16th Century Typography: The Geneva Bible, London, 1581

Printed in London, 1581, by Christopher Barker.

These typefaces, the paper, the density, the uneven quality of the ink: All these elements come together to give us an example of lush typography from the 16th century.

Look how the margin notes wrap into the text column (especially apparent in the second image). We could apply this to current design projects just as you see it, or in other ways too. What other secondary or tertiary design elements could be allowed to “impede” on the territory of the top-level heirarchy?

Click each image to view a large version.

Source: Fromoldbooks.org.

Stanley Donwood’s El Chupacabra, July – August, 2009

Stanley Donwood’s new show, El Chupacabra, opens July 10th at the Weapon of Choice Gallery in Bristol, England. In other words, anyone living in England who doesn’t go to this show is taking for granted the fact that they don’t have to buy a $1,000 plane ticket to get to Bristol.

Donwood says about the show:

There are thirteen Pandemons in the show called ‘el chupacabra’. Thirteen ghosts at the funeral. Thirteen spectres at the feast of the goat. Loitering on the blackened cliffs of free-market economics, cackling as they raise a glass to toast Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet. Gallons of paint I’ve poured over them to drown their snickering. But still they laugh.”

Read about it on the Weapon of Choice Gallery blog.

Let the Declarations of Support for the Pirates Begin!

Here we go again.. the increasingly boiling Somali Pirate crisis wouldn’t be complete unless someone stepped out to lionize the criminals!

The best gem I’ve found so far is Johann Hari’s You Are Being Lied to About Pirates:

Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence”.

“We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas.” William Scott would understand.

Read the full article.

Johann, here’s where you and the pirates that you defend are wrong: they are not attacking Toxic Waste ships and demanding the world look at the problem. They are attacking vessels passing through, including Captain Phillips’ ship recently, which was delivering food aid to Africans, and demanding MONEY.

What pirate has boarded a toxic waste ship and declared “We will stop attacking these boats when they stop dumping waste in our waters!” None.

The arguments you use are similar to the ones that have been used to defend extreme Islamist insurgents. But here is what you guys always miss: Pirates, instead of seeking to change the problem they describe, attack innocent people in the interest of money, while ignoring those that are doing them wrong. Their message of being a victim is lost to their greed and their willingness to create more victims. Insurgents are the same, they start out claiming to be victims of foreign invaders, but then lose their message by killing innocent men, women and children, including their own people. When someone sites a problem to justify greed or lustful killing, the problem they site shows itself for what it truly is: a way to rationalize committing atrocities.

Heroic insurgents, like the American Revolutionaries, attacked and defeated the occupying army of a much stronger nation. They didn’t win the war by gunning down and blowing up other Americans. How stupid would that have been? Then, in 1812, when the British were harassing them at sea, the Americans did not respond by pirating random merchants and aid ships. They went straight for and defeated the aggressors without seeking to create more victims by attacking people completely unrelated to the situation. Sitting Bull fought against the aggression of the Americans, and he didn’t do it by planting bombs to blow up his own people or invading Canada. You see the difference?

The rhetoric and logic you use to defend these criminals would mean nothing if you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up in front of one of their AK-47s. You would face the same fate as all the other victims; all because someone else is occupying Israel or dumping toxic waste.

This pirate/insurgent attitude of “You victimize us so we will victimize them” is foolishness at its best, trumped only by the foolishness of well-educated men who think reason and logic should be used to reinforce the backwards, radical and barbaric philosophies of kidnappers and murderers.

@theconnor Ponders “What is the True Self” After a Tweet Ends Job Prospects

This week, a blundering Twitter post made by @theconnor seems to have ruined that Twitterer’s job prospects at Cisco, and the whole event went viral. The original post was:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

After reading this, a Cisco employee replied:

Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

In a blog posted today, @theconnor ponders what has happened, making this point:

the point is that people with many Twitter followers can’t afford to be real people on Twitter. Tim Levad would probably never use Twitter to make a flippantly negative remark about his career, because he understands that @timmylevad is more of a mass-media channel than a human being.

