New-PDX-StreetBladePalooza and More Curbstone History In Sellwood

1995.Today I found not one but two new-look PDX street blades. We go into Sellwood with gun and camera ... minus the gun.

This is a view down SE Tacoma Street looking toward the 13th Avenue light. That spire on the right is a Columbia Sportswear store that at one time, not too long ago, was the Sellwood Theater movie house:

A thing to see in the area is the sign to the Methodist Church, there on the left, which typically has Korean (well, at least it looks Hangul) on the readerboard. Very interesting to view.

And, askew on the SE corner of SE 13th Avenue and Tacoma Street, The Wife™'s sharp eye picked out this:

Tacoma Street is the 81st full block south of Burnside, so Tacoma equals the 8100 block.

The signs are looking better and better. The block index, which seemed to crowd the name at first, now seems more natural that way. Here's a closer look:

And the Avenue blade:

The kerning on this sign is very well done. There's a companion for it, over on the NW corner of the intersection, adjacent to the dental clinic (which, I note, is accepting new customers).

Some time ago I had a "day job" down in little ol' Sellwood, and decided to leave the area on a circuitous route, doubling back on SE 17th Avenue to go either north out that street or east out SE Tacoma. Little did I know that Sherrett Street had a surprise for me. Here you go:

It's a longer name, there's a longer blade, and the block index number is a little condensed (the numbers themselves seem a little bit squeezed skinny). Note also here it's a mixed set; like the 92nd and Ellis assembly I showed off a little while back, the SE 17th Avenue blade is the old-look, extruded style. The new Sherrett Street blade is only on the NE corner of the intersection; it's companion, on the SW corner, is the traditional old-style (complete with bolted-on block index tab on the Sherrett blade), is pretty weathered and could use replacing itself.

I remember when I worked in this area, about two-three blocks south of here. If I didn't know it before, I'd not recognize it now; something is always being built or remodeled around there these days:

That convenience store there on the right, Foster's Market and Deli, has been there an awful long time, and if it's still owned by the Fosters, under the same ownership.

Nice, dark photos, yes? When you've lived in a place all your life, you tend to take the environment for granted, including the seemingly-everpresent Oregon overcast. It's not till you get the photo home that you realize how dark it was out there. You'd think I was shooting day-for-night here.

One other remarkable thing. My obsession with the Portland address grid should by now be a matter of wide public record. I've also documented that frequently the archaic street name was preserved in the curbstone of the corner; I don't know exactly why they decided to do that, though I've always thought that it was for the benefit of pedestrians (of which there were undoubtedly more of back before 1930). But the point I'm driving at is that when the city street grid was rationalized in The Great Renaming of 1933, some numbered avenues actually changed thier names too. In a posting made on 23 Nov 2005, I published some pictures and findings detailing the changes that occurred over time at the corner of SE 53rd Avenue and Woodstock Blvd (which were once known as, respectively, 54th Street SE and 60th Avenue SE).

The corner of SE 17th Avenue and Sherrett Street has a similar treat in store. The corner holds the name of the contractor who poured the cement and dates it to 1910, twenty years after the merger of Portland, East Portland and Albina into the kernel of the modern-day City of Portland and twenty-three years before The Great Renaming. Looking down at the corner side facing onto SE 17th Avenue, one finds the following:

It may be a little hard to read at that resolution, but it says:

E. 19 ST. S

In 1910, what we call SE 17th Avenue was known to the people who lived in Sellwood rather as East 19th Street South. The suffixing of South is unexepected, as the general Portland street naming scheme of the day suggests it would have merely been East 19th Street only. Perhaps the suffixing of South was reserved for streets in the city's outer areas, as Sellwood is today, and with the slower travelling modes of the dawn of the 20th Century, would have seemed like the boonies.

But how did 19th Street move down two places to become 17th Avenue? We can only guess that they started counting from a slightly different place, or decided to call 15th 17th for some reason. But some number changing went along with the name changing.

Technorati Tags: Portland Streets, Portland Street Scenes, Street Name Gallery, Historic Portland, Historic PDX, The Great Renaming, The Great Renaming PDX, Sellwood, Oregon

Cartoons Drawn On the Back of Business Cards

1994. Hugh McLeod:

My dream.

GapingVoid.com.

Also: Join the Crazy, Deranged Food Mailing List. It's the right thing to do.

(PS: It's Deranged Fool, not Deranged Food. I just wanted to point that out, but I wanted to leave it up as Deranged Food, because that's just such an awesome idea. Kind of like Attilla the Bun.)

Technorati Tags: Gaping Void, Hugh McLeod, Cartoons, art

A New PDX Art Supply Shop: Muse Art and Design

1993.Just got wind of this one via a little bird: we have a new art supply star to add to the firmament.

Muse Art and Design is located at 42nd and SE Hawthorne Blvd and has a brief little page up, not too much on the stock and what they got yet, but some good basic information and enticing enough to get you to get a toe in and see what their all about.

The rationale seems to be professional-level encouragement for everyone to produce something, because creating something feels good! (We can relate):

Whether you've been creating art for years, or just starting, you'll find a full range of QUALITY ART SUPPLIES at Muse Art and Design, along with affordable prices, and friendly, knowledgeable service. Have an idea but not sure how to get started? We'll help you choose the right materials to fit your budget.

We haven't browsed an art supply store in a while (it's a wonderful experience). We think this one would require a visit, perhaps. Will report back.

Technorati Tags: art, art materials, art supply retailers, PDX art supply retailers, Muse Art and Design

What Happens When Matt Davis Gets Vexed And Ratty

1992.While I'm reluctant to read anything into anyone else's work that's not obvious (oh, well, okay, I'm not actually), I'm guessing that the our favorite PMerc reporter finds a certain debate a little wearying (warning before you click that link – there's a bad word therein).

