Job Applications In The 2.0

SuperCW And A Really Goode Job Application

Last evening I received an email from a dear friend of mine from back in my days of The Cocktail Circuit in Honolulu, Christa Wittmier. It was a brief note explaining that she was applying for a job, asking her friends and contacts to vote for her video application, and linking us to her application page at Murphy-Goode Winery in Sonoma County. The “Really Goode Job” is for a social media whiz whose title will be “Murphy-Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent,” and I think that the concept of requiring job applicants to submit YouTube video footage of why they deserve the job is amazingly fitting.

I really can’t think of a better way to test the talents of a potential social media maven than to request an application via video, and Christa, of course, rose to the challenge, compiling her extensive online curriculum vitae into exactly one minute. The video condenses a Google search into only the most essential information, and showcases it all remarkably well.

As a friend who is very well-acquainted with Christa’s tireless photoblogging efforts at Honolulu Nightlife Diaries, jealous of her constant VIP passes to only the hottest of Honolulu nightlife and arts events, and enamored with her ability to socialize and write it and photograph it all at the same time, I suppose it is no surprise that I voted for Super CW here.

(And also no surprise that I think you should, as well, since I give good recommendations like that.)

But more so I think that this is where job applications should be heading: concise, simple, creative communications of our talents.

In only sixty seconds.

Filed under: Blogging, Media, Net Culture, Technology , a-list, christa wittmier, employment applications, hawaii, honolulu, honolulu nightlife diaries, linkage, Murphy-Goode Winery, pimpage, social media, social networking, supercw, the elevator pitch, video, YouTube

As URLs Go By

I was born on The Internet in 1994.

As lavishly expensive as my small liberal arts undergraduate college was to attend at the time, it was a bit late to connect members of its student body to the world wide web. My friends from prep school who had matriculated at Amherst, Swarthmore, Vassar, and Williams boasted .edu email addresses from their first days on their respective campuses; I did not receive my official “abartelby@mail.slc.edu” email address until close to the end of my sophomore year, in the spring of 1994. I remember the occasion as if it was only yesterday, however: the newest building on campus, the Science Center, had just been completed and opened for business. But the lines of students snaking out of the building’s main entrance on that first day were not there for tours of the new science labs, they were there for the assignment of email addresses, and to finally explore the new and expanded collection of Apple Macintoshes in the Academic Computing Center.

My friends with whom I lived that year and I were among the first students in the lines. We collected our new email addresses and passwords with the excitement of Christmas morning, and spent our first strictly limited hours during those first few weeks in our little adjacent workstations, emailing each other back and forth.

From: Kramer @ mail.slc.edu
To: Atherton @ mail.slc.edu
Date: Thu, Apr 23, 1994 at 8:13 PM
Subject: Re: Re: OHMYGODISTHISNOTEXCITING?!?!
Mailed by: slc.edu

This is kind of retarded. You do realize we’ve been here nearly an hour sitting right next to each other but emailing instead of talking, right?

Write me back.

Love,
Kramer

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From: Atherton @ mail.slc.edu
To: Kramer @ mail.slc.edu
Date: Thu, Apr 23, 1994 at 8:15 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: OHMYGODISTHISNOTEXCITING?!?!
Mailed by: slc.edu

WHO CARES?! ISN’T IT FUN?! WE HAVE EMAIL, DUDE! IT BEATS WRITING THAT PAPER ON 17TH CENTURY METATHEATRE, OK?!?!

Write me back, too.

Love,
Atherton

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From: Kramer @ mail.slc.edu
To: Atherton @ mail.slc.edu
Date: Thu, Apr 23, 1994 at 8:16 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: OHMYGODISTHISNOTEXCITING?!?!
Mailed by: slc.edu

OH, TOTALLY! I wish we could smoke in here. I need a cigarette. Where the fuck is Amory? Why is he on a WINDOWS machine?! He’s such a loser. Wanna go to Bates after they kick us out of here?

