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Re: Read Between The Leading - On this week’s episode we talk to John Boardley...

GAPS — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:47:57 -0000

Great show again, guys.

Couple of small things—there is just as strong a regard for good typography with the Japanese alphabet as there is with the Latin one, with just as many finicky rules that often go ignored in a lot of published material. It’s kind of frustratingly difficult to find any English information on what these rules are, but a guy I know wrote a couple short blog posts on the topic a few years ago that give you some idea of how one goes about setting type in Japanese: http://www.aqworks.com/2004...

The idea that Japanese is just monspaced is way off the mark, for instance.
There are also a plethora of different Japanese typefaces, with more coming all the time. It is true that there are only a few really big, full character set typefaces around, but there’s even more of those than you might expect, given the effort required. Akira Kobayashi is probably the biggest single name in that field, a sometime protegé of Hermann Zapf, who is responsible for Hiragino Mincho.
Something to note is that having three alphabets means that there is no obligation to design all three. The two simpler alphabets, Hiragana and Katakana, have about 45 characters each—well within the capability of one person. Because of this a lot of typefaces comprise of only one or both of these alphabets.
There certainly aren’t many Japanese type rockstars, though. I think TypeRadio have interviewed some of them, but the people that get international attention in the field tend to be on the more creative end of the spectrum. Guys like Dainippon Type Organization (who’s stuff is really rad, nonetheless: http://dainippon.type.org/).

Just felt compelled to clear that stuff up a bit, because while I was doing my degree (and studying Japanese at the same time) I wound up making a lot of the same assumptions that John did in this interview. I’ve learnt a bit more about things since then. Still not nearly enough to feel in any way confident when laying out Japanese myself.

One interesting thing I can add, too. There was a question about what things John had noticed Japanese designers doing typographically, and there’s one thing that’s blown my mind over and over since I got here—it’s pretty much okay to squish type, horizontally being the most common. My supervisor here explained that this is pretty much down to there being no condensed or wide versions of Japanese typefaces. Of course this is linked to the huge character sets necessary, but unfortunately the fact that it is acceptable with Japanese characters means that for a lot of designers it then becomes acceptable with Latin characters, too! Madness!

You guys should dig up a something like Hiragino Mincho or Kakugo sometime, too. These large character sets aren’t just big because of traditionally written characters—for a full character set face to be acceptable a huge amount of different bullet points, lines, arrows, circled letters and numbers, inverted circled letters and numbers, and again in boxes... and still more seem to be necessary, because I see these extra characters everywhere!
Quite fascinating to pore over, but it’s really no wonder there are only a few weights and no condensed or wide versions of even the most prominently used faces...

Okay, you’ve probably heard enough about Japanese typography for one day! Sorry for going on and on again!

Re: Read Between The Leading - On Episode 8, we have a long discussion on logo...

GAPS — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:46:05 -0000

Isn’t that what this comments section kind of is?

I get the feeling, listening to the pros, that they script out a lot of dialogue beforehand, but if you guys did that it would lose a lot of the spur-of-the-moment topic changes and energy you’ve got now. I vote for just refining the current style you’ve got going.

Re: Read Between The Leading - On Episode 8, we have a long discussion on logo...

GAPS — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 10:42:17 -0000

Much clearer.
Perhaps I got a bit ahead of the discussion, too, sorry.
A logo is quite a separate beast from, say, a poster or product. A consumer is rarely going to see two logos on a shelf and make a purchase decision based on which one is better. So yes, logos ought not be done in reaction to a particular style. I still feel kinda sad that Xerox fell for this so hard.

Re: Read Between The Leading - On Episode 8, we have a long discussion on logo...

GAPS — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 01:38:01 -0000

Bloody hell, that was long, wasn’t it?

Re: Read Between The Leading - On Episode 8, we have a long discussion on logo...

GAPS — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 01:37:30 -0000

I might go on a bit because I keep commenting on stuff from last week’s show as well.