I've stolen the graphic and Bowdlerized it a bit so that the kiddies can see it:



(two offending letters were left smeared a bit just so you know they were there)

Technorati Tags: Made In Oregon Sign, PDX Landmarks, Portland, Liff In Portland, Satire

The New Greatest Warning Diamond EVER

1991.In Number 1981, I shared what I thought was the greatest yellow warning diamond sign ever. It looked like this:

John B, over at the local blog Sellwood Street, went me better. I bow the greatness and the awesomeness of this sign (link is to the actual photo as per John's comment in 1981; it's a biggie):

(photo nicked from JohnB's blog, Sellwood Street.
JohnB retains all rights to this photo)

The sheer awesomness of this warning diamond floors me. MAX tracks, not one but two street names (N Thompson St is about a block ahead, so you're giving trucks adavnce warning), and building lines ... it's a map in and of itself!

Mad props to JohnB, and thanks for me mention of my blog on yours. I return the favor.

Technorati Tags: Warning signs, road signs, sign design, information design, funny signs, interesting signs, PDX Street Scenes

Tropicana OJ Redesign FAIL: The Brand Redesign That Should Have Worked ... But Didn't

1990.Sometimes you get a design that clicks, that's solid, that absolutely nails it. Anyone who knows anything about design ... and a lot of people who don't know design and aren't emotionally invested in your look ... will look at this design and say "Good golly–that's dead cool."

Such a design, in my opinion, is the recent Tropicana redesign. Leaving behind the "straw into the orange" and traditional type with the studly majuscule T in the front is a picture of the actual product was a clean, bright design by the Peter Arnell concern.

Illustration via Logo Design Love

Now, this is what I call an evolved design. Unified, accessable, appropriate type, and the product–and all its percieved quality–right up front (ever tried to actually suck orange juice out of an orange via a straw? Mur-der, at least on the old cheeks, there. And notice that the plastic cap has become a little tiny half orange (called by some wags the orange b**bie, where *=o).

Brilliant, tight, designed.

And everybody hated it. Hated, Hated, Hated, Hated, Hated it![1]:

IT took 24 years, but PepsiCo now has its own version of New Coke ... The about-face comes after consumers complained about the makeover in letters, e-mail messages and telephone calls and clamored for a return of the original look.

Some of those commenting described the new packaging as “ugly” or “stupid,” and resembling “a generic bargain brand” or a “store brand.”

“Do any of these package-design people actually shop for orange juice?” the writer of one e-mail message asked rhetorically. “Because I do, and the new cartons stink.”

Others described the redesign as making it more difficult to distinguish among the varieties of Tropicana or differentiate Tropicana from other orange juices.

Tropicana's old design will return within a month due to apparently-overwhelming consumer demand. I hear the orange "b**bie" will remain, however,

A lot of designers I've read via teh Google are unhappy with the redesign as well, so the design mind is hardly of monadic character on this. I disagree. The new design is clean, appropriate, relies on a strong typographical theme and puts the quality of the product right up front. I think it was timely, but as with ever New Coke moment, sometimes you just can't help but underestimate how emotionally attached customers are to a look and feel.

For a lot, Tropicana without the orange-with-a-straw just isn't Tropicana.

Well, someone did once say a day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.

Just for the sake of the record, the design is (at this writing anyway) still up at the Tropicana products website. Here's a screenshot:

And here's an example of the print ad design:

The warm oranges being a counterpoint "splash of color" next to black and white photos of smiling nice people form an interesting dynamic tension. The print ad format and the website format are winners too. I respond to them. Shame more people don't.

The designer whose name is on the project, Peter Arnell, is put in the odd situation of defending a successful redesign:

According to Peter, it’s about giving each other hugs, and “the power of love”.

Upon such intangibles is identity design supported, but it seems axiomatic: allying Tropicana with warm colors and affectionate images bespeaks similar qualities in the product itself–warmth, affection, goodness. Logo Design Love has the designer speaking at a press conference about it, which can be viewed here.

[1] apologies to Roger Ebert.

Technorati Tags: Tropicana rebranding, brand design, branding and identity, brand redesigns, brand redesigns that failed

The New PDX Blades: NE Oregon and 102nd

1989.For our first spotting of the new-look Portland street blades, we go just south of Gateway, to NE 102nd Avenue and Oregon Street:

Just across the street used to be a shabby apartment complex. Now they're getting ready to build some office complex on the site. The tan building on the right in the middle distance is part of the Gateway Fred Meyer store. The dark, high-topped building in the far distance is either part of The Oregon Clinic's Gateway location or part of the Providence Gateway clinic. The Gateway MAX Station/Transit Center is behind those trees in the left-distance.

Mug shot time:

NE 102nd Avenue:

And, NE Oregon Street (the 8th Street name north of Burnside, hence the 800 block crossing-street):

Most designs local authorities debut I find have to grow on me. This is not one of them. I've liked it from the first.

I'm also pleasantly surprised as the speed at which this is being rolled out. If you're like me, and you want to record and preserve the way the old ones look, though, you'll have to get busy. They may not be around much longer.



Technorati Tags: Portland Street Signs, Portland Street Blades, New Portland Street blades, Street Blade Gallery, PDX, Portland, NE Oregon Street, NE 102nd Ave

Undo Send? Yes, Gmail Now Gives You Five Seconds To Yank That Message Back

1988.We all have emails that we wish we hadn't sent; that's so axiomatic an observation to have become trite. Who knew that a Google Labs employee would finally come up with an Undo for sent emails?

