Legibility

Two posts this evening have touched upon some­thing that has been lin­ger­ing in the in the back of my mind for some time:

The first step on the road from thought to web­site is text. Text is the most fun­da­men­tal kind of web con­tent. When web­sites have images, audio, or video, respon­si­ble authors will make sure these things have tex­tual equiv­a­lents. How­ever pale such alter­nate text may be com­pared to the media it rep­re­sents, it’s a base­line. Text is the com­mon denom­i­na­tor of web com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” — Tim Brown, of Nice Web Type, on his new tum­blelog, Mak­ing Nice Web Type.

And,

Typog­ra­phy isn’t just font choice, text arrange­ment and spac­ing, but orga­ni­za­tion of infor­ma­tion (i.e, sys­tems design, not win­dow dress­ing).less than a minute ago via Tweet­Deck

In the last year, this web­site has been pow­ered by Expres­sion Engine, Dru­pal and later, once I found the appro­pri­ate fit, Word­Press. It has been skinned with a hand­ful of pub­licly avail­able free themes — present one included. I will say, I have a great respect for any indi­vid­ual will­ing to put their code out there for free — how­ever, of the themes I have per­son­ally tried, none have focused on what I value most: legibility.

Leg­i­bil­ity is very dear to me because, well, I have dif­fi­culty with that which is near to me.

Sec­ond, though we have all embraced short-​​form com­mu­ni­ca­tion, I’m afraid, gen­er­ally speak­ing, we’re col­lec­tively ignor­ing the value of long-​​form articles.

That said, I felt it was time to do some­thing. I have been work­ing on a Word­Press theme that puts the reader first — if its worth it, I’ll even try and make it pub­lic. My hope is that, once in place, it will allow me to focus on writ­ing longer posts and have them pre­sented in a man­ner that encour­ages you, the viewer, to read them.

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40−30−30

Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Gilbert has shown that we deal with fail­ure bet­ter than we’d expect. In stud­ies, “when peo­ple are asked to pre­dict how they’ll feel if they lose a job… or fail a con­test, they con­sis­tently over­es­ti­mate how awful they’ll feel and how long they’ll feel awful.” In other words, “we over­es­ti­mate the inten­sity and dura­tion of our dis­tress in the face of future adversity.”

While we tend to focus solely on build­ing our skill sets or expand­ing our knowl­edge, the great­est advance­ment and learn­ing most often comes from action, expe­ri­ence, and tak­ing risk. And our regrets in life reflect this. Accord­ing to Gilbert, stud­ies show that “in the long run, peo­ple of every age and in every walk of life seem to regret not hav­ing done things much more than they regret things they did.” –Michael Schwalbe, The 40−30−30 Rule, from The 99 Per­cent blog. via Destroyed by Design.

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On Meaningful Work

When Bor­genicht came home at night to his chil­dren, he may have been tired and poor and over­whelmed, but he was alive. He was his own boss. He was respon­si­ble for his own deci­sions and direc­tion. His work was com­plex: it engaged his mind and imag­i­na­tion. And in his work, there was a rela­tion­ship between effort and reward. […]

Those three things—autonomy, com­plex­ity, and a con­nec­tion between effort and reward—are, most peo­ple agree, the three qual­i­ties that work has to have if it is to be sat­is­fy­ing. It is not how much money we make that ulti­mately makes us happy between nine to five. It’s whether out work ful­fills us.” –Mal­colm Glad­well, Out­liers, pp149-​​50.

I am slowly set­tling into an idea of what, to me, con­sti­tutes mean­ing­ful. I know that I need to be excited each day by what I do or I floun­der. Auton­omy, com­plex­ity and a con­nec­tion between effort and reward. I should alight every morn­ing with a ter­ror rat­tling through my bones – then I know I’m chal­lenged! Nav­i­gat­ing within the con­fines of that chal­lenge brings reward, but chal­lenge is the key.

