Merde

I really like Nas

By Matthew on July 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)

1. Jesse Jackson wants to cut Barack Obama’s nuts off.

2. Nas proclaims: “We don’t need Jesse. I’m here. I got this.”
We have our new leaders, like Obama, David Banner, and Young Jeezy.

3. Somewhat unrelated, Nas donates to PBS because of Fox News.

4. Nas + Kelis = Forever

Ongoing Organization: Gmail Filters

By Matthew on June 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve been really interested in organizing all my email messages. But I don’t really want to go through every single message to do that. Today I tried to make some filters in Gmail to at least get some general organization.

First I attempted to get all money related emails into one place.
To do this I looked for all the email addresses of my banks, student loans, online buying/selling, that kind of stuff. At first I was getting every address, but I realized it would be much faster to grab whole domains. So this is what I did.
from:(@cems.wamu.com OR @ebay.com OR @amazon.com OR @wellsfargo.com OR @mint.com OR @checkout.google.com OR @paypal.com OR billing@dreamhost.com)

Then I wanted to try and organize emails with attachments by file type.

For images
Has the words:(.jpg OR .jpeg OR .gif OR .png) has:attachment

For media
Has the words:(.avi OR .mov OR .mp3 OR .m4a) has:attachment
For documents
Has the words:(.pdf OR .doc OR .docx OR .xls OR .xlsx OR .ppt OR .pptx OR .oo3) has:attachment

For design
Has the words:(.ai OR .psd OR .indd OR .qxd) has:attachment

The one problem that I’ve run into so far with this is with PDFs. About half of the pdf emails are related design. This is also a problem with Fireworks PNGs.

This is by no means complete. It is only a quick stab at email organization. Hence “ongoing.” If you have any ideas on how to improve this or any filters you’ve set up that work well, comment.

I helped

By Matthew on June 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Apple ♥ Enterprise

By Matthew on June 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

“For the first time, OS X includes native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in OS X applications Mail, iCal and Address Book, making it even easier to integrate Macs into organizations of any size.” - ~~Snow Leopard Press Release~~ (Taken down since I started this post.)

“It supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, delivering push email, calendar, and contacts. And it gives mobile users secure access to corporate resources with Cisco IPSec VPN and wireless network services with WPA2 Enterprise and 802.1X authentication.” - iPhone Product Page

I bought this

By Matthew on June 6, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

I can now listen to things on my computer at work.
So far I’ve listened to a lot of This American Life.
I had to catch up.
Also, some of the Fists and Juice Team.
I’m still waiting for someone to install iTunes.
I don’t have the permissions.
What else can I listen to that is streaming?
Patrick sent me this song.
Really good.
Tomorrow is week 3 of being married.

3 things I learned about England

By Matthew on June 3, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4)

England has no good beer.
Period. We had an IPA that tasted like nothing. Worst than nothing. It was gross. And Cask Ales? BAH!
England loves Gill Sans.
Gill Sans is the Helvetica of England.
England has very good Indian food.
While there I had the best Dosa of my life.

What is Graphic Design exactly? I really thought I knew, but of late it’s become more confused and gray. Why does Graphic Design exist? The purpose is utility, not art. The purpose of Graphic Design is clear communication. This isn’t meant to be a definite answer, but to start some sort of dialogue about what Graphic Design is.

Working with clients
In this view, a client comes to you with a job. You take the content you and try to mold it into the most compelling outcome. The main feedback that you get is from the client. From my (limited) experience, this is how the print world works. You can propose different ideas to the client and try to sell them on what would work best. It feels very intuitive. Your decisions are often based on experience and what you know has worked in the past.

The economics of Graphic Design
A Graphic Designer is not self sufficient. The very nature of the profession depends upon others. Graphic Designers work for the client, for the money. That’s what it really comes down to. It is love of the the craft, but it does make a living. Thinking about the economics of Graphic Design becomes much more interesting and measurable when it comes to the web. A lot of what I’ve been learning at my new job is this. Design is measured by its success. How many people complete the form? What are the numbers? Do people prefer red to blue? And what not. What is good Graphic Design in this model? Is it good if it sells a lot but looks like garbage?

Aesthetics?

What consideration should be even to aesthetics? In school we learned that good design follows rules (or breaks them eloquently). But what if beauty doesn’t sell? Ideally, design that follows the rules and is built on a grid and is typeset well will sell. I believe this deeply. But what if you can be mathematically proven wrong? If this ad makes a lot of money is it good design? If good design is clear communication and this ad speaks to people who are wanting to refinance their home it must be good design? I know you might think, “of course it isn’t good design.” But it has really got me questioning things. If weird poorly designed (ha!) flash ads work as a marketing tool than who am I to say they aren’t good Graphic Design. Is it me being an elitist? Does it really help anyone for me to ream somebody for having no consideration for typesetting?

Type
Ligatures, kerning, smart quotes, none of these really exist on the web the way they do traditionally in print. This is a real loss to me. I do what I can, but there are many inconsistencies to worry about. There is no way to anticipate for dynamic content. I mean, I have smart quotes happening, I specify font size and line height, but I can’t really force there to be no widows or orphans, especially on content I’m not generating. Also, I use Helvetica for this blog, but if you view it on a Windows machine or even in a feed reader chances are you are reading it in Arial. Helvetica and Arial are 2 fairly different typefaces (to say the least). They look and work in very different ways. They will even render differently render in different browsers on the same operating system. Ugh.

What do you think?
This is not to be a one sided conversation. What do you think makes good design? You don’t have to be a Graphic Designer to answer this. Are you attracted to ads like the one above? Do you gravitate to minimalism and clean design? Do you own a mac? Do you hate anti-aliasing on Windows?