[pdx, liff] A Mount Hood Study

1002. I adore Mount Hood (or Wy'east, if you prefer). The following, taken just before we got started on the Sandy Blvd picture experiment:

You are looking east on NE Killingsworth Street, about at the old Columbia Blvd light (they are giving the Columbia Blvd/Killingsworth Street intersection a major rethink, it has to be seen to be believed). That big intersection you see in front of you there is the I-205 interchange.

This is a very evocative photo for me, and not just because of the nature/development tension. I remember, when I was but a neat thing, that Life magazine (or one of the big pictorials of the late 60s) had a few pictures of the PNW, and one of them was this telephoto smash-up of bright signs against Mount Rainier.

I love the Cascade volcanoes, and I love signs. I can picture it even now–I could stare at that photo for hours, and I did. And this one I got (at The Wife™'s prompting, credit where due) comes very close to that one. It's as though something has come full circle.

Tanjit, I want a better camera and a telephoto lens and I WANT THEM NOW NOW NOW!!!!

Technorati Tags: Mount Hood,Portland Photos

[pdx, tech] Google Street View PDX: Astoundingly There

1001. How good is Google's PDX Street view, commented on by better than I today?

You know how one of the best views of downtown is from the top deck of the Marquam Bridge–but it's a freeway so you can't pull over to look?

Well, hell...now you can stand in the middle of the damn Interstate...

And if you love walking downtown but just can't get down there today, you can at least get a piccy of it (tho' it do look a little Sim City-ish:

I wonder sometimes if there's nothing that Google can't do.

When you remember that Google started with two geeks in a garage, the mind boggles.

Technorati Tags: Google Maps,Google Street View,Street View,Portland Oregon

[ad_design] Never Too Late To Fix The Small Stuff

1000. Not long ago, loyal reader, you will remember I caught the following spelling gaffe in a local online ad:

The point of showing it off wasn't to mock the ad designer (which is another job we wish we could get) because this is an absurdly easy mistake to make and to miss; the word scaring (which was supposed to be scarring) was, while spelt correctly as the word "scaring" was incorrectly spelled for the context (while we'd hope a medical procedure wouldn't generate undue anxiety, that wasn't quite the actual selling point).

We caught it again today:

Spelling corrected, ad fixeded, message communicated properly. And the takeaway here is, when you make a small error like that, when you get a chance, just go back and fix it.

We are not arrogant enough to assume that this meagre blog's attention caused someone to go back and correct it, but we hope it's understood that we were not out to mock the ad designer. Good on them for fixing the error.

Technorati Tags: ad design,graphic design,web design

[pdx] My 2nd YouTube Video: Sandy Blvd in 56 Seconds

999. Here, a trip down Sandy Blvd starting from the Killingsworth I-205 Overpass and ending at Burnside and MLK. About 5 miles in 56 seconds:

Once again, the ViviCam 3705 in action, an amateur's tool. I could probably do a more creditable job if I had a more stable base–the ad hockery in this one was that I held the camera in my hands all the way down the road. But, it was an experiment, and we kind of enjoyed it.

I'm going to try more experiments like this over town soon, because I love Portland, and I love taking pictures of it.

Technorati Tags: Portland,Sandy Blvd,Portland Videos

[notebook] Two Brand Icons Who Really Existed

998. From the ZehnKatzen Notebooks:

Not every commercial brand-name icon is imaginary, like Betty Crocker:

• Evelyn Wood, the goddess of "speed reading", was a Utah schoolteacher who lived from 1906-1995. Her "Reading Dynamics" program was iconic through the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
• Today, Duncan Hines is a well-known branded cake mix. During the early and middle years of the 20th Century's American car culture, though, Duncan Hines pioneered the idea of travelers' food and lodging guides, which perhaps makes sense for a man who was a traveling sales agent in the days before interstate highways and chain restaurants.
• Wally "Famous" Amos was a talent scout for the William Morris Agency when the cookies he'd send home with his star clients caught on (after following the advice of friends who said he should open a shop and sell 'em). Mr. Amos lost control of his own brand some time back, but the reputation remains.

Technorati Tags: Branding,Brands,Duncan Hines,Evelyn Wood,ZehnKatzen's Notebook

[web_design] Horizon Air's "The Slog" Quite Funny

997. If you listen to radio, you've no doubt heard the many Horizon Air promos about the historic trail known as "The Slog", or as we like to call it, I-5 from Portland to Seattle.

We put off visiting it, mostly because we are very, very jaundiced about web-marketing tools, though we have found the "Clark & Lewis" commercial series quite funny.

