What’s Your Sign?

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Shea Lewis

I’m obsessed with email. Each day is an adventure in and of itself to see what the inbox holds and to see what friends have sent me. By friends I mean Paul. I have gotten used to his personal passion to document every known use of Papyrus in pixels and chastise me with it. That’s what friends are for right? This is the most recent version from Sea World in Orlando.

I also have a sick circle of friends who send me post cards from exotic places like Australia and North Carolina filled with beautiful images and messages set in Papyrus. And by circle of friends I mean the Caputos. Sheila Caputo may not actually consider me a friend but Joel and Maya do. This is the most recent version from Australia, obviously they have the same default fonts even down under.

Ever since the inception of IBD way back in 2009 the friends, readers, interpreters, and complainers began sending us photos of signs, exhibits, and other design related products that caught them off guard or that they found interesting. The images illustrate the good, bad, and ugly approaches to design and communication. At the very least they may make you think about design decisions you make and sometimes laugh.

I was reminded of this after reading Paul’s second post from Australia and seeing the picture that he posted of the Australian bias against schnauzers it reminded me of a photo that a friend of IBD had sent me that displayed a similar bias against schnauzers (specifically those defecating) from Belgium.

Perhaps this anger towards schnauzers is more than just a southern hemisphere problem.

As I was looking though the IBD archives (a shoe box underneath my bed that also includes DVDs of the 2008 and 2009 World Series as well as a pristine collection of rub off letters set in Helvetica, to be preserved in the event of the end of the world), I came across several other images that had been emailed to me in the last few months that are worth sharing. Six images I could not post. The person responsible for sending those images and any associated text messages (you know who you are) please keep those to yourself in the future.

Here are few worth sharing…

I’m constantly searching for signs that have a unique way of saying something like “it’s air conditioned in here” without saying “it’s air conditioned in here.”

Who says signs have to be square or fit in a box? I normally do, but in this case the shape speaks volumes about the animal.

Most would agree that Disney is successful at most approaches to communication. These signs were posted in areas under construction in Epcot to remind you of their vision and to distract you from the box that is hiding something cool that you are missing out on.

I saw these same signs in the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom too. They were all designed with custom backgrounds and typefaces. These being located in Epcot led to the Tron-like typeface being used.

This sign is cool for one reason only and only to me.

Some signs really give you a feeling for what a place is going to be like. Since I’ve never been to Hawaii and I need that feeling. The color combinations, type, and image in this sign all work well together inviting you in. I also like claims to fame.

This sign echoes elements of the memorial. I’m not sure I could handle the feelings a visit to this site could evoke.

I would steal this sign if I was still in high school. In some ways just making a public statement like that reveals that I’m still in high school, mentally. And by steal I mean borrow. Photographer, thank you for risking bodily harm for this image. It was so worth it.

This sign says if you are lost and need a safe place to go, come in here and accept a hug from this alien (the eye sticker was most likely applied by the person who sent me this picture, who shall remain nameless, and who lives in Maryland).

Despite the maintenance needed, this is a great sign with a powerful message that makes visitors think.

Keep the pictures coming except from those being blocked by my filters, require vandalism, and from Paul.

Opening Day: Here Come the Flying Squirrels

Posted on April 5, 2010 by Paul Caputo

Our long national nightmare is over. I’ve gotten through the winter with halfhearted attempts at being interested in professional football and college basketball, repeated viewings of the United Breaks Guitars video on YouTube, and even interacting with my wife and children. As of today—Opening Day for Major League Baseball—baseball is back and so is the bounce in my step.

Regular readers of this site know that when it comes to sports, Shea and I are primarily fans of Major League Baseball, and write about it often. I root for the Phillies because I grew up in the Philadelphia area and still enjoy my connection through family and friends to a community that supports the local team. Shea roots for the Yankees because they have the most money and are therefore likely to win every year.

