Test.

[bloggage] Developing A Blog Posting Plan B

2391.

Since I have pretentions to a blog mostly concentrating on the visual world, uploading pictures is close to a deal-breaker. And if I can’t find a blog editor that will upload pictures on a dependable basis, I cry inside.

Scribefire has been working for a very long time now. But, over the last two weeks, it has been very confused in the matter of picture uploading. This post is being assembled in the Flock browser’s blog post editor, which is nifty in the general and will upload multiple accounts but is undependable in the way that sometimes I will have the function and sometimes I will not and I still don’t have too much of a line on how it will behave. Here, for example, is the test pattern – uploaded again, and there are ways to go to the Picasa account to hopefull make it so’s I don’t have to reupload the picture over and over … but Flock has a lot of different ways to do a lot of different things in the social.

This is that test pattern.

So, I have a plan be until ScribeFire gets its act together. I found (refound actually) two bookmarklets (one for Delicious and the other for generating Technorati tags) and can use them … so until SF is back, I’ll use Flock (the interface is kind of nifty) and fight with it occasionally I guess.

Sadly, I’m compelled to blog. I’ve tried stopping, and I can’t. Too bad I’m not famous for doing it but c’est la guerre, mon frere.
 
GAAAAH Update: No, Flock won’t work it either. I can’t resize an image that it doesn’t turn all pixelled. Ptttth!

Technorati Tags: ScribeFire, Flock, Blogging, Bloggage

[design] New Portfolio Stuff! Websites and Logos and Stickers Oh My!

2390.

Two new notable additions to my online portfolio at Behance – a website and logo design for a worldwide SCA event and a local political campaign:

Number one, at right, is the logo for the Known World Heraldic and Scribal Symposium, a major annual event for the Society for Creative Anachronism. An explanation of  all is at the portfolio website, but briefly what it is is a yearly assembly of SCA members literally worldwide which includes practitioners of the Heraldic arts (Onomastics research and technical design of coats of arms as well as bellowing on the field and in court) and art materials and techniques used to produce scrolls, charters and the like.

• The website I designed and implemented is (for the nonce) at http://kwhss.sca.org.
• The Behance portfolio for this project is here: http://www.behance.net/Gallery/SCA-Known-World-Heraldic-Symposium-2010/477345

The logo for the Roberta Philip for Multnomah County Commissioner website is just on the right here. Thank you very much to T.A. Barnhart for giving me the opportunity to design this. It’s a simple design that I think will work well on your average lawn sign, and looks good at the top of a website. It’s now on that website and will soon be on a brochure for mailing (which I have roughed in) as well as on a sticker (that T.A. laid out but I polished up just a little bit). T.A. also designed the website.

• To see this logo at the top of the website go to http://robertaphilip.net (and donate if she’s your kind of candidate).
• The project folder for this effort is here: http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Roberta-Philip-for-Multnomah-County-Commission/476140

Of course, my entire online portfolio can be seen here: http://www.behance.net/SamuelJohnKlein/frame/viewall .

[type] Saving Ink When You Print Ad Absurdum

2389.

Ink. Damn, but it’s expensive. When you got your inkjet printer you thought Hey, Groovy, they’re giving away these printers for a steal these days. And then you saw the inkjet cartridge prices and knew that you were being played.

What to do, what to do? There are a few things actually.

Once you’ve cut every corner – we have an HP inkjet that takes the 56/57 cartridge pair, which will run you $50 for a replacement – you’re forced to turn to the one last thing you can control – the rate of ink usage. Surprisingly, some technical solutions have been implemented.

Ecofont (http://ecofont.com) takes it right out of the middle. That is to say, it reduces ink usage by literally “punching holes” in the letterforms that are big enough to reduce your ink usage by about 15-20% overall but still leave enough of a letterform to be readable. A sample document is available via the Ecofont link above. Here’s a closeup of some of it:

The document is still readable though a little light. Ecofont offers one free font download and a handful of other fonts for prices.

The absurd extreme of this, beyond the limits of parsimony, is represented by the AP article published at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100406/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_money_saving_fonts, suggests changing the font to one that uses less per glyph and therefore less overall.

