OryCon 37. Coming away from its dark period, I re-entered the fray with a con that had a SF, adventure-y feel: The Quest For The Ultimate Artifact.

Tanya Huff was the Author GoH, and Alan M. Clark was the Artist GoH. As anyone who's seen Alan's work weill recognize, there's an atmospheric quality to it as he lets some of his materials play a chaos game in the background while he lets intelligence guide the foreground. The combination usually imparts a near-incomparable air of mystery to all his works, be they SF, horror, fantasy, or anything else he does.

The cover illustration, Buckets of Bad Weather, is a thing to get lost in:

The steampunk-y construction is inscrutable, it keeps its own counsel; it appears to be siphoning something off and sending it somewhere else, but while it's guessable, it's unclear what or where or why. It may be an unwelcome thing, taking from the local environment but giving little or nothing in return, and you might think otherwise, but the title has a sinister note to it. Also, it seems rather ancient; the parchment revealed seems to imply that but it, like the construction, holds its secrets well.

The portrait of Alan illustrates the sense of mystery, stress, wonder, and tension which seems to be his main art materials.

The idea of a quest inspired me to find a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" style font, and that may seem an uninspired, perhaps even lazy choice, but the type used for that movie is a brand that connotes intriguing, mind-expanding, crazy and just-dangerous-enough-to-be-interesting exploration. The Creation Station people really went to the wall with that one.

It's an example of type supporting the message, and again, the type and the art merged to create an atmosphere and feeling for the rest of the book.

[SF] OryCon 32 Souvenir Program Design: OryCon Works Dark

3430.

The next year, OryCon 32,  I was back as publications again, and this was the first of two years when the theme went 'dark', as they say.

The Author GoH was P.N.Elrod, creator of The Vampire Files: the Art GoH was Chad Savage, macabre artist extraordinaire. What better them than The Dark Side of Fantasy?

This program was a bit of a new experience because, whereas the previous ComCons were content with my decisions on everything from headline fonts to layout, this year the remit included a bit of art direction via the con chair. She had a definite idea as to fonts for headers and headlines, and was obviously quite sensitive to the visual and emotional weight that the fonts transmitted to the content.

The GoH's, page, backed with a screened-back bit of his art, cast a certain mood. This was the first time I attempted this, and I thought it worked quite well.

The spread showing off the GoH along with a snazzy little ad for WorldCon 2013.

I must admit this was a challenge for me in more ways than one. The art directing, while minimal, was a factor I hadn't contended with in the previous two publications and it was a new experience, and a welcome one. The big up here was, as previously mentioned, the Con Chair clearly understood that thoughtful choice in cover design and typography is an essential starting-point to a successful overall design. She pointed me in a good direction and, as every solid graphic designer knows, when it's not necessarily your vision, it's your duty and job unify everything so it supports the client's look-and-feel. This succeeded very well on that level, and was a real creative workout for me.

The other part was ... well, in saying this, I don't want anyone to think that Chad Savage's art is bad. I don't. I think it's splendidly-done, and if I were 10 times the draughter I am now I'd be, at most, 1/100th the artist he is. That he has talent and vision cannot be gainsaid. The crux is that I don't find dark themes pleasant; they don't speak to me so much. So this really opened my mind to listening to an artistic voice that didn't quite transmit on my wavelength, and that was a real workout, and a valuable one, too.

I'd suggest that a good way to expand your design chops and your visual repertoire, as a publications designer, is work with edgy art that's not exactly to one's taste. I'm still not one with the macabre art, but I can hear the voice it speaks in and help it communicate when it must, and that's something else an effective designer does. 

Push ones' own envelope from time to time. After all, art shouldn't always stroke your happy place. A diet of art that doesn't sometimes disturb is just as stultifying to the visual health as eating the same thing is to the physical. 

The other notable thing about OryCon 32 was the loss of one of the granddaddies of the OryCon/PorSFiS community. John Andrews, a regular and one of the maintaining forces of the original OryCon crews, passed away at an extremely untimely age.

