Letterpress and typography Sunday, Jul 5 2009

Back from the WordPress hiatus!

I’m thrilled to be part of a letterpress class this summer – I have really enjoyed learning about how to use the presses and I’ve had the tactile satisfaction of making letterpressed items. I’m coming across all sorts of interesting typography and letterpress resources because of this class – here are a few I’ve run into recently:

The Ladies of Letterpress is a fun Flickr group that showcases the work of women who create with letterpress. Inspiring work!

Beast Pieces is the portfolio site of Studio on Fire – cool stuff they make!

I’m using my netvibes page as a collection of typography blogs, links and resources right now – I can’t keep up with all the stuff that’s happening in the field because there’s just so much of it online! But here I (and anyone else that finds my little netvibes ‘universe’) can look at a glance at some online resources brought together in one place to pick out something interesting to read: http://www.netvibes.com/liquid06#blogs

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Hijacked company e-mail database? Saturday, Dec 20 2008

So, today I got one of the strangest spam messages I have ever received. It didn’t get filtered by Gmail’s awesome spam filter. The title didn’t include any special characters, there were no images in it or ads for viagra. From a sender I don’t know to an e-mail address list I don’t recognize…

Entitled “Yes…Many suffer now,” here is the message from Rubin Temple (lvros@killer.kkk.sg)

Dear MAN
Yes, you’ve got spam mail!
Sorry for this kind of trouble, but it’s the only way to inform all civilization about the real situation in global economy.
Millions of people had lost their job!!!
Millions of people have no even constant home and profits!!!
It is global problem of humanity! And each of us should understand that for solving this trouble one needs to insert the brain and begin to act!
If you are reading these words – it is really matter for you what could happen to you, to your children and friends.
Let me tell you about ways of solving financial crisis problems:
First way – just listen and believe in endless promises of help from your government.
Second way – wait for financial crisis ending (may be tomorrow or in a few couple of years). I don’t know, I am not foreteller.
Third way – get knowledge and information about real situation in global financial market and use it for elimination of mistakes.
I can’t tell you more right now ‘cause I’m an ordinary manager in advertising and my responsibility is reporting to you that it is really necessary to fight against the crisis! ONE CANNOT DO NOTHING ABOUT IT!
Write me and I’ll give you contacts of people who are not slipping right now and trying to change this world in better way.
My personal e-mail: mr.fersinks@googlemail.com
Mary Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Best regards
MAN

I have to wonder about this message. If it was from one of the usual advertising lists, Gmail would have blocked it, right? Did somebody actually hijack a spammer’s e-mail database to send this message they felt was so important? And what of the misspellings? They don’t serve their usual purpose of advertising viagra or some such spammy attempt. The thing I find most interesting, though is the similar salutation and closing. MAN. Addressed to another human being. I am no doubt one of thousands who received this message. I think this is the number one most odd spam message I have ever received.

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Choosing the right person Saturday, Dec 6 2008

This is a story about the importance of choosing the right person for the job.

Once upon a time, a team of three people was sent out to capture an event that seemed like an everyday occurrence to some, but like an amazing feat to others. We were sent out to capture students in a music class practicing the violin with their teacher. We arrived early, paranoid as always about not having enough time to set up. We hid lights and reflectors behind the piano and in the corners of the room, and we made a rough plan for who would do what during shooting.

I was to hold the microphone that would capture most of the student’s music when they were playing. The person holding the camera my microphone was attached to would record close-ups of the children and monitor the sound via headphones. The other of us would get all the needed wide shots and close-ups of the teacher, and record the teacher’s voice. This seemed like a fine arrangement except for one thing. The person monitoring the audio from my microphone is nearly deaf and hasn’t got much experience in this sort of thing. He could probably tell us whether there was audio being recorded or not, but I don’t think he could tell us much more than that.

The class proceeded to enter the room and play beautiful music, with our director asking for re-takes sometimes and different angles on the action at other times. Every time I looked at my headphone-wearing partner, I got a sign of thumbs-up!