Way back in the 1990s, I lived in Richmond, Virginia, for three years between college and graduate school, mostly working part-time jobs that either paid terribly or that I hated (frequently both). One job that I actually liked (but that paid the worst of all) was as the sports editor for a short-lived weekly newspaper called The Richmond State. As sports editor, I had a press pass to cover the Richmond Braves, the Triple-A minor league affiliate of the hateful Atlanta Braves. Covering the Richmond Braves primarily entailed eating a free dinner in the press box with real sports writers during the first two innings, watching the rest of the game with friends in the left field upper deck seats, and then once a week writing 200 words pulled mostly from press releases. (No wonder The Richmond State wasn’t around long.)

Another job that I had in Richmond was as a video editor for a local news station, NBC affiliate WWBT Channel 12, where I worked alongside (okay, near) now-famous CNN news hottie Campbell Brown. We would have conversations like this:

Campbell Brown: Hey, fat, red-headed video editor. I need this video edited in time for the 6:00 news.

Me: Wow. Hi, Campbell. You’re attractive. It’s Paul, actually. Will you go out with me?

Campbell Brown: No. Will you edit this tape please?

Me: How about just being seen near me in public?

Campbell Brown: No. Edit the tape.

Me: You know, you may go on to be a wildly successful news personality with your own show on a national network some day, but I’m going to write a blog on the Internet and I may not actually know what those words mean right now but we’re going to get literally DOZENS OF HITS EVERY DAY. And then you’re going to wish you were NICER TO THE LITTLE PEOPLE!

[Long silence.]

Campbell Brown: Phil, will you please edit this videotape?

Anyway, the point is, I think, that I really enjoyed being close to minor league baseball. As much as I love baseball played at its highest level (as it is in Philadelphia and the Bronx these days), I also love the local, friendly atmosphere of minor league ball. So I was a little sad when I learned recently that the hateful Atlanta Braves had relocated their Triple-A affiliate from Richmond to somewhere in Georgia.

Then I learned that Richmond was getting a new team, the Double-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. And as with any new minor league team hoping to maximize its marketing potential, they weren’t going to be called something boring like the Richmond Giants. No, they were going to be called something strange and meaningless. To that end, the team opened the naming process to a public competition, which dutifully selected a bizarre mascot that has nothing to do with Richmond—the Flying Squirrels. (When the National Association for Interpretation unveiled its new logo in 2007, one disappointed member wrote to say that the new logo should have been designed as a part of a competition and selected through a vote by the membership. Had we done that, I wonder if NAI would have ended up with something like a flying squirrel as the new identity of the organization.)

The Flying Squirrels unveiled their logo, which includes the primary version at the top of this post as well as the three alternate versions here, at a press conference late last year. A minor league baseball website had this to say about it:

The logo, designed by San Diego-based ideas company Plan B Branding, features what the team describes as a “sleek, angular flying squirrel in mid-flight.” This logo utilizes the team’s color scheme, which consists of black, “radiant red” and a previously unquantifiable hue now known as “squirrels silver.”

I don’t mind odd names for minor league teams. The minor leagues are filled with teams with names like the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, Lansing Lugnuts, Savannah Sand Gnats, and NAI Interpretators. (Okay, that last one is just a softball team I’ve been trying to start, but the others are real.) Though many of these wacky names seem like thinly veiled attempts to sell gear, most of them seem to have at least some small connection to a local cultural element or natural feature.

Richmond’s new baseball team’s logo was designed by a firm on the other side of the country and the mascot has nothing to do with the city or the area. I’m not sure what a more appropriate name would have been (maybe the Tobacco Hawks or the Civil War Runners-Up—I’m still working on it), but sports teams can represent cities in many ways and Richmond’s does not.

If an interpreter had been involved in making this decision, he or she would have pointed out that the name of a sports team is an opportunity to make a thematic choice, to say something meaningful. Instead, when the Richmond Flying Squirrels take the field for the first time ever this Thursday, what the city will get is a wacky novelty that may sell a few T-shirts, but says nothing about the place.

