A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless (but whose name rhymes with Lay Shewis), recently asked for my opinion on a logo he was working on. I have to admit that my immediate reaction had nothing to do with what you’d normally look for in a logo—simplicity, impact, memorability, composition—but the choice of the typeface the designer selected. If I remember correctly, my response was something like:

“Is that Hobo? No Hobo!!! PS: The Yankees are stupid. And so are sweater vests.”

This “Lay Shewis” character didn’t really deserve such a curt response and he certainly didn’t deserve all those exclamation points. I liked much of what he had done with the logo, yet my response was based on a visceral reaction to a typeface I’ve seen perhaps one too many times.

This got me to thinking, What do I have against the typeface Hobo? It’s not poorly designed like Comic Sans, overused to the point of irrelevance like Papyrus, or inherently hateful like Curlz MT (we haven’t written about Curlz MT yet, but it’s coming). So why does Hobo so frequently show up on lists of the typefaces designers hate most? Usually when designers take a disliking to a typeface, it’s not necessarily that it’s a bad typeface, it’s just that it’s been misused and/or overused.

Hobo is like your kindly grandfather: playful, unassuming, and 100 years old. It was designed in 1910 by Morris Fuller Benton, the chief type designer for the American Type Founders from 1900 to 1937, to be used for display purposes in informal situations. It’s been described as a “humorous novelty,” which makes me think of it as the fake dog poo of typography. Here’s a description from the website Typedia, a website you didn’t know about because you’re not a huge nerd:

The Hobo font is a dynamically tapering face in which all strokes are accentuated curves, achieving a superb decorative effect. Hobo almost suggests a freely drawn alphabet with its unusual robust roundness. The Hobo font was designed to be used at large sizes. It has no descenders: the lower case g, p, q and y are incorporated into the x-height. The Hobo font imparts a friendly personality to display work such as invitations, menus, signage, and packaging.

Let me repeat part of that back to you: It has no descenders! (I know, again with the exclamation points.) All of the letters g and y and p and j and what have you end abruptly on the baseline. I mean, has the whole world gone crazy? Also, the entire character set is made up of curved lines. Look at it and you’ll see there’s not a straight line to be found.

There’s at least one website dedicated to the dislike of Hobo, but it doesn’t have anywhere near the same energy or force as those opposed to truly bad typefaces like Comic Sans. There’s a website called Hobo Sightings, a Flickr page, and a firm called The Design Office in Rhode Island dedicated to documenting instances of Hobo in its natural habitat, which appears to be on church playgrounds, restaurant signs, and whimsical T-shirts or bumper stickers.

I guess, in retrospect, I don’t really dislike Hobo. My reaction to seeing it in Shea’s “Lay’s” logo design was based mostly on the fact that it is fairly prevalent in the visual environment, usually found in lower-end fare. But it does what it set out to do and it obviously has stood the test of time.

And I think that’s the crux of it. I don’t mind seeing Hobo on fliers for neighborhood cookouts or canvas banners announcing 2-for-1 egg rolls at the local Hung Far Lo Chinese eatery, but I can’t see it being used well in a piece of sophisticated, high-end design.

This is the second post this week from the happiest place on earth—or the happiest place on earth to physically and mentally exhaust your children and push them to the edge of existence, test your marriage, and find new words for describing your relationship with in-laws.

Note from Paul: Hi everyone, Paul here. Shea is actually still in Disney, shirking his duties as a husband and a father to write this post. He emailed some photos and asked me to include them in this post for him. Unfortunately, due to a shaky Internet connection, those photos never made it to me. Knowing that Shea would want at least one Disney photo here, I have included one from my own collection of the two of us with Cinderella (or possibly Snow White). Now, back to Shea!

Update from Paul: Shea got photos to me by stealing wifi at a Crystals restaurant. I’m leaving this one here, anyway.

As Paul noted in his post on Monday, reality is a hard concept to wrap your mind around at Disney World (and when I say Disney World, that is to say that includes Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios as well as the all-important Spring Training baseball). Based on what our wives have told us about spring break at Disney World, it is the perfect place for Paul and me since our lives are based around fantasy and ice cream. (For the record, our wives ate the ice cream too.)