One of the ironies of my life is that my nocturnal-by-necessity nature means that I see some people in my own tribe, who live in the same city as myself, only once-a-year; necessity has made of me rather a recluse. But one of the signals that this was indeed OryCon was meeting John Andrews at the pre-reg table; as long as there was a John Andrews helping hold things up, everything was aright. 

He left us a legacy of a scholarship fund that sends a fan to WorldCon in his memory. We should all be so lucky as to inspire such a mark in Con history.

John only made it to age 48. The community he helped build continues with a newer generation every year, it seems: a posterity anyone would be thrilled to leave behind. 

[SF] The Orycon 31 Souvenir Program Design

3426.

The year after my triumphant debut as OryCon publications, I managed to finagle another go at it. OryCon 31's Guests of Honor included urban fantasy author Patricia Briggs and mononomial artist Lubov. Lubov specializes in fantasy and SF painting and illustration but seems to have a heavy accent on the whimsical, softer side of fantasy. Her paintings were a fresh revelation to me and seemed to call for a similarly whimsical typeface. I found one which I loved, a font which looked sketched and chaotic yet compelling called 'karabinE.' And, as the whimsy got itself into the thinking, it asked that I arrange the type vertically, like so:

This is the full wraparound of the cover, of course; the front cover to the right of center, back cover to the left. Doesn't the idea of a parade with flying sharks make you feel king of antic inside? It did, me. Fanciful, whimsical, romantic, fun. The use of a gradient on the right and left gave me the space I needed to make the type readable but also to bridge the gap between the white space and the illustration, unifying all the parts.

This spread demonstrates how the type announcing the GoH's names allows more than one GoH's bio and info to spread across the spread and live together while still remaining separate:

The type dominating near the artist head-shot sets up a strong relationship, even when it appears, contra-expectation, to the right of the artist's info, rather than the left.

The above gelled, of course, after the cover and the TOC page (below) were hammered out, suggesting again how the them developed organically, like roots finding their way in the soil. Even now I remember how satisfying it was to watch it develop front of me, almost like a living thing that had something of a mind of its own.

[SF] The OryCon 30 Souvenir Program Design

3424.

Starting with this post, I'm going to do a little look back. The centerpiece of our year is OryCon, Oregon's premier SF and F convention. All the people I've known and loved over my years of living as a Portlander come together each year to throw the best party ever thrown and continue to do so. 2016 saw OryCon 38, and 2017 will see OryCon 39. I've attended since Orycon IX.

Wife goes me one better. She hit OryCon VIII.

After I learned graphic design and got layout skills, I wanted to contribute in the way that spoke the most to me: creating the program guides. OryCon standardly puts out two: the Pocket Program, which has all the tough details about who's going to be where and doing what and what panels and where and such, and the Souvenir Program. So far, I've designed the main publications for OryCons 30, 31, 32, 33, 37 and 38. Six of the last nine. That may or may not be more than any one person has done in the history of the 'con, at least as far as I know. The fact may be a little different.

In 2007-2008, I finally got my chance. I seemed to find myself on a tabula rasa, of sorts; there wasn't anything but inspiration and a little organizational memory to go on. The Guests of Honor that year were author Harry Turtledove and artist Jeff Fennel, amongst the others, and I took a little spiritual inspiration from both, though it clearly was the artist that influenced the tone … as well as the theme, Days of Future Past. Looking at the future through the lens of what we thought it would look like during the salad days is a base SF tends to touch on a semi-regular basis and it's got a powerful pull.

Here's the cover of the OryCon 30 Souvenir Book, which is centered on a particularly beautiful example of Fennel's retro-futurist style:

The idea of retro-future influenced the type chosen: Futura Condensed seemed a natural choice. And here's where the influence of the art translated into visual theme: somehow it occurred to me that setting half the name in Futura Condensed Medium and half in Futura Condensed Bold would be visually complex while retaining a simplicity, visually playful without losing its earnestness. A perfect encapsulation of the innocent, antic yet serious hope the past had for the future.

