The Original Angels at The Emmys, 2006

My mother bought me my first gun when I was five years old.

She did not want to buy it for me, but I begged and pleaded until she did. It was a toy gun, a .38 Special replica that fired caps off of those rounded red disks. The same gun that Kelly Garrett, Sabrina Duncan, and Jill Munroe carried. (My mother did not know at the time that our housekeeper Helga had been allowing me to watch episodes of “Charlie’s Angels” in secret; I was only officially allowed to watch PBS.)

“My name is Munroe!” I yelled to my mother, after mock-shooting a Bad Guy (it was a seagull) on our beach, thrilled by the reports of my toy gun’s caps.

“Munroe?” my mother queried, brushing brunette strands of hair out of her face against the wind. “Your name is Bartelby. Who is Munroe?”

“Jill!” I exclaimed, firing my toy gun again and channeling the woman I had seen on our brand new color television set, fighting Bad Guys and solving crimes and racing cars and playing tennis and looking fabulous, all feathered blonde hair and soft, whispery voice.

“I am Jill Munroe!”

My mother laughed, indulging me. “Well, mon cher, I am sure that you are.”

That evening, we watched an episode of “Charlie’s Angels” together, after I had confessed to her that I had been watching it, but without divulging Helga’s involvement. We watched Jill drive. We watched Jill run (in five-inch cork wedge heels). We watched Jill solve crimes.

As the closing credits rolled, I turned to my mother and asked excitedly, “I’m Jill, yes? I am Jill Munroe?”

“Yes,” my mother said to me, caressing my cheek, “you are definitely Jill Munroe.”

It’s a difficult space to be in, when one of your idols has died. When one of those icons of your youth has suddenly vanished. When everything that they represented to you comes back into focus. When suddenly that toy gun that you made your mother purchase for you, just so you could become so much more adept at being Jill Munroe, a.k.a. Farrah Fawcett, suddenly retains so much more meaning.

Farewell, Angel.

I shall miss you.

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ELSEWHERE ACROSS THE DIGITAL WORLD:
There is an excellent post up right now on BlogHer that is a fabulous compendium of Farrah Fawcett’s life and career, by AV Flox, of course. You should read it.

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.

This past weekend, I became engaged in a conversation with several friends on Twitter regarding Nabisco’s apparent redesign of the Oreo and Ritz brands’ packaging. I was not too surprised at my nearly irrationally vehement reaction against the redesign, for both aesthetic (i.e., “ZOMG the redesigns are sooooo flat and soulless and hideously awful!”) and purely practical (i.e., “Why was this necessary?! WHY?! Were they broken?!”) reasons. My reaction reminded me rather a lot of my reactions to the Peter Arnell-orchestrated rebrandings of Pepsi and Tropicana in late 2008 and early 2009 (although I will concede that those two reactions were far more vehement than mine to Nabisco’s recent foible). The discussion got me thinking not only about the reasons why and when a particular brand chooses to even entertain the (always costly and usually risky) venture of rebranding, but also about our relationships to brands (and even the very concept of brands) in general, as a society and as individuals.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this weekend also saw the resurgence of a particularly thought-provoking blog meme started last year by advertising industry blogger Jane Sample, who published a humorous and engaging graphic representation of all of the major brands with which she came into contact throughout the course of one day. The piece was published one year ago to this day, and I remember reading it last May (and reading the ensuing comments and plethora of other advertising and media industry bloggers’ versions of their own Brand Timeline Portraits) and placing it as a line item on that List Of Fun Personal Projects That Atherton Bartelby Somehow Never Seems To Get Accomplished. This weekend, however, thanks to a revival of Sample’s original post by the Rocketboom blog, and an additional mega-boost from a reblogged mention by Linkage King Jason Kottke, the “Brand Timeline Portrait” meme has been, as Alan Wolk noted today, entirely reanimated.

So I brushed off my epic “To Do” list and recorded my own Brand Timeline Portrait today.

Brand Timeline Portrait Of Atherton Bartelby

I’m really glad that I took the time to do it, and to reflect on how it looks, on what it says about me, and also on what it means about brands in general. Because not only does it tell me a lot about the differences in my life now versus if I had completed it when I first saw it last year, but it presents me and others who see it with a timeline of my experiences, a visual narrative of not only my daily life, but of me as a person. In some ways, the brands represent me more individually than do the color of my hair or my green eyes; in others, they evoke a striking sense of community, i.e., they’re not only my brands, but those of my agency’s colleagues who share my work space, of the other New Yorkers who take the same forms of branded transportation as do I, or even, for that matter, of those who live in the same branded city as do I. Brands are, or can become, as much of an integral part of our individual and collective consciousness as our experiences, or of our very memories. So I don’t suppose a vehement consumer reaction to a seemingly unnecessary rebranding, that has at first glance been executed with little or no thought given to the previous brand experience that has been shared by so many different individuals, is really so very surprising.

