My Favorite Day Of The Year

Churchill Downs - Louisville Kentucky

Derby Day.

The mere thought of the day conjures poignant road markers from memory. The scent of my mother’s rosewater; and that of the peculiar mixture of mint, bourbon, and tobacco on my father’s breath, as he knelt to properly tie my bow tie; and that of the Kentucky grass, and earth, on every first Saturday of May that my childhood memories still retain. Flashes of scarlet: my mother’s Chanel hat, reserved for wear only once a year, at Churchill Downs; the single, perfect rose affixed to my father’s jacket; and, of course, the fabled shawl of roses draped over the winning horse. Laughter. Excitement. Words.

“Nothing else exists but that shawl of roses.”

Indeed, it does not.

My inner circle of friends and those more regular readers of Curious Affairs will already know that horse racing is the only “sport” that truly inspires any sort of meaningful “sports writing” from me. Except it’s not even really “sports writing” so much as it is an excuse to wander through happy memories of my childhood, when my family’s annual triptych of trips to watch the Triple Crown races each year smacked of nothing but excitement. Even later, as an adult, when the Triple Crown races began marking prominent events or statuses in my life that were not always happy, I still welcomed the beginning of the races with gladness. For it is usually on Derby Day, that day on which any horse, really, can win, and on which no one is yet rabidly rooting for the next Triple Crown Winner, when I most adore wandering through memory, and winning, and…hope.

Because for me the tradition of the Triple Crown was not ever about how much money one could make from their picks (although my father seemed to have an almost preternatural talent for picking precisely those colts that would win, including the last three Triple Crown Winners). It was about the pride that one had in their picks, or in the horses they had raised, and trained, and sent to the races. It was about the validation that one would feel when their horse did, in fact, win the race. And it was about hope, not only that ones horse would win the Derby, but that this horse would go on to win the next two races, thereby gracing the world of horse racing with its next Triple Crown Winner.

Over the years, for better but also sometimes for worse, these values have crept into other areas of my life, as well, until Derby Day has become a day of celebrating those three tenets of horse racing, and of life. And although sometimes, as for this 135th Derby Day, I may not be in the most fabulous of places in my life, this day still always inspires me to take pride, no matter how unfabulous things may seem at the time, in my life, and to endlessly hope for the acquisition of my own figurative shawl of roses, and, perhaps most importantly of all, to never lose sight of winning.

And so that is why, tomorrow, on this first Saturday of May, as I scream hysterically rooting for jockey Gabriel Saez to ride trainer Larry Jones‘ colt Friesan Fire to victory in The 135th Running Of The Kentucky Derby, I shall be smiling.

For the memories of Derby Days past.

And for the hope of those to come.

Friesan Fire - Image Copyright Andy Lyons / Getty Images

Filed under: Events, Personal, Triple Crown , Churchill Downs, defining moments, family, Friesan Fire, Gabriel Saez, history, horse racing, Kentucky, Larry Jones, linkage, Louisville, love each day, memories, needful reminders, red carpet situations, sports, The Kentucky Derby

In Praise Of The Pixel Pushers

Design by Hannah Ljung - Grafisk Utbildningsfonden - Uppsala Sweden

I first became aware of the significant importance of visual communication the day I helped banish all art on my college campus.

It was during my sophomore year of my undergraduate schooling, when, as a member of both the lesbian, gay, and bisexual student group, as well as the AIDS awareness student group, I assisted in the implementation of Visual AIDS‘ Day Without Art, in observance of World AIDS Day. Launched on the first day of December in 1989, the observance (since renamed “Day With(out) Art”) was intended to make the public aware that AIDS can touch everyone, and in order to inspire positive action, some 800 art and AIDS groups in the United States participated, shutting down museums, sending staff to volunteer at AIDS services, and sponsoring special exhibitions of work about AIDS. On my college’s campus, we raided the theatre department’s stash of black fabric, and covered nearly the entire campus with it, draping every sculpture, every art installation, and every painting (even the portraits that were displayed in the administration building of our college’s founder and of his wife, our school’s namesake) in the heavy black cloth.

On a campus such as ours, noted for its art and artists, it was a visually arresting display of how much a part of our daily lives art actually was; it was profoundly compelling, to see all of those expansive swatches of black fabric obfuscating the art that was all around us.

Years later, having graduated from college and fallen rather unexpectedly into a career of graphic design, the importance of visual communication was made abundantly clear to me once again, upon my first reading of what is still one of my most treasured essays on the practice of graphic design, by designer Jessica Helfand. Although excerpts from this essay appear in many places throughout this blog, it seems fitting to repeat them here, again, today, on the anniversary of the founding of Icograda, the International Council of Graphic Design Associations, and on the 15th annual observance of World Graphics Day.

Graphic design is everywhere, touching everything we do, everything we see, everything we buy: we see it on billboards and bibles, on taxi receipts and on websites, on birth certificates and on gift certificates, on the folded circulars tucked inside jars of aspirin and on the thick pages of children’s chubby board books.

Now, as a jaded designer who has practiced the craft of graphic design for nearly fifteen years, this passage may read like a no-brainer. Of course graphic design is everywhere, all around us, communicating its messages to us either explicitly or, if it is done very well, implicitly. However, as a designer who was relatively new to his field when he first read this essay, its message was one of awesome importance; it is not every day that one realizes what a profoundly privileged place one inhabits, when their career is entirely about the effective communication of messages, both textually and visually.

This realization was almost as powerful for me, if not more, than the realization of how profoundly important art was in my everyday life, on that first Day Without Art of years before.

Graphic design is the most ubiquitous of all the arts. It responds to needs at once personal and public, embraces concerns both economic and ergonomic, and is informed by numerous disciplines, including art and architecture, philosophy and ethics, literature and language, politics and performance.

It is this power, this special, ubiquitous nature of graphic design and visual communication, and its ability to effect change in the world around us, that Icograda’s World Graphics Day celebrates. Informed by and informing countless disciplines and practices, design and its designers wield the power to effect change in equally countless arenas of daily life. We see this power in TEDTalks that link design to technology and innovation; in the branding and rebranding of corporations, products, and services; in the efforts of designers to practice their crafts with gazes toward the future, and sustainability; and in the work of experience designers, designing to effect change in the way in which an audience interacts with content on the Internet.

Graphic design is a popular art, a practical art, an applied art, and an ancient art. Simply put, it is the visualization of ideas.

Ideas that, when executed effectively, may facilitate real change. Everywhere. And all around us.

I am aware, on a nearly daily basis, of how fortunate I am, and of how proud I feel, to be able to call myself a designer, and to practice the art that I practice.

But it is on this day, every year since I first became aware of this design “holiday,” that my pride swells just a little bit more than usual.

Happy World Graphics Day!

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NOTE: The above-quoted passages are excerpted from Jessica Helfand’s stellar essay, “Paul Rand: The Modern Designer,” which appears in Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture.

Filed under: Art, Books, Design, Editorials, Events, Personal , defining moments, egreetings, history, Icograda, Jessica Helfand, linkage, memories, needful reminders, World Graphics Day

The Fifth Of November

“Employed Writer” Halloween costume was a joke, obvs. Getting into character right now to don my real costume — “Remember, remember, the fifth of November”…

Filed under: Events, Fashion, Film , celebrities, history, humor, linkage, photoblogging, red carpet situations

The Dark Night

Final Honolulu Halloween + no idea how many more F&M events I can attend before I leave = F&M’s The Dark Night at Pearl Ultralounge tonight!

Filed under: Events, Music , a-list, egreetings, honolulu, linkage, oahu, pimpage, red carpet situations