Going into this trip to Orlando and having visited Disney World about 18 months ago, Paul and I decided to each take on different perspectives while blogging while on vacation. Each perspective needed to be unique and either were definitely going to annoy our wives. After an intense conversation over bowls of chocolate-covered chocolate ice cream with chocolate sprinkles, I decided to take on the authenticity of Disney World, despite the sudden urgency to exercise.

Is Disney World an interpretive experience? That is a really tough question. If interpretation is defined as a process where emotional and intellectual connections are built, then you may have to look at your Disney experience more intently. Let’s face it, no one does things better than Disney—customer service, facility planning, organizing, visitor experience, technology, as well as making elephants fly. I was reminded of their attention to customer service when I found myself in a “Cast Members Only” area of the Caribbean Beach Resort where we were staying.

While my wife was marveling at the inattentive nature of my driving, we came across this sign on the opposite of the “Cast Members Only” sign.

Note from Paul: I’m betting one of the photos Shea meant to put here was of the sign he’s talking about. Check back soon. Shea can’t be on vacation forever! Back to Shea.

Obviously the sign was timely for my wife as well as for those working at the resort. Interpretive sites worldwide can learn from how Disney teaches customer service.

The use of design at Disney World has led to success. Everything is designed perfectly and purposefully. Exhibit-type elements are nothing short of perfect. I found myself photographing elements such as an oversized viewfinder disk and then searching for my children. As Paul and several security guards can attest, my youngest son takes the “Disney Magic” literally and can disappear before you can get to the “I” of M-I-C-K-E-Y.

While searching for authenticity (and my son) in Disney World, it became obvious to me that Disney primarily uses interpretation (in the strictest interpretations of the definitions of interpretation) as a tool to add authenticity to the overall experience. This was most evident at Animal Kingdom, where the theme park experience crosses with a zoo that crosses with a cast of characters from successful movies that cross with a budget of which any interpretive center would be pleased to have six percent. If there is any awkwardness within Disney World, besides a moment between me, my son and Cinderella, the mixture at Animal Kingdom requires help from interpretation. I actually had to interpret the actions of me and my son to Cinderella’s security guards.

Interpretive efforts are key to an overall successful presentation at the Animal Kingdom to ensure that the animals that are cared for there are not just presented as another character or movie prop. Otherwise, flying past a yak at 65 miles per hour on the Expedition Everest roller coaster leaves you with a feeling that the value of the animal’s life is second to the feeling of nausea you are experiencing. You can find personal elements such as guides at various kiosks and tents presenting impromptu programs and demonstrations with themes matching the area and animals found in that part of the park. Non-personal elements are presented with Disney flair and have brief, effective, and purposeful messages. That is if anyone is really taking the time to read them.

Okay, I’ve got to get back to getting in trouble for going into “Cast Member Only” areas to read signs and avoiding conversations about blogging on vacation with my wife.

French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote about a philosophical construct called the simulacrum, which holds that we are further removed from reality each day and that our culture is increasingly based on representations or copies of real things rather than real things themselves. He goes on to say that we will one day be saved from evil computers and their robots by Keanu Reeves. I may be confusing some of Baudrillard’s key points, but as you’ll see if you keep reading, my brain is a little fried at the moment.

Last week, my wife and I took our kids (Joel, age six, and Maya, age three) to Disney World in Florida for the first time. After months of planning, a long day of travel, and a morning schedule blown to smithereens by our failure to account for daylight savings, we arrived, along with roughly 8 billion other visitors, at the Magic Kingdom. We pulled up to the brightly colored entrance just off the highway, wallets open in preparation to fork over whatever toll the parking troll demanded.

There was a stiff breeze blowing, which made for a hair-raising plane landing the day before, and which was bending and ruffling the abundant foliage lining the highway that morning. One of the few items of the landscape not being blown by the wind, ironically, was a series of structures atop the tollbooth—rigidly constructed to look like flags being blown by wind. Sheila, my wife, asked, “Why don’t they just put real flags up there?”

All I could think was, Jean Baudrillard would love this.

It’s been well-documented that as a purely visual experience, Disney World is rich—saturated, consistent, and expertly crafted. With that as a given, I was struck by the second-most frequent question my kids asked during the week: “Is that real?” (The first-most frequent question was “Can we have ice cream?”) Almost invariably, the answer to both questions was No.