Damn, I don’t know if it’s just my imagination, but it feels like you guys bring up design vs art a lot.
I can’t actually see a difference myself—besides the existence of this thing called “the art world,” which seems to involve galleries, curators, buyers, auctions and art fairs. Then you’ve got everything else which is people making stuff and selling it in all manner of various ways, so varied that it’s fairly impossible to create mid-level classifications.
I think in episode 7 you brought up what the role of a web designer should be, and this is kind of an example of this difficulty. I’ve got a friend who only designs the layout of a website or email newsletter as his fulltime job, and doesn’t have to touch code at all. That’s left up to the code monkey who takes his design and turns it into a site. Then you’ve got people like Jason Santa Maria who are really versatile at both aspects (I believe he wrote something interesting about his feelings on this issue a while back... oh yeah, here: http://jasonsantamaria.com/....
It’s also arguable that the programmer is a designer in their own right, too. Certainly if you’re going to take the definition that design is problem-solving, programming is all about problem solving, so even if the programmer counterpart to my friend doesn’t have ‘designer’ in his job title, his role in the design process is no less important.

As an aside, since you guys are interested in what gets taught at school, my university had almost no programming in the curriculum. Our few months on web design consisted of using the slice tool in photoshop and dumping it into Dreamweaver. Thankfully, like you guys, I’d taught myself html by then, and used the time to start to wrap my head around css (this would be 2002). Though, slices are useful to know about...... I guess?

So I guess I see it as all art. It seems like ‘design’ is often used to attempt to label the specific arrangement of people producing, at the behest of a client, any of a set of things that designers are expected to be able to produce. But even this kind of definition is broken before it’s finished, and doesn’t take into account all sorts of stuff that people also feel inclined to label ‘design.’
I think the vagary evident in that common phrase ‘design and architecture’ illustrates the endlessness of the art vs design argument pretty nicely.

Logos. I’m with you guys. Black and white really ought to be taken into account. But frankly I’m with my lecturers on logos. They should be the last thing you think about in a brand. I think they can probably even be an afterthought. Any meaning in a logo will be way stronger if it’s imbued from the surrounding elements. Maybe my tendency to think this way is why I wasn’t so taken aback by Paul Rand saying similar stuff in that interview.
Broadening the view on this, no design exists in a vacuum. I know you were trying to get a mess of thoughts clear in your head while you were talking, but I don’t think you’re correct at the end there, Aaron, when you say that you shouldn’t be reacting against the popular style when designing. Hmm... actually, I don’t even think I need to explain why.
Shit, that wasn’t about b/w at all.
I guess, if your design works in b/w, then it is more likely to work at something like 5×5mm or 10×10px, and if the company has even an ounce of ambition, it’s going to wind up that small somewhere. But also, I don’t advocate sticking to the rule that it should work in black and white because it’s reducible and is more likely to result in an easily recognisable mark. More that one should recognise the rule, then try to find the loopholes.

Oh yeah, you asked people about photoshopped pictures!
I like the angle that the people that do it should be credited more prominently. I didn’t think of that when I heard about the idea myself, but it makes a lot of sense. After all, the photographer often gets prominent credit, right? As to putting it into law, I think that’s a bit much. I’m all for spreading awareness of the issue, but wouldn’t it be easier to put some crafty advertisements into those self same magazines instead. Sort of some before/after shots or something? Nothing negative, like the anti-smoking ads, but rather just making people aware of the extent to which photos are manipulated. I personally think that a lot of people are aware, but I don’t think anyone really knows how much.

Cheers for the shout out. Sorry I’ve been quiet.

Re: Read Between The Leading - On this episode we’re joined by special guests...

GAPS — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:18:35 -0000

I’m really liking this format you’ve got going, where you bring on a guest, discuss their work with them, and then keep them around to get their opinions on the rest of the show’s topics. I think Monocle have done it once, and it worked well there, too, but their topic range is a little too broad to allow it to work often. You guys make it work really well.
Keep striving for better sound quality, though. I had my ipod on full volume on the train this morning and sometimes the guests got washed away by train noises.