Our mistake. "The Slog" turns out to be something of a tour de force, where they make rather effective use of comedy and American History documentary tropes (the endless sepia tone, the title cards with the filigrees, the Ken Burns effect, the drawly, fatherly tone of the narrator with that tinge of vague dispair, and the eternal harmonica soundtrack). The result is a pitch-perfect satire of historical documentaries that takes a few side-splitting liberties with the form, turning the account of what is usually a 3-hour drive into a trek the maginitude of the Oregon Trail:

• There's the story of the "feral hoopsters", near Exit 22, who were rumored to live in the woods near where a school bus was abandoned north of Vancouver when its driver gave in to the despair of the trip ahead.
• The stretch across the Columbia from the Trojan site becomes "Geiger Counter Straits", where travellers begin to experience strange vision after passing.
• We learn that, despite the traveller's standard tools for warding off sleep, named as "propping the eyes open with corn dog sticks" and "self-slapping", the Sandman proved a dogged copilot along "Longblink Gulch", located somewhere amongst the small towns in the western Washington interior
• And the generational story of the highway workers along the Big Repave has to be heard to be believed.

The best moment for me came during the short for "Molasses Pass", the area through Oly where drivers slowed down so much and so often that astronauts were said to have reported seeing "a giant glowing red snake" living in Olympia. As the narrator intones

"And the thought that astronauts thought a 12-mile red snake was living in Olympia is a more than a little disturbing. I mean, I thought astronauts were supposed to be really smart."

Laugh along with me here. Flash player plug-in needed, naturlich.

Technorati Tags: web design,web marketing,Horizon Air,The Slog,comedy.

[news_design] The Perils of Page Layout, 1: Type in Narrow Spaces

996. Here begins an occasional series (essentially when I can find fodder for it), "The Perils of Page Layout". This post carries a Dialup Danger warning; the pictures included are, by necessity, kind of large.

The reason page layout is taken seriously is that the understanding the grammar of placing text and pictures in a page can get quite complicated sometimes, and sometimes, the solution to a problem can be choosing between the lesser of a variety of evils.

For today's example (with due respect toward the layouter who's doing a job I'd kill to have a chance to do and undoubtely has to draw this sort of line more than often–because a food publication withough good illustrations just doesn't make sense), we go to The Big O's FoodDay suppliment, section FD of today's paper, specifically, page FD4, about halfway down, on the left. There is a sidebar with a showcase of interesting items for foodies to buy at various locations around town. One exhibits a book and a set of "tasting forks and spoons" available locally:

Taken from page FD4 from today's The Oregonian. Clicky to embiggen.

Note that really narrow column on the left on the picture. Something tells me the layout artist was right up against the grid here.

A problem with designing to spaces so narrow is that multiple-word sequences that need to hang together to prevent awkward reading. Join the / club causes the brain to "stub its toe": one seems to be called to knit them together again in the mind's eye before proceeding.

Note also the sequence of three consecutive hyphenated words at the lower left corner of the illo. This can be tough on the reader because you work to read and also, as before, to knit the words back together in the mind; moreover, the three hyphens tend to form a visual unit that can be distractive (the weight of the sans-serif type The O uses in its body type here go quite a long way toward mitigating that problem, however).

The biggest hazard in splittling words that need to stay together to complete a thought, however, comes when such things can actually consipre to change the appearent meaning of the text. If you don't think this is possible, check the zoom in here:

$22,255? That's one expensive book! (Clicky to Embiggen)

Note that the text is meant to read "DK Publishing, $22, 255 pages". The line break, however, comes between "255" and "pages". The result looks, despite the obvious space between the comma after the price and the number 2, as though the book is from DK Publishing, costs $22,255, and consists of pages (hell, at that price, I hope it'll contain one or two!).

In my unasked-for opinion, I'd say that that column needs to be widened a little bit–it's just too narrow for successful layout. Alternatively, it probably wouldnt' take too much reduction on the kerning in the the en-space (at least that's what it looks like) between the comma and the number to save enough space to bring the word "pages" up on the line where it should be. Maybe only a couple-hundredths of an em would be all that it needed.

(Disclaimer: I am not employed in page layout right now, but would like to be. I have no idea what pressures the layouter in the cited clippings had driving whatever decision was made)

Technorati Tags: News design,page layout,The Oregonian,Food Day

[liff] Alek's Doing The Light Thing Again for Coeliac Disease

995. Alek Komarnitsky is at it again. This year, he's annexed Halloween.

Those who've head of him know him as the guy who puts up Christmas lights that you can play with over the Intermets at http://komar.org–turn 'em on, turn 'em off, inflate and deflate the lawn decor, that sort of thing.

He's been doing this about three or four years, I think, and this year he's upped the ante; now, there are Halloween decorations you–or anyone–gets to play with (follow the link to the page that has all the information about when it's available and linky code that you can embed in your own page, if you're that sort of person)

As the man said, you have to serve somebody, and Alek does so by giving you a link to donate to Coeliac desease research.