Write me back.

Love,
Kramer

And so on.

It was exciting, because it was new: this foreign mode of communication.

Time spent at the Academic Computing Center became even more exciting, however, during the first semester of my junior year, when, after befriending the 1337 g33k students who staffed the Center, I acquired access to flatbed scanners, the single Macintosh workstation that housed Photoshop and Pagemaker, and advanced knowledge of the world that existed in the tubes beyond those of our college’s mail servers. It was not long at all before I was exchanging emails with friends on a site called “Hotmail,” developing my very first (of, tragically, far too many) Internet crushes on the “Intellectuals” “floor” of a chat site called “Gay.com,” and, perhaps most exciting of all, establishing my very first home on The Internet, on a site called “GeoCities.”

WANDERING THROUGH SOHO

GeoCities - Circa 1996

I seemed to understand intuitively that my GeoCities page would be seen by “everyone” on the world wide web, and therefore took great care in selecting which “Neighborhood” I would “move into,” knowing that this would be “everyone’s” first impression of me. “Athens?” I did adore philosophy, and Plato, and…no, no, no, because then “everyone” would think I was an uptight, too-serious academic and wouldn’t “get” that section of high resolution scans of pages from Madonna’s Sex book that I intended to “feature” on my “page.” “SoHo?” I did have an internship in the neighborhood that year, and that was where I invariably hung out when I was in Manhattan. Trendy. Cosmopolitan. Artsy. Yes, totally, “SoHo” is so me!

And so, “SoHo” it was.

My “page,” as I remember, was hideous. White text set in Times New Roman on a black background. Garishly hued, animated navigational buttons. Graphic headers that I “designed” in Photoshop: thick, indelicate text banners, that I embossed, outer glowed, drop shadowed, and lens flared the hell out of, each color-coded to match the content of each section. (I still give myself props for at least being consistent in the color arena, despite the hideous aesthetics of the rest of my “page” architecture.) Aside from the Sex book scans, I can remember precious little other content. I can vaguely remember a “Literature and Philosophy” “section” in which I posted my course syllabi each semester, as well as a few seminar papers, and there was almost certainly a “section” devoted entirely to gritty, scanned, pseudo-sexy self-portraits over which I imagined my Gay.com crushes would drool, but that’s about all I remember.

I was always embarrassed to mention my very first GeoCities page, once I settled into my own personal design style and graduated to CSS and a properly designed and self-hosted site from my early, clumsy HTML coding and GeoCities hosting, until a few weeks ago, when I stumbled upon a screen grab of noted designer Jeffrey Zeldman’s web page circa 1996, which made me feel a whole lot less embarrassed. Now, I wish I had had the foresight to take screen grabs of my own, all throughout those first laughable infant steps of mine into the world wide web, if only to be able to laugh at their hideousness when held up to the clean, minimalist white tundra of my current blog theme.

I mention all of this, of course, in response to Yahoo!’s media release yesterday stating that it will shut down GeoCities entirely before the end of 2009. I know, right? It was still around? I forgot all about my once-treasured GeoCities page after I was graduated from college in the spring of 1996, once I entered “The Real World” of living in New York City on an Editorial Assistant’s salary, when I no longer boasted constant access to The Internet.

But I remembered it, yesterday, and became, I dare say, a bit nostalgic for the old pixelated “SoHo” in which I used to “live.”

THE DEATH OF THE REPUBLIC

The Designers Republic - Angryman

This most recent occurrence of Internet nostalgia, however, is only the latest in a series that began back in late February, when I first read of the death of The Designers Republic. February has for many years been a month of death for me, following the death of my father in February of 2002, and the death of my mother in February of the following year. So it seemed fitting, somehow, that this most recent February should herald the death of not only my most recent romantic involvement, but also that of one of my most revered design studios.