Get to Know a Typeface! Hobo

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Paul Caputo

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.

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

Posted on March 1, 2010 by Paul Caputo

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.”

Since 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.

Chex Party Mix and the Grid

Posted on December 24, 2009 by Shea Lewis

Cereal is quite possibly the perfect food. Some people consider themselves fine connoisseurs of wine and other fine foods. I consider myself a sommelier of compressed grain and sugar. My well-refined palate can tell the subtle differences between the best vintages of all the varieties of Cap’n Crunch.

One thing that I have learned since Paul and I started the endeavor known as IBD some eight years ago, is that the more that you thrust yourself into interpretive design, the less normal your life becomes. Much of that last statement has nothing to do with interpretive design and more to being directly related to being friends with Paul. The more you become aware of design, the more attention you pay to design elements.

Being just a normal visitor to an interpretive site, museum, or nature center can no longer easily take place. Instead on focusing on the experience, you find yourself wondering about the decisions behind that site’s use of type, image selection, how themes are conveyed, and overall media selection. When visiting interpretive sites, I find myself photographing interesting color combinations, unique textures, signage, and expressive typefaces, instead of taking pictures of my neglected children and annoyed wife.

This obsession has extended into my personal life and most recently has been obvious during the holiday party circuit, which has brought to my attention to use of Chex cereal. I really love cereal. Almost as ubiquitous as the use of Papyrus and/or Comic Sans in the design world is the appearance of Chex Party Mix at various holiday functions. I have discovered that nothing gets a party started like a festive holiday sweater vest and eating Chex Party Mix while discussing the direct relationship of the cereal to the grid. (For those of you that are new to IBD, the grid is one of the foundation pieces that we present as part of the decision-making process in interpretive design. A full explanation of establishing the grid is available in the book.)

Chex Party Mix is great for people who think that things belong in specific places, see beauty in squares, and enjoy pre-season baseball. Much like cereal and Chex Party Mix, I love the grid. If you ever find yourself in one of those awkward silence conversations at a holiday party, the grid is always a great conversation starter. Though, I often find myself alone eating Chex Party Mix, carefully aligning individual cereal pieces into a grid.

I’m content with who I am as a person; my annoyed wife is not.

Chex What’s not to like about Chex and the grid? They are both square, simple, and good for you. They serve as an accompaniment and work well with other good choices. The grid is no different. The first goal of the grid is to create a framework that helps you make consistent decisions that will then make your end product more easily accessed by visitors. Once you have established a grid, based on the guidelines in the book, you have a system in place that establishes order out of chaos.

I’m a simple guy and cereal is about as simple as it gets. Milk, cereal, and bowl are all you need. With the grid all you need are the basic design elements. When applying your other design decisions to the grid such as type, colors, and images the grid becomes the organizing factor for displaying the potential for all of the other good decisions that you have made. A good grid makes things simple, yet allows for flexibility and creativity.

I have always maintained that cereal should be first delicious, pretty, and then nutritious. The grid is more nutritious, then pretty, and very difficult to make delicious (some metaphors can only be pushed so far). If our goal is to create a product to be used by visitors, then designing a product that is good for them (or nutritious) is the most important. If it happens to be pretty, visually interesting, and unique, the better it will be. And believe it or not, it can happen within the grid. If you know how to make the grid delicious, please let me know. I’m thinking copious amounts of butter would help.

I like the choices that Chex provides. Corn, Wheat, Rice, Strawberry, Multi-Bran, Honey Nut, Frosted Mini, Chocolate, and Cinnamon Chex are all great choices filled with carbohydrate goodness. When it comes to choice, the grid is your friend as well. You control the grid; it doesn’t control you. There have been several incidents where the consumption of too much Chex Party Mix has taken control of my life. I’m not sure what that statement means, but I just had to put it out there. The grid can consume your way of thinking but it is in your best interest. Just remember, you establish the grid and based on the choices you make in its creation, the possibilities are endless. Besides making you feel carb-loaded, its establishment will provide order to what you are creating.