What Is Coeliac Disease?

Coeliac is a genetic, auto-immune disorder that affects the small intestine, where your body gets the life-giving goodness out of the sustenance one ingests. Specifically it is a reaction to gluten, that protien found in grains that makes things like bread possible.

The body's immune reaction to gluten is, at the very least, discomfort and, depending on the complications, can be lethal. Coeliac was given a public face locally a few years back with the death of local radio legend Jimmy Hollister, whose death was the result of complications from Coeliac.

Coeliac was typically diagnosed under such nomenclature as IBS (irritable bowel) and gluten intolerance, but this is less so as time goes on and awareness of Coeliac increases.

Alek's two lovely sons suffer from Coeliac, so he's invested. If you are moved to do so, you might want to help him out. To date, he's raised over $17,000 through his web spectacles for Coeliac research, so if you're looking for a worthy cause and this speaks to you...well, here you go.

The decorations, however, are free for the playing with.

Technorati Tags: Alek Komarnitsky,Net Spectacles,Holiday Lights,Coeliac Disease,Fund Raising

[liff, silly] Because I Can't Let This TV Logo Thing Go...

994.The editoral staff of The ZehnKatzen Times would like to apologize for the following graphic:


I promise, this is the last time I make fun of the "Falling Block" logo. Promise. Props to KIMA/KEPR (who have really cool call signs) for being sports about this (not to mention KIDK, who I made fun of earlier).

I saw the graphics packages in action, and they really look pretty good in motion.

Technorati Tags: KIMA,KEPR,LOLNews,Image Macro

[liff] Still Slow: Pace of Life In Snailem

993. I've gone on enough about where I grew up: Salem.

Now, I love Salem. But the pace of life is so gentle there I had to come down the road. Even this gentle soul needs a little bit of excitement.

Brian Hines points it out in a crystal moment why Salem teenagers become Portland adults.

You think Portland's parochial? Hah. You just don't know. You just don't know.

Technorati Tags: liff,Oregon,Salem,Oregon's Capital City

[pdx_media] WW to Merc: Neener Again; Merc to WW: Backatcha!

992. The rivalry amongst the scrappers at the Merc and the olde guarde at the new-look Willamette Week continues with the sly redirecting of the Merc's link from WW's home page; from its first redirection, a local porta-potty company (Honey Bucket), we find the last word has not be had; it now points to the Bratz website (we include the link in the interests of the record; we do not suggest you actually click it. If you are over 28, you will vomit. You have been warned).

Not to be outdone, Blogtown at the Merc has the link to WW actually pointing to a place that suggests that, despite the facelift, WW still is your father's alt weekly.

The only opinon we have here is that this is the best bout of Portland Wrestling since Frank Bonnema died. We'll be off making popcorn.

Technorati Tags: Portland Media,Portland Alt Weeklies,Willamette Week,Portland Mercury

[liff] KDJQ, AM 890, Boise: A Craigslist Bargain

991. It may or may not be unusual to find a radio station in a rated market for $800,000, but is sure is unusual to find it on Craigslist.

Here's a story about the listing of KDJQ (courtesy KTVB), Here's the listing (which will not last), and below is snapshot of the listing itself, for posterity's sake:

At this price, that's $16 per Kilowatt. Such a deal!

Thanks again to commenter Ben.

Technorati Tags: Radio,Idaho Radio,Craigslist

[logo_design] It's New Logo Time In the Fisher Constellation

990. OMI today broke the news that, as far as anyone can tell, KATU's new logo shift (notied in the studio monitor at the legendary KATU Blogger meetup (which see, here too) is beginning to happen, if gradually. As mentioned at OMI, the new logo can be seen if you go to watch a show online; it's in the upper right of the viewing window. OMI has an actual-size version, and here's what it looks like when you blow it up a bit:


Another lesson in making your logo with resizing in mind. The image has fuzzed out a bit, since all I did was make a screen shot and blow it up in Photoshop, but detalis are still clear.

The most interesting to me was the treatment of the numeral 2, with its subtle oblique skewing and that interesting bevelling of the base stroke there on the right. the canted red square reminds one of the Fisher "Flag" logo, and the red color looks very close indeed.

Here's a before and after:

Your mileage may vary, but I think it's an improvement. Moreover, I like the movement from minisucle to majuscule (lower case to upper case) on the callsigen ("KATU" vs "katu"). The onld logo is strong, but it's locked down and static. The new logo, with the "airspace" all around and the tilted red tile, has dynamic tension and energy.