Well, to be completely correct, you can't yank back emails that are already out the door. But what Gmail's Undo Send does for you is hold that email for five seconds so, for instance, if you (as I sometimes do) click the "Send" button instead of the "Delete" button (like you meant to) you can prevent anything from an embarrassment to confusion to a complete train wreck.

I just tried it in one of my Gmail accounts, and it works like a song. This is not a joke but a real function. To enable it in your Gmail account, go to the Settings page, then the Labs tab, and look down until you find it (they have quite a few toys to play with there). All one need do is click Enable and you're good to go.

You'll know you have it when you hit "send" and you see this message across over the sending window:

The undo disappears automatically after the message is away. Turns out that 5 seconds is a bit longer that you'd think–but then a watched clock never boils, so they say.

Technorati Tags: Google Labs, Gmail, Undo Send, Gmail, Google

Sci Fi Channel To Change Logo, Open Rift In Time And Space

1987.The Sci Fi Channel has served up to us SF fans a heaping helping of world-changing stuff over the years, from swell-done to shouldn't-a done, but regardless, it's a channel that's near and dear to most of our hearts–and not just for making Battlestar Galactica artistically relevant, elevating it from some dorky 70s "me-too" version of Star Wars for television.

Now they plan on messing with the very fabric of time and space itself. Over the next several months, culminating on 7th June, they plan on utterly remaking thier image and identity.

Good bye, Sci Fi ... hello, "Syfy". get a look for yourself:

Stunning. Well, I'm stunned, anyway.

Set logo on "stun".

Okay, I'm done with that witticism. Promise.

Such a strange redesign begs comments and questions. The New York Times's Stuart Elliott covers it quite aptly by casting light on several aspects of branding that no doubt went through the minds of the creative team who evolved this.

They're good questions to ask; how do we differentiate, how do we stand out, with our brand? How do we make ourselves like nobody else in this arena? And, most importantly, how do we come up with a brand that we can copyright? Stuart Elliott:

One big advantage of the name change, the executives say, is that Sci Fi is vague — so generic, in fact, that it could not be trademarked. Syfy, with its unusual spelling, can be, which is also why diapers are called Luvs, an online video Web site is called Joost and a toothpaste is called Gleem.

And that's also why Intel gave us the Pentium, instead of giving us the i686 (the processor names up until that time, for instance the 486, came from the part designation (80486, which couldn't be copyrighted as it I think referenced an industry-wide spec).

But what I'm thinking of is the throwing away of a quite-nicely done current-logo. The ringed-planet constructed by two sweeping arcs and a type which in its clean clear regularity suggests streamlined futurism is very approprate. The structure of the logo, with the ringed planet acknowledging the type and the type acknowledging the ringed planet is impeccable. It says what it needs to say.

Syfy says ... well, what, though? It's trademarkable, sure. But it means nothing outside of what history connects it to the entity it represents. Sci Fi executives in the article are quoted as saying that this doesn't "throw the baby out with the bathwater". I extremely disagree here. "Syfy" would look as at-home on a pack of water crackers at the European import food store as it would ... well anywhere actually. The tagline Imagine Greater would work just as well on ... well, anything that wants you to aspire to buy it.

The tough part about design punditry is that having an opinion on something not only compels you to say how you'd do it better but also how well you'd think it would do. To those questions, I have but two answers: 1: I would have left it alone and stuck to creating game-changing science-fiction media, like BSG, and 2: it's going to leave a lot of Sci Fi's consumers, many of whom I read already pretty p*ssed about what I hear is the inconsistent content quality, scratching their heads with a hearty WTF?

But you can't really tell until they use it a while. They may well be running this one up the flagpole to see who salutes. We'll see.

Technorati Tags: The Sci Fi Channel, Sci Fi, logo design, logo redesign, identity and branding, SF in Media

Troy Worman Has Changed It Up Again

1986.It was Orbitnow! then it was uncategorized and now it's back to being Orbitnow! again.

I don't know why.

I do think that it's nifty that he links to me. Just wanted to say that where it counts.

PS: don't wait for permission to succeed.

Technorati Tags: Troy Worman, orbitnow!, linkage, bloggage, ZehnKatzen, easily distracted

1964-2009: That Was Tom Peterson's (And Gloria's, Too!)

1985.I'm wondering, did I miss the announcement or the party?

It would seem that Tom Peterson & Gloria's Too is no more:

Now Tom Dechenne of Norris, Beggs and Simpson's name is up on the wall next to Portland's two favorite and most famous appliance and furniture mongers.

The thing was, I don't remember the announcement of the sale or the retirement. Last year, The Big O's inPortland supplement did a respectful and sweet profile of the two. Not long before that, Tom and Gloria moved the old store from the signature southwest corner of SE 82nd Avenue and Foster Rd to a smaller, pokier building at 8225 SE Insley–sandwiched between a Union 76 gas station and the Oriental Food Value market, a building which used to hold a branch of the Tom Peterson's appliance empire (and which still has the old signs in the ceiling announcing CAR STEREO, CAMCORDER, VIDEO LIBRARY, VIDEO, and AUDIO. Go to OFV and see it sometime).

The real estate signs perched on the roof were the first giveaway. The window art (which has the touch of Extremo the Clown about it–looks like his style in the type) was the second. And if you go up and look in, there's nothing but nothing in there.

We had come by here via SE 92nd and Ellis, still exulting in finding another example of the new street blades (just look back one posting). We were, as it happens, on our way over to Oriental Food Value, and there was Tom and Gloria's place.

Thanks for 45 years.

This was the sort of thing that should have gotten a write-up in The Oregonian or something on the news. But when it was time for Tom and Gloria to retire, it came quietly, with nary an announcment or an advertisement.

I asked one of the OFV clerks about it, and she said it closed at last about a month ago. And we shared memories of "Wake Up, Wake Up!!!" and other things.

