[bloggage, design] Q Interviews Me, Question 1

 1319. Recently I participated in a quite fun meme started by Neil at the blog Citizen of the Month, The Great Interview Challenge, where everybody is somebody (you see, people, I told you I was somebody.

The scheme is simple. Just comment on the announcing post. The person who commented before you sends you a handful of interview questions; you send the person who comments after you interview questions. You post the results. Q posted before me. SusanIsk posted after me. Over the next five days, I'll post the five responses I made to Q.

Here's number one:

A word on the style: It was actually inspired by question 3, Can you graphically design your way out of a paper bag? I'll not discuss that yet, we'll just let that hang there for now and say that that question inspired me to take a graphic approach to the whole thing. It made me think of airline instruction cards and Swiss-design-inspired iconic graphic instruction lists and cards. Once I had that, it was off to the races for me.

The place settings are also iconic ­­­– it's the freeway service sign icon for Food (as in restaurants ahead.

The particpants stack up thusly:

1. ZehnKatzen. Yours truly, silly. And yes, I am underrrated. Other bloggers fart, they get written up in The Big O and people link to them simply because they exist. Me? Four years of doing everything they say you're supposed to do to create a charming blog and – meh (there are charming exceptions to that, and they can be found in my blogroll, particularly in the list titled "Most Of The People In This List Can Do No Wrong, As Far As I'm Concerned"). You people (and the "Designers To Watch Out For!" list) rock.


2. Q. Co-proprietor of the blog Where Are The Naked Pictures, a/k/a 650miles, who was my interviewer, and I knew I had to have that person interview me when I saw that header image. Seriously, go look. The blog is also a very sweet story, told with acid wit, by Q and his SO, fringes.


3. Gerry Rafferty. If you're a music lover and don't have City to City in your collection, we must call your musicophilia into question. It was one of the most important albums of the 1970s, and "Baker Street"'s sax solo, actually performed by the intriguingly-named Raphael Ravenscroft (nom de guerre, you think?) is a thing of legend. Gerry is one of the most underrated singer-songwriters in music history, and between Stealers Wheel, The Humblebums, and his solo career, forms an inspirational keystone for me. I'd just like to hear him say what-all about what he did and what he does.


4. Paul Rand. What does He designed your world mean? The Westinghouse logo, the IBM logo, the NeXT computer logo, the old UPS logo, even the ENRON logo ... Rand created designs that informed the way we looked at logos themselves. He is Logo God (and since he's deceased, we understand he's creating the new identity for heaven, with ulitmate artistic freedom.


5. Susan Kare. You do have her to thank for the trashcan on your desktop – or recycle bin, if you're a Windows user. When the Mac first came out, Susan designed the first icons for the Finder, and her simple yet genius designs set the early standard for the GUI look that we all use now. She created the trashcan, the original document icons, the concept of document-and-tool to denote an editing app, even Clarus, the Dogcow (she say MOOF!). A combination of talent and being in the right place at the right time equal near artistic immortality.

Tomorrow, Question 2: Wishes.

Tags: The Great Interview Challenge, Q, Samuel John Klein, ZehnKatzen