An epiphany quickly followed, one step in front of the last, in which I realized how the half-and-half type approach would lend itself to a certain unifying treatment; putting one work in Medium in a black block at the ear of the page, forming an ready anchor point to let the rest of the page 'hang' from. Here's how it worked on the bio page for the Author GoH, Harry Turtledove:

The black block nicely defines the vertical space in which I could tuck a photograph of just about any size (sometimes you get very small graphics and have to make do with them) and provides a reference point that I can hang the rest of the page design from. The eye goes right to the black block and since the bold type outside the block is on the same baseline as that within, the unity is provided, and one's vision falls naturally down to where the text begins.

I had great fun coming up with this design and idea. It went over very well, as I recall.

One other page I want to show off: The table of contents:

I think it was on this page that I really hammered out how the type was going to play together and I just let the snowball run on out from here.

Note in the upper left-hand part of the page. The blue disk with the red swallowtail and the green Oregon shape with Portland picked out by a particularly bold star was a one-off; part of the 'Days of Future Passed' theme involved getting NASA photos from the 70s and 80s as illustrations (along with Jeff Fennel's art); I even found one where the Star Trek original series actors posed along with Roddenberry at the rollout of the Enterprise STS glide-test vehicle. It inspired me to come up with a sort of mission patch for OryCon 30 based on the NASA designs I've known (notice how the margin of the design (pictured right) is full of details, including the GoH names arranged as though they were a crew on a manned space mission. This is proud bit of inspiration; the simplified mark (with just the words OryCon at the 12 o'clock position and Portland, OR at the 6) appears to have been informally adopted as a logo/icon for OryCon*, a bit of indirect flattery which I'll cherish as long as I have memory to.

The logo of the 2017 edition of OryCon at http://39.orycon.org

It was a coming of age as a ComCon member and a demonstration to myself that I could take on a big project and make it work and succeed. And it was finally contributing in a real way to something in my life that I love very very much to this day.

I would go on to do it, so far, five more times unto the present day. Of which, more to come.

* IMPORTANT NOTE: The author does not speak for nor represent the views of OryCon and any views I have on the adoption of the 'mission patch' design as OryCon's logo are strictly my own impression and not to be construed as a statement of OryCon policy.

[design] OryCon 38 Souvenir Book: The 'Why' Of The Cover

3421.

When I first got the chance to come up with a design for the OryCon 38 program books, the rationale pretty much wrapped itself up for me and gifted itself to me on a silver Manticorean platter.

The real challenge to designing an SFF Con's program book is finding the one key thing that will blossom into a theme. Once you have that, everything else falls into place pretty quickly, and it's just a matter of making everything fit. The theme idea inspires the cover, the typographical approach to headings and display pages through out. It's a catalyst thing.

The reason it came so easy this year is because the Honorverse books of David Weber and the art of David Mattingly combine almost organically to present a certain gestalt from which a handle on the feel and form can easily be grasped. Once I saw the motifs I knew that an approach calling to mind the covers of the Honor Harrington books was demanded. This is this year's cover:

The choice of font was easy too, as Friz Quadrata is a font used in several of the Weber novels' covers. They were filled with a dramatic gradation to evoke the feeling of the type on those covers, and the star title ORYCON 38 was set in a black cartouche to evoke the feeling of the heavy-line framing used on many of them. The illustration involved, David Mattingly's Honor Amongst Enemies, seemed a natural; the right line drawn between complex depiction and simple composition to show off the richness of the art and the incredibly seductive detail of Mattingly's tech depictions and space vistas and still work well with the bold type.

Honor's steady, gimlet gaze looking out at the reader gives the theme a very personal punch.

A theme is born. The inspirations that brought this together cascaded through the document to anoint page headings and subheadings and headlines, like a catalyst.

The result is a satisfyingly laid out document and one which, once again, I'm proud to say I did.

[SF, Design] Penguin Galaxy SF Classics Cover Design A Challenge To The Eye

3396.

(via IO9) Penguin Books have just released a series of five undoubted classics of science/speculative fiction in a package designed to have your SF collector go straight to avarice mode.