It is safe to assume that this is one of the worst analogies used in the the history of IBD, but what can you expect out of a Christmas Eve post. It is also safe to assume that several of the parties that I have been going to are pretty lame based on the amount of Chex Party Mix that I have consumed and the fact that I was there.

Merry Christmas!

Blogging: Not Just for Aging Sci-fi Fans Anymore

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Paul Caputo

With the World Series effectively over, we now resume our regularly scheduled posts.

When we launched this site back in March, we asked the question, “Why do we think the world needs another blog?” The Internet is already saturated with the unsolicited opinions of countless middle-aged nerds living in their parents’ basements. Blogging has given us everything from sites like People of Walmart, in which Walmart shoppers make fun of other Walmart shoppers (pictured here), to more useful special-interest sites like Cloud 9 Organize & Redesign, which offers budget-friendly interior-design advice, just to name two of the countless examples out there.

The software that drives many blogs, including this one, is called WordPress. It makes it possible for people who don’t design websites to create and maintain their own online presence. During the Enlightenment, this would have been like giving every individual a printing press and an unlimited supply of paper. Seventeenth-century streets would have been littered with scraps of paper with comments like “René Descartes thinks therefore he’s an idiot” and “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace made me want to throw up my fig pudding.”

One interesting feature of WordPress is that it allows us to see how some Internet users arrive at IBD (which, for the benefit of my wife Sheila, stands for “Interpretation By Design”). We can see what browsers and operating systems our readers are using, the web page that referred them here, the pages that they viewed on this site, and even where those people are physically located. (At the time of this writing, we’ve had readers from the USA, Ukraine, Thailand, Brazil, and Canada in the last six hours.)

Admittedly, this is creepy.

Possibly the creepiest thing we can do is see what search terms Internet users have searched to reach our site. So all of you people in Parkin, Arkansas, who search the term “Shea Lewis” three times a day, we’re on to you. So far, my favorite search term that has landed someone on this site is “can you wear sweatpants to a museum.” I hope that person eventually found some guidance on the issue.

Some other recent search terms and the pages to which readers were referred include:

“Megan Fox graphic design” (Tag: Megan Fox)
“Lewis caputo winner of 50,000 scratch off ticket in Patchogue, NY” (Tag: Papyrus)
“who are streakers” (Post: Streakers, Browsers, and Students: Sam Ham on Hierarchy)
“darth vader new york yankees images” (Tag: New York Yankees)
“buy fresh prince pants” (Tag: Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince)
“make my own sweat pants” and “sweat pants that stay up” (Post: Style and Sweat Pants)

So this is the world of the Internet these days. Shea uses fashion as an analogy for breaking out of his interpretive comfort zone and this site starts getting visits from people too cheap to buy their own sweat pants or too skinny to find sweat pants that don’t fall down.

On the other hand, blogs significantly broaden the ability of organizations to inexpensively and regularly reach a worldwide audience. The National Association for Interpretation maintains five different blogs (listed under “NAI Blogs” in the sidebar on this site). None of these blogs can quite match the popularity of People of Walmart, which once crashed its server after receiving 2.6 million hits in one day. But NAI’s sites offer a great way for InterpPress authors and NAI leaders to share thoughts, ideas, and information that you will not find on NAI’s traditional website, InterpNet.

I especially encourage interpreters at small sites like community nature centers, historic sites, or museums to maintain blogs. You may find a whole new market of visitors and supporters you never knew were there. And more importantly, they may find you.

I recommend that you add content at least weekly, write seasonal or topical posts, promote the site in your newsletter and on your traditional website, and mention sweat pants a lot.

The IBD Blog

Graphic Design Basics for Heritage Interpreters

Tag Archives: Papyrus

What’s Your Sign?

Opening Day: Here Come the Flying Squirrels

Get to Know a Typeface! Hobo

Chex Party Mix and the Grid