But it's not just KATU that's changing its look. Latterly, we've noted here that Idaho Falls's KIDK Channel 3, a CBS station, was changing its look as well. All kidding aside, it seems to be a bit of a movement amongst Fisher's Inland Empire; KBCI Channel 2, Boise, has a new logo treatment for its newly-renamed Eyewitness News flagship:

Earlier we notied, somewhat irreverently, that KIDK has a fearsome new logo that made us duck when we first saw it, with the tagline Watching Out For You. Notable, are general similarities in "eyefeel": the rectilinear block treatment, the same typefaces for the words. KBCI's logo differs in that it takes up less square footage, but the overall treatment is the same:

Notable also are the taglines. Sporting a similar red swipe underline, KBCI's tagline, Everywhere, can be actually combined with KIDK's to create a single thought: Watching Out For You Everywhere. These stations are getting just a little too friendly...

Seriously, though, yet another similar logo and graphics regime has surfaced in the Tri Cities and Yakima, where the Fisher affliates there, KEPR and KIMA respectively, have shifted to new logos and openings (though this alliance has retained the sobriequet Action News:

It should be noted that this Fisher shift to new logos is hardly uniform, While KATU and the Inland Empire stations seem to be going to a completely new look Seatlle's KOMO is going for a variation on the corporate theme, and KLEW (Lewiston ID) as well as the Eugene and southwest Oregon stations seem to be standing pat for now with the "old" look.

FWIW, the new graphics regimes can be seen by going to each stations site (If I missed a link, go to the station's pages via the Fisher Communications' "Our Stations" page) and digging through the video clips.

Technorati Tags: KATU,KIDK,KCBI,KIMA,KEPR,Fisher Broadcasting,logo design,TV Logos

[liff] Templars Off The Hook: Official

989. Good news for those who fancy Knights Templar; the Vatican has let them off the hook for something they did somehow. Don't ask me what it was fnord.

What really amuses me about this was that the document that exonerated them was actually misfiled for several years. Makes those extra waits for passports all those people had to suffer earlier this year seem kind of inconsequential.

Also, how secret can the "Secret Vatican Archives" actually be, now that it has a spokesperson?

And so it goes.

Technorati Tags: knights templar,catholic church,fnords

[logo_design] They Don't Make 'em Like that Anymore: Desilu Studios

988. A television company that really needs no introduction–Desilu was late 60s television (Mission: Impossible, Mannix, Star Trek:TOS–need I go on?)

This is the famous "merging circles" logo, hosted at youtube.com at the account of mcy919, to whom we give thanks.

To me, this was 60s logo design at some of its best. The merging circles are symmetrical and gracefully combined, Color TV was still new at the time and any, even subtle, nod to color production amounted to a competitive advantage in the mind of the public. Once merged, the circle becomes the jot over the "i" in a graceful sweep as the script "Desilu" finshes drawing by an unseen hand, and it's all tied together by a meaty yet fleet five-note fanfare.

Mind you, this was years before "Sit, Ubu, Sit. Good dog (bark!)" and the advent of the production company ID card as micro-productions unto themselves.

The Desilu fanfare was punchy and good-sounding enough that Paramount Television, the successor to Desilu, used it for several years after.

While more-than-somewhat ineffable, the feelings I get watching the logo come together more than amply explain why, in certain ways, we keep touching back to the 60s and 70s in television culture. Sure, those decades included mounds of steaming dreck–when it was bad, it was horrid. But when it was good, it was very good–even elegant.

They don't make 'em like that anymore.

Technorati Tags: logo design,Desilu Studios,TV logos,animated logos,1960s logos

[bloggage] Dreaming of 30,000

987. Vistor 30,000 logged here by Sitemeter.com at 13:37 today, from Boston, Massachusetts, via UUNET.

Thanks for stopping by, my friend, thanks for stopping by.

Sadly, I am not prosperous enough to give out prizes for passing the turnstile yet, but, hope remains evergreen.

Technorati Tags: bloggage,Zehnkatzen,Samuel John Klein,The ZehnKatzen Times,30,000 vistors

[bloggage] 98 Visitors to Go...

986. ...as of this writing, at the time of this missive, until we break through 30K.

Hey, it may not impress some, but every one of them is important to me...

Technorati Tags: bloggage,ZehnKatzen,Samuel John Klein

[liff, design] Dutch Bros. Rocks The Coffee Bean and the Peignot Bold

985. The stickers have showed up on cars of all kinds; you know the ones, the ones with "Dutch" in them, with the type in the funky 70's style. We see a lot that say "Dutch Playa", with the "hang loose" hand signal.

If you wondered where they came from, wonder no more; it's all part of Dutch Bros. Coffee's campaign for world domination. I, for one, welcome our new Dutch masters.

There are two Dutch drive-throughs in Portland proper: one at SE 136th and Division, hard by the pedestrian overpass, and one at SE 67th and Foster, by the Save A Lot store and the Dollar Store that used to be the Kienows and the Phoenix Drug Store. To those who thought that the demise of Coffee People as the local funky drive-through chain and dreaded the advent of Starbucks and thier burned-flavor house coffee, there is reason to rejoice.