They've called the Galaxy series, and it comprises six classic novels: Frank Herbert's Dune, William Gibson's Neuromancer, T.H. White's The Once And Future King, Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land, and, saving possibly the best mention for last, Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand Of Darkness. The range is undeniably significant (the inclusion of LeGuin legitimizes this collection on so many levels for me, personally) and the packaging, in an orange-tinted plastic box, including a series introduction by none other than Neil Gaiman, indicates that Penguin is taking the subject matter very seriously and driving hard about being stylish about it at the same time. This is cool SF; this is collectors-item stuff.

The designs on the covers may leave your eyes crossing and you on a slow burn, however. The style point is hit hard here and carries the echo of chances taken and creativity at work; the letters, made of lines and rendered in various styles mostly parallel lines, seem to seek to merge a classic feel found in Art Deco with the subjective atmosphere of speculative fiction and a sly graphic visual pun on the themes in the story. This works best with the cover for Neuromancer: shimmering silver-green on green evokes retro computer displays while the visual static hints at similarly-retro visual ideas of displays breaking down, becoming something other than they are and the disharmony represented by Gibsonian dystopiae.

The cover for The Left Hand of Darkness puns similarly, by evoking the theme of gender ambiguity and changeability upon which the novel rests into a double-visioned title that seems to have to live on the cover with an alternative vision of itself in the same space, being both and neither at the same time as it suits.

The most conventional cover is the one for The Once and Future King, an abstraction of a visual cliche on illuminated type; the weakest one, Dune, in which the four letters of the title, two of which almost resemble what a hieghliner might have looked like through an Art Deco lens as held by Dino de Laurentiis, are banished to the four corners of the dark orange title. While this does evoke the emptiness and dryness of Arrakis quite well, it renders the title unreadable as a word.

This series is a true adventure in design, pushing the boundaries of what it means to be the title of an SF work beyond the 'appropriate cover art' ghetto most SF and Fantasy tends to find itself in and elevates it to the level of a more universal literature. However, the reader might find themselves torn between the daringness of the cover design and the simple truth that, in challenging the eye by going heavy on design, some readability … and, hence, communicative ability … might be lost, leaving the viewer with what they may regard as an indulgent exercise in overdesign.

Quoting Brenda Balin, a friend who was at one time an art director, "Form must follow function. These don't function." And, David Gerrold who, on Facebook, blandly stated "They're great design … but they're lousy covers."
.
I myself feel simultaneously drawn to them and WTF'd away from them.

The Penguin Galaxy series can be more fully peeped at http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/PGX/penguin-galaxy.

[art] When You're Not Successful And People Still Help Themselves To Your Content

3327.

My friend, Jeff Fisher, has been a successful graphic designer for a very long time and I much admire him. He's published two very good books and put himself out there in the world in what still seems to be a courageous way: He stands up for himself in the matter of holding people accountable for simply helping himself to his work, which he has gotten justly paid for, but is just as likely to see his work used across the world by small businesses who don't understand that graphic work has value as well as by desperate designers in 'crowdsourcing' online logo factories.

A personal blog he maintains is http://jefffisherlogomotives.blogspot.com/, and it's got good reading there.

It's kind of a funny thing to acknowledge but I, too, have been similarly done. It's a funny thing that obscurity and lack of success does not bring immunity from this. In a recent posting I mentioned that a few people have, in the past, helped themselves to my own online stuff, specifically, the PDX downtown skyline picture I snapped in 2004. It's even being used in unauthorized places today, as this Google Images search will show.

The commonality I mentioned in that post that the three authorized users have is that, at first, they found the image on the web and simply appropriated it, without asking. At the moment I discovered that, I was a little wounded; after all, all three were fairly savvy online users, all had good ideas, and all were good people. I say this because I want to pointedly add that once I contacted them they apologized and since I liked them and what they did, I agreed to license use of the picture because of that personal reason.

But I think it goes to show that no matter how obscure or unsuccessful you are, you put something up on the web, out it goes and, Berne convention or no, people will use it. Now, I still, after all these years, have profited pretty much not at all because of another thing; I had, and still have, no real strategy for holding such kyping accountable. I'm not the DMCA sort, but simply helping yourself to what I do online without so much as checking in with me isn't cool either.

So this is a work in progress, still, even 12 years after the original was taken.

