Start Stealing Sheep, Goats, Pigs and Everything Else You Can Get Your Hands On…

One of the trends I’ve noticed recently among my design students is their love of all design rules. Especially when I’m dishing out the latest assignment—they seem to crave the limitations and restrictions. It’s actually starting to worry me.

I like and understand the rules of design as much as the next designer—but in no way would I ever let them dominate my decisions when making work. For example, I have been taught and continue to teach my students to try at all costs to avoid stacking type. Most of us would agree that there is almost no really good reason to do it. It is difficult to read, it looks atrocious, it is even contradictory to the fundamental structural design of the type characters themselves, however, when I teach this rule and give my explanation on why, I simply get a bunch of okays and nodding heads. Every student is instantly in agreement with me and from henceforth they will never stack type again. And God have mercy on the soul of the student who forgets this rule, or wasn’t listening when I talked about it, and stacks type in a crit a few weeks later—because they will let into her. They’ll even lecture that student as to why she shouldn’t do it in the future, the same way that I did to them. That’s the condition of students these days in our design programs. They like the rules. They like to have order and they want to be told what to do.

Does this seem frightening to anyone else? I remember being taught this rule in my undergraduate studies and I also remember thinking at the time that there has to be some sort of exception. There has to be some time when it’s acceptable to stack type. I also remember thinking that in some design in the future I would have to try and pull it off successfully, even though I knew it was a huge design “no-no.” I think this is what a designer and artist should do. We are the agitators. We are the rule breakers. We are supposed to question and inspire. We are supposed to be the risk takers. So, what happened? How did design students get to be so “rule crazy?”

I imagine that there’s a certain comfort that comes from the rules. For some I guess it’s much easier to be ruled than to rule. Maybe they’re just not angry or aggressive as artists and designers. They all seem quite content with the “rules of design.” They like to keep quite, eat vanilla ice cream and shop at Wal-Mart.

Let’s take our old friend Comic Sans for instance. Like almost all designers I loathe this typeface. But I’ll be dammed if someone is going to tell me that I cannot use it in a sophisticated design problem. I know I could do it! It sure as hell wouldn’t be easy, but I refuse to accept a limitation or restriction like that. In fact, just thinking about it gets me so fired up that I want to take it on like a challenge—or a contest. Hey, wait, that might be a really great assignment. But, back to the matter at hand. There is some sort of urge or drive in my creative personality to be the visual spur in the side of society. I like it when old ladies have to read the “F” word. And no matter what psychologists and studies tell me, I refuse to believe the notion that seeing a photo of naked breasts will turn a child into a serial killer. During a recent critique I actually had one student questioning another student on why they chose to use 30 degree angles in their type assignment as opposed to 45 degrees. What the hell is going on here?!? This is maddening! I really had to take a calming breath before I addressed that student during that critique. There were so many more significant issues to resolve in that work than the degree angle of the type. I felt like a beet faced Winter Sorbeck (just check Google if you’ve never heard of him), ready to scream and flip-out on the spot.

Good design makes people think. And it certainly doesn’t do so by being safe, following all of the rules and blending in. The rules are good and they have their place but no rule is more important than making a good design.

I Recently Lost 75LBS. Check it out…

Summer Classes…

The Apple is Trying to Take a Bite Out of You…

Watch this clip and decide why you should be paid to design anything. Scary.

Day Three in Boston…

After our interviews this morning we rode the green line to the Financial District and then walked over to the North End and saw a bunch of shops and restaurants in Little Italy. It was interesting. I think Little Italy in NY is a bit more authentic, but Boston has Manhattan whopped on bakeries. There was this incredible little place called Mike’s Pastries and it was awesome. Since we were in Little Italy I had to have a cannoli and it was super good. I also bought this hunk of Italian bread that I just munched on while we walked around.

We ate lunch at this little Mom and Pop hole in the wall called the Theo’s Corner Café. It was great. I had a plate of spaghetti and meatballs for four bucks. That was the first time I got to kick Boston back financially. We also saw some historic stuff like Paul Revere’s house and some old churches and shopping districts. We walked all the way to the shore, but the cold wind was like a brisk ice water slap in the face and we had to pack it in.