But for me Ian Anderson’s Designers Republic was far more than an important design studio whose work I admired and whose business practices and client list I sought to emulate and achieve myself. It was also, much like Joshua Davis‘ Dreamless.org before it, of which I was also a member, an international community of designers who met in its forum, Neue.DR, to socialize, brainstorm, and share work and music. In those early days of the new millennium, when both my personal and professional lives were constantly in flux, Neue.DR was my one constant, my one home, the one thing on which I could always depend. I could escape into its tubes, away from my hectic job, away from my relationship that I knew was nearing its end, to find solace in the conversations I had with the other designers, humor in the flirtatious antics between the Icelandic woman and the French dude, and inspiration in the latest Photoshop battle.

It was my haven on the world wide web.

So, even though The Designers Republic had (again, much like Joshua Davis had done with Dreamless.org before it) long since shuttered the Neue.DR forum before its own ultimate demise at the end of this January, I still felt a bit of nostalgia when I read of its passing during my dead month. Because, much like GeoCities had, Neue.DR marked a specific time in my life, and became, like any of the physical senses will become, a trigger for memories of events, and of work, and of people: a road marker on the map of my life’s experiences.

The passing of both online “homes,” for me, really does signify, if one will pardon an oft-employed phrase in these Curious Affairs, “The End Of An Era.”

THE ONLINE MAPPING OF A PERSONAGE

In some ways I feel that these words and ruminations that I am recording here are only the beginning of a more expansive project, inaugural notes for an endeavor that will eventually record my life and experiences, not only in words or images, but also in the URLs at which I have left traces of myself, and which have left their own traces on me. As an individual who almost obsessively records his experiences and memories based on sights, sounds, scents, and other senses, it seems only natural to begin recording them also based on my online activities. Because, much like I can vividly recall the scene outside of my apartment’s balcony when my brother told me over the telephone that our mother had died, or describe in minute detail the scents that filled my nostrils as I lost my virginity, so too can I recall precisely which design forums I was frequenting when my father died, or which blog I was maintaining when I was told that my first friend to die of AIDS had just been diagnosed with it, or exactly how many subdomains resided on my website when I experienced the most soul-destroying breakup of my life.

And, as someone who, almost quite literally, lives online, I think it is important to document these sojourns throughout the great white web as faithfully, and as thoughtfully, as one records his experiences IRL. If only to be able to, many years and several lifetimes later, look back on design forum conversations and Photoshop battles, and on the hideously designed pages of his first “home” on the Internet, and marvel at just far one has come.

And at just how much one has changed, as the URLs have gone by.

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RELATED ARTICLES FROM ACROSS THE WEB

• There Is Always A City by AV Flox: “Perhaps more than places of residence, spaces online are like lovers. We enjoy many people who touch our lives, but there are only a number of them that really change us so deeply, and teach us so much, that we remember them forever. In a sense, GeoCities was that. It may not have been the moody codependent relationship I had with Diaryland, or the drama-filled, torrid affair I had with LiveJournal or the wild, no-strings-attached fling I’ve been having with WordPress, or the warm marriage I enjoy on this self-hosted blog—but it shaped me. Maybe it was my first crush.”
• RIP GeoCities by Maria Diaz: “What this ending of Geocities does make me realize is, for all our scary talk of how we need to watch what our slutty, drunken selves put online because oh no someone who may pay us to do something might see it, is how not permanent so much of the web truly is. This is why I think talking about the Internet’s history is so important. So much of what happened is gone now. We have to discuss it, there’s so little evidence of it but our memories and a few pages with dead links.”