This looks good on paper, but seems a little kooky when you consider that the individual user is only saving about $20 on the year and, since (the example given) Century Gothic takes up more space than Arial, you’re actually using more paper. So you got six of one, half-dozen of the other – or, more appropriately, a few molecules saved there costing you a few molecules there.

Now, this is not to say that it’s not completely without merit. The example given posits an educations instituion that spends over $150,000/year on printer cartridges and toner. So, for a economy of this scale, it might make a few thousands of dollars difference.

But for the individual user? Best practices might more effectively include:

• Using both sides of paper
• Test-printing on already-used paper
• Only printing when absolutely necessary
• Printing out to a PDF before printing to see how they look in Adobe Reader

One thing that I did agree with was the observation that what they were after was to move the point where you press the print button to a more conservative place.

But if you’re the individual user, it might not be so effective to use Century Gothic vs. Arial when compared to using a judicious attitude toward printing in general.

(h/t Twitterer Ugly Mug Advertising for the pointer to the AP article)

Testing Flock Uploading 2

2389.

And another try. These pics are being tried out because ScribeFire is broken and undependable all of a sudden and I needs to post my piccies.

And now … A glider.

No Technorati tags yet.

Testing flock upload picture

2388.

This is a test pattern.

You’re making me do this, ScribeFire, by staying broken with the pic uploads and the stuff and the things and the FLAVENS!

[design] Helveticards – What We Mean When We Say "Swiss Design"

2387.

Occasionally the term Swiss design is bandied about, and people who aren’t designers feel a bit of eye-glazing coming on. It’s kind of like designer cant.And it is, in as much as cant is a way of economizing language and using one apt term to cover a whole school of thought. But it’s hardly occult or incomprehensible.

Swiss design is actually best exemplified by the Helvetica font – just enough art, just enough design, not too much and definitely not too little, but certainly the minimum needed to accomplish the design while still having a cool, subtle sense of style and mode.Swiss design is cool without quite being cold, efficient without being inhuman, minimal, airy, straightforward and refreshing.

If you know what Victorian-era design is, in which there was a tinged attenuation in every color, and every embellishment had its own embellishment, then Swiss design is the anit-Victorian. No better example of the moment demonstrates this than the soon-to-be-released Helveticards, by the Gingko studio. Pictured right, the 5 of clubs is the epitome of Swiss design – simple forms, bare but still somehow enaging. Even the club-symbols have gotten a Swiss-style remodel.

The Helveticard deck is available for pre-order at:

• http://helveticards.uberdm.com/

… and it’ll cost you $10. For art like this – such a deal!

(via Twitterer Jeff Patterson)

[design] How To Become An Online Designer Plenty Quick

2386.

Pariah Burke, how knows more about establishing an online presence than most people I know have forgotten, breaks it down:

1. Get a domain name
2. Install WordPress
3. Use a nifty, fashionable template

You’ve probably heard of the free blogging software WordPress. Thanks to the efforts of a massive community of diverse users, WordPress has grown into much more than a platform for blogging. For example, WordPress is an excellent host for easy-to-erect and easier-to-maintain portfolios. Even if you never write a blog post, you can use WordPress to get your portfolio online, in front of prospective clients, and you don’t have to learn HTML, CSS, or any other Web design language.

Here’s the skinny and the details: http://www.creativepro.com/article/put-your-portfolio-web-without-touching-code

Technorati Tags: business of design, design online, digital design, digital design tools, websites

[art] How She Became An Illustrator

2385.

Penelope Dullaghan:

First off, I want to start by putting this quote in front of you. Read it twice. Giggle if you want to. An then let it seep in.

Let it comfort you.

“Nobody knows what the hell they are doing. (at least no one I know) You just prepare as best you can and make up the rest as you go.”

A very sweet story about how an award-winning illustrator found her way. I found it inspiring. Here:

• http://artbistro.monster.com/careers/articles/375-how-i-became-an-illustrator?utm_source=nlet&utm_content=ab_c1_20100402_

Technorati Tags: Illustrators, Penelope Dullaghan

[Out 122nd Way] Powell Grove Cemetery – In The Curl Of The Off Ramp

2384.