Later for dinner we hit an Irish Pub, but I had to turn in early due to a rough migraine. Tomorrow we are going to try and visit the Contemporary Art Center. I’m also looking forward to getting back home and seeing the kiddies.

Trip to Boston (still in progress)…

Julie and I arrived in Boston on Wednesday night at about 6:30 PM. After checking into the hotel and calling the fam to let then know that me made it O.K., we decided to go out and explore the city and find something to eat. Both of us have been so redunkulously busy lately that neither of us had time to prep for the trip. We knew where nothing was and didn’t even have a map. So, we just decided to walk until we found someplace that looked like it would have good local seafood.

We ended up at this place called the Atlantic Seafood Company. It’s a nicer place (by that I mean a little more expensive than I expected), but holy crap man, was that some gooooooood seafood. The place gets fresh fish in everyday—they even reprint their menus every day to keep up with the latest deliveries. We both had some clam “chowda” in a bread bowl and then we had some appetizers too (fried clams and some Italian style calamari). Really great stuff. Nothing like that in the Midwest. Since it was already late, we headed in for the night and prepared for our interviews the next day (well actually today).

I woke up early this morning and we had some morning interviews. During the lunch break we headed over to the mall which is connected to our hotel. Had some lunch, hit the Barnes and Noble for a map and headed back for the afternoon interview. After we were finished interviewing we decided we would hop on the subway and head out to Harvard to look around. We only had to take two trains to get there and it was a pretty fast and easy to navigate trip. The trains run on a color system and their direction is either called “in” or “out” of the city. So, we took the green in and transferred to red and took that out to Harvard. (I sound like a Bostonian already!). All the people that we’ve run into on the street and asked for help are super friendly. This is really a great city. It has the feeling of Manhattan, but a little smaller and much cleaner, and even a bit safer I think. And what’s pretty interesting is that an authentic, rich, blue collar Boston accent almost sounds like another language.

Anyway, back to Harvard. Harvard was pretty cool. Surprisingly, it was much more “touristy” than I expected—with gift shops, restaurants, the whole bit. But most of that was close to the stop where you get off of the train, once you walk into campus more it’s pretty much like you expect. Beautiful, old architecture everywhere you look. You really get a sense of how committed they are to their physical institution. Every building is brick or marble with wood all over the inside and they all have the feeling of giant old Catholic schoolhouses. It’s worth a visit. But, by far, the best part about Harvard was the Fogg Art Museum. When we first got there I was kind of bummed because I had to pay to get in, and I was considering whether or not it was really worth it to pay to get into just some university art museum. But man alive, it was absolutely worth it! What an incredible collection of stuff! There is one room that has Monet, Manet, Lautrech, Matisse, VanGogh and Picasso all right across from one another. And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. They have so many significant wonderful examples of work from a great range of artists. I even snapped off a few pictures of a Moholy-Nagy and a El Lissitzky before the security guard caught me. See below. I’ve never seen a Lissitzky before in person—very cool.

After taking the trains back from Harvard we met up with a former NKU student who now lives in Boston and he told us of this great sandwich shop that we went to called the Parish House. Great food, but again I spent too much money. This trip is great, but I think it’s going to break me. I see a lot of McDonalds in my future ; )

More interviews tomorrow during the day and later we’re heading to the North Shore to see all of the historic stuff. In addition to all of the landmarks, I hear there are some authentic mom and pop bakeries there that I will have to patronize. I’ll let you know how it goes.

A New Blog is Born!

Lately I’ve been looking for a way to renew my enthusiam in blogging. I thought of something that may be pretty exciting as long as it doesn’t land me in jail. I started a new blog that is completely open to the public for anyone to post whatever they want. Check it out here: http://www.differenteveryhour.blogspot.com. The username and password are in the heading of the homepage so you really can log in and make a post of anything. I imagine there will be some idiot that puts kiddie porn on there I’ll have to delete, but this site should work as an incredible social experiment.

Pass it on, tell your friends and assuming it gets popular, it should be different every hour.