Dutch Bros. rocks in two (count 'em) ways: one is product, and one is design.

Dutch Bros. Rocks The Bean

Regardless of how cool Dutch looks it wouldn't be even worth slowing down in front of without decent coffee, and it has that. The true measure of a coffeemonger, regardless of what else they sell, is their regular house blend–it's what they put in everything else. And Dutch Bros. Private Reserve is smooth and nice–almost as good as my personal gold standard, Allann Bros. House Blend (hey, Allan, one Beanery up in in the Metro–that's all I'm asking! Look into it! We are so there! Anyway!)

Compared to Starbucks house...well, it just doesn't compare. It just doesn't. That means that everything thier coffee goes into–the lattes, the Annihilator (just try it)–is going to be just that good. I have no complaints about this coffee.

Dutch Bros. Rocks The Font

Dutch Bros also has some interesting ways to approach thier identity. The bright, flat colors and simply-rendered graphics give a cheery start. But the way they work the typeface in is what I find most impressive.

One might look at that font and feel there's something very familiar about it. They'd be right–it's one of the most used commercial typefaces known, Peignot Bold. It was last in wild popularity in the 1970s, spurred by (amongst other things) the titles to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and was used very thoroughly by ABC in its titles to its evening movie broadasts. It has a history which goes back to 1937, when A.M. Cassandre developed it for the French typefoundry Deberny et Peignot.

The way Dutch Bros. uses it is unafraid and constant. In the context of the flat and saturated colors and the simple graphics, it fits very well, taking a typeface that might have seemed dated in any other context and making it cheerfully funky. It really is kind of brave to use such a font in today's visual culture, because it takes a touch to use it right. Dutch Bros., either by accident or by design, did it right.

Having it on such cool stickers that are sprouting up on autos all over the place certainly helps.

Dutch Bros. Is Getting Around

They've got two Dutches in Portland, at least one we can think of in Gresham (in the Rockwood area), and we're hoping they get more in here. We aren't the only ones. Subsequently we found ourselves at Powell's Books downtown and The Wife™ still had her Dutch Bros cup in hand, and a stranger exclaimed "Hey! Does Dutch Brothers have a location downtown now?"

Sadly, no, Well, not yet, anyway. But the way they're growing, it should be any time now.

http://www.dutchbros.com (view this one through Firefox, kids; with Safari under OS X, it complains that you don't have the Flash plugin installed even if you have the Flash plugin installed)

Technorati Tags: type,type design,coffee,Dutch Bros. Coffee

[urban_design] Mannheim: The Grid auf Deutsch

984. A couple of missives ago, I opined about the grid as a city layout basis and came up with an example of a European use of the grid. Milton Keynes, however, is an extremely recent (in historical terms–1960s) example. with the rectilinear grid going, in fact, way back. I did mention that I had read of examples going back as far as the Indus River Civlizations.

While Mannheim, A major industrial city in southwestern Germany, doesn't go back all that far–its city center was laid out in its present form sometime in the 1700s, if I read the histories correctly (and I may not, in all fairness). The city center itself is press-fit between the Rhein and Neckar (a major river in south-central Germany) and is conspicuously recticlinear.

The first illustration here, Exhibit A, is taken from the Wikipedia entry on Mannheim and is taken from the 4th edtion of Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (Meyer's Encyclopedia), which was published from 1885-1890. The grid, oriented more or less toward the Rhein, is encircled by a horseshoe-shaped ring road, and centers on a building that was then the palace of the Prince-elector (Kürfurst) at the south side of the grid (on this map, it's noted as Schloß, also spelt Schloss (the terminal charcter, ß, is a glyph in the German alphabet which simply reduces to "ss" and is my favorite letter in any alphabet, and we're deep in digression land again) It shows little of the surrounding areas (only a section of the neighboring city of Ludwigshafen (Ludwig's harbor) across the Rhein and the burg of Neckargärten (Neckar gardens) across, appropriately, the Neckar.

The next illustration, Exhibit B, is clipped from a Google Maps display, and gives a sense of surroundings. While straight streets and griddish patters can be found around, there is nothing that has the sense of planning that the city center has; the rest of the area seems uncoordinated in comparison.