Filed under: Blogging, Editorials, Net Culture, Personal, Technology, Web Design, Writing , death, defining moments, Dreamless.org, eexhibitionism, GeoCities, history, home, Ian Anderson, identity, Jeffrey Zeldman, Joshua Davis, linkage, memories, needful reminders, Neue.DR, online communities, representation, The Designers Republic, traces

Everything Is Science Fiction

James Graham Ballard - 15 November 1930 to 19 April 2009

I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that is my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again…the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul. — J. G. Ballard

I was a latecomer to the J. G. Ballard fan base. This did not stop me, however, from being quickly, deeply affected by his work, and from thinking, for the first time in years when discovering a “new” writer, as I had when one of my editors at HarperCollins first introduced me to the work of Thomas Bernhard in the mid-1990s, “How had I not already read this writer’s work?!” This is precisely how I felt upon reading Ballard’s Millennium People for the first time (of three times; I read it again, twice, immediately upon completion) early last year. So today, in the middle of only my second reading of Ballard’s Super-Cannes: A Novel, I find myself deeply saddened by the death of such a brilliant, visionary writer.

His work focused on, as Tomorrow Museum’s Joanne McNeil notes in her thorough, excellent retrospective of Ballard’s life and work, “a distrust of technology and human nature […] a sense of the absurdity of shopping malls and an intuitive understanding how architecture, especially in its most banal forms, affects our emotions. Ballard shunned email and Internet, it was irrelevant to his obsessions. His concern was space, the body, travel, the dark underbelly of a suburban tract housing development.” And I think it is precisely Ballard’s distrust of technology vis-à-vis human nature that drew me so strongly into his work, much as Bernhard’s distrust of society vis-à-vis human nature drew me so strongly into his own.

And I think it is this quintessentially Ballardian wariness of technology, and the future, the very things about which he wrote passionately and prolifically, that will be missed the most.

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RELATED SITES

• For fellow latecomers to J. G. Ballard’s work, the above-referenced article at Tomorrow Museum, JG Ballard, Our Greatest Living Novelist Is No Longer, is an excellent starting point, as are the Museum’s J. G. Ballard archives.
• Ballardian.com, “a very unofficial site exploring tropes and motifs found in the work of J. G. Ballard,” edited and published by Simon Sellars, also provides an astonishingly thorough compendium of the novelist’s work, life, and thought. Sellars’ Ballard obituary is a great place to begin.

Filed under: Architecture, Books, Technology , Ballardian.com, J. G. Ballard, linkage, science fiction, Thomas Bernhard, Tomorrow Museum, urban appreciation

10 Design Thinkers To Follow On Twitter

Not Your Average Twitter Listicle

I was inspired recently by GrainEdit’s curated list of designers to follow on Twitter. I admire it because it not only includes the “Design Rock Stars” as one would expect (@ilovetypography, @DesignObserver, et al.), but also highlights some truly amazing designers who are currently doing some truly awesome work. So, for this week’s #followfriday phenom on Twitter (in which I do not usually participate, and when I do attempt to do so it seems, to me, to be entirely awkward and therefore inorganic), I thought I would put my own spin on recommending designer-ly types to follow on Twitter.

I employ the completely made-up term “designer-ly” because not all of the individuals on my list are graphic designers. But since, as a designer myself, I always gravitate toward those thinkers and designers who speak on a variety of topics (because, really, design inspiration can come from anywhere), I decided to highlight those individuals whose content inspires me. I also tried to select “designer-ly” Twitterers who maintain impressive blogs and / or websites, as well, and whose Twitter streams augment their excellent thoughts on design, art, or technology as presented in their forums that go well beyond Twitter’s 140 character confines. Lastly, I sought to focus on those thinkers who tend to be more engaging with their followers on Twitter, and not only follow / engage with the “Twitter Design Elite”; I am not criticizing those who do this, but I personally get more out of following design thinkers when they actively engage with their audiences.

With that, I give you my top choices for the “10 Design Thinkers To Follow On Twitter”.

@brainpicker

Maria Popova of Brain Pickings

I have been a huge fan of Maria’s for awhile, and have written of my admiration of her blog before in this space, but my love of her content bears repeating. Brain Pickings “picks culture’s collective brain” for innovation, inspiration, and brilliant ideas, and Maria’s Twitter stream follows this up with bite-sized bits of brilliance on art, culture, design, photography, sustainability, technology, and, of course, all things TED. She is an awesome resource for inspiring some very heavy “outside of the box” thinking about design, innovation, and the inter-connectedness of ideas.