It's been fun having Tom Peterson's around. I'll miss it. I've heard of a lot of local business legends, but none have ever accrued the good will Tom Peterson did. I've written about Tom Peterson before and nobody ever had a bad word to say about him. I remember Xonix and Muntz TVs, appearances in the crows nest with Frank Bonnema on Portland Wrestling, the Wake Up sale commercials, free hot dogs, free TP haircuts, Stereo Stupid Stores, "I'm listening to my wife!". I'll remember it all.

We've had some interesting TV characters since, but Carpet Carl, Marmoleum Mike, Leif Hansen, even The Outrageous Audio Guy (ALL MoNtH LONG!) can but stand in the shadow of Tom and Gloria's awesomeness.

I'd always said to The Wife™ that we ought to go in and buy something small from Tom, just maybe a table or a coffeemaker or something, just to say we've been. We'll never have that chance now.

Abysinnia, Tom. You too, Gloria.

PS:Seriously's, I've doen teh Google on this. I can't find a thing about the last days of Tom Peterson and Gloria's Too. Not a word. Would have liked to say goodbye ...

Technorati Tags: Tom Petersons, Tom Peterson And Gloria's Too, Portland Legends, Famous Portland Advertisers

New Style Street Blades Sighted At SE 92nd And Ellis

1984.At last! The first example of the new-look City of Portland street blades has been sighted off SE Division Street–just outside of downtown Lents, at SE 92nd and Ellis.

Coming in from the north on SE 92nd Avenue–our destination being the Oriental Food Value market on SE Insley just east of SE 82nd, and at that time of the day, coming in the "back" way rather than down 82nd is just the smarter thing to do–the SE Ellis Street blade presented itself with a visual shout, which is probably why they settled on this design:

Notable here is the way the new street blade for Ellis was perched atop an old street blade for SE 92nd Avenue (note that it's the extruded blade, and not a sheet, as the new design is).

I was somewhat disappointed that there was no new 92nd Avenue blade until The Wife™ pointed across the intersection, on the Lents Little League field side of the street:

The visual difference is obvious. These blades are so easy to spot and find, which is proved every time we find a new one like this.

Here's the money shot:

It's interesting to see a new named-street blade that doesn't say "SE Division St", for now we have some idea of how the rest of the city will look once these blades are the standard.

And here's a shot of the new-look cross including the 92nd Avenue blade:

And the documentation continues. If anyone who passes this way by these humble blog missives and lives in Portland (obvious point, yes) sees these new-look blades anywhere else in town, won't you clue me in? I'd like to get some idea of how far these are going.

Technorati Tags: Street Blade Gallery, PDX Street Blades, street blades, street blade design, sign design, Portland Street Blades

I Am All Oregon, Baby, The List Explained: Nos. 11-20

1983.Way back a few months, before the colossal computer failure, I'd reprised the I'm All Oregon, Baby list that I'd revised in Number 1831 of 29 October. At the time, someone somewhere else released a list of you know you're Oregonian if ... trivial points, and I knew I could go that better. And, I did.

I thought that a little more exposition was in order, so I released Number 1841 later on, detailing personal explanations to numbers 1-10. Really, it's a subjective thing, but there's cultural commonality that means that some people are just ... well, more local than others. And since I was (and still am) unforgivably smug about being lucky enough to be born in Oregon, I think that I ought to walk my talk.

Peforce, we take up again the deep glimpses into the elements of my list, and why I think they really make you The Compleat Oregonian. Let's take it up with number 11:

11. You remember how the building that housed that Morrison Street store was levelled (this doesn't happen often in Oregon)

By "That Morrison Street Store", I'm referring to the legendary Morrison Fred Meyer, the Fred Meyer store that was downtown and about the size of a large drug store–hardly the 1-stop Shopping that Fred Meyer made famous, but a traditional location for a Fred Meyer, being as the original store was located a mere one block south, at SW 5th and Yamhill.

The Morrison Street Fred Meyer was on the first floor of the Corbett Building. What is on that block now is a part of the Pioneer Place Mall, and the Corbett had to go. The method was, as far as we know, Portland's first (and so far only) controlled demolition implosion.

Emporis has a page with an awesome picture here. The Corbett Building died on 1 May, 1988.

12. You remember what sort of imported car Tom McCall stuffed his 6-foot-plus frame into during his tenure as Governor.

While I don't remember the model, it was an Audi. I do remember the news photos of it. It was kind of funny, watching this Central Oregonian rancher's kid stuff himself in the back seat. But that was Tom McCall for you.

13. You consider Tom McCall God. There's no passes on this one.

He cleaned up the Willamette River, opened the beaches to all, and told everyone to please visit Oregon again and again, but don't come here to live. Said in earnest jest in an interview with CBS's Terry Drinkwater around 1970, it defined Oregon as a state of quirky individualists.

They only made one Tom. Ther're Governors who came close, maybe, since. And maybe Governors of similar stature elsewhere. But if you want the best damn governor Oregon ever had, it's Tom.

That's my story, and I'm-a stickin' to it.

Tom McCall died in 1983, aged 69.

You all know I have terminal cancer—and I have a lot of it. But what you may not know is that stress induces its spread and induces its activity. Stress may even bring it on. Yet stress is the fuel of the activist. This activist loves Oregon more than he loves life. I know I can't have both very long. The trade-offs are all right with me. But if the legacy we helped give Oregon and which made it twinkle from afar—if it goes, then I guess I wouldn't want to live in Oregon anyhow.

14. You remember what Tom McCall did to make the beaches of Oregon open to everyone, all the time. You know that, in Oregon, signs that said "Ocean Beaches" was just Oregonian for "This way to the coast".