Later on, in the editing room, I was in charge of capturing all the footage. As I was watching the tapes from the wide-shot camera and making the logs I thought that these kids really are doing something amazing, even though they don’t think so. It’s just their regular everyday music lesson. To me it’s an extraordinary thing to see people doing things they enjoy, and an expressive medium like music is all the more appropriate for this! It was a pleasing experience to watch all the footage and to mark the best takes of different parts of the class, but most of all I enjoyed hearing the music the students were playing. Up until this point, I had been watching and listening to the camera recording the wide shots and the sound of the teacher’s voice via a lavalier mic attached to her shirt.

Then I put in the first tape from the other camera. The tape with the close-ups of the students, and the boom audio which I had been controlling but not monitoring. I started crying when the children started playing. On this tape the signal was way too loud, overmodulated and distorted. The sounds matched the correct young violinists that were in the video, but it was so distorted and loud that it was extremely unpleasant to listen to. Here they had put on a really great performance, and this team of three people who had been set out to capture it, had failed them.

After all the video was captured, I took a sample of the poor, distressed sound into Audition, to see if it could be salvaged. Some things could certainly be done to make it more tolerable, but nothing could be done for the overmodulation. It wasn’t recorded properly – it would have been much better to end up with a recording that was too quiet and then boost it in the editing process. Instead, there’s a recording that went over the limits, and the tops and bottoms of every waveform are missing, and there’s no way to get them back again.

The moral of the story is, of course, always make an effort to learn about people’s strengths and weaknesses, and try to choose the best person for the job. Pay attention to the process of doing something and evaluate its effectiveness and contribution to the quality of the final product instead of bending it to the way that’s easier for you. I know that not too many people are as particular about quality as I am, but this could have been simply and easily avoided by a test tape with the students present, a monitor on which to watch and listen, or just some instruction for the audio person. All of these things were within the reach of our group of three people.

But we didn’t do any of them because it would have been too difficult for us. A monitor is heavy, and another piece of equipment you have to carry around. This person is so passionate about recording – he must be skilled at it. We don’t need to run a test – we just ran one (with only the teacher present). And all these things could have been carried out even without changing who was doing what on this shoot.

I can hear the sound of violins.

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Review: We Draw Good Saturday, Oct 4 2008

Sometimes viewing art is negatively impacted by the opinions of others, intentional or subconscious.

Last week we were referred to specific galleries to write reports “because there’s good stuff there.” I disagree with “good stuff” being someone’s judgment before we’ve seen the work for ourselves, so I’m writing about the stuff we were pointed away from. “We Draw Good” is work by the Visual Communications graduating seniors, and it’s showing in the Kachina Gallery which is also a student lounge. The theme is the sketch and the process by which ideas come about.

I viewed this exhibit because, by not including it in the “good stuff” it deserved attention without bias.

It’s a little difficult to browse this exhibit during the day when the lounge is filled with people. Some of the tables are pretty close to the walls and the works, and you have to watch out not to trip of people’s laptop cords and backpacks. I came to see it when it was almost empty.

Viewing these pieces seems a lot like being inside someone’s head. You can see the ideas as they emerge and develop. You can see raw inspiration and searching through doodles. You see what’s usually unseen; the sometimes-ugly beginning.

The presentations were different depending on the work, and every piece was in a space in the gallery that was appropriate for it. From scattered paper to cards neatly arranged on a piece of mat board, presentation matched the work entirely.

There were many types of media in this exhibit and also various levels of development of ideas and images. Some images were just drawings or sketches. Others seemed more finished and intended for exhibit, such as the tiny papercraft scenes by Margarita.

Some of the pieces could have been made more interesting with the addition of a story or small narrative to explain the existence of the work. One such piece was called “Bigaro Journal Project,” and it seemed to be a collaboration between a few artists. It was made of a large sketchbook with sketches on the pages. The images didn’t seem to relate to each other or be particularly well-developed.

The papercraft scenes I mentioned before seemed to have their own stories without an explicit narrative. Like actors on a stage in a scene, the (very small) paper characters showed emotions through four constructed panels. In wooden frames, paper was suspended in layers to create depth and detailed scenery for the characters. Two of the four frames had titles written on them, in a few words describing the scene and sometimes naming the character.

One piece I enjoyed in particular was entitled “My Lively Mind.” Made of paper (which looked like scanned sketchbook pages which were then printed and glued together), the piece begins with one small single sheet glued to a piece of glass in a frame hanging from the wall. It’s then a chain of papers that are the same size, some attached on the short side, and others on the long side, creating a waterfall of paper that usually goes down and sometimes sideways. I think that’s a really neat way to add a 3-D element to a piece, and I’m considering taking that as an inspiration and trying a similar idea on my next project.

