01/28/10: The Future Is Now
Apparently while I was changing diapers and fretting about daycare, the future arrived. It’s 2010 – a year that sounded so distant for many years, and yet here we are. I still don’t have a ticket to Clavius, I don’t have a jet pack, and my garbage is not being converted to fuel. As I look around, 2010 looks a lot like 2009, and frankly, a lot like 2007 or 2001, or heck, even 1998, except we can buy more stuff online and I’ve developed miniature lines around my eyes.
I’ve been contemplating what we can do to make 2010 feel more like the 2010 of my fantasy and decided to just a pick another year to project “the future” on. So, did you know that 2025 is going to be awesome? I can’t wait for my hover car and the end of global warming!
In the mean time, I guess I’ll focus on the present. Anyone need a designer?
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11/18/09: “Annoying” quotations “irk” me
Before i was a graphic designer I was an editor, ok, more like an editorial assistant. I had a succession of terrible jobs that included editing indoor air quality newsletters and historical dictionaries. At one of these jobs I had an evil boss. She had all sorts of weird trust issues, which she manifested by setting up editorial traps designed to publicly humiliate me (a direct quote in the editor’s room from her: “Jeez, who corrected the year for the Battle of Trafalgar? Me: “Um, I did. It said 1803 on the proof.” Her: “Uh, duh. EVERYONE knows it’s 1805.” Really? Does everyone know that?). She was 3 years older than me but she dressed like an old maid and referred to me as “kid,” as in, “Kid, Can you copy these 400 pages for me?” One of the most awful tasks she assigned to me was to read the Chicago Manual of Style cover to cover. In front of her. Seriously. This is not a book people read, it’s a reference book people look at when they want to know whether to use a serial comma or captialize president (capitalize when using as a title but not as a noun).
Anyhow, this 3-day miserable grind ended up being a blessing and a curse. The blessing: by reading the book, I actually learned quite a bit and knew where to find salient information quickly. The curse: I became completely intolerant of many grammatical and punctuation inconsistencies, the most egregious being misuse of quotation marks. I “hate” it (see how annoying that is?). The worst part is that this problem is omnipresent (see above annoying picture for evidence…why isn’t it just Welch’s Grape Soda? Ok, i’ll give some leeway on the word “grape” but I don’t think that’s the intention here).
Now every time I see signs or documents like this, I have to resist the urge to take out my trusty red pen and cross out. I still do it mentally though.
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09/03/09: Welcome Nathaniel Diehn!
Nathaniel (Nate) Erik Diehn entered the world 4 weeks early on August 16, 2009! I’m happy to report that Nate is doing well, which apparently doctors track by how many poopy diapers he makes (answer, a lot). We had to accelerate the plan to turn Erik’s office into a nursery and for the first week Nate shared space with a lot of computer equipment and fishing gear. He still shares space with some semi-inappropriate movie posters looming over his crib. My mom was quick to point out that the 007 Goldfinger poster with a scantily clad woman and a learing Sean Connery was not typical nursery decor. He monitors the crib along with a shadowy Godfather and a smoky illustration of Faye Dunaway in Chinatown. At least he’s got good taste…
Updating this blog has made me realize I am a terrible blogger. I think the point of blogs is that they are updated frequently. I can now say with confidence that this will not be the case as I find I have barely a minute to spare each day. Just grooming myself takes immense planning.
Feel free to check in and see how things are going, and I will do my best to at least post more recent pictures of Nate. Some day I will post pictures of his awesome nursery mural—if I ever get to it…
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08/02/09: A Must Attend!
There are a variety of things that rankle me about this poster. An event indicates something important, monumental even. Hand soap on sale does not qualify as an “event.” Why is it the “Great American” Hand Soap Event? As opposed to those other inferior international hand soap events? I think it’s bizarre that the signage seems to imply something patriotic as well, as if buying hand soap is your duty as a proud American. Forget about Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s hand soap that will bring us together. Peace.
Seriously, the creatives who worked on this project should feel slightly ashamed.
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