In 1967, Tom got HB 1601–the Beach Bill–passed:

In 1967 Governor Tom McCall signed the Beach Bill with great fanfare, calling it "one of the most far reaching measures of its kind enacted by any legislative body in the nation." The bill granted the public recreational rights to the dry sands of Oregon’s beaches all the way to the vegetation line.

This was kind of an evolution of something Governor Oswald West did in 1913–declaring the wet sand beach portion of the beach a public highway (and it kind of was–Oregon Coasters used opportune sections of beach to get from town to town before there was a US 101). But naturally this left enough leeway for developers to take as much dry sand as they could, and knowing the usual Oregon developer, I don't doubt they tried.

And it's true that, all during the last half of the 20th Century, if you were going to the Oregon Coast, you followed the signs reading "Ocean Beaches" which pointed westward from every likely cross-highway access from the Valley cities. Latterly, the signs say "Oregon Coast".

I mourn the passing of those old signs.

15. You understand that the correct way to say Glisan is seen as incorrect, and the incorrect pronounciation is what everyone uses.

The actual correct pronounciation of Glisan, I am told (and they say there's evidence to back this up) is as the word glisten. It makes sense. As far as I'm aware, a vowel after two consonants should generally be pronounced "short". Somehow, over the years, we've vowel-shifted it to rhyme with the last name of The Great One.

So you have a choice: say it wrong and be a regarded a local, or say it right and be regarded an anal-retentive goober (and get corrected a lot).

16. You have spent at least one (preferably more) camping holidays at Detroit Lake (or similar reservoirs in the Cascades.

Oh, yes, summers in the Cascades. At the time all I was interested in was Detroit Dam, but the trees, the lake, the stream tumbling down from the mountains ... it's an Oregon thing. If you grew up in Albany or Corvallis you went out to Green Peter or Foster reserviors, if you grew up down in Eugene you went down to Dexter reservior. It's an east-west-east rhythm that easily rivals any vacation crush to the Borscht Belt.

17. You remember when Bend had a population of about 15,000. Wasn't all that long ago.

In the mid-late 20th C, before Bend was "discovered", it was kind of a poky little place of 15-20,000 and grew kind of slowly. As late as 1990 Bend only had about 20,000 people in it, kind of a Central Oregon version of Pendleton.

Then the housing bubble grew, "lifestyle" migrations became fashionable, and Bend was "discovered".

There are still people trying to recover from that, but nevermind. Statstics show that Bend added nearly 23,000 people between 1980 and 1990, and current estmates of its population put it near 80,000.

Now it's Central Oregon's version of Yakima, population-wise-speaking.

18. You know what they Round-Up in Pendleton each year.

Cows. And then they use the cows to round up cowboys, and the cowboys round up spectators. The Pendleton Round-Up is amongst the most famous rodeos in all of Oregon, if not the west.

19. You have eaten frozen food products by Ore-Ida.

Via Wikipedia: Founded in the early 1950s, Ore-Ida was the pioneer of Tater Tots. The company's name is a portmanteau of Oregon and Idaho. Indeed, the company's original logo looked like the map silhouettes of Oregon and Idaho fused together, with the name Ore-Ida superimposed on it in italicized letters. Ore-Ida's primary production facility is located in Ontario, Oregon, and employs over 1,000 local residents.

Yep. OreIda made Napoleon Dynamite necessary, and intoduced us all to the allure of Tots. Life was never the same.

20. You have had earnest discussions with someone east of the Cascades about what Oregon really is.

Everyone knows that there are two Oregons: Us, on the Wetback side of the Cascades and north of about Eugene look around and see lush, green moist climate, growing things, compact cities going through growing pains. Drysiders see ranches, wide-open spaces, not so much rain, beautiful volcanoes rising striaght up from the plains, and, if you're in the 1/3 of what's west of the Cascades that isn't the Valley, beautiful mountainous country that's dry and hot in the summer and cold and snowy in the winter.

Sometimes it's as though three excellent states were smooshed together to make one awesome one. And if we argue about what Oregon really is, where the heart and soul of Oregon can be found, we'll all eventually agree that we wouldn't want to be any-damn-where else.

We'll do 21-30 soon ... and not wait so long at it! Bis naechsten Mal, schloss für heute!

Technorati Tags: Liff in Oregon, life in oregon, oregon trivia, Oregoniana, Native Oregonians, Oregonians

Filed Under: The Color Initiative

1982.For those who wonder, I am creating a new label for filing my posts about color, of which there will be more, and related to a project I'm nurturing under careful development.

This label will the The Color Initiative. My main thrust is color and mood and what I can find out about it, but the thing about color theory is that if you dig your beak into it just a little, a whole lot starts presenting itself.

It's my public diary about my exploration of color, and, as usual, everyone is invited along.

Technorati Tags: Color, Color design, color theory, The Color Initiative, The ZehnKatzen Times, ZehnKatzen

J. Alfred Proofreader: More Anal About Copy Than Even Us

1982.I don't go on about it much, but I'm quite the snot about copywriting. I just do it for free: on my blog, in my diary, and other appropriate places.

I try to write like I talk. I also try to talk like I write.

Well, if there's anyone in America who's more anal than an inveterate diarist who's married to one of the original grammar and spelling Nazis, it's J. Alfred Proofreader who, with respect to this banner ad:

Wrote the following scathing review:

As you can see in the screen shot highlighted above, the word guarantee was butchered by ad copy writers and editors. They misspelled it "guarentee." If they were trying to be intellectual and distinguished, they could have gone with guaranty, a variable and accepted form of the word.