@changeorder

David Sherwin of ChangeOrder

David Sherwin’s ChangeOrder is an amazing resource because it focuses on the business and process of design in a way that makes its content truly accessible to all designers, not only to Creative Directors or Principals. His articles never fail to inspire thought concerning the business side of design, and allow one to see the design process not only from the design side, but from the all-important client side, as well. All of this amazing insight is, of course, nicely supplemented by David’s Twitter stream, which is a resource I could not imagine being without.

@darrylohrt

Darryl Ohrt of Brandflakes For Breakfast

As the most recognizable online voice from the greatest agency in all of the land, Plaid, it would be an egregious error on my part if I did not include Darryl’s Twitter stream and Plaid’s blog in my list of most valuable Twitter design resources. With a sense of humor, frankness, and shockingly accurate eye for detail and all things branding, Darryl consistently delivers the best of what internet culture, pop culture, good design, and branding trends have to offer. Pair that with an amazing attention to how (and how well) companies are using social media to their (dis)advantages, and you have, well, one of the greatest Twitter streams in all of the land.

@hellyeahdude

Patrick Algrim of Hell Yeah Dude

I remain a longtime fan of Patrick’s Hell Yeah Dude, which was initially launched as a forum to which young authors trying to break into the design world could contribute their own thoughts, beliefs, and topics concerning design and the design process. Hell Yeah Dude has, through numerous incarnations, retained this contributory, collaborative focus, and it is one of my top go-to sites for fresh design ideas and perspectives. Patrick’s Twitter stream is an excellent supplement, focusing on design, art, Chicago, and the web with refreshing insight.

@jackcheng

Jack Cheng of JackCheng.com

I first began following Jack Cheng’s work and ideas back in October of 2008, when I read his article, “I am my own boss (and so can you!),” published on his site. A former copywriter and UX / web design lead, Jack has an amazing talent for conveying innovative ideas concerning design, writing, working, and living in a way that I find very engaging and useful in my own life and work as a designer and thinking visual artist. His Twitter stream also never fails to give one pause with its ideas and textual images painted in less than 140 characters.

@jomc

Joanne McNeil of Tomorrow Museum

The Tomorrow Museum is a collection of images and speculative essays exploring how technology, science, and economics are affecting the fine arts. Curated and written by science and technology writer Joanne McNeil, the original essays themselves, as well as the curated links in the blog’s “Asides” column, always inspire one with their observations of how technology, science, and the web inform the processes of creative thinking and artistic production. Additionally, Joanne’s Twitter stream augments the blog with a characteristic wit and keen eye, and should definitely not be missed.

@kitsunenoir

Bobby Solomon of Kitsune Noir

I discovered Bobby Solomon’s rather excellent blog collection of links to and ruminations on all imaginable goodness related to art, design, fashion, film, and music via the previously-referenced list of top Twitter designers compiled by GrainEdit, and I am so glad I did. Bobby has an amazing eye for all kinds of visual and aural awesomeness, and presents them with a wit and candor that make reading and seeing them all the more enjoyable. One should follow his equally engaging and informative Twitter stream to remain abreast of all of the action occurring on Kitsune Noir.

@michaelSurtees

Michael Surtees of DesignNotes

I cannot imagine anyone remotely related to design being unfamiliar with Michael Surtees’ DesignNotes, but if for some unexplainable reason one is, one should rectify that immediately. Michael writes widely on graphic design and all things visual with a candor and frankness that I find refreshing in the arena of design writing. He has a unique eye for finding interesting sites, projects, and events online and in New York City (and chronicles them in his impressive weekly Link Drops), and can always be counted on for unique, innovative content, both on his blog and in his Twitter stream.

