The great timeline of events in the sky.
As most of you (who are designers) probably know, Creative Suite 4 is well on it’s way to being released, right when we’re getting a real grasp on Creative Suite 3. For those who aren’t designers, Creative Suite is Adobe’s software package that includes InDesign, Illustrator, and the ever-popular Photoshop. You should probably also know, and be surprised to learn, that Photoshop is not the primary design tool. It’s used to edit photography for the most part, to create artwork, and sometimes for web design. Likewise, Illustrator is used to illustrate. InDesign, however is the beautiful tool that’s used in most ad layouts, multiple-page documents, and so forth. Have you ever seen an ad somewhere that was low quality and the type is all “jaggy”? It’s because someone was using images and most likely photoshop to create it. That’s a dirty, dirty method. If you’re thinking to yourself, “But Josh, I love using it for my church bulletin!” don’t fret too much. It’s not going to look pretty, but you’re not being paid to do it. And if you are being paid to do it, consider investing in your design software education. It doesn’t take a degree to do design, but knowing when and how to use the software appropriately is a good thing. I highly recommend it.
Back to my rant about Creative Suite 4. What’s most frustrating is having to constantly relearn or learn anew the way that the programs function. For example learning that cmd+f is the paste in place command in Illustrator, but cmd+shft+v is for InDesign. Or likewise with the handy “step and repeat” function that copies your last move while creating a new object. What really has me nervous, however, are the toolbars. I wasn’t terribly fond of the new toolbar organization for a long time, and now that I’m finally used to it, I’m a bit scared that they’ll go all Windows Vista on me and completely reorganize everything again. Needless to say, intuitive is not the word for the last change they made. I’ve come to appreciate it, but not without some pain and confusion when things disappear and/or reset themselves at their own discretion. There’s also the pain of buyer’s remorse. A good example being the iPod nano I purchased for $249 (it’s the product RED version, hence the price) when the iPod touch drops to $199 a month later. The only thing dulling the pain is the knowledge that I’ve contributed a bit of cash to ending AIDS.
Deep down on the inside, all I’m really hoping for is better union between the suite. Their functionality as a group is lacking at best, and infuriating regularly. I find myself saying things like, “What do you mean you can’t?!?!?!…. but… it’s the same…. BAH”. In the mean time, here are some of my favorite photoshop fixes that I’m hoping work well:
Non-destrictive adjustment palettes: This means editing your images without losing photographic information much, much easier. Most laymen won’t know the difference except by seeing the images side-by-side, but it’s a great time-saver and resource.
Content Aware Scaling: This allows you to easily (well… more easily) edit photos to adjust for size constraints. A two-column width photo can be adjusted to fit into a one or three-column layout area by intuitively adjusting the perspective. Hopefully it works as well as it sounds.
Overall it doesn’t appear to be a huge change in things, and for the most part it doesn’t appear to be worth a full upgrade for slight improvements to ease-of-use. We’ll see.
A mighty wind blew this way.
Just yesterday, in fact. As I stood atop a local parking garage, a major landmark that has existed my entire life was deflated. At roughly 11am, the RCA dome began it’s final journey as the fans were turned off and the enormous dome became an enormous bowl. It was a weird experience, one I’m not terribly fond of but glad to have had. A few of my colleagues and I left the office to document the deflation of the dome, walking the five or so blocks over to where it was happening. At first we went up to the seventh floor of the Simon parking lot (note: the Circle Center Mall parking lot), but were promptly, and curiously, told by the security guards that we were not welcome. Thank you Simon, for your contribution to the people of Indianapolis as one of the monuments which stood for 24 years was being taken down, we appreciate it. Most amusing were the words the guards used:
“Simon doesn’t want people on our roof, you’ve got to leave. We don’t want anyone watching from our roof
“We can see you, you know, we have cameras all over the place. You have to leave, you can go next door, the exit is at the fourth floor”
Of course, high above us in their nice little tower were the Simon employees. Heaven forbid we mar the view by watching from their parking lot… In a nice bout of irony, being forced to move actually worked in our favor, providing us a far better view from a parking lot that the Colts apparently own. We went up to the eighth floor (the open air lot) where Chris set up his camera to record the event. Among about 100 people, and half an hour later, the dome started to deflate:
It was truly strange to watch it go. There aren’t many things that I can say have played a regular part of my life that have come to pass, but here was this integral part of the Indy skyline, slowly sinking as though a sun on the horizon. I couldn’t help but feel a little depressed about it. It’s always been there. Every image of Indy has it, and since I’ve existed, so has it. Until now, there exists no time in which it wasn’t there for me. Living on the west side of the city, it always greeted me as I drove down I-70 in the morning or on my way to some event. And now it’s gone (fully so in December when they implode the structure too). When I came back and conveyed my… nostalgia?… to my office mates, they kind of looked at me strange about it. Maybe it’s just different for me. I’ve always lived here, and it’s always been here. Who knows though. Maybe it’s just a part of growing up that I’m going to have to deal with: things change, and what’s always been here won’t always continue to be here.