No, Maya, that’s not a real elephant.

No, Joel, we’re not really in a space ship going to Mars with Gary Sinese.

No, Maya, that’s not a real castle. Well, okay it’s a real building and it’s shaped like a castle but … just be quiet and eat your ice cream.

No, Joel, you can’t have more ice cream. You just had some back at the castle. The fake castle. The real building shaped like a fake castle. Be quiet and let’s go get ice cream.

No, Shea, this isn’t a real baseball game. It’s just spring training. Yes, it will still hurt if you get hit in the head with a foul ball.

One of the attractions at the Magic Kingdom is a 3D movie called Mickey’s PhilharMagic, the effects of which are as convincing as any I’ve ever seen (though I’ve not seen Avatar yet). Throughout the movie, my daughter kept reaching out, grabbing at specters of Donald Duck and floating wizard hats. When a loud noise or sudden movement scared her, I’d say, “Don’t worry, it’s not real.” This settled her down until the image of water coming at the audience on screen was accompanied by actual mist being sprayed on the audience. Maya looked at me after the show as if to say, “I don’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore, but you owe me ice cream.”

Disney’s Animal Kingdom presents an impressive interpretive experience, including talented interpreters and the opportunity to witness live, exotic animals roaming quasi-free on the immense park grounds. The centerpiece of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, however, is a structure called the Tree of Life, which is neither a real tree nor actually alive.

Epcot Center features something called the World Showcase, which gives visitors tiny, bite-sized tastes of life in other countries. I have never been to Germany, but I have a distinct impression of the country based on several layovers in the Frankfurt airport, select scenes from the movie European Vacation, and a meal I had with my family as a child at Epcot Center’s German pavilion. (Based on each of these, I’d really like to go there one day.) Here’s the fascinating thing: Of the 10 countries Disney chose to represent at Epcot, one of them was the USA. Granted, the World Showcase gives you only a superficial, cursory look at each of the countries represented within, but I can’t begin to imagine what a person would gain from a superficial, cursory look at the country they’re already in.

Baudrillard maintains that we are removed from reality by our perception of the world through symbols and even language, that we no longer interact directly with the real world but through filters. We interact with representations of the world, but not the world itself. If this is true, then Disney has mastered and made the most of this fact. The perfectly controlled Disney experience—“wild” animals there for your viewing pleasure, a Happy Meal portion of American culture, and flags that blow even when there is no wind—is summed up by a most pervasive symbol—the ubiquitous Mickey ears on shirts, balloons, napkins, ticket stubs, and even a notable water tower just outside the park.

You see the Mickey ears and you can’t help but think, This is fun. And you know what? It was.

I have wasted too much brain space on pop-culture factoids. I have always been fascinated with elements of pop-culture. It probably has something to do with me primarily living outside pop-culture trends and my late-80s Dungeons and Dragons expertise. I have even been dubbed by one IBD reader as the “trend-guru.” I’m not sure if that is a compliment to me, an insult to Paul, or some sort of club that I unintentionally joined that has been charging $14.99 a month to my credit card. I like the idea of staying current, and I especially find it gratifying when I see something in popular culture that relates to my work or passions. 

A couple weeks back, I was really excited to watch the Academy Awards. Not because of the red carpet, a movie that made me cry that will go unnamed, or seeing what typeface the larger than life letterforms on the stage are set in, but because of a movie where design was at the premise behind the film.  The short film Logorama was up for Best Animated Short Film. Some of you may remember my post on the film Helvetica (by some of you I mean Paul) where I mentioned that “the 2007 release Helvetica brings recognition to a typeface that was created not to be noticed.” That’s right I just quoted myself.

The short film Logorama won Best Short Animated Film. If Helvetica was created to go unnoticed then the logos featured in Logorama were created to get noticed. The 16 minute French animated film does an excellent job of highlighting logos by taking them out of their context and pretty much abusing them. This is no different from me trying out for the football team as a freshman in high school.