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On the Meaning of the Comic

[Com­edy can­not] pro­duce its dis­turb­ing effect unless it fell, so to say, on the sur­face of the soul that is thor­oughly calm and unruf­fled. Indif­fer­ence is its nat­ural envi­ron­ment, for laugh­ter has no greater foe than emo­tion.” Yet it “does not exist out­side the pale of what is strictly human. A land­scape may be beau­ti­ful, charm­ing and sub­lime, or insignif­i­cant and ugly; it will never be laugh­able.” — Henri Berg­son, via Sally O’Reilly, ‘Things Fall Apart,’ Frieze Magazine.

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How to Mine the Crisis

From an inter­view with Patrick Rod­mell, CEO of Watt Inter­na­tional, in Monday’s Globe and Mail on what retail­ers can learn about brand­ing in the recession:

One of the core chal­lenges, par­tic­u­larly in North Amer­ica, is over­com­ing the devel­op­ment of strate­gies from silos. Mar­ket strate­gies are often done with­out con­sid­er­a­tion for the over­all retail envi­ron­ment. Adver­tis­ing can be done in the absence of look­ing at the actual store. How many times have you been to a store and then seen the TV ad and felt like they could be two dif­fer­ent busi­nesses? They have to bring that inte­grated mes­sage together or it gets lost in the noise.

The win­ners in retail after this reces­sion will be those who oper­ate from a truly brand-​​centric point of view. [This means] the core essence of an idea that trans­lates into all the touch points of your customer.”

Fur­ther, he iden­ti­fies that cus­tomers are seek­ing “the right choice” over “every choice avail­able.” Per­son­ally, I believe a curated prod­uct line is impor­tant, and would add—and firmly believe in—attention to detail and an unre­lent­ing com­mitt­ment to quality.

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Nine Below Zero

Every time I’m tempted to over­com­pli­cate a project, I lis­ten to Sonny Boy Williamson and he restores my faith in sim­plic­ity. You’ll understand.

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No Brand

Begin­ning Spring 2010, Rick Klotz, owner and designer for Freshjive, is strip­ping all brand from the firm, their mar­ket­ing and indeed, soon, their website:

Through­out the years I’ve become uncom­fort­able with this busi­ness of brand­ing and brand iden­tity. I’m not the type of per­son that buys some­thing for the brand name. I’ve also never done a very good job at cre­at­ing a cap­ti­vat­ing iden­tity to our own brand logo. Also, within the streetwear cul­ture, the pro­mo­tion of a company’s brand has become down­right silly to me.”

Worth not­ing is that Freshjive is a sub-​​brand of Gen­eral Pants Co., which includes 70 retail loca­tions across Aus­tri­alia, gen­er­at­ing at least $250M in rev­enue annu­ally. So: is this a ballsy cor­po­rate move? Is it punk, as Klotz states, for an iconic com­pany with two decades of his­tory to drop it’s name?

Catch the full inter­view with Klotz at The Hun­dreds blog.

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Rebranding Nations

Unapolo­getic, and unabashed, Wally Olins speaks on the brand­ing of nations (Note: .pdf file.):

And the rebrand­ing of France has pro­ceeded spo­rad­i­cally and often vio­lently ever since. Napoleon’s Empire gave way to the restored Bour­bons, who were over­thrown and replaced by a bour­geois Monar­chy, which was fol­lowed by a Sec­ond Repub­lic which turned itself into a Sec­ond Napoleonic Empire. In an attempt to recre­ate the glory of his uncle, the first and incom­pa­ra­bly greater fig­ure, Napoleon III and the Sec­ond Empire went down to humil­i­at­ing defeat by Prus­sia in 1870. By the time the Third Repub­lic emerged from the ashes of the Sec­ond Empire, French politi­cians had become the worlds spe­cial­ists at brand­ing and rebrand­ing the nation.”