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Marketing and your website Thursday, Jul 31 2008

A bit of advice: your marketing effort IS your website. There is no difference, and it’s all related to branding.

Placing the [...] videos on the [...] Internet home page is a great idea and really helps our marketing efforts! Adding the video icons also helps.

The above quote was taken from an e-mail from an employee to the webmaster. It conveys an extreme misunderstanding about the function of marketing in an Internet age. Let me try to straighten this out for anyone who happens to be interested.

Marketing: a traditional definition

I don’t have my marketing textbook handy, but in my own words the traditional definition goes something like this:

“Marketing is the communication of a person, object, business or idea through the elements of Product, Price, Place and Promotion.”

Related to marketing would be branding. The brand of a product or business would serve to position the product in the eyes of the target consumer, describing the brand values through marketing channels.

Promotion Elements

The promotional tactics used by the business that, in addition to physical space and customer interactions, serves to communicate what is sometimes called the “brand image.” The customer’s impression of the brand values is helpful to sell the product or idea. In recent years, the view of marketing and advertising has spread to include all customer interactions and points of contact. And the term “Integrated Marketing Communications” (IMC if you like acronyms) has come about as a way to describe print, web, television, in-store and any other media working in harmony, promoting the same message to the target consumer.

In the particular business where the opening quote was encountered, the communication with customers was fragmented, handled by too many different people and departments. Print media usually looked unprofessional, thrown together quickly, and sometimes had grammatical or spelling errors. Online media had been created by different authors over and some pages had not been updated since 2001. Customer interaction was all over the map – some locations reported good customer service while others got complaints. Video media didn’t tie in with any other promotional efforts; in essence, each person in charge of putting out a piece of communication made their own rules, creating thousands of different voices attempting to promote the same overarching brand.

No consumer would have guessed that all those communications were from the same company!

Consider every opportunity

The solution? Consider everything. Every single communication with the customer is an opportunity to promote the values the brand stands for and to identify the brand so the public is familiar with it. Oh, and don’t have an ego about it – that’s just my advice, but consider this example.

Person A has got a great idea. It’s cutting edge, fantastic and it breaks all the rules. Person A thinks that everyone should know this idea, so she pressures the people who control the media. She convinces the TV station to run a segment about her idea, she gets another department to place an announcement in their newsletter and she gets a location to host a forum about her idea. If this idea supports the brand values, and showcases the company that the ideas are about, then it’s a good promotion. If it doesn’t mention the brand it’s about and does not communicate the same values, the contact is lost to the brand. It’s good for the individual, but not for the company.

This is the same case as the web case. The train of thought that is speeding much too fast thinks “There must be a place on our website where we can put our marketing messages.” Then it thinks “There should be a place at every location where we can place our marketing messages.” Then “We should have a printed publication to communicate our marketing messages.”

But that’s missing the point! Your website and your marketing message should be inseparable. The use of the web site should be constantly communicating that message with every click by way of design decisions. Same thing with customer service. Every interaction with a customer should communicate the brand in a sincere and subtle way. In the modern world, with successful companies, this is the method that’s been proven to help keep loyal customers and attract new ones.

Those of the old view think that marketing means coming up with a slogan, then hitting the customers over the head with it until they buy something. Modern-day customers don’t like to be hit with things, and I doubt older-day customers liked it either. Modern-day customers want to be shown. Not told.

What if your website stated proudly in large, red, type: “We are the latest and greatest!” Well, OK, but what if your site also looked like it was made in the 90s? Show the customer that you’re the latest and greatest by following a current design technique, using a new method for doing business that’s better than the previous method and by constantly trying out new ideas. Would that not communicate the core value in a better way than the large type?

I think so. And that’s my message.

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Nope, not here. Tuesday, Jul 29 2008

So to my dismay, the most-read post on this silly little blog was my angry one written about docx files after observing some office staffers being perplexed about them.

Those silly .docx files, 1,320 views

Does this show a need for personal, gentle tech support on the internet? Nope, you won’t find it here.

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