@rbtlshow

Aaron Heth (@aaronheth) and Matt McInerney (@mattmc) of Read Between The Leading

One of the great new resources that I recently began following is Read Between The Leading, a podcast that focuses on graphic design and typography, and produced by two extremely passionate design students at the Savannah College of Art & Design. The two designers have produced some amazing episodes thus far, including interviews with Glenn Garriock of FormFiftyFive and John Boardley of ILoveTypography, and never fail to direct thought-provoking questions toward their interviewees or other design topics. Their show’s Twitter stream is a must-follow resource for anyone interested in design on any level.

@serial_consign

Greg J. Smith of Serial Consign

Greg’s truly amazing site and more casual yet still truly amazing Twitter stream are in my top list of immediate go-tos for design brain candy. A designer and researcher interested in media theory and digital culture, Greg’s work focuses on how “contemporary information paradigms affect representational and spatial systems”. What this means is that one can always be inspired to think about design in vastly different ways once one reads Greg’s take on design as manifested in illustration, information design, visualization, and writing. Another definite must-follow.

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There are many, many other impressive designer-ly thinkers on Twitter, to be sure, and I follow a lot (but by no means all) of them. Do you follow anyone on Twitter (“designer-ly” or not) who you consider to be a “must-follow”? If so, leave some tips in a comment so that I and others can check them out!

Filed under: Art, Blogging, Design, Net Culture, Technology, Typography, Web Design, Writing , 31 days, a-list, being servicey, follow friday, linkage, listicles, lists, twitter

She Walks (And Codes) In Beauty

In celebration of Ada Lovelace Day, nearly 2,000 bloggers pledged to write about a woman in tech they admire. Ada Lovelace (10 December 1815, London – 27 November 1852, Marylebone, London), the only child of poet Lord Byron, is known for having written a description of an early mechanical general-purpose computer, and is appreciated today as “the first programmer,” as she was writing programs—that is, manipulating symbols according to rules—for a machine that had not yet been built. March 24 is an international day of blogging to remember Ada Lovelace’s contribution to the world of modern tech, and to draw attention to women excelling in technology. You may read about other outstanding women in technology at Finding Ada.

Strategic Designer Emily Chang - Photo From Designer's Flickr Stream

I first became acquainted with the work of strategic designer Emily Chang early in 2008, when I became a more active participant in the Twitterverse, searching out peer designers to follow for inspiration, conversation, and exchange of ideas. Chang, co-founder and principal of Ideacodes.com, a web consultancy in San Francisco that focuses on the design and user experience of next generation websites, social applications, and networked communities, boasts an impressive résumé of award-winning web and interactive projects and technology strategies. But it is her minute attention to anything that is designed, whether it exists in the world of technology, on the plane of the web, or in more traditional media such as sculpture, paintings, or architecture, that I have come to admire even more. For it is this minute attention to aesthetic details that seem to breathe beauty into all of her tech and web projects.

On her blog at EmilyChang.com, Chang writes widely and eloquently on web and user experience design, technology, and the next generation web, and has most recently begun sharing her love of design, the web, and tech with a larger community with the launch of her site PicoCool. “A new site that is dedicated to bringing you tiny and obscure content from the world of peer media, social networks and subcultures; cool content from real people,” PicoCool is the first site of its kind to focus on the content being created by people on social networks and through peer media.

Although her impressive work on the internet and in technology has garnered dozens of design and interactive awards, it is her limitless passion for technology, the web, and good, clean design that makes her one of the outstanding women in technology whom I admire. It is all of this, in addition to her willingness to freely share all of the beauty that she finds, curates, and creates, with a wider audience of peers, that makes her the subject of this blogger’s Ada Lovelace Day post.

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Note: The title of this post is a pun on the title of the famous poem by Ada Lovelace’s father, Lord Byron, “She Walks In Beauty.” I thought it slightly more fitting, given Ms. Chang’s love of design, than any excerpts I could find from Ada Lovelace’s “Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage”.

Filed under: Blogging, Design, Editorials, Technology, Web Design , ada lovelace day, emily chang, gender, history, linkage, picocool, women