And fur­ther draws par­al­lel between the brand strat­egy of nations and businesses:

Busi­nesses have to cre­ate loy­al­ties; loy­al­ties of the work­force, loy­al­ties of sup­pli­ers, loy­al­ties of the com­mu­ni­ties in which they oper­ate, loy­al­ties of investors and loy­al­ties of cus­tomers. In cre­at­ing these loy­al­ties they use very sim­i­lar tech­niques to those of nation builders. They cre­ate myths, spe­cial lan­guages, envi­ron­ments which rein­force loy­al­ties, colours, sym­bols, and quasi-​​historical myths. They even have heroes.”

Here in Alberta, there are ongo­ing con­cerns with pre­sent­ing the province to the world in a pos­i­tive light, some­times con­tro­ver­sial, some­times regarded as expen­sive and ulti­mately unsuc­cess­ful. This has resulted in a multi-​​front war of words divided amongst the Provin­cial gov­ern­ment, advo­cacy groups, envi­ron­men­tal stew­ards and the news media.


(Sun­cor Energy upgrader and tail­ings ponds. Fort McMur­ray, AB. Photo by Edward Burtynsky.)

For some, Ed Burtynsky’s aer­ial pho­tos of the tar sands are the only insight into the oper­a­tions hap­pen­ing in our own back yard. Or, they would be if any­one here had paid attention.

The value and impor­tance of the oil sands will make that much harder the choices that Alber­tans and all Cana­di­ans sud­denly face. Canada has now become a major-​​league mer­chant of one of the most desirable—and dirtiest—sources of energy. The money is flow­ing in, and the prof­its are rolling out—good news for stock­hold­ers, the Cana­dian dol­lar and gov­ern­ment coffers.

But there are envi­ron­men­tal and social costs to stuff­ing our pock­ets while the oil speeds south. And Cana­di­ans will have to answer a ques­tion already being asked by many Alber­tans: When does a boom become a bur­den?” —Erin Ander­ssen, Shawn McCarthy and Eric Reg­uly, An empire from a tub of goo, Globe and Mail.

See also: Bet­ter Nation Build­ing Through Design, via Design Observer.

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Stadsfiets

Built around an alu­minum frame, this Dutch bike fea­tures a single-​​speed, coaster brake, inte­grated solar pow­ered LED head and tal­lights and not much else.

We were inspired by the good old-​​fashioned Dutch bike,” explains the 28-​​year old Dutch designer Sjo­erd Smit, “we stripped the bike from whims that can only break or cause frus­tra­tion and added inno­va­tion and style”.

The VANMOOF is a thor­oughly mod­ern town bike, and looks noth­ing like the old stads­fi­ets my Old Opa would have built at our fac­tory, (though that’s not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing!) It cer­tainly res­onates with me: I sus­pect cycling is in my blood.

VANMOOF promises a new model every six months, and this is a firm I’ll con­tinue to watch.

Update: Portland-​​based, Specialized-​​owned, Globe Bicy­cles looks to have a small, but grow­ing col­lec­tion of prac­ti­cal and not-​​so-​​practical mod­els for sale. More inter­est­ing than their offer­ing, how­ever, is the run­ning com­men­tary on factory-​​built/​imported bicy­cles vs. locally built by a skilled frame­builder in the post com­ments at the NAU blog. (via Luke Dorny/​@luxuryluke.)

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Scuderia BENZINA

Scuderia BENZINA

As the weather turns, I tend toward the work­shop, squir­reled away turn­ing wrenches and smelling of two-​​stroke motor oil. This is a world I stum­bled upon, years ago, that has become very much a part of me—despite the chal­lenges of geog­ra­phy, parts avail­abil­ity, and pre­vail­ing atti­tude towards such means of trans­port in an oil town, such as this.

A very good friend of mine has decided to have a go at a shop, and I’m hap­pily along for the ride. If you ride a clas­sic Vespa or Lam­bretta, BENZINA is here for you, from the ground up.

I hope to be able to show you more, as our ven­ture proceeds.

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