Tag Archives: Baseball Teams

New Year’s Resolutions for 2011

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Last year, I made one New Year’s resolution—to figure out what was in the mystery Tupperware in the fridge in my office and get rid of it. I have four days to achieve that resolution and I doubt it’s going to happen. I’ve sort of grown attached to the container, and I don’t want to be responsible for destroying the new life forms that have started to form inside it. This year, in the interest of adopting a more positive outlook, I resolve to cultivate my relationship with the Tupperware container and understand the world from its point of view.

A year ago, since I had my own resolutions taken care of, I made 10 resolutions on behalf of designers everywhere, and this year, the tradition continues. Here are 10 resolutions that I’d like to see the graphic design community adopt for 2011:

  1. I resolve to stop feathering edges.
  2. I will kern away the space between the 1s in 2011.
  3. I will root for baseball teams that are within 1,500 miles of my birthplace or anywhere I have ever lived.
  4. I will not use apostrophes to pluralize, even when it comes to numbers, acronyms, and names.
  5. I resolve to use fonts that did not come pre-installed on my computer.
  6. I will not comment on the typography of my menu to waitresses at restaurants. (This one’s for me.)
  7. I will run spell-check and proofread everything before it goes to press—even headlines and captions. (Thanks to Friend of IBD Steve Dimse, who took this photo near his house and reports, “These guys couldn’t get it right even when the dictionary was two feet away with letters five feet high!”)
  8. I resolve to use a grid.
  9. I will pronounce the T before the L when I say Chipotle.
  10. I will blur less.

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If you have some of your own resolutions, we’d love to see them in the comments here.

Happy new year, and see you in 2011!

One Year of Interpretation By Design: What Have We Learned?

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Photo by Michael Lorenzo

One year ago today, we asked the question “Why do we think the world needs another blog?” and with that, the Interpretation By Design blog was born. We have yet to achieve our stated goal of eradicating the world of clip art and Comic Sans, nor have we overthrown all world governments in order to impose our own merciless rule. But we have enjoyed the opportunity to dialogue with and learn from readers, as well as to rant incoherently about whatever random thought pops into our heads every Monday and Thursday.

We have gotten to brag about our respective favorite baseball teams winning the World Series (the Phillies earned their title in 2008; the Yankees purchased theirs in 2009). We have discussed design pet peeves (drop caps for me, the typeface Papyrus for Shea), and we have revealed our deepest, darkest secrets (I used to work in TV news, Shea likes Walmart).

We have learned (to our surprise) that our readers are passionate about grammatical and typographic minutiae like the difference between less and fewer and whether to single space or double space after a period—and whether they’re setting that type on a Mac or PC.

We are thrilled to have had the opportunity to use the phrase “Friend of IBD” often, not to mention that our respective marriages are still intact even after our families vacationed together during a blog-intensive week in Chicago last August. We’ve enjoyed (nearly) all of the comments that readers have left (even the one telling me that “life is too short” and that I should “get over it” in my post about drop caps).

In that first post exactly a year ago today, I wrote, “We don’t want your Social Security number, credit card information, or first-born child. You don’t even need a username or password. All you need is an interest in interpretation and/or graphic design and a moment to share your thoughts with us.”

Quiet sign on the road to Hana1Since then, we’ve enjoyed interacting with readers, especially when you send entertaining links and photos like this one from Friends of IBD Lori Spencer and Don Simons, who wrote after a trip to Hawaii, “Hi guys, You’ve got us noticing signs now.”

And that’s really what IBD is about. We know we’re never going to shut down a server because one of our posts goes viral on the Internet, but we hope to have found a niche of readers who find beauty in the quirky, who care about type and design, and who enjoy the way our natural and cultural heritage is presented visually at interpretive sites. We write this blog because we enjoy discussing interpretation and design. (If we didn’t have the blog, we’d probably end up writing all of the same content in emails to one another, only probably with even more snarky baseball-related comments, so it’s best for our mental health that we do have the blog.)

If we have changed the way you look at the world—noticing worn-down signs while others might be soaking in a beautiful rainforest or seascape, wondering whether a specific typeface was appropriate while others enjoy the content of an interpretive exhibit, or cringing at the use of a double space after a period while others read happily along without a care in the world—then our job is done, and we are truly sorry.

And finally, an announcement: For the next year, Shea and I will use the typeface Helvetica every day until a major Hollywood studio makes a movie about us called Shea and Paul and Max and Eduard. The movie will span seven decades and tell the parallel, touching stories of the creation of the typeface and our use of it. Shea will be played by Meryl Streep.

Ask a Nerd: Help! We have three months to make 27 wayside exhibits!

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bio-lisa-1This message from the Nerd Herd came in about three months ago. We’ve been too busy railing against Comic Sans and making fun of each other’s baseball teams to get to it, so we asked our mysterious and reclusive third co-author (and also fifth Beatle) Lisa Brochu (pictured here in her natural habitat) to answer it:

Dear Nerds,

What if, hypothetically, a friend of mine worked for an agency that “forgot” they had funding for 27 wayside exhibits, suddenly realizing this fact exactly 3 months before the end of the fiscal year? Of course the whole project would have to be conceptualized, written, designed, fabricated, and paid for by then.

Any tips to avoid hurried, glaring mistakes in content development or design? Any magic tricks you know to legally maneuver a molasses-slow bureaucracy? Are we, er, I mean, is my hypothetical friend going to be ok or as doomed as a grasshopper pierced on barbwire by a shrike?

—Frantic in Cyberspace

Lisa replies:

Do you really have to have 27 signs? You might want to think about cutting the budget in half and spending half to get some professional help (not the on-the-couch kind, but the planner/writer/designer kind) and then spending the rest on the sign fabrication. Think purchase order (the all-purpose legal maneuver). If that’s not possible, at least do the following:

1. Check fabrication times so you know what your absolute drop dead deadline will be.

2. Determine whether any of the signs could be considered unnecessary or redundant (most signs are). The fewer you have to produce, the fewer mistakes you will make.

3. Write first, then find graphics that illustrate the text (no clip-art allowed).

4. After you write the first draft, edit. Edit again. Edit one more time. Come on, you can get that word count down if you really try – edit, edit, edit. Try to get to where you have no more than 100 words per panel – 50 would be better.

5. Follow the instructions in Interpretation by Design related to grid layouts (this works for signs as well as publications).

6. If any of these things go wrong, make sure your tetanus shot is up to date (that barbed wire is just filthy).