Mark Bult Design: San Francisco, CA, Established 1988
Web design and development for small and large business, e-commerce, b2b, b2c, SAAS, and community websites. User experience design and usability testing.
NPR’s “To the Best of Our Knowledge,” on fonts
Great show including an interview with Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, who created the font Gotham, recently popularized in the Obama campaign (and incidentally the font I use for my new site design, although I chose it before Obama’s team did). Also an interview with Matthew Carter, who designed Verdana and Georgia, two of the most prevalent fonts in the Internet. Listen to an RM stream here, or download the podcast MP3 here.
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most notable, interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Posted by espd at 5:18 AM |
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Thursday, July 09, 2009
Thursday Top 5
Resonance This is a really interesting and well produced video on design strategy, made by product design firm Continuum in LA. I couldn’t embed so you’ll have to go to their site to view it.
Street Sweeper Social Club, “100 Little Curses” I guess I haven’t been paying attention, because I didn’t know Tom Morello and Boots Riley started a band called Street Sweeper Social Club. Pretty good song.
Possibly the best complaint letter ever A passenger on a Virgin Atlantic flight from Mumbai to London wasn’t exactly thrilled with the in-flight meal, so s/he wrote a letter to Chairman Richard Branson: “...You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left...”
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
My pocket journal (an ultra-thin Moleskine) is where I jot down such things while I’m out and about. My electronic journal (this here blog yer lookin’ at) is where I save those things for posterity, and share them with others. So here are a few ideas I heard speakers talking about, which made impressions on me:
Self-Indulgent Design Designers practicing “self-indulgent design” is equal to driving a Hummer. Examples: Elaborate, unnecessarily long brochures, annual reports, and the like which often contain just three words per page and use fluorescent or metallic inks, plastic sleeves, and other wasteful and nearly impossible to recycle materials.
Low Rate of Paper Recycling Still only 50% of paper is collected for recycling, and whether all of that actually gets recycled or not is another story. Yet 35% of the waste going to landfills is still paper! C’mon people! I can hardly believe that it’s still so difficult for people to just have two separate containers near their desk, and to be mindful of which one gets garbage and which one gets paper. This is not rocket science. A child can do it. And often, children do it way better than adults.
Electronic Design is Wasteful Too One big eye-opener for me was something I already knew, but that I hadn’t really processed completely (or maybe I just didn’t want to admit it to myself): Web designers aren’t really polluting and wasting less than print designers. We think of the web and electronic design as a more pure and less wasteful design process, bypassing the pesky problem of deforestation for the pulping of our paper and the nasty chemicals used in the printing process. But in fact, always-on web servers and storage for videos, PDFs, and other files is not free. Servers = energy consumption = oil drilling, coal burning, even *yikes* nuclear energy (and waste). And let’s not forget that servers and hard drives go bad within a few years, all those cellphones and other nifty electronic devices we’re designing iApps for become some Third World country’s e-waste problem (and those countries’ poverty, environmental, and health problems eventually become our problem).
And here are a few links to things I heard about or saw at the conference:
LetsGreenwashThisCity.org PG&E started a huge publicity campaign a year or so ago under the laudable banner of “Let’s Green This City.” A group of citizens has formed the Green Guerrillas Against Greenwash to unmask the $10 million publicity campaign as mere greenwashing, and offers San Franciscans an alternative in the form of Proposition H.
PaperSpecs.com An independent (not owned or sponsored by any paper companies) database of information that designers and printers can use to specify paper stocks. It’s a paid service ($19.95/mo. or $158.40/yr.), and I haven’t paid for it, so I don’t know how good it is. They have some free paper, printing, and environmental information available too, but you can’t access the paper database without paying for membership.
Encyclopedia of Life EOL.org is a new project that intends to harness crowdsourcing techniques to create a vast online resource of information about the Earth’s 1.8 million known species.
The Designers Accord “A global coalition of designers, educators, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact.” I joined earlier this year.
Core77 / BusinessWeek Design Directory I’d seen DesignDirectory.com a couple times before, but hadn’t bothered to list myself until this year. In participation with the Designers Accord, you can search the directory exclusively for firms/individuals who have certified that they’ve adopted the accord.
Freedom of the Press In the gallery I observed a single display copy of Freedom of the Press, a newsprint publication by Brian Ponto and Lindsay Ballant. In excellent culture-jamming style, in 2004 they commandeered newspaper racks in New York and inserted their own newspaper with stark observations on American politics and how Americans get their news.
CheatNeutral.com A satirical nod acknowledging how many people (including me) view carbon trading: “Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and not cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience.”
Posted by espd at 6:08 PM |
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Sunday, August 03, 2008
Hey "New York's finest," don't forget: You work for us
On July 25 a New York City rookie cop assaulted a bicyclist participating in a Critical Mass ride. According to the New York Times, Officer Patrick Pogan has sworn a statement that the cyclist, Christopher Long, rode straight at him. Clearly, the video (seen below) shows another story. Meanwhile, Long has been charged with attempted assault of a police officer, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest.
This is why cops get a bad name. This is why people hate cops. The New York City Police Department needs a reality check. Perhaps forcibly making all officers learn the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights might help. Protest is not a crime. Bicycling is not a criminal activity. Assaulting a protester is a crime.
Hiring rookie cops who have anger management problems, gigantic chips on their shoulders, and the barest possible understanding of the concept of civil rights should be a crime, and the bureaucrats that do it should be put in jail.
Here's a second video that shows some of the tactics (and incompetence) of the NYPD in dealing with Critical Mass.
"Green" graffiti makes paint-free protests Photo gallery of culture jamming and graffiti techniques that don't rely on spray-paint. news.cnet.com/2300-13838_3-6242898-1.html
Youth with Promise: Outside In Productions
Last January I attended 
Aaron
Alexis
Anne
Anya
April & Matt
Ari
Bo
Brian
Bryan
Chris
Cousin Carol
Dave & Terri
Dave H.
Debby
Drue
Fibu
Four Waters
Fwegan (aka Ynnej)
Gary
Holly
Hilary
Internet Rockstar
James & Eric
Jason
Jen
Jesse
Jessica
Joey
Kansinee
Karl
Kelly
Laura
Leah
Marc
Martin
Matt
Mike
Morgan
OkayDave
Olya
Paco
Peter
Rick
Rocky
Ryan
Stellah
Tatum 
Trent
Velma
Veronica
Whiskey Media
Yuliya
Yu-Po