The colours we’re born to mourn:
Orange, white, and green. This weekend was IrishFest in Indianapolis, and my friend Mason went with me. Sadly there are no photographs, I forgot my phone on the couch (surprise!) It was definitely different than I had pictured it in my mind, but then again it was pretty unlikely that they would rebuild a small pub in the middle of Memorial Park, fill it with wall to wall benches and tables, and allow the whole place to get riotous.
Instead, it was an open-air festival organized in the way that only American-(insert culture here) pride can do it. As we walked in, we were kindly greeted, purchased our tickets and proceeded over to the first tent. There we purchased 10 redemption tickets (which was scheduled to equal two beers each, but changed later). Feeling utterly naked at IrishFest without a good import, we went first to what would normally be the beerwagon, but was more like the beer semi-trailer, and ordered ourselves a couple of Harps. While we were waiting in line, we overheard what I can imagine would only be said in a state like Indiana: “They ain’t got no Budwieser or Coors or anything good.”
From there we decided to check out the bands on all the stages as well as the vendors selling everything from knit caps, to wool sweaters, to every imaginable product labeled “Irish” or “Ireland”. I personally purchased a green rugby jersey. There are no pictures (camera phone still at home…) but I’m sure I’ll wear it often enough that you’ll see it if you live here. The music was pretty good overall, and there was one band, Mickey Finns we were particularly fond of. The guy playing fiddle was really talented, and the drummer (playing djimbe’s with cymbals) was super good. The guitarist was actually Irish (as in from Ireland, rather than from Indy but a third generation Irish immigrant) and his voice reminded me a lot of the fellow from Dropkick Murphy’s.
And then there was Brigid’s Cross. Apparently they were the band of the festival winners last year, and as we sat through the first couple of songs it became clear why. They were fun, they were charismatic, and they didn’t perform Irish music. Well, let me rewind a bit. Mason and I were trolling around looking for a stage to sit in front of for a while, and while there was another entertaining set going on, it seemed that there were good seats at the main stage opening up, so we went there. The sound check was at least mildly amusing as the frontman got his vocals and guitar checked while singing “All Along the Watchtower”. The lady on keyboard amused us with a little Four non-Blondes, and the violinist treated us to some metal on the fiddle. I was pretty excited, because they were definitely entertainers. Then the first curious thing happened. It was strange enough that our alcohol passes were American flag wrist bands, but I didn’t expect to have to stand for a run through of “God Bless America”. Perhaps I’m not terribly patriotic, but after that they spent about five minutes telling us why America was so great. I agree, America is pretty good, but we’re at IrishFest and this is just awkward gosh darnit! Okay, okay, so let’s let them play and see how it goes. The first song? Alabama’s “Fiddle in the Band” with country music being replaced by Irish music. Um. Okay…. It was pretty lame. We left. When we came back to see if it was better, they were oddly playing a little of “The Pretenders”. I enjoy the song (far more than the prior choice), but the only thing culturally Irish about the song are the singers. There’s no other relevance. Molly Malone? Irish. Black is the Color? Irish. Danny Boy? Irish. 500 Miles? not really. But, as with all music, this was subjective. I don’t think they should be awarded band of the festival because of that, but apparently everyone else enjoyed it.
There were also a bunch of signs everywhere labeling the areas. Mason brought up a good point, asking whether it was necessary to label all of the areas “Irish” (like Irish Market) when you were at IrishFest. The only place without it were the johns, with the nifty port-o-sinks so you could wash your hands. Hooray for festival hygiene!
After a while of listening to Mickey Finns, we spent our remaining beer tickets on pretzels and headed back. Good times over all, and I plan on going back next year and recommend that you give it a try as well.
What a difference design makes!