Also, a hyphen should be separating the words "money" and "back" rather than a space. Interestingly, the people behind this ad copy managed to correctly spell Rachael Ray's name, which, evidently, is no easy task. According to Yahoo.com, in 2007, Rachael Ray's name was the second-most misspelled word typed into Yahoo Web searches. Yet, the correct spelling of guarantee still eludes these advertisers.

Wow ... Rachael Ray's name was the second most misspelled word?

How many of those were looking for them FHM photos she did (rrrowr!!!111!!!)

Have some laffs at some inattentive copywriters' expense: read The Copy Edits Of J. Alfred Proofreader and be thankful you aren't one of the targets of his yellow highlighter.

(content lifted from J. Alfred because it was too good not to share, with apologies)

Technorati Tags: Writing, Copywriting, Bad Copywriting, J. Alfred Proofreader

Greatest Railroad Crossing Warning Diamond EVER

1981.Now, Portland is no stranger to funny warning signs, as any bicyclist who rides near the Portland Streetcar tracks will tell you.

But is there anything for the truck driver with a truck with a long trailer who made the unwise decision of turning down that backroad-bit of NE Cully Blvd between NE Columbia Blvd and Portland Hwy?

No, you think?

Think again:

Whoa, that's pretty – well, graphic. Let's take a closer look:

Now, picture that you're the truck driver that ignored this warning. Awkward. Awkward.

Technorati Tags: Funny Signs, warning signs, Portland Photos, NE Cully Blvd, NE Columbia Blvd

The Allure of Boxed Water–Is It The Concept or the Design?

1980.This just found during a random act of clickage: a glorious package design blog called The Dieline. Which is blogrollable, to be sure.

But what caught my eye was this:



Yes, Boxed Water brand water.

I don't know what's more intriguing–the idea of putting bottled water in the classic milk carton, the spare design, or the way there's a Macintosh-style "hello" on one panel, or the name Boxed Water, which is reminiscent of a piece Steve Martin once wrote of "Folding Soup" (You can find it in the book Cruel Shoes, I do believe).

It's all quite adventurous. And while there is an environmental impact with paper cartons, to be sure, it's certainly got to be a whole lot less of a problem than that of plastic leavings. Moreover, the very packaging is its own advertisement. You're not going to soon forget that carton.

This is kind of what I mean when I talk about "painting with type".

Visit the Boxed Water website for more looks and a look at their rationale.

Technorati Tags: Boxed Water, package design, type design

SE 145th & Division: The New PDX Street Blade Look on Old Blades

1979.Our other catch today on the Street Blade Safari (in the rain and the cold, but I'm Oregonian, and that's how I roll) is a distinctly unexpected surprise – the apparently-new street blade design, but not as I expected it:



SE 145th and Division is immediately northwest of the Division Street Fred Meyer. On the northeast corner there's a KFC; on the southwest, a gas station. The parts of SE 145th Avenue north of and south of Division do not meet square, they 'jog'; it's a signalled intersection, presumably because getting into that area of neighborhood both north and south of Division over on 148th is a bit impractical maybe.

And it's where the new Portland blade design – which, on Division at SE 117th, SE 101st, and SE 57th Avenues are on big, white-bordered sheet – are here applied to the traditional, extruded metal blade which are the standard for Portland blades

The fit of the letterforms on the blade is a feels a little force and awkward, but it works fine really. Particularly good is the way the layout artist aligned the block index (2500) and the generic (ST) along margin on the left ends of the respective text blocks.

I have wondered if there was going to be some way to deal with the fact that the new big-blades, which appear to be sheet, might need the strutctural-stiffness the ribbed extruded shape provides for support of Portland's numerous neighborhood sign-toppers. One reason this redesign pleases me so much is because many of those sign-toppers result in the loss of the block-index tab, which can be a great help to visitors in finding thier way around and for delivery drivers and others who might take the time to memorize the blocks but probably find just having to find a sign to get them saving a huge step.

These new blades grace the northeast and southwest corners of SE 145th and Division. I have the ones here on the northeast corner, by the KFC; it was just too rainy and cold to stay out and take many more pics (I'm Oregonian, and that's the way I roll, but I'm just insane about street blades, and not about standing out in the cold and wet).

Here's a couple more pixs. First, a view from the north of the SE Division blade:




And now, the full monty. Maybe it's just that it's a newer blade, but there's something crisper and better-proportioned about the letterforms on the new blade (when I first saw them from the side, I thought they were using Helvetica for a split second):



And the documentation continues.

Say ... has anyone seen these blades in thier 'hoods? One curiosity is that these are only appearing (so far as I know) along SE Division Street. Why nowhere else? I see about my share of corners in the city, but no other examples of this yet.

Anyone else see these around town?

Technorati Tags: Street Blade Gallery, Portland Street Blades, Portland OR, Portland Geography, SE Division Street, street blades

How Do You Get A Rewrite For Street Blades?

1978.On a street-blade safari today, and I got some good ones, but none as interesting as the ones at NE 148th and SE Stark and SE 148th and NE Glisan.

Didn't I get that wrong just there? Yep. So did whoever put up the street blades.

Also, I've been remiss. In my excitement over the apparently-revised look of the standard Portland street blade, I've left out mentioning there's apparently an entire new look for the major intersections, as well. Let's look:

The difference is of a class. Instead of having one type size handle the directional and the specific and smaller one for the generic on the Street blade and one type size for all type on the Avenue blade, we have one size for the directional and generic and a larger one for the specific on all blades.

This has the distinctive characteristic, via the design concept of hierarchy, to make the specifics (the street/avenue names themselves) come up front and center. While the supporting information is now smaller, it's uniformly so, but not so very small; moreover, these signs are about 20 per cent larger than the old design, so everything is large.

Also, due to what has to be some error (or perhaps a rift in the fabric of space that happened that I missed), Northeast Glisan Street at the corner of Glendoveer Golf Course is crossed, improbably, by Southeast 148th Avenue.

