Posts by Scott

Author Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and The Omnivore’s Dilemma) spoke at U.C. Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall tonight. If you haven’t heard of his books, you may recognize him from the recent film Food, Inc. — which I highly recommended seeing.

In one of his books, A Place of My Own, Pollan describes how he personally, with no carpentry experience, built this small structure behind his house in Vermont. This whole thing might be ringing a bell if you read the Linda Aldredge post, but remember her tree house is a real, fully livable home, isolated in the woods, in a tree. She definitely wins the battle of priciple, but Pollan gets the honorable mention for pragmatism. Although how many people just happen to have an acre of woods in their backyard? Or happen to own an acre of raw forest for that matter… I think this is an east coast thing, the woods always look amazing out there.

This “writing house” — as he describes it — is a great concept and I am willing to bet it’s an incredibly productive environment. I often find that working in the same space as I live presents unique challenges to motivation and focus. This seems like a cost-effective alternative to having different addresses for your working and living spaces.

How many of you work primarily from home? Do you find there to be a conflict between convenience and distraction in the home work environment? Comment

The new Performance Mouse MX from Logitech didn’t make it in time for the Design Mouse Roundup post from last year but I sure wish it had. I have the MX Revolution (the original version of this new Performance MX) and I really love it, save for one fatal flaw: a defective battery. This was apparently a common issue with the old MX mice and they lose their ability to charge properly. So now it’s pulling light duty upstairs as an entertainment center controller, a purpose for which it’s surprisingly well suited.

I’ve been using the Razer Death Adder recently, and aside from it’s tacky design and even tackier name, it performs very well. I’ve been steering clear of wireless mice — I just don’t trust the accuracy and the last thing I need down in the studio are more wireless signals — but this new one is pretty intriguing. I’d really like to have hyperscroll back, I miss it on the Death Adder.

Anybody using the new Performance MX yet? How it is? Let us know in the comments

In keeping with this week’s (completely unplanned) typographic theme, I thought I’d post these excellent covers by Emil Ruder. I’d love to see someone try to get away with type layout like this on a client project.

Some additional info (apparently translated) from 80 Magazine:

“in 1953, TM held a competition to design a cover series, inside layout and advertising pages. 12 people took part, including the basel typography teachers emil ruder and robert büchler. the TM jury report on ruder’s entry:

‘the designer if his competition work chose the square as design motif, wich also resonates again in the page layout. this cover series is designed with sparkling fantasy; bold and new, far way from tested solutions, in a darling refreshing attemp. […] a really new solution which could have an interesting change from the arrangement up to now’

five covers by emil ruder were applied to break the monotony of the winning entry of robert büchler”

extracto da revista-libro ‘ruder typography ruder philosophy’. idea magazine 333. vol. 57. marzo 2009. xapon. issn 0019-1299 +

Via 80 Magazine

Grain Edit has a great post on the upcoming Photo Lettering Site from House Industries. When I first saw the headline for the original post I was half hoping for some sort of digital way to achieve that awesome blurred edge style from old movie titles and magazines. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. But the reality was just about as good, a bunch of great until now defunct vintage typefaces. The Photo Lettering Site is not fully operational yet, but you can check out some posters featuring some of the fonts here.

Big thanks to everyone who made it out Thursday for the Ghostly show in Seattle, we had a great time playing for you. Hope to see you all again soon.

By the way, did anyone catch that Mad Professor / Banga show at Nemos afterwards? Amazing, I couldn’t breathe from all that bass.

Photo by +Russ who also has some more shots of Decibel Fest up.

Nothing too involved here, just a simple diagram outlining the key differences between Arial and Helvetica. You can find the full alphabet overlayed here. Just in case you’re unfamiliar with the unique history these typefaces share, here’s an in-depth analysis. And here’s the battle mode.

Via Swissmiss, who’s workspace is way cleaner and more Helvetica-ish than mine:

Alex and I were discussing this a while back so it was nice to see the whole subject wrapped up in a nice post over at Shelby White’s blog. Now you can annoy the hell out of all your non-designer friends by constantly correcting them when they use “font” incorrectly. Be sure to start off with “Actually…..”, people love that. I liked Nick Sherman’s take the best:

“The way I relate the difference between typeface and font to my students is by comparing them to songs and MP3s, respectively (or songs and CDs, if you prefer a physical metaphor).”
– Nick Sherman

For a while I thought font was sort of a dirty word, like it really didn’t have any proper usage when talking about design. Typeface still sounds better but it’s nice to know that font does have it’s own place in the world.

Link | Additional Reading

Just a quick update on tomorrow night’s ticket situation from the organizers:

Decibel: Ghostly 10 yr showcase tomorrow at the Seattle Art Museum

REGARDING TICKETS
There is a VERY good chance that you’ll be able to get into the Ghostly event in the auditorium. Pre-sale have ended, but I doubt all pass holders are going to show up, which means we’ll have extra seats available for walk up sales. I’d recommend getting there by 6pm. Tycho goes on at 7pm.

Some links to more info:
Homepage story: http://www.dbfestival.com
Story in detail: http://www.dbfestival.com/?p=2808
Showcase description: http://www.dbfestival.com/?p=1083
Ticket link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/79151
Tweet: http://twitter.com/dBFestival

Aaron Draplin (who’s blog is always an excellent source of inspiration) finds gold on the road during “The World’s Longest Yardsale”. I’ll let Draplin explain it in his own words:

THE STORY: Our second annual running of the World’s Longest Yard Sale. Dale, Jess, Evan, Uncle Bob, Dad and Aaron. Four days of wild, sun-up to sundown treasure hunting spanning five states and some 630 fuckin’ miles on Highway 127. Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. Not for the weak of heart. You man enough? What happens on the road, stays on the road.

Amazing! Check out more of the results at Draplin’s Flickr:
Pregame . Earlybird Day . Day 1 . Day 2 . Day 3 . Day 4

I’m happy to announce that 2/3rds of Dusty Brown will be joining me on stage for the Seattle show on Thursday. We’ve been rehearsing some new versions of different songs and we’ll also be playing the Dusty Brown remix from Past is Prologue. Flying out tomorrow, gotta start packing, see you out there.

More Info
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Photo from Ghostly 10 Year @ Mezzanine SF by Lead Into Gold 101.