Logorama deservingly won the Oscar.  It is worth watching from a design standpoint. Every time I watch it another logo stands out to me that I didn’t notice previously. It is amazing how many logos are involved in the film and it is great fun to see how many you can count. No wonder I didn’t make the football team. I have to give a disclaimer here, as much as I enjoy the artistic approach to the animated logos some of the content, violence, and language in the film is for adult audiences (not that kind of adult). Based on the amount of Disney films shown in my house, I was a little taken back by some of the violence and language especially coming from Ronald McDonald. You could mute the movie and just watch the visual scenery (the best part), download the French version to learn words they never taught you in French class, or make up your own story and act out the parts in funny voices. Really, no wonder I was the manager for the tennis team. Logorama can be downloaded for $1.99 on iTunes.

I also hope that in 2011 that another design-type movie is nominated for an Academy Award. I have yet to see it but based on the title alone, it’s awesome. Typeface the movie has to be great. Everything that I have heard about it echoes my enthusiasm, but I do have a small circle of friends. In a world of digital design Typeface focuses on a Wisconsin print shop where layout and design is still one element at a time.

From what I have read the Hamilton Print Shop and Museum is similar to Hatch Show Print Co. in Nashville, Tennessee. Some of you may remember my post on Hatch (by some of you I mean Paul, who am I kidding even Paul doesn’t remember that one) where I mentioned that “Hatch Show Print Co. is in operation today using the letterpress process in a world of desktop publishing, offset printing and computer processing.” Okay, two quotes from me, by me, is even too much for me in one post. The film is currently available in limited screenings but I hope to offer a full review in a future post. The film has a great website with the story of the movie, photos, video, and store. A DVD of Typeface is scheduled to be available later this spring.

Now I’ve got to explain to my wife how I failed to notice three months of $14.99 charges on the credit card to dnd.meetup.com.

As you know by now, the first two installments of Grammar Pet Peeves (Part 1 of Literally Millions and Part 2 is Comprised of Five Points) went viral. That is not to say that they got a lot of hits, but they did make a lot of people sick. In an effort to redeem myself, I give you more pet peeves and the first-ever installment of “Two That I Had Wrong.”

Who/That
Friend (or possibly Nemesis) of IBD Phil Broder asks:

What’s the proper usage of that/who? Is it “I am the person who edits a magazine” or “I am the person that edits a magazine”? And does it make a difference if the subject is human or not? “I have a dog that likes to sleep by the fireplace” or “I have a dog who likes to sleep by the fireplace”?

I like that we’re taking requests on “Grammar Pet Peeves.”

The commonly accepted rule here is to use who when you’re talking about people and that when you’re talking about things or stuff, though there is some wiggle room (see the “Grammar Girl” link below). I’ve never heard a discussion on this rule as it relates to animals, so I’d say if you like animals and think they have personalities and feelings, use who; if you dislike animals except when you’re eating them, use that. (I have a dog who licks my face when I get home. I have a chicken that will be great breaded and fried.)

There’s a good post on this topic on the website Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips.

Alot/A Lot
Unless you are talking about Alot, a town in India that is home to a temple of the Hindu deity Shiva, a lot should be two words. For instance, one could say, “You must have a lot of time on your hands if you’re reading this blog.” Just as you have a dog instead of adog, you have a lot of something instead of alot of something.

Very Unique
There are no degrees of uniqueness. Something cannot be kind of unique or very unique. Being unique is like being pregnant. You might be two-weeks pregnant or nine-months pregnant, but either you’re pregnant or you’re not. This explanation from Washington State University puts it better than I can:

“Unique” singles out one of a kind. That “un” at the beginning is a form of “one.” A thing is unique (the only one of its kind) or it is not. Something may be almost unique (there are very few like it), but nothing is “very unique.”

So Fun / So Much Fun
In this instance, so is an adverb that modifies the adjective much, which modifies the noun fun. An adverb cannot modify a noun, so when you say, “Reading about grammar is so fun,” what you mean is “Reading about grammar is so much fun.”

Two That I Had Wrong

None Is / None Are
Frequently, we get notes wrapped around bricks and thrown through our windows that say, “Dear Shea and Paul, none of your posts are funny.” For a long time, I thought, the joke’s on you, Mr. Angry Blog Reader, because what you mean is “None of your posts is funny.” Well, it turns out that Mr. Angry Blog Reader is also correct, because both forms are acceptable. Also, we’re not funny.