Amidst a heated battle between political rivals, a series of designs has come forward. Shepard Fairey has his ubiquitous Obama HOPE image, and McCain and Palin have their, oddly, typeset names in equal point Optima. Perhaps it’s got something to do with my fondness of Fairey’s work (and it does), but the two images say different things to me. I choose these two for the entry because they really have become ubiquitous, they’re the images associated with each campaign. The HOPE sticker stands out to me because it is, as Obama’s campaign has been pushing, a change from typical political messages. The last time this kind of imagery was used appropriately was decades ago, and for a good reason. The criticism I most often hear is that Obama is a socialist, which is historically tied in to the stylings of Fairey. The link between this image and images of Mao, Guevara, Lenin, and Stalin stands out as obvious to me, and given the number of imposter images, it seems that it stands out to others as well. I enjoy it, don’t get me wrong, I may even get myself a magnetic version. There is a strong issue with history there, however, and that may be a detrimental image. An even more unusual treatment of image are the McCain | Palin signs, which appear to give them either equal weight, or push governor Palin more than senator McCain. Both names are set equally in Optima, and while Palin resides below McCain, the big dipper appears on the left side of the sign as though they were running for Alaskan office. It could be that her name is enough shorter that they can emphasize both names equally, but it seems to me that they prefer to keep the focus on her and off McCain (especially after certain market issues…)
Aside from those individual treatments, there are also surprising media treatments, which were recently highlighted in a New York Times article. This article is really the purpose of the post, and it highlights one of the most important parts of this campaign: seeing is believing. While many people may have missed the message in The Polar Express, it seems that public opinion has been largely influenced by images which appear to make a point which may, or may not, exist. One graph appears to paint the poor as the victim, the other graph paints the rich that way. Obama may be hosing the uber-rich, but McCain would rather help them far more than the middle and lower classes. At any time, these graphic treatments can send a message to the reader using the same date, but representing it in a convincing way. The same has been true of past campaigns. Common knowledge evidences Kennedy’s ability to overshadow Nixon on appeal alone, and recent events surrounding Gov. Palin show that a clean image is better than a clean reality. It appears that popular opinion is swayed more by convincing images of people, rather than convincing truths. I was watching the news the other day (always a bad choice at election time) and saw some of the most crazy head-in-the-sand action as people attempted to defend John McCain’s staunch three-decade support of deregulation, a major cause of our recent financial market crisis. The merry-go-round was spinning near the speed of light as people attempted to fumble for words that made his policy sound good, but ultimately were putting, how they say, “lipstick on a pig”. And that’s what it’s all really about now, image. Hopefully we can move past the inclination to believe what we see, and as a nation push for reality over marketing. As a designer, I can say that we’re often asked to make things look much better than they are and we’re forced to make choices based on that. Which clients we take on, for example.
Progress.
As I was driving home from work today, I had the hadron supercollider on my mind. I know, crazy. You’d be surprised at what keeps me awake at night. Most people might be nervous about daily stresses, family, relationships. Me? Particle colliders. It’s been on my mind for a while now, but particularly today since they began to fire it up, doing tests for about the next month before their first collisions. On my mind today were certain consequences of the tests, including the end of the world. As I’m driving along on I70, I have this little dialogue playing through my mind:
Me: Why is this so important that you’re willing to risk everyone’s life to do it?
Cern Physicist: It will help us understand the big bang, and give us a clearer picture of the particles we study.
M: Sure, but at the risk of all those lives?
CP: Well, there’s a one in 45 billion chance it could happen, that’s virtually impossible.
M: Right, but lives. You’re willing to kill people for knowledge?
CP: You’re not? This could bring us so much more knowledge about our past and give us new research for where we’re going!
And it’s that point in my internal dialogue that brought me to progress. (well, about that area, the actual dialogue was longer… sad, I know.) I began to think of the value of progress, and what cost could offset that kind of knowledge, and then began to wonder what the whole point was at all. If we understand time as an infinite line, going on forever, then what is the point of progress? Do we need to spend billions (roughly 10) and risk the entire planet for the sake of progress? If we all die, and naturalists are correct, then it may never matter. Time could go on into eternity, and one foolish decision could not only remove us from that eternity but would have pointlessly killed every last person. Foolishness at best. The odds may be good, but if we’re casting a set of dice that could bring us new knowledge or kill us, it seems that we have to at least consider the reason for doing this.
Coming to that point, I began to wonder what the point of progress itself was. Supposing we continue on our current determined path of progress into eternity, it will have never made a difference. New video games? Pointless. Better physics? Pointless. Heated car seats? Pointless. Now, I’ve chosen those three to reveal my hypocrisy, so if you feel indicted then know that I am as well. All three of those things, while wonderful, are ultimately not very practical in eternity. Rather than solving world problems and attempting to find some semblance of peace (I would personally refer to this as the Kingdom of God) we keep pushing for bigger and better. Today I have questioned why, and my only answer is an unshakeable confusion.