Going down to 148th and Stark, in the shadow of the 7-Eleven store, we have the same anomaly:

Also:

Isn't that second one kind of artistic, what with the lining-up with the overhead wires 'n' stuff. And can you believe that iStockphoto turned me the hell down!?!?! Yes, seriously! It's unjust.

The mistake at the southwest corner of 148th and Stark was repeated over on the southeast corner as well. Just looking at the signs is kind of mind-bending.

Can the city sign shop get rewrite on this? Or, put another way ... can we fix this in "post"?

Technorati Tags: Street Blade Gallery, Portland Street Blades, SE Stark Street, Street Sign errors, street blades

Color In The News: Gamblin's Unique Torrit Gray

1978.When going over what I could find out about color today, I was pleasantly surprised that not only was color in the news, but that it was a well-regarded Oregon maker of world-famous oil paints that was making the news.

Gamblin Artists Colors, I've the impression, is a company in the tradition of the colormen of the 16th and 17th centuries–utterly committed to providing artists with the best-concoted oil paints. Oil paints in and of themselves are a fascinating medium, whether or not it's your medium of choice (what painting I do I do in watercolor), and are, as far as I am aware, a very simple thing; you mix powdered pigments (some of them quite nasty and made from heavy-metals) and linseed oil.

Gamblin brings their "A" game by committing utterly to not only quality but also by a committment to being kind to the environment–very wise considering the qualities of some of the pigments, and very appropriate, being an Oregon company. In their studio, an efficient filtration system removes any particulate matter using products from a company called Donaldson Torit. Throughout the manufacturing and sample process, doubtlessly samples and bits of paint are discarded. Add all this waste together, colorwise, and what do you get?

Gray. In the ideal paint world, when you mix a great many colors together, the colors do not necessarily sum up to black; what they do is neutralize each other (an ideal red mixed with an ideal violet, for instance, being complementary (note they are 180 degress away from each other on the color wheel) cancel each other out to the degree they are ideal, resulting in, not black but gray).


If you mix together all the paint-leavings from around the studio and the particulate strained out of the air in the Torit filters, the result is, apparently, a luminous, somewhat pearly gray, with a green note. John Foyston of The Big O tells the story:

Each February, cardboard drums of pigment powder trapped by the factory's Donaldson Torit air filter are added to an oil base and buckets of waste paint, then run through the roller mill that gives Gamblin paints their trademark silky texture. Torrit Grey (with an extra "r" to avoid any trademark infringement) is the result, and it's packed into date-coded 37-milliliter tubes marked "always complimentary, not for sale" and then given away -- 11,000 of them last year -- to artists, students and teachers starting every Earth Day.

Torrit Grey is always free and it's always gray, because that's what happens when you mix together pigments from the dozens of different paints that Gamblin makes and sells to artists around the world. But don't think that gray is a synonym for boring: Any artist worth her palette knife knows that gray is a many-splendored thing. Far from being simply black and white, gray has a range of hues and shades -- they are the mid-tones that make up much of our visual world.

So it should be available in your local gentlemany art supply emporium pretty soon now. Locally I trust Art Media and Utrecht for new art supplies. You will, likely, not find this at your local Michael's, but I might be wrong about that.

Something else that occurred to me was that the Gamblin company (and, by extension, Mr Gamblin himself) are very canny marketers. Each Torrit Gray tube is as individual as what sold that year, and each are valuable in and of itself as subtly distinctive and individual.

It's a quirkiness that lends itself to amazing self-expression. The Gamblin concern even runs a contest each year for the most creative work produced by an artist using Gamblin Torrit Gray, White, and Black oils. Using these three colors is a bit of a challenge, because instead of using color, which, even when inexpertly-mixed, can tell a very subjective story with relative ease, using just black, white, and gray means you work only with value–the relative whiteness or blackness of a thing. As it happens (and this I've found true when you reduce your canon or your working tools to minimum) limiting your range to simply values seems to infuse even more creativity, resulting in works that are even more moving and compelling than you'd think. Gamblin's current gallery of Torrit Gray competition works can be found here; if they change it, just go to the Gamblin page and look up Torrit Gray.

Gamblin has a reputation of care and committment I find admirable. Torrit Gray is a brilliant stroke of genius. If Robert Gamblin only did what he did for oil paints to watercolors, I just shudder to think what would result.

Visit the Gamblin company here.

View the Oregonian article here, complete with a nifty video about how they do it.

(illustrations were taken from the Gamblin site for purposes of illustration only. All copyrights and rights obtain to them)

Technorati Tags: Gamblin, Torrit Gray, oil paints, best enviromental practices, Oregon Companies

A Sort Of Inscrutable Color/Mood Graph

1976.As part of my researches into the intersection of color and mood, I stumbled on this chart. Follow the below link to view it.

Color Mood Chart

It's a little inscrutable. It's not clear how one might use or or how the list below maps to the diagram up top, but it does suggest connections.

Moreover, I'm finding charts that seem to be in agreement. It's hard to say if it's a group-think thing, or perceptions reinforcing preconcieved notions. The trouble with such suggestve things is that we cross-associate a great deal of things in our heads, and no two people, no matter how similar in overall outlook they may be, are really wired exactly the same. The color blue may suggest the same overall thing to the notional you versus me, but it does not mean that while the notional you might find blue with experiential biases toward happy things, I might find it biased toward sad or indifferent or not as happy as you.

What verbiage! I just barely avoided not wading through it.

In this list, for example:

Blue represents peace, tranquility, calm, stability, harmony, unity, trust, truth, confidence, conservatism, security, cleanliness, order, loyalty, sky, water, cold, technology, and depression

From the color mood chart linked above, we have Blue meaning:

• RELAXED
• AT EASE
• CALM
• LOVABLE
  

There is some congruence.