And, yes, I might have imagined that this would happen ... but I might have also imagined people could send me an email on it. And I've evolved in more ways than that; I'm much, much less inclined to use something off the 'net without making sure it's available for such (I'm thankful to Wikimeda commons for this … most people there put stuff in expecting it to be shared and used), or simply creating my own (I've the skill to do so).

I guess what I'd say to anyone putting stuff on the web right now is, have some sort of plan in place for dealing with when people help themselves to your stuff.

Be ready to contact them. Because, for some reason, they won't contact you.

And so it goes.

[#design] The Official "Portland In 2016" Westercon Bid Ad

3113.

I'm kind of the junior partner in this arrangement, but I'm thrilled just to be along for the ride. Far too infrequently do I get to look at awesome up close.

What you see, here, is the official ad for the "Portland in 2016" bid effort to land Westercon 69 for the Rose City, which will appear in the program book for at Westercon 67:

Quite the thing, neh? And I get to say that I contributed.

A precis:

The design suprema here is Meredith Cook. She has the sharpest design mind I've come across lately and I've found her incredibly inspiring. She's guided the the design effort so far and planted the seed (and did the hard beginning work) that grew into the goodness that is, and is sure to come. The general artistic appearance of that logo comes from her. I contributed a few ideas that serve to give it a little more character; it may or may not be what it is because of the bits I suggested, but it wouldn't have been at all if it weren't for her.

The base photo, that of that night-time Portland skyline, is my own work (as I detailed here). By making the bid effort logo circular, Meredith's design has enabled it to be used in the cleverest way …  the moon-over-town, lighting and illuminating a sky full of things that we love about Portland, and that sell Portland as the place for the envisioned Westercon 69. the whole effect is pure visual poetry to me, because as a place for fandom, Portland needs not too much more selling (at least in my personal, fairly smug opinion).

Westercon 67 is taking place in Salt Lake City this next month. That is where the vote will happen; anyone who wants to support our effort is welcome to do so (there's even a Pre-opposing contribution option, for those sufficiently perverse).

Portland in 2016 has Facebook and Twitter presences for those of you so inclined:

• On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Portlandin2016
• On Twitter: https://twitter.com/Portlandin2016

So, go support. Who knows … you might win a date with a unicorn!*

*Maybe, I guess. I don't know from who, but anything's possible … if you believe!

[#design] 600-Or-So Portland-in-2016 Bookmarks For Westercon 67

3111.

The Wife™ had a little busytime project.

You see, we're involved on the edge of a little group that's trying to bring Westercon 69, in 2016, two years hence, to Portland. The bid will be voted on at Westercon 67, being held this next month in Salt Lake City, and we have been promoting.

And, by we, I mean a rather divers group of passionate individuals doing what they can, when they can, and making it count. The sun our planets revolve around is the inimitable Lea Rush; entropy fears her, scattered card decks stack themselves at her mere approach. I am essentially a graphic design support grunt at this point, and provide support to Meredith Cook when and as she needs it. The Wife™, she handles the office we've called "Mailroom".

In case you ever needed to know
what more than 600 bookmarks
looked like, here you go.

How to Support
the Bid
(click to embiggen)

At this point, it is as such: a call came a day or so ago from Lea wondering how many bookmarks were left. We had started a stock of 5000; less than 2500 are left (we may have a handful or two left over before this is done, and this is no sin … we own lots of books which require marking), and the mission; send 600-or-so of them to Westercon 67's ComCon. Mailroom snaps into action: The Wife™ counts out the required number, packages them up, and gets them ready to go.

They're in a box, right now, ready to be shipped. Inspired by the example of those around us, the proper amount of energy is leveraged for the maximum effect. USPS Media Rate is our faithful friend, and Westercon 67 will have the bookmarks.