Obviously, much thought goes into any rebranding initiative or redesign. I in no way mean to imply that all rebranding campaigns are executed with no thought whatsoever paid to the brand and to how its consumer base will receive its new identity, beyond the initial studies of profits or the eye-roll-inducing evangelizations of the “Personal Branding Experts” on Twitter. But I do think that, more often than not, rebranding initiatives get a bit too caught up in themselves, a bit too blinded to the products’, well, connections to a vast group of other human beings, a bit too ignorant of the hearts, souls, and experiences that consumers have invested in the brands themselves.

Because brands are not just products, or logo artwork, or packaging, or pixels and vectors and typography arranged nicely (or not so nicely) in space and time. Brands represent shared experiences. And brands (and rebranding) shouldn’t always only be considered from a profit standpoint, or from the standpoint of failed artists who are now ad men and attempting to impose their own aesthetics on products that are not only parts of their own experience, but parts of the collective experience of the rest of the society that consumes them, as well. Because brands are not just about profit (or shouldn’t be); they’re about hearts, souls, and memories, as well.

It turns out there’s an awful lot in a brand. And it would behoove a lot of people, particularly those who are directing and manipulating them, to keep this in mind.

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

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.

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.”

Scallywag And Vagabond - A Salon of Cultural Affairs

When I first received the list of suggested assignments for my column at Scallywag & Vagabond this week from my fabulous editor, I groaned inwardly. Not because the topics were uninteresting or unseemly (quite the contrary; my fabulous editor’s assignments are always unflinchingly flawless and titillating), but because I knew immediately that “How To Tell If They Are All That, Plus More: A Guide To Assembling The Clues” was the topic I knew I had to attempt to tackle. This distressed me for a variety of reasons, and the most bothersome of my thoughts on the topic were: 1) I have never enjoyed sustained, long-term fortune in deciphering such clues about My Others on my own, so who in hell am I to give any advice on the topic whatsoever?; and 2) despite over six years of on-again / off-again relationship writing in this blog, I had not attempted it in any sort of serious fashion in quite some time, and was frankly frightened that I could not accomplish it effectively anymore, or, worse, that if I could, my words would convey a pale imitation of the passion with which I once wrote about love.

However, always one to rise to a challenge as opposed to run from it, I decided to cover the topic anyway. I began with a recent dream I had about a man, and my relationship with him, and worked backward through memories and my own relationships, to compile what I believe to be a fairly accurate foundation list of how one knows that the he (or she) one is dating just may be “All That, Plus More.” As it turned out, I am rather pleased with the piece, not only because I think it was a successful return to relationship writing for me, but also because it is a pretty nice compendium of only the most positive attributes, words, and actions of each of my previous boyfriends (and even non-boyfriends).

So please do stop by and have a read, won’t you, of “How To Tell If They Are All That, Plus More: A Guide To Assembling The Clues,” and tell us what you think?

The Bartelby Brew tea this week is only slightly bittersweet, and significantly less bitter, and sweeter, than one might have imagined.

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.

Tod Kapke Foto Illustration Design - Bunnies

Very early this morning I remembered an Easter Sunday tradition in my childhood home. My mother would put some beautiful, moving piece of music on the record player (usually, in honor of springtime, Clément Philibert Léo Delibes’ Lakmé, and in particular its Sous le dôme épais section), and spend an hour or so introducing me to artists and art movements from her impressive collection of art history books, in the morning sunlight of our sitting room. This was not, of course, the only time of the year my mother did this, but for some reason, for me, it was always the most memorable. (Perhaps this had not a little to do with the anticipation of her expansive culinary presentation of the family’s Easter brunch, immediately following the seemingly endless Episcopalian Easter Sunday liturgy that always occurred after our early morning art history lessons.)

So I was delighted to stumble upon, this morning, while attempting to continue my little family tradition all by myself, the work of Denver-based illustrator / photographer / designer Tod Kapke, via one of my favorite art blogs, My Love For You Is A Stampede Of Horses. (Perhaps not only coincidentally, I discovered Kapke’s portfolio site just as Delibes’ Sous le dôme épais began playing on my Last.fm radio station.) Of course I knew immediately that the dark tones of one of Kapke’s “Bunny” pieces would be an excellent eGreeting from Curious Affairs for a, well, a “curiously” happy Easter to those who celebrate it. But I was also deeply impressed by Kapke’s creative process, which he illustrates in great detail on the Process page of his portfolio site. I always enjoy discovering fellow visual artists whose process is as involved as my own, so even Kapke’s process sketches were a joy to wander through.

It was a lovely way to spend this very early Easter Sunday dawn: continuing traditions begun seeming lifetimes ago.

I wish all of you the same kind of inspiration this morning, whether you celebrate Easter, or, like me, will once again be skipping the seemingly endless Episcopalian Easter Sunday liturgy, yet enjoy revisiting the traditions and memories that are invoked by the day, all the same.

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!