I was one of those folks who thought that because the word none derives from not one, it is necessarily singular. Turns out that both structures are accepted and have been used since the days of Old English. There’s a good post on this on The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation. (There are still some sources that insist on none being singular, but they are in the minority.)

Loan/Lend
Again, for a long time, whenever I heard people use loan as a verb (“I loaned Shea $4 in 2003 and still haven’t seen a penny of it”), I’d smile smugly and correct them in my head. (I’d think, “They meant lend. I should write a blog about this!”) Well, unless those folks were British, I owe them an apology, because in American English, loan is a verb as well as a noun and has been for a long time.

British grammar and many American nerds hold to the rule that loan is a noun only (“I took out a loan at the bank”) and that lend is a verb only. So if you’re writing for an international audience or for whatever reason trying to impress nerds, use that rule, but common usage in American English allows loan to be used as a verb.

I used to think that I was one of those people who responded well to change. The older I get, the more I realize that I am becoming more and more resistant to change. I find myself continually telling myself that change is good and that the new location of the cereal at Walmart is okay (even though I really know that it is on the wrong side of the aisle and backwards in organization, and that the manager is never going to respond to my comment cards).

I thought people in my generation (Gen X) responded well to change. We are the first generation with the Internet, microwaves, break-dancing, Windows operating system, and MTV. Now MTV is also making changes, leaving me behind. (It may actually be a strategic goal of theirs to rid park rangers in their 30s who live in Arkansas, drive mini-vans, fill out comment cards, and have friends who write about the serial comma from their Neilson Ratings.) I’m pretty sure I’m hurting their street cred. Initially I thought there was a problem with the formatting of my television versus the satellite’s signal and then I saw on Fox News (another reason I’m a target) that after 30 years, MTV had unveiled a new logo.

MTV’s logo is always prevalent on the lower right hand corner of the screen during programming. I found myself wondering why they had to change it. Now it is a total distraction to me when I’m trying to watch the Real World (arguably the best reality show in history), the Jersey Shore (a Caputo tradition upon which the show is loosely based), and My Life as Liz (a pseudo-reality show that is obviously packed with subliminal messages that I for unexplained reasons seem to be drawn to). I can’t stop staring at it, missing the original logo.

Okay, so the new logo isn’t really different from the MTV logo that everyone knows and recognizes. It is more of a zoom and crop of the original logo and less of a new logo, but it is different. The most noticeable change in the new logo is the removal or cropping out of the “Music Television” text portion of the logo. MTV is not the 24 hours a day of music videos that it once was. The re-design also made the background transparent, so that it can be filled with promotions for upcoming shows. Originally, the background was filled with various color combinations, patterns, and textures (my favorite was the brick pattern).

I had to learn more about why they made this change when the original logo is so well known and recognized.  Was the change for a specific purpose or change simply for the sake of change? When you have a brand that is as well known as the Nike swoosh or Coca-Cola, should you change? As an interpretive manager I have to be careful not to change elements of an operation just because I can.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Tina Exarhos, executive vice president of marketing and multiplatform creative projects, was quoted as saying, “The people who watch [MTV] today, they don’t refer to MTV as music television, they don’t have the same emotional connection that, say, the people who are writing about [the logo change] do.”

Uh, that’s me.

Exarhos was also quoted in the New York Daily News as saying, “From a truly design perspective, we didn’t look at losing ‘music television’ for any other reason than from a functionality standpoint, but we realized that it would have an impact if we took that off. I think those who watch MTV today think about it as much broader than music television. Music is still at the heart of everything we do, but it’s about a lot more now,” she added. “If MTV didn’t change, we’d be irrelevant.”

There is purpose behind their decision. You would expect as much from such a corporation, but we should be reminded of the importance of all the interpretive design decisions that we make—especially those that evoke change and may cause an unintentional emotional response from your audience.

Walmart has gone through some drastic changes in the last year, including a new logo and store re-design (leading to my issues with the cereal aisle) that I have adjusted to.  It was Mohandas Gandhi who said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” My wife tells me it is time to leave the 80s behind and change the channel.