It’s important to think about these things as you go about your daily life. How am I using Twitter, really? Do I have the service set up in the right way to support that? Am @I more of a mass-media channel than a human being?

My 2 cents on this issue:

You can be yourself on Twitter..and there is no difference between you and your twitter name. Whether the real you shouts at the top of your lungs “I hate this job” loud enough for the world to hear, or publishes it in text for all the world to read, there is no difference.

Just because Twitter gives you a technological way of ’shouting really loud’, doesn’t mean that it is a “fake” you or anything else. You just need to make sure that you’re only shouting the things you want people to hear. If you insist on being genuine at all times, then shout and Twitter away, just recognize there is no difference.

If you are pondering over “What is it to be genuine?”, then you should’ve said to the hiring manager, “Look, I would love the fatty pay check, but I would really hate to work here.” Obviously, you didn’t do that, which is why he offered you the job.

Posting a public comment on the internet is not a way of communicating with your 45 friends.. It is mass publishing with instantaneous distribution. Be yourself, be real, and be genuine at all times… and in the process, if you tell someone something negative in person, or shout it loudly, or mass-publish it electronically, don’t be surprised at the consequences. More than that, please don’t ponder needlessly on what is and isn’t your true self.

That being said, I don’t think people should be insulting you, but that is typical reactionary behavior.

The whole thing reminds me of a local music-related web forum I was a member of several years ago. After a few years of seeing flames supercede any positive benefit anyone could’ve gotten from the site, and the admin’s reluctance to prune the Trolls, who had completely taken over, I decided to leave. 

What was interesting though was that this forum was different than most forums we, as internet users, participate in… because this one was local, and everyone knew each other in real life. We often saw each other at the events, concerts and parties that the site promoted. Despite this, people would post some of the most crass and derogitory statements about others, things they would never say to the person in real life. You could get a smile and a hug from someone at a show, followed by a long “How have you been?” talk, and then a few days later read a post they had written that cut you, your show or your friends to the bone.

If you confronted them in person or over the phone about what they had published about you, the situation was approached with alarm, taboo and complete shock. The response could be summed up by saying “What are you talking about? That was an internet post!” There was a complete wall of seperation between the real them, the flesh and blood version, and the other them that “posted stuff” on the internet. It seems that what @theconnor describes above has been adopted as canonical doctrine by the Internet Generation. It is the fundamental notion that there is a duality consisting of a real person and a digital person. For most, this doctrine is taken for granted.

When someone breaks the doctrine, by confronting flesh and blood over what their digital self published, the shock almost always leads the flesh and blood person to quickly downplay and move past the situation. That leaves room for the digital person to come back in full force, publishing about the taboo meeting on the internet, where it can be reviewed, analyzed, criticized and lampooned in published form. 

I’m hoping that as the internet evolves, people will realize what should be completely obvious: that there is no difference between what one speaks in real life or mass-publishes on the internet. One immediate result of such a realization is that people won’t be getting fired over their Twitter or Facebook posts… If they speak their honest opinion at all times, and not just on the internet, they won’t ever get those jobs in the first place.

Designers: Jail-break Your Freebies and Let the Community Use Them

One of my favorite websites is SmashingMagazine. Rarely a day goes by without them posting a great article on design or a collection of free downloads (fonts, photoshop brushes, patterns, icons, etc).

In a recent post, they had a collection of free Photoshop patterns. When I went to download some, I found the majority were rendered useless by pattern creators throwing attribution (“you must link to my site if you use this”) or permission-only (“email me before you use commercially”) clauses.

It reminded me of the rise and fall of the Stock.Xchng.. a photosharing site where photographers would upload stock-style photographs for free download and use. In 2004, Stock.Xchng was great… but then something started to happen. Photographers began putting these attribution and permission clauses on almost every good photo. The whole point of the website: If you give me some free photos, I’ll give you some free photos, had been lost.

