A Sunday consideration: "Design" by Robert Frost.
Whether speculation about the existence of God, a comparative review of Nazi Germany, or a mere exercise in irony, Frost's celebrated sonnet, aptly titled "Design", explores a relationship with scale, the symbolism of color, and the balance of form. Quite honestly, I hadn't thought about it since high school. And I figured it was time to return to his construction, some twenty-plus years later. So what do you think?
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.
Posted by Eric Hillerns in Communication | 29 March 2009 | Permalink | Comment on this post (4 so far)
Stock-taking.
I spent the weeks following my father’s death cleaning out my attic. I mean this in the literal sense: I deal with loss using a method that is derived in equal parts from both of my parents: like my mother, I brood when no one else is around. When I am with others, I detach, compartmentalize and push on through, like my father. But though I was alone during this time — my wife and daughter were in New York attending to one of my wife’s projects — the cleansing of the attic was an exercise of the second sort: a physical activity meant to shove feeling aside, where it can safely be forgotten.
Posted by Adam McIsaac in Communication | 14 September 2008 | Permalink | Comment on this post
Career Tools: Grass roots marketing. And a few friends.
I was quite content to spend an early morning for another installment of Career Tools, AIGA Portland's quarterly breakfast series. Frankly, I had gone in with a plan of saying a quick "hello," catching a bit of the action and then making my way to a client meeting with time to spare. As you've likely surmised, I stuck around. The presenter, Kelly Coller, is perhaps best known in this town for her retail design outlet Office PDX, which aside from shelling the most supreme workplace tools, also touts a lively design-centered event schedule. During most days, she is marketing director for Twenty Four • Seven, a Portland firm who serves clients worldwide in providing design strategy, retail and graphic design. Her presentation was called Grass Roots Marketing: A Handy Top 10 (which may well have gone to 11) and provided a portmanteau of strategies and tactics for freelancers and firms, alike. I came away enlightened and considered Ms. Coller pitch-perfect for this environment. Respectful of Kelly's content, I've requested permission from her to post a summary of the tips and most certainly will, if granted. Stay tuned.
Obligatory shouts-out: It's always nice to sit between previous (AIGA) board members and firm principals Kim Malek and Rick Hooker and current board secretary and designer, Lisa Holmes. I enjoyed seeing Jacqueline Bos and Brent Loosli, Brian Wright (who puts together AMA Oregon's Connect Networking series), Lia Miternique of Avive Design and yet another present board member in Jennifer Green, formerly of Volt. I'm certain to be missing other good friends in that run down, but can't overlook the behind-the-scenes works of Tiffany Jackson, Heather Dougherty, Steve Potestio of 52 Ltd., Joaquin Lippincott of Metal Toad Media. And of course, lest we not forget the efforts of the ever-talented Lindsey Hammond of HUB. Nice work, all.
Posted by Eric Hillerns in Communication | 09 September 2008 | Permalink | Comment on this post
Use your words.
Steven Heller's recent post for Voice: AIGA Journal of Design, observes that for many designers describing design, reductive language is becoming increasingly elusive. In the pursuit of pursuing the client prospect, we have become them; so interested in selling that we forget what's being sold. And how it's being said. An amusing look at communications as communicated by the communicators. Tee-hee.
Posted by Eric Hillerns in Communication | 09 May 2008 | Permalink | Comment on this post
The Triumph of Vanilla.
Poking around in the pinch.nu analytics the other day (we use Shaun Inman's Mint, which I highly recommend) I noticed a referral from Google Translate. An individual had requested that our Hawthorne Books case study be translated into, of all languages, Arabic. Delight and amazement: what interest an Arabic speaker could have in the story of our relationship with a local literary press is beyond the shrinking capacity of my middle-aged brain.
But: here's a another example of how plain old semantic HTML sites rule over their Flash-based brethren. Presentation (which Flash is mainly concerned with) is a servant of communication (which you could argue is the province of the Web in general). There are translation schemes for Flash, but they require external scripting and forethought on the part of the site author. HTML, because it is an open system, does not. So, by way of illustration: you can put together an animated typographic tribute to Seattle hip-hop legend Sir Mix-A-Lot and get some nice traffic from the cool kids here in the states. But if you are more interested in the underlying message (as we are here), you can set the motto "I like big butts; I cannot lie" in a header element and our friends from the Middle East will see (read right to left): 
And that, you will agree, is a hopeful thing.
Posted by Adam McIsaac in Communication | 08 April 2008 | Permalink | Comment on this post
After a four-year hiatus,
Dean Allen's Textism has returned to the Internets. Mr. Allen is more or less the opposite of your faithful correspondent (meaning he's Canadian, hates Catholics and loves the Velvet Underground), but he possesses a pungent prose style and his opinions on communications-related subjects are pithy and often amusing. I look forward to reading him again. N.B.: "All right" should always be spelled as two words, unless you're Roger Daltrey.
Posted by Adam McIsaac in Communication | 04 April 2008 | Permalink | Comment on this post (1 so far)
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