Time for another look Out 122nd Way, my favorite road in the world, this time a little north of Rossi Farm, where NE Sandy Blvd and NE 122nd Avenue cross.

Sandy Blvd and 122nd Avenue do not meet at grade.

The streets flow into each other by on- and off-ramps, southbound is accessed from NE 121st Place (watch for the sign – its easy to miss) and northbound from a curving “on-ramp” that forms a sort of a “jug-handle” on the northwest corner of the 122nd and Sandy Kmart store.

When you see it on a map, it’s kind of unbelievable that there would be a cemetery there. But you go there, and there is. In the curl of the  offramp, industry and shopping and apartments and shabby residences as far as the eye can see, but it’s there, all right.

There isn’t much for parking, to be sure. Wide shoulders on the south side of Sandy provide some pullout; a wide pullout area on the north side is better, but none of that feels particularly safe.

Powell Grove Cemetery has been in operation (not necessarily on this site; reading I’ve done suggest that it might have been moved at some point) for about 163 years at the time of this writing. That’s a significant percentage of the recorded history of the Oregon Country. Wherever it was originally founded, it was miles away from the nearest town, of course though, as things happen, the city came out to meet it.

Still, it’s a cemetery in the traditional mode. Old headstones, trees, cenotaphs, family plots, and a sort of sereneness obtains despite it being bounded on all sides by traffic.

Some of the markets are quite old, even for this area. They suggests a fairly grim, if vigorous, story of those who have lived out 122nd Way before we did – or even before it was 122nd. The Reynolds family seems to figure prominently …

There were obelisks and markers and cenotaphs that were each of interest, but by far the Reynolds family marker stands above the rest, if only for that amazing typography:

There’s something very “Roaring 20′s” in that typography for me. The Reynolds marker designer knew something of design; the common typography ties the entire assembly together:

“Baby” Reynolds didn’t even make it to 1881.

Lillian D Reynolds was only with us for 22 years.

John Reynolds made it to age 75. He was born 203 years ago this year, whenever it was he was born. He was undoubtedly the family patriarch.

I have heard, all my life, about how short the average lifespan is for our grandparents and great-grand’s generations, and I’ve looked at the stats just like everyone does, but what really drove it home was the number of childrens’ graves I saw there, which were, by my informal survey, a total of “More Than I Expected”. They sure seemed easy to find. Eddie Dunbar only was with us for 13 years and 6 months;

His last words were I’m in heaven, now. They just don’t do that sort of thing on headstones any more.

His little sister Allie outlasted him by just one single day. Her last words: I love everybody. I love Jesus. I don’t have historical research chops, but I wonder if 1882 was a significant year for some sort of epidemic of flu or something in these parts.

“Edward F.”, for whom fate held the rather cruel riposte of making his last name illegible via weathering and decay, only made it to age 18, and also died in 1882, though later in the year than the Dunbar children. His marker has a pious poem for an epitaph, but what made it so beautiful to look at for me was the way the type was slanted backwards, a fashion that is never used today, but seemed to be rather popular towards the end of the 19th Century.

The verse reads: Dearest brother, thou has left us/Now, this loss we deeply feel/But ’tis God that hath bereft us/He can all our sorrows heal.

Like I said, they just don’t do things like that anymore.

The Bagans are the “youngsters”, if one wills, in this group. Heck, one of ‘em’s still alive!

Eugene Allen Bagan would be in his 70s now.

And, just at the foot of all this, is the jughandle ramp, leading Sandy traffic down to 122nd:

122nd exults in the generic “Boulevard” on some of the signs from Sandy on north. This is not a universal marker, some of them say “Avenue”.

That’s life and death on NE 122nd Avenue … graveyard on my right, Kmart on my left:

… and traffic all around.

Technorati Tags: Out 122nd Way, NE 122nd Avenue, Sandy Boulvard, Parkrose, Portland, PDX, Liff in PDX, PDX Photos