The last illustration, Exhibit C, is a closeup of the most detailed online map of Mannheim that I could find (clipped from this page):

Now we get down to interesting cases. Perhaps you've noticed the abscence of one very imporant thing (and it was obvious if you zoomed in on the map in Google): there are next to no street names. The surrounds have names (the ring road is named, at different places, Luisenring, Friedrichsring, Parkring, and Kaiserring (the suffix ring tends to be used for semicircular streets like crescent in the Commonwealth or circle here in the USA) and a few of the grid streets have names as well (the horizontal street that intersects at Stadt Parade Platz is named, from west to east, "Rheinstrasse", "Planken", and "Heidelberger Strasse", and the vertical center street is named "Kürpfalzstrasse", essentially, "Electoral Palace Street"), but, instead of street names, we have what look like a sort of grid coordinate in each block (or Quadrate, as locals call them).

The pattern of Quadrate naming follows a logical sequence with an exception, and this pattern relies on the position of Kürpfalzstrasse as an assumed centerline. The ranks-the horizontal rows–are lettered increasing away from the Bismarckstraße baseline. Ranks on the west side of Kurpfalzstrße are lettered A through K, and ranks on the east side take up the sequence again with L and proceed through U. Files–the vertical columns–number in sequence away from Kurpfalzstaße both east and west. The exception comes with the L rank, which includes a row of blocks south of Bismarckstraße which are numbered in a leapfrog pattern until L14 and L15 at the Bismarckplatz.

My understanding of addresses is somewhat limited here, but if I remember my reading correctly ,it's rather Japanese in manner; your address is a number in the Quadrate your place is located in. For example, if you live in a flat (if such exist) four streets north of Bismarckstr. and three streets east of Kurpfalzstr., then your address is a number in Quadrate O4.

This seems rather innovative for the day, I'd guess. It certainly reinforces the ideal of the German as a lover of efficiency and precision, and, in its regularity and order, stands out as a unique city center plan on the European continent (as least as far as I'm aware).

Technorati Tags: urban design,city layout,street grids

[tech] Ever Wonder What Happens When You Send An Apple Crash Report?

983. So did I.

Paul Krummenacker at Extensis draws back the curtain a little.

Takeaway: Send the crash report. People do look at it.

Technorati Tags: tech,tech tools,design tools,Extensis

[tech] Speaking of Audacity

982. Speaking of Audacity, I just took a moment to check the page I linked to in the last missive and found that they've got some notable improvements in the 1.3.x development.

Current stable version is 1.2.6, and stable it is–works with no hassle or apparent flaw.

1.3.x has new support for importing audio from QuickTime files on OS X, also a new screen-capture utility. I've not tried it yet, but I may; ever the enduser, I stay away from betas unless sufficiently intriqued by them or made absolutely necessary.

As I said, if you want to play with sound and don't want to spend no money and get a quality product anyway, Audacity's your man.

Audacity. Here. Go. Download. Use.

Technorati Tags: Audacity,Open Source,FOSS,Sound editors

[liff] That Much Closer to Producing a Podcast

981. I finally got around to getting a cheapo Radio Shack microphone for SunDial Three, my PowerMac G4. I typically worry about whether or not things like this will work without a great deal of hassle; I found, of course, that I worried over nothing.

All I had to do was plug the mic into the line in jack, fire up Audacity, and record.

I've mentioned Audacity before. I found it when I needed a program to edit together sound clips; since this is neither my forté nor my ambition I wanted to find something that just did the basics and, if possible, was free. Audacity is worth much, much more than the price (which is free), and the help files give the novice an introduction to the sound artist's trade.

Audacity is available here. You really ought to look into this.

Good Lord, does my voice sound gooney! Still, it's the only voice I have, so we'll have to go for it. It's good enough quality that I can think about actually doing something I've always wanted to do, and that's a podcast.

Now, all I have to do is get some really interesting content!

Technorati Tags: Podcast,Microphones,Audacity

[design] Adobe Photoshop: We Are Family

980. Photoshop isn't just Photoshop anymore. It's Photoshop CS3 Basic, Photoshop CS3 Extended, Photoshop Elements...It's now a family. And the family coat of arms can be seen on the right there.

As announced by my colleague at Designorat, Jeremy Schultz :

Photoshop Is Now One Big Happy “Family” — Designorati

A few weeks ago at Photoshop World, John Loiacono (Senior VP/Creative Business Products at Adobe) revealed the new “Photoshop family” of products, complete with logo, which encompasses the various Adobe products branded with “Photoshop”

Here's the page at Adobe with the full skinny.

Here, at PhotoshopNews, is a display of all the various permissible uses of the logo and the new tagline.

Technorati Tags: Adobe Photoshop,Photoshop Family,Photoshop Lightroom,Photoshop

[urban_design] The Grid

979. The subject of city layout and address structures is one I've not touched on often of late (well, at all actually) but one which I keep mad keen interest in.

Latterly I was delighted to find an article in Wikipedia about that mainstay of the anglo-American city, the gridiron; read all about it here. The biggest takeaway for me was that, despite the prepoderance of such a grid plan in modern cities and the apparent lack in older ones, the gridiron type of street plan actually goes back a heck of a long way back–to the Indus Valley civilzations.