Which are sweet, by the way. Featuring the logo designed by Meredith with assistance by myself, they feature a picture of a night-time Portland skyline snapped by the ViviCam 3705, the Plastic Fantastic, back in 2009. 'Tis a picture I'm most proud of, and I'm equally proud that it may help, in a small way, win a very significant moment in time for the fandom of the Rose City. This is the bookmark:

Like I said, sweet! The night-time scene has a little bit of Tron and Matrix-y stuff going on there. Great mood setting. The round patch is the offiical Portland In 2016 logo, done by Meredith with help from myself. This is the photo it was based on:

 And that was in January, 2009. Photos are forever …

And they make, I'll say again, sweet bookmarks.

Presupport is still available. Clicky to embiggen the back of the bookmark, on the left above (there's even a QR code for your enjoyment) for terms, or go to http://portlandin2016.org to find out more.

Yeah. This is something that should happen. 

[design] Milton Glaser Hearts Microbrew Labels. Unless He Doesn't. Without Extra Added PDX.

3039.

Milton Glaser is responsible for a a lot of graphic awesomeness over his career, including a very iconic New York logo.

Just recently The New York Times asked him to review a handful of microbrew's labels. Is very trenchant. The bad reviews are, as usual, the most fun to read, as witness:

“The surface of this is so unpleasant. It sort of looks lumpy, like food that has gone bad. To me, this is antithetical to the idea of refreshing taste. Even though this violates assumption, it still doesn’t create a sense of anticipation about drinking it.”

The rest are here.

SPOILER ALERT: There is no mention on Portland anywhere on this list. Yeah, I know, right? You figure any intersection of NYT, beer and microbreweries would squeeze out a pip labelled PDX, but no. Not this time.

(via You The Designer)

[design] Dept Of War Math Posters Now For Sale

2936.In the previous missive, the remark was remarked that Plus3 should be sellin' them Dept of War Math graphics as posters. Unless you were a very silly person, you agreed with me.

Well, Brad Clark and Plus3 have heard and delivered.

Hie thee hence:

http://plus3video.com/store

You'll be glad you did.

[design] Dept Of War Math - Propaganda for Geniuses

2935.
So there's a trending topic these days (that I hope does more than trend), and its name is survivorship bias. You'll all want to write that down, because it'll become a serious bit of discussion in the months to come … or should. If it doesn't, that'll be unjust, and I think I'll be coming back to it here.

Surviviorship bias. Learn about it, courtesy of David McRaney, at the blog You Are Not So Smart.

But it started me on this road, a great riff on a classic style. And it has to do with the wartime Department of War Math.

War Math?

A little-known, unsung department that helped us carry the great World War II?

Well, yes … and no. It's like this:

During the war, math and science played a very large role, of course, and a role that extended into things like the post-war Race for Space and the very large role also that scientists played in giving us the shiny technological world to follow.

But during the early 1940s the USA was running up against problems requiring extensive mathematical modeling … and the computers that could do that modeling didn't really exist yet. The most powerful number-crunchers of the time, as the article says, ran on toast and coffee.

There was a time that 'calculator' was a human job title, do take note.

The Applied Mathematics Panel, made up of groups of human mainframes ensconced in various spaces hither and yon, was, or should have been, our Department of War Math. Commanders in the field brought them problems, and they solved them. Pretty much just like that. They came up with a way to figure out how to best fire torpedoes based solely the ripple pattern left behind by a ship … if it turns, you see, the ripples are different in a way, and if they're cruising evasively, you can't predict which way they're going to turn, but if you analyze the waves, you didn't have to.

Actually, they were kind of Mentats, really.

McRaney's article on survivorship bias goes into great detail about how these amazing people would not only use their technical knowledge but superior analytical and logical minds to finesse the unobvious but crucial details out of any situation. He went to Dave Clark, of the video and animation design studio Plus3, who brought the notional Department of War Math to virtual life, with pitch-perfect propaganda graphics. This one is my favorite:

Illustration by Brad Clark of Plus3. Used with permission.

The heroic math geek spirits the downed Allied pilot away from the crashed plane. "Carry the one?" Indeed. Containing clever wordplay with a multiple meaning, pitched with just the right patriotic enthusiasm - and a deft eye for the war-poster style, we have a completely convincing poster for a war department that wasn't - but it should have been.

This next one is a rather darker, but none the less on-target:

Illustration by Brad Clark of Plus3. Used with permission.

