January 31, 2010

My fictional alphabet

As an assignment in my typography class, we were asked to create an alphabet essentially from scratch. Each of us created a list of words beginning with each of the phonemes of the 26 latin characters, then created pictograms of each. Then, emulating a few thousand years of calligraphic evolution in my sketchbook, I morphed these pictograms into an upper & lower case alphabet. Then, just to see how it looks on the page, we each wrote a page in our new script, complete with fancy drop cap.

Here’s my alphabet & page. It looks like greek to me! The variety of styles in the class was amazing—some looked like medieval blackletter, some arabic, some egyptian. Mine was one of the least regular of the bunch—probably more to do with my barely developed drawing and calligraphy skills than anything.

It was a very fun exercise that really taught me a lot about alphabet development. For instance, I had never really noticed that the Latin alphabet is strongly biased towards vertical characters: All capitals are generally the same height, as are lower case (and ascenders and descenders are all uniform in height). So, you can’t have a wide & thin character in the alphabet—it’ll look more like punctuation than a letter. If you make that character the same height as the others, it’ll look enormous because of it’s width.

October 19, 2009

Just do it

do-something-museo-sans-compact-2-blog

I always wanted to make a typographic poster…  So I did.

June 27, 2009

OC Quattro nearing finish of RAAM 2009

imageTeam OC Quattro, the team I filmed three years ago for my documentary, will be crossing the finish line again in the Race Across America 2009.  They’re currently in third place, and have maintained an average speed of 19 MPH (and that includes the Rockies & Appalachia!).  Not only that, they’ve raised over $100,000 for their charities.  By the time I wake up tomorrow, they’ll be celebrating their finish (probably by going to sleep!). 

I’m psyched that they’re doing so well, and really wish I could be there with them.  Congratulations to the team & crew! 

January 21, 2009

Hello President Barack Obama

As thousands huddled in winter coats & hats in D.C. yesterday morning, I shivered in layers of blankets in my living room (no, it wasn’t an act of solidarity—my heat’s been out for a week), glued to the TV to watch Senator Obama become President Obama. It was a great moment that I’d been looking forward to for a long time—especially the inaugural address. I’ve long been a fan of great oratory and had high hopes for this speech from an excellent orator on a momentous, long awaited day. I was a little disappointed.

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January 07, 2009

Observations on service

A recent support call proved to me a few things about service.  I called to start the transfer process of my domains from register.com to another registrar.  The operator convinced me to stay:

Everything is negotiable.  My reason for switching registrars was price: Register.com charges $35/y/domain; the competition charges $10). Talking with the operator, it turns out that there’s some flexibility in pricing. Now I’m renewing at $8/y/domain. 

Small talk goes a long way.  The operator didn’t put me on hold while she was working—she asked about the weather. We chatted about grey winters & snowstorms between trading information for the domain renewals. The net result: I felt like I was being treated as a real human by a real human instead of being a participant in a machine-like, protocol-driven transaction. It made a huge difference and all it took was the age-old conversation tactic of talking about the weather. 

December 07, 2008

RAAM: Finish line

Me: finishedAfter almost two and half years, I’ve finally completed my Race Across America movie. No, really! It’s done, finished, fertig, finis. It’s ready to show.

Wow! It’s still sinking in that it’s done. I’ve been working on, thinking about, worrying about, and fussing over this thing for over 2 years. It’s defined my thinking for that entire time. The idea that there’s nothing left to do feels kind of alien.

And extremely freeing. I’ve got so many projects I want to start.

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November 04, 2008

A good day

image

(poster designed by the talented Jonathan Hoefler)

The die is cast; just desserts

RM081102D-043I meant to post this a few days ago after finishing my ballot.  It was to be accompanied by inspiringly patriotic text.  Now, though, I’m just glued to my browser; too addicted to the statistics and tallies to even go make myself dinner.  Instead, I guess I’ll just look at this cupcake (from world renowned Trophy Cupcakes down the street).

October 21, 2008

Thumbing the scales of democracy

There’s a guy standing outside the coffee shop I’m typing away in. He’s canvassing our very blue neighborhood, raising money for Democratic candidates in battleground districts throughout the country. I know it’s legal and that everyone seems seems to be doing it nowadays (moveon.org and the DSCC are constantly at it) but I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s my place to put my thumb on the scales of another district.

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October 08, 2008

I am powered by Chocolate Chip Cookies

chocolate chip cookiesI’m convinced that I run on chocolate chip cookies.  In the last two weeks, there have been a number of times when I felt unproductive, slow, moody, ill.  Each of those times that I then had a chocolate chip cookie, I soon became happy, productive, and loving life. 

Proof positive that cookies make Robs go.  If I donated blood, it’d probably be 65% cacao.

(And yes, earlier today, I did the calculation of how many cookies I would have if I were paid in cookies instead of dollars (market resources report that the cookie is up vs the dollar and euro in late trading today)).   (photo by wenday :D)

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