Grid plans actually seem to date, in the US, from the time of the original layout of Philadelphia which was design with wide straight streets and big blocks as a way to prevent the firetrap problems of cities that grew more organically.

And latterly, even though Europe is (at least to me) not known for griddled towns, there is at least one that qualifies–a town created in the 1960's, the "new town" of Milton Keynes.

While its more of a wobbly, wavy grid, MK's structure is that of the grid, with wide boulevards laid out to get you from one area of town to another, including wide roundabouts, as the map here will show:

This map was nicked from www.mkweb.co.uk, to which all credit goes. Read about Milton Keynes at Wikipedia here.

A net of H (Horizontal) roads mesh with V (Vertical) roads as a top-level in a street hierarchy, highly untypical for a European city–at least from an American perspective.

Technorati Tags: maps,map design,urban design,urban layout

[design] Drawing Maps in Adobe Illustrator

978. Just found this little gem: an article at a just stumbled-on blog by a much more successful graphic designer than I on how to use Adobe Illustrator to draw maps.

Amongst the most important Insights: how to form good-looking street marks. Solution: make 'em a brush stroke.

See it at Rae's blog here.

I plan on giving these techniques a bit of trial run hereabouts, and will post the results.

Technorati Tags: design,map design,Adobe Illustrator

[pdx] Schumacher: Can't Catch a Break

977. Looks like one of the protesters is off the hook.

Technorati Tags: Schumacher Furs,Schumacher Fur Protest

[ad_design] Sometimes, Spell-check Can't Save You

976. From an animated ad on a local TV Station's site:


While it is admirable and laudable that a medical procedure not be frightening (no scaring), I think what they meant to say was no scarring.

The trouble with spell check, you see, is that it's not context-check. Scaring here is correctly spelt.

(FWIW: cryoablation is a non-invasive method for removing certain non-malignant fibrous tumors)

Technorati Tags: ad design,graphic design,web design

[logo_design] KIDK-3's Eyewitness News Logo...It's Coming For You

975. Look out...here comes KIDK-TV's (CBS Channel 3 for greater Idaho Falls/Blackfoot/Pocatello Idaho) new Eyewitness News logo.

Holy yikes! "Watching Out For You"? With that angle and treatment, dropping out of an apocalyptically-purple mottled sky straight out of Damnation Alley , more like "We're coming for you!"

Duck! Wear a hard hat...something!

(Thanks to commenter Ben in this post about KATU's (another star in the Fisher constellation) logo)

Update: Ben also posed quite a good question–what did the KIDK news broadcast logo look like before? I rooted around on KIDK's website and Google images, and I think this is our answer:

A change of graphic identity, a change of show name, a change of attitude.

Technorati Tags: logo design,KIDK,TV Station logos

[liff] Those Who Do Not Learn From History....

974. ...are doomed to repeat it, in architecture. From Naval Base Coronado, on the Silver Strand, Google Earth gives you the US Naval Swastika Barracks:

Rah-oh!

Just a little embarrassing, seeing as we were the winning side in WWII (we jest here, of course. We are big-time fans of the Nav).

That said, they are budgeting over $half-a-mil (which is now also $half-a-mil Canadian) to make it a little less...Swastika-y.

And so it goes.

(Blessings on this one to Urban Honking, who pointed us to this posting. The building is yours for the finding in Google Maps and Google Earth–but here's a hint; It's not on the north end of North Island)

Technorati Tags: strange but true,swastika,architecture

[design] My Mad Skills

973. Hanging out my shingle in the side bar.

I know there's a place for me out there. I'm hungry to work–someone out there is hungry for someone who is hungry. I am that hungry person.

Go here and peruse, if you are the sort. I am the sort who is available.

Technorati Tags: design,self-promotion,job search

[liff] The Fair Weather Fan

972. I'll admit it, I'm a fair weather fan.

Actually, I've never been much of a sport fan to begin with. I've always found televised sports a crashing bore, while I do like baseball–when we can get to the park and watch. Now, that's a good time. I keep hoping Portland can land big league ball because, hey it would be kind of cool to be able to catch MLB live (though the day it comes to town, as it must, because Portland b-ball fans never give up, it will no doubt be too damn' expensive. Anyway.)

I'm removed enough from sports that when the local offerings suck, you won't find me anywhere near 'em. During the Drexler years, when the Trail Blazers were the greatest also-rans the sport ever saw, I was there for every game I could get, and I still think that Clyde the Glide never getting a championship ring is a great injustice. Moreover, even though the 'Zers never got out of the Finals alive, they were great players and gentlemen...you ever think Duck or Mercy, Mercy would have been caught anywhere near the chronic or dogfights? Never in a million years, my friends.