Wikipedia (to the rescue!) has a huge list of at-mark names on their site for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
Interestingly, one of the three sources listed is Bringhurst. I just checked the book now, and it’s got barely a paragraph in the terms index, so hardly a definitive source, but kinda cool.
More interestingly their disambiguation page for Amphora ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... ) has a couple extra names that are oddly close to those odd combin-o-words that came up at the end of the show: “the @ ("at") symbol (also referred to as asperand and ampersat).”

I think I like amphora the best. Though strudel sounds compact and descriptive as well.

Re: Logical Techno Manners: Dinner With Cthulhu

GAPS — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:32:13 -0000

A belly laugh indeed.

But really, Cthulhu EATS?
I wasn’t really aware that It had a mouth... no wonder you advise not looking directly at it.

Re: Read Between The Leading - On this episode, we have our first guest...

GAPS — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 02:56:55 -0000

Ho!
The golden ratio... grids are all good, but I never really got why people cared so much about the golden ratio. I couldn’t really see myself why it was better than any other well-balanced composition, but I never really thought too deeply about it. Until a couple weeks back when I came across these articles:
http://www.maa.org/devlin/d...
http://www.maa.org/devlin/d...

He doesn’t come across as completely convincing due to the way he reels off misconception after misconception without referring to supporting material, but his points at least ring of truth.
I haven’t read this myself yet, but the Markowsky article he mentions in the first link is available as PDF here: http://laptops.maine.edu/Go...
I’m not ragging on grids here, mind—I’ve been subscribed to The Grid System for a couple of months now, and it’s a brilliant resource—just that the GR should be regarded as one possible option, and not that which one should always strive for.

As an interesting aside regarding Tropicana (I’m personally on the “they failed, didn’t think of context” team, as well as thinking the new logotype looks crap compared with the old) the product has completely different packages in Japan, being that the name is currently being licensed by Kirin: http://www.k-tropicana.com/
When I lived in Australia—I don’t even know if Tropicana is available there—I bought what I believe is a superior local brand, so these Japanese packages are my first exposure to the brand... and, well, the straw is really cheesy. Otherwise, I find the old American design preferable. I guess because it feels more object-like, with layers of information to focus on, while steel feeling reasonably uncluttered and spacious.

Otherwise a really nice show, once again. Like you said yourselves, keep doing what you love, and others will love it too.

Re: Read Between The Leading - Shownotes for Episode #2 This week we’ve picked a...

GAPS — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:17:08 -0000

Good good stuff. The only other GD/typophile (in the general sense, not the site) podcast I know of is the grand and formidable Type Radio by Underware.
Those guys have the interview shit down so solidly I wouldn’t dare try to compete with them on the straight-up interview front.
Discussion between two opposing viewpoints, like you mentioned in ep01—I think you might have something interesting there.

Otherwise just keep on rocking the discussion of the new.

I find it very very hard to believe that the Pepsi doc could be an honest document, myself. In the early pages it’s believable, but by the end it’s gone beyond ridiculous. You do make some reasonable points, though.

As to your query, I graduated from GD in Australia in ’05, and our first couple years were a pretty even split between learning the graphics apps in one class, and doing lots of little “designaerobics” by hand in another. As the 4 years wore on, though, the computer dominated more and more. Though I always got the impression the teachers wanted us to hand in more stuff done without a computer. Half of them were spending their non-teaching time as painters or similar visual artists, after all.

Actually, you make me remember now that by the end of my course I was partly fed up with everyone’s reliance upon standard Adobe methods that I started to feel a bit claustrophobic. Unfortunately I was well into a couple of larger projects for my portfolio at that point, and could only break out my now beloved scalpel and pens for some smaller assignments...

I guess I think the problem is not so much that we need to break away from computers, as much as a lot of still haven’t wrapped our heads around the fact that the computer is one tool among many—the most powerful of which is still your brain, as one of you sort of said. It’s an expression that my teachers said a lot, but it’s still so easy to just open up CSwhatever and use it in the same old way, without really thinking of all the other potential the machine holds...