That Nazi swastika never saw it coming. With a palette that reminds me of those sinister, silhouetted "Hun comin' to get ya" posters, the heroes work unseen in the background, Mentating an Allied victory for sure. That compass means business, man! And again the adroit multiple-meaning word play; We're counting on you goes more than one direction, when it comes to the math the sharp pencil brains at the Dept of War Math did.

If I were them, I'd be selling posters of this. Great satire like this comes along so infrequently.

Plus3 Video is at http://plus3video.com.

Again, these illustrations used are by Brad Clark, to whom I express grateful thanks.

[net_liff] Gmail Ninja, The Infographic

2929.From designer Aleksander Tsatskin comes a pretty effective cheat-sheet for all the keyboard shortcuts that, if you take the time to learn them, should elevate your Gmail exprience.

Everyone knows what keyboard shortcuts are. Every pulldown has a staccato list of symbols to the right of the commands; these key combos connect you directly to the function without having to mouse, click, drop, click.

The problem with keyboard shortcuts is that they require discipline and practice. It also might be more comforting just to find and read the command in your pulldown menu. It takes a little courage; you have to know what you're going for. But who doesn't, if you use any Word-like program to assemble your documents, know what the key combo for Italic, Bold, or underline? It's even here in the Blogger interface, which saves a ton of time.

I first learned the mad savings in effort that keyboard shortcuts when learning QuarkXPress. There were a group my instructor called the 'Fab Four', and indeed I used them all the time. The keyboard shortcut, CMD-SHIFT-OPT < or >, for instance, increased the size of highlighted type by one point up or down respectively. Saved a lot of mousing and clicking.

The infographic delivers just what's needful, and that's why it's good. Graphic elements are greatly simplified but very recognizable, and the visual grammar translates instantly.

A very effective use of color, style, line and shape; green is the color of the keys, yellow are the simplified instructions. Simple lines and shapes tell the visual story.

Here's the whole thing, via a link; if you use Gmail as your primary email interface, as far as cheat-sheets one could very easily do worse.

(via Bit Rebels)

[design] A Symbol For Earth Day

2928.April 22nd, upon which eve this missive is being prepared, is recognized worldwide as Earth Day. And, in this era when ecological conditions seem more dear than ever, what with the state of the Arctic icecap (I hear there are projections that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer by the year 2025) and the rather depressing staccato stutter-step of I think it's some achievement hat Earth Day is being taken seriously as a day of awareness for all rather than just something 'hippies' celebrate (as I recall was its reputation upon incarnation).

Our ecology is important; it's the most beautiful world in the world. I couldn't be happy without you.

There was a symbol, created in the 70s by cartoonist Ron Cobb, which attempts to give ecology an icon. I remember it from then. It looked (and still does look) like this:

It looks kind of like the Greek letter theta, and like many such symbols, is invested with meaning. It can be seen as a minuscule 'e', a letter which stands for many positive things; Earth, environment, ecosystem, &c, &c. The crossbar is framed by an oval with a narrowing stroke at the top and the bottom; that the narrow parts are on the vertical axis renders a minuscule 'o' shape that we typographers call 'unstressed'. This gives two silhouettes; an ellipse along the exterior (a very natural shape, planetary orbits do this) and a circle interior (we live and socially relate in circles, there's a circle of life, and to the eye the Earth from space is approximately circular in shape.

The website PeaceButtons has a delightfully wonderful graphic that explores the various meanings; enlightenment thuswise can be found at http://peacebuttons.info/E-News/ecologysymbol.htm. They even tie the square shape in.

The first design I ever saw for an Earth Day or an Ecology flag, now, looked like this:

It was also designed by Ron Cobb. It features the Ecology glyph in yellow in a green union with green stripes. The resemblance to the US flag is obvious, and appropriate as I think, with our awesome technical prowess and national drive, if only we could summon it, the USA could lead the world in cleaning up the mess that was made. One might point out that it's also appropriate in as much as the USA led the way in making a great deal of that mess, but I'm not necessarily here to point fingers.