Sometimes it is good to share just for sharing’s sake.. all of us designers post a few things here and there without restriction (except that someone doesn’t resale the collection), and we all have more tools to use in our work.

In 3 years, if I choose a pattern, font or photo out of the thousands on my computer and throw it over an element in my design, I won’t be able to dig around and figure out who I am ‘required’ to link back to in order not to violate the copyright.

Plus, what bank, corporation, government agency or business is going to allow the designer to throw “Random square pattern barely visible in background of contact form by [link]PhotoshopPWNRdood[/link]“? They won’t, therefore the pattern is completely useless for downloaders.

I quickly check the Terms of Use on each freebie I consider downloading, see if there is an attribution or ‘ask permission’ clause, and if there is, I have to skip it. When I post my own freebies, I un-cuff them and let the community use them, knowing others will do the same and it will benefit me. These designers should do the same. If you want credit and money, then please just sell your work.. but don’t tease us with a free download that is anything but.

Burger King’s New Marketing Mastery

Though their french fries aren’t as tasty as McDonald’s slivers of ultra-preserved, mystery chemical deliciousness, Burger King has been hitting advertising home runs all throughout 2008 and into 2009. These new commercials and viral campaigns make us LOL to tears, and, in most cases, deliver memorable and powerful bits of marketing.

If Budweiser was in command of funny, smart and memorable advertising in the 90’s, and Geico ruled the mid 2000’s, the crown has now passed to “The King,” Burger King’s new(ish) mascot. Most memorable from Budweiser were the “Bud-Wei-Ser” frogs, whom they followed with the “Wazzzzzup!” campaign. Geico’s Gecko transformed them from being the drab General Insurance Company to being THE Geico.com. They turned funny into an advertising art form with the Geico Cavemen, a campaign that was so successful it warranted a TV sitcom spin-off. Recently, that campaign has gotten stale, partly because of the sitcom’s flop, but also because it is showing its age and running out of jokes.

Burger King, on the other hand, has been taking a multi-faceted approach, with several funny TV campaigns running concurrently, supported by viral documentary-style videos (with supporting websites) and social networking campaigns.

The King

Always with that creepy, unchanging expression, The King wakes up in bed with men, or pops up like a stalker from the other side of a window, or delivers huge tackles on football players, among many other things. He’s the best at whatever he does, especially when it comes to being a memorable mascot.

The Whopper Freakout

The Whopper Freakout campaign was led with introductory TV commercials that drove viewers to online videos. Hidden cameras showed Burger King customers being given flagship sandwiches from competing fast food restaurants and then taping their response. There is no better way to illustrate “We have the best sandwich” then showing unwitting customers screaming at Burger King managers and cashiers over a Big Mac.

Burger King’s Flame Body Spray

Completely gratuitous and unexpected, Burger King released (or pretended to release?) a body spray that smells like grilled meat. Add a website with sultry 70’s style funk and you’ve got an email-link-to-everyone winner.

Whopper Virgins

The perfect taste test. Burger King flew in people who had never touched or tasted Big Macs or Whoppers before, filmed their trial, and put it on the web for all to see. Taste testing is a worn out form of advertising: with thousands of coffee, beer and food commercials doing the same thing over and over (usually with actors). However, the authenticity of this campaign cut through all that history and created something wholly believable.

And For the Win: The Whopper Sacrifice

This viral campaign was so hip, so hilarious and so successful that Facebook felt obliged to axe it on their system. Not only did the campaign successfully get the word out about free Whopper coupons, it poked snarky fun at the foundations of social networking. By deleting 10 friends from your Facebook profile, each of whom gets a message telling them a Whopper is more important than their friendship, you get a free Whopper coupon. Who doesn’t have 10 friends on their profile they could live without?