The colors of techINcolor.

This entry should have many names: "Why I blog" or "What I believe, worry about, hope, and fear" are just a couple. Just know this: It will change. I'm always reforming, always changing, always adding, deleting, undoing, and redoing my beliefs. So if you like this version, you should save it somewhere else. I can't promise it will be the same tomorrow, or even an hour from now. But it is probably my most important entry. It is what echoes in my mind when I think, leaks out my mouth when I speak, and bleeds through my fingertips when I write.

photo by ishrona

My colors:

• I believe, above all, that the internet is "not just about information. It is about linking people; linking people in ways we've never seen linked before."
• I am frustrated by the perception that technology cheapens relationships, instead of enhancing them. I am frustrated by services that give truth to that.
• I worry that technology deepens the plight of the poor; making those who don't have it even more helpless, while those that do, more connected and therefore, more powerful.
• I believe that technology is a powerful equalizer for those that do have it. Anyone can network with anyone. Anyone can have a voice. Anyone can be heard.
  
• I struggle with the tension between providing contextual relationships and preserving privacy.
• I wonder how we can be authentic, vulnerable, and still safe. I believe that if we take the term "community" seriously, then we need to be more vulnerable. But we cannot be careless.
• I believe that design needs to risk innovation over intuition and familiarity. We can do better than the mouse. We can do better than the keyboard.
• I believe that social media can change the world for the better.
• I also believe we need to discover new, innovative ways to turn conversation into action. Ideals are cheap if they are not based in reality. We need concrete plans to provide a foundation for our optimism.
• I believe that we have not yet begun to harness the ingenuity of the general public. I believe that no action should go wasted. I believe that every action can be redirected towards meaningful problems, either through human computation, volunteer computing, or other clever methods.
• I believe that technology will sculpt the world's moral and ethical future.
  
• I worry that the perceived inaccessibility of science will leave the vocal majority on the sidelines, as a small contingency of men in white lab coats dictate that future.
• I worry that we don't understand how much we are affected by technology, and how much more we will continue to be affected by it. I worry that our leaders who do not actively participate in science and technology will be confronted by deep problems in which they have no basis of understanding.
• I believe that we need to seriously consider the ramifications of our technology before the problems present themselves. I worry that if we don't, the consequences of our carelessness will be terrible.
• I am optimistic, but wary.
• I do not have many answers.
• I do think we can do better.

If you have your own thoughts, additions, disagreements, etc. I'd love to hear them. Leave them in the comments, email me, twitter me, or smoke signal me. Although these are my own thoughts, I think that in some ways, they belong to everyone.
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Typography Tangent of a Crazy Mind

Why I'm good at packing cars.
Something you should know about me - I move things in my head. I can move a desk from four inches away from the east wall to two feet from the corner of the south wall. I move picture frames to different locations, change the angles of walls, and spin chairs in my head. Occasionally, if I am walking in a neighborhood, I spin houses. If I've never seen the back, my mind just fills in the blanks, creating what it think the back of the house should look like - porches, ivy, and all. Sometimes I can control it, sometimes I can't. That's just the way I am.

The setting of insanity.
So last Monday, as I was sitting on a 3 1/2 hour flight from Charlotte to Denver, I began to spin things. Unfortunately, nothing in the plane was interesting enough. After all, this was my second flight of the day, and I was sick of anything that lives in the air or charges $5 for a can of potato chips (not to mention $15 for my first checked bag). I tried reading Dostoevsky, but because of my exhaustion, my mind was hardly ready to wrestle with 12 concurrent characters, each with multiple nicknames. That's when I started moving letters. I moved them left and right, flipped them around, and then turned them upside down until my mind had turned into some perverted word crossword puzzle of chaos.

Anyways, here is a peak into my mile-high revelations (all my own terminology):

Mirror words.
Mirror words are words that have a line of symmetry right down the middle. You can fold the first half of the word onto the second half and have it line up perfectly. Mirror words are palindromes on steroids, and there are very very few of them (unlike MLB).

Some examples of mirror words are toot, bud, and mom (this is based on the way I write the letters, and may vary depending on the font).

Letter words must be composed of letters that have a mirror reflection.
q and p can be mirrored with each other, depending on the writer's style.
b and d can almost always be mirrored with each other.

Letters that have a vertical line of symmetry themselves:
lowercase: i l m o t u v w x
uppercase: A H I M O T U V W X Y

What does this have to do with anything? Not too much, but we'll talk more about symmetry in a minute.

Planes of letters.
All uppercase letters are generally the same height. Vertically, they all start at the same stop and all end at the same spot. But lowercase letters are a completely different ballgame. Some dip low, some stay in a middle plane, and some stretch up to the height of capital letters. Oh the horror! This is probably a pretty basic concept in typography, but considering I have never formally studied it, it is revelatory to me (especially when combined with symmetry ... we'll get to that).

letters who stay still: a c e m n o r s u v w x z
letters who stretch up: b d f h k l t
letters who go down: g p q y j

If your favorite letter of the alphabet is i, then you have probably noticed that I didn't include it. I'm not quite sure where to put it. It probably belongs with the "letters who stay still," but that dot at the top just ruins everything. Let's say that it is a quasi-letters-who-stretch-up.