I'm still trying to find any scientific color study (you know, like that one in The Andromeda Strain (the better one made in the 70s, not that recent abomination) that told the engineers what colors to paint the walls on the underground WildFire lab) and will report back soon on this. I'm sure it's just around the corner.

Technorati Tags: design, graphic design, color design, color theory, design theory

Color Wheels Through History

1977.Something I didn't know until recently was that the concept of the Color Wheel itself–the flash of genius that caused someone to realize that you could arrange the producible colors in a logical wheel that not only displayed the natural progression but also turned the idea of color combining into an accessable thinking thing–blazed in the mind of none other than Sir Isaac Newton.

Not to belabor the point overmuch, but this is your general basic additive RYB color wheel. It's more than a logical progression for colors but a guide on how to produce more. To cover the obvious just for the sake of completeness, you start with your primaries–Red, Yellow, and Blue. These are the primaries, the colors from which all others flow and which cannot be further reduced. Exactly halfway between these colors are Green (Yellow+Blue), Orange (Yellow+Red) and Violet (Red+Blue), made with ideal equal proportions of the ideal primaries. Rounding out (if you'll excuse) the primaries and the adjacent secondaries produce the tertiaries.

In practice, of course, there's no such thing as an ideal, perfect primary. every color you get from a tube, crayon, or pencil has a very subtle bias, which is an idea I've lived with for a while and will write on very shortly.

The reason I wrote all the obviousness above is because the idea of the color wheel is a natural poetry that appeals. It's such a simple thing and works so very brilliantly, it's the most simple and effective guide to how to get what you want out of what you got ... it's born in logic and then transcends logic.

And I can't believe how highfalutin' I've gotten all of a sudden over the simple color wheel but I do whenever I realize what a quantum leap it was. I'd like to have been in the lab when Newton hit upon this. Well, that and when he figured out how to make them cookies (mmm, Fig Newtons(™ probabaly))!).

The reason I visited the color wheel is that I wanted to look through history. Wikipedia, while not 100% trustworthy, seems to have good examples.

This, for one, is Newtons original color wheel, diagrammed, correlated with musical notes and astrological symbols for planets (see, I said it was all kind of subjective):

Note, interstingly, that Newton came up with only seven colors. The color wheel's evolved since it was devised. As a matter of fact, let me direct your attention to Boutet's wheels, which came in seven and twelve color flavors:

Ahh, cherubs and unnecessary illustration. This dates from the 18th C, 1708 to be exact, so this was probably sehr teuer, if you catch my German drift. Not too many could have afforded the book that contained it.

Speaking of the German, even the great Goethe got into the act:

This from his 1810 work, Theory of Colours.

This color circle, from a 1904 book, wouldn't look to out-of-place in an art manual in modern times:

It also ID's the colors by initialisms around the rim. Very useful.

Actuallly preparing a color wheel should be something I will do very soon now, since it's simply fun playing with paint, and something I will post here as soon as I can get it up.

There are a couple of other nifty wheel designs to be seen at the Wikipedia entry here.

Technorati Tags: color theory, color wheel, color circle, color, color design

The Periodic Table Of Oregon, Version Beta 2

1975.Did a little clean up and correction. Added column titles because this is more strongly reminiscent of the column headings you'll find on real Periodic tables, and explains the column themes if they aren't so clear.



Enjoy, and view it bigly here.

Technorati Tags: Oregon, Oregon humor, Samuel John Klein, Zehnkatzen

The Periodic Table Of Oregon

1974.The previous periodic table inspired me to create one of my own.

Clicky here to embiggen. It's not finished – I want to create some column headings and add a bit more decoration, but there's the meat of it right there.

It's a big NW-Oregon centric, but that's where I roll. The Periodic Table is a handy framework, though, so I don't see why there can't be a Periodic Table of Eastern Oregon, etc ...

In the main part, the columns are themes which should be pretty obvious. The "Rare Earths" part, the separated part off below, I reserved for real Oregon characters from the good (Tom McCall) to the bad (Bhagwan Sri Rajeneesh) to the Ugly (Ma Anand Sheela), and creative types (authors and musicians, for example) The last four in the bottom row are just there because they needed to be, and there's no room for them anywhere else.

Technorati Tags: Oregon, Oregon history, Oregon Humor, Oregon personalities

The Periodic Table of Typography

1973.The Periodic Table of the Elements has always been a nifty framework to show off witty and wry humor and to combine any sort of element for illuminating display.

Here's type arranged by famililies and classes. It really is amazing how the format lent itself to this.

The number in in the upper corner is the ranking of the font based on a number of metrics. To read about that, go here (Awesomness courtesy of Behance). A link to an embiggened image can either be found at that posting or if you just want to cut to the chase, clicky here then.

(Combined h/t to Larry Fire and Alan Cordle, who both emailed me at about the same time here. A design consipracy! Nifty!)

Technorati Tags: typography, type design, type humor, periodic table

Art Research: Redefining Our Past, One Formerly-Dorky Looking Person At A Time

1972.First, we find out that Martha "Mrs. Father Of Our Country" Washington was quite the rrowr-licious hottie:

Now, we find out that, due to a recently-discovered painting, Bill Shakespeare may well have looked a lot less dorky than we thought:

Kinda got some young Nic Cage working there, I'd say. What a pompadour, yes? Apparently our vision of Tha Bardd was based on an engraving that was based on a sketch, possibly of an Elizabethan bar napkin ... or something like that.

Time magazine has the whole bit.

Yeah, we kind of like art history.

Technorati Tags: Martha Washington, William Shakespeare, art history