There is another official Earth Day flag, complete with ™ and all. Nothing personal, but I like the above better. I like the symbolism in the Ecology glyph, and I like the color green. I am an Oregonian after all, and green is what we try to do here.

Think of it as you go through Earth Day. What we do affects everyone else. And, with 7 billion of us on this shrinking blue marble, now, more than ever, we are our brother's (and sister's) keeper.

At least we can be a good neighbor.

And so it goes.

(Since Ron Cobb's website is just a front page right now, here's his Wikipedia entry. He's been places, yo.)

[graphic design] 30 Ways To Die Of Electrocution In Greater Germany

2875.This following diagram isn't just a good idea … it's the law. Or it should be.

The book this (and other pictures similar) is found in is one called Elektroschutz in 132 Bildern, published in Vienna in the early 1900s by a physician named Stefan Jellinek. The pictures are nice and direct and unambiguous; they teach, graphically, that the surest way to kill yourself with electricity is to form a complete path from source (usually the bright red arrow) to ground (the screened back, pink arrow. Arrowheads provide the path for current flow.

The pictures seem oddly timeless despite being drawn in a style instantly recognizable for that of Germany and environs in the early 20th Century. They're very evocative, showing the startled stunned dismay of the victims, and the drawings are strewn about with strange inscrutable devices with dials and terminals whose apparent function is to place lethal electrical current in places where foolish, thoughtless death is made even more convenient and unavoidable:

And electricity being what it is, not even animals are excused from appalling stupidity:

Who's a bad dog, then?

Really, considering the flagrant disregard for safety apparently exhibited by the German-speaking peoples during that time, it's doubly astounding that the Deutsches Kaiserreich even made it out of the Wilhelmine era, never mind Reich #3.

H/T http://www.brepettis.com/blog for this boon. View 30 of these überamusing diagrams at this flickr album: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bre/sets/72157611077138836/. Via Google+ at this post: https://plus.google.com/u/0/112360867913985105653/posts/7advWsaN4KS.

[design] Secret Messages In Packages, Or, How I Know Post Raisin Bran Is America's Cereal

2836.We messed-up people are afflicted with something called pareidolia. This is the psychological act of seeing a significant message in random inputs, like seeing faces on the Moon or Mars, Jesus, Mary and Joseph on a toasted bagel, or a big thumbs-up in the fork between the Willamette and Columbia rivers (squint your eyes, bunky, it's there, trust me).

Last night's weekly to the market gave me food for thought (and untrammeled conspiracy theorizing, when, as we were in the cereal aisle (not isle, that would be a mound of cereal surrounded by water which would not only be soggy but most unpalatable) and, as I turned to look, my fnord detector went off.

I swear, out of the corner of my eye, for just the briefest moment, that raisin-bran-laden spoon resembled this:

Take a look at this …

Do you see it yet? No? How about now?

What about now?

Mhmmm.

Anyhow, sometimes accidental folds will deliver a wildly different message. Without the fold, Morris likes 9 Lives. But With a fold in the right place?

Turns out his favorite cat food is really "Olives".

Shop wisely, everyone. 

[design] Multiple Tools? The More, The Abler

2786This graphic I found interesting because it reinforces some things I've conceptualized about the practice of graphic design and digital tools:

1. Photoshop is teh awesum:
2. Adobe is massive:
3. QuarkXPress is the minority platform.

I don't think a designer should be necessarily counted out because he or she doesn't have skills in, say, Illustrator as well as Photoshop as well as InDesign. But the skills required to use all three at a basic level of proficiency are pretty transferrable from one to the other: the Beziér-based Path tool works the same basic way, and the difference between how a vector and a pixel conspire to make your .ai file different from your .ps file are quick to learn and become intuitive soon enough.

An enlightened teacher or mentor in the art and practice are essential, of course. 

But if one's going to learn one, one should get into the others. Being a triple-threat Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesigner says more than you know how to use three important tools – I think it also shows that you're willing to rise to a certain challenge.

The biggest surprise? QuarkXPress isn't mentioned at all.

(via Pariah Burke's repin of Calvin Lee's pin at Pinterest at http://pinterest.com/pin/124974958379513909/)

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