Now we get to mention my favorite lowercase letter: j

Look at it. The enigma of the letter world. It dips down below the central plane, but like the letter i, has some real-estate up above it. If j were graduating from its high school class, it would clinch up the "most personable" award. And when combined with letters all of the same plane, I think that it can make a word look visually appealing. Consider the word ajax, or mojo. Don't they just look good on the page?

Planes and patterns.
Getting back to the concept of symmetry, it seems to me that words have a better look about them when there is some sort of pattern in the letters. Actually, the more distinct pattern a word has, the more I am attracted to it. Lets look at a couple of words.

boring : The word lives up to its name. There are no patterns here. The best I can come up with is the b vertically reflecting the g. But even then, the i sort of disrupts us from enjoying that reflection. I don't see anything fun when I look at "boring."

lollipop : I like the way lollipop looks. Why? I think it is because we have this pattern TALLmiddleTALL i LOWmiddleLOW. Since l is such a thin letter, the "ll" sequence doesn't throw us for a loop. Even the i seems to work as a transition to the other half, like a ladder from the floor to the bookcase.

kayak : Of all the words here, kayak looks best to me. Not only is it a palindrome, but it is a palindrome that feels like a roller coaster - start high, dip low, and then ramp up high again. "kayak" has the most distinct pattern.

Why, why, and why?
It occurred to me that, even if we don't explicitly think about these concepts, "how a word looks" judging could very well be going on all the time in our minds. At the very least, I think that certain words jump out at us. For me, it is "kayak." I like it.

How can this be applied in any sort of constructive way? Well, since I like the word "kayak", I am prone to like other things that are associated with "kayak". In a world that is dominated by logos and branded company names, don't you want every edge you can get? This may apply even more so in the internet world. Web 2.0 is notorious for making up words as their brand (and to be honest, most of them aren't terribly interesting). If I am trying to be just a little bit more interesting than a thousand other companies, I would consider making my company's name a "fun word." In a worst case scenario, no one notices, it has no subconscious impact, and you lose nothing. But what if it does have an impact? What if, because people like your word, they are ever so slightly more likely to come back to your site? Isn't it work the risk? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. So why not?

Just one more thing to chew on.

Fonts: Too Much of a Good Thing is a Terrible, Soul-Sucking Thing

A couple of weeks ago, Creating Dew posted a list containing 11 of the Highest User Ranked Free Fonts. The list is fun, and I've already found myself playing around with several of them.

But (and there's always a but), please please PLEASE use them sparingly. Let's face it, a majority of people who read this site are not designers, which means your mind immediately jumps to PowerPoint. And it's tempting, I'll be the first to admit it. It's fun to elicit an "ooh" or "ahh" when queuing up your presentation. You feel like you are establishing your PowerPoint street cred. You are proud that you aren't using Times New Roman or Calibri. And for a fleeting moment, you should be.

But then you ruin it. You ruin it for everyone.

You get excited about your new toys. You put them everywhere - you use and abuse them like a sadistic 5th grader with a Tomagatchi. Before you know it, your presentation goes from being Cinderella at the ball, to Cinderella at the night-club. You don't fit, no one understands you, and yes, they are all looking at you strangely.

Want to know what a portion of this post would look like in Jellyka Castle's Queen font? Just look on below (WARNING: the graphically minded may want to avert their eyes):


So once again, please PowerPoint responsibly.

Can Bad Design be Good Design?

First off, let's look at the basis for this article.

Three Truths about Design

1. Design has a purpose
2. The only qualification for a good design is to meet that purpose
3. Everything else is superfluous

What does this mean?

If a design meets its purpose, it can assault your eyes all day long and still be good design.

Why do I bring this up?

I was watching TV the other day when one of the Viagra commercials came on. I have always though they were ridiculous. I have always thought they were poorly done. In fact, I feel the same way about most medical commercials. Dr. ImAPaidActor hasn't convinced me to take my vitamins, let alone make an appointment to find out if mystery medicine #5 is "right for me."

So that means the commercials are poorly designed, right? Right.

Wrong. The truth is that Viagra doesn't think of me AT ALL when they create a commercial. They don't care about me. I am not their target customer. They don't care what I think of that stuffy doctor, or the middle-aged parents having a dance party in their kitchen (although, to be fair, I hope that I am having kitchen dance parties in thirty years).



So at this point, I have to concede something - they know their target audience much better than I do. Apparently. people who are pro Viagra are also pro awkward dancing. I shouldn't simplify it so much, but the point is still there.

What's the Point?

Looking at design from this perspective, don't we have to reconsider for a moment exactly what we define "good design" and "bad design" to be? Most of the design-savvy people I know are in their 20s and 30s. So while the right grunge font may catch my eye, it might make my grandparents change the channel. Think about the following questions:

• Is this website that uses Comic Sans targetting 5th graders?
• Is this midi background music targeting elementary music teachers?
• Is this design that is based on a neon color palette targeting Vegas strippers?

You may be saying, " . . . but wait, WAIT! Those things are still bad design!" And the truth is, yes, I die just a tad every time I see something of that sort. But I can also tell you that my mother loves midi music sites, and my 5th grade self (rocking sweat pants and pogs) thought that Comic Sans was the coolest font ever.

To me, it is bad design. But if the design serves its purpose, doesn't that qualify it for good design? Can't bad design be good design?