But, that's another digression. As I said, I'm a fair weather fan. I'm not saying this because I'm necessarily proud of it, but I'm not ashamed.

I look at it this way. Pro Sports, like any business, is selling me a profit. Unlike most businesses, they sell me a team of personalities and an organzination that generates emotions and events. You can't hold it, you can't put it on the shelf, you can't put it back in the box and take it out again when you want to play with it. If you have it, though you know it; when it's good, it's very good, and when it stinks, well...

My thoughts turned this way when I read that that OSU snatched defeat from the jaws of a UCLA victory (UCLA! They could have kicked UC ass!) and read the various mea culpas generated by Riley and the gang. And I'd realized that, even though during the last two seasons, when OSU Football was appointment radio with me, I'd not listened to a single game.

There's the sort that will stick with a team through thick and thin...and especially through thin. I honor you and admire you; it takes severe dedication to be that masochistic. When a team screws up repeatedly and makes the same mistakes over and over...this must be what keeps blood pressure med makers in profits.

But it's not a life for me, alas. I have enough heartache in my life. So, if a local team won't take its own act seriously, why should I? Laters, folks.

On the flip side, though, you've got to realize that your fair weather fans (and I'm not the only one, I'm sure) are your best friends really. if you're doing everything right, even if you're not winning, we'll be back. I stuck tight to the Blazers during all those heartbreaking NBA Finals because...well, hell, I liked them. They were good fellows, playing the best they knew how. Regrettably, the NBA era they played in was the time where the season amounted to which team was going to lose to the Bulls in the finals that year. That was hardly the fault of Clyde and his team. They were quality stuff, and it showed.

I think you'll find that if you have a quality product, then everyone including your fair weather fans will come to take some. And that's how you know you're winning the hometown fans.

Give me some quality players and a team and organization that will win my heart and I'll be back–whether or not you'll be taking the championship (though that would be the best, and no mistake).

No disrespect meant toward faithful fans, but you'll always have them. Get people like me on board, though, and you know you're succeeding.

Technorati Tags: liff,Oregon Sports,Sports Fandom

[design] Local Designer interviews Quark Supremo

971. On the heels of this groundbreaking article from our own Pariah Burke comes this futher interview with Raymond Schiavone, the CEO of Quark, Inc, commenting (and not) on recent revelations from the erstwhile electronic layout king and its flagship, QuarkXPress.

It's interesting what he says–as well as what he doesn't say.

The latter part is a self-interview, where Pariah poses questions to himself. This is a vehicle for delivering some really great insights and should answer a good many questions many might have about his own approach.

Technorati Tags: Design,Design Tools,QuarkXPress,Quark Inc.,Pariah S. Burke

[bloggage] More Contribute Futzing

970. This is a good news/bad news thing.

Good news: the Spa Fon Project has borne fruit. I can now edit posts.

Bad News: The re-edited post is re-inserted back at the top of the post stack, so the last few posts are now all out of order.

Will see what happens to this one.

Spa Fon? Squa Tront!

Technorati Tags: Adobe Contribute CS3,buggin'

[pdx_transit] TriMet TV

968. We have, for our approval, the debut–kind of a preface, actually–of something called TriMet TV, which is apparently TriMet's entry into video podcasting.

I enjoyed the first epi, but I do wish they didn't try so hard to be witty and funny. It kind of showed.

But I am a fan of TriMet, so I'm givin' it a big-time chance. I also love pods and vods, so there it is.

Spa fon?

Technorati Tags: pdx_transit, TriMet

[design] Famously Graphic

967. A couple of postings locally caught my eye–but then, that's what effective graphic design is supposed to do.

A lot of us who love music love it partially because of album cover art (Gerry Rafferty's City to City is still amongst my most personal favorites). When the act is particularly iconic, sometimes genre-shifting work manages to wrap one of the act's discs. Here, at mental_floss's online presence, is 23 album covers that represented paradigm shifts, according to the author (Chris Smith). We all have our opinions; Record Store Geek (whose posting here recommended the list) has his ideas of what should have made the cut. Art is subjective that way.

And why 23? Always the rule of fives with these people fnord. Anyway.

In another posting, re:PDX reveals how graphic parody can bring light to a dark subject. The morphing of Nestlé Crunch into "Nastilie Credit Crunch" (A new forclosure in every bite) is a darkly humorous take on the particularly harrowing evolution our domestic economy seems to be going though right now. It works particularly because it touches all the stylistic bases: color, type, general style; if the reference wasn't so clear, it would be a pastiche.

Graphic Design that clicks is just like that. Instantly unforgettable, powerfully communicative, and eloquent of the unseen but realized grammar of visual communication.

Spa Fon?

Technorati Tags: Graphic Design, Parody, Album Covers