Cows and people have more in common than we think. Continue reading ‘Thou shalt not herd’
Who says every written piece of work has to be “literary?” What defines “meaningful” or “good” writing, anyway?
Recently fired Harper’s editor Roger Hodge stood behind a podium last Friday in Durham and told the mostly gray-haired audience why we should despair.
“We as a society have made bad decisions,” he said.
“People in the business are panicking. They won’t talk about it—that’s bad business—but they’re panicking. And now that I’m not in the business anymore, I can talk about it.”
Hodge isn’t new to this area. He told us he got his start as an intern at the Independent Weekly, wrote reviews for a newspaper in Chapel Hill, and even did some work in Pittsboro.
But now he’s very well-known in the industry as an eloquent editor. Even though he’s had quite a lot of criticism, too.
Watching his responses to the audience’s questions, I can understand why.
He shrugged off one person’s comment about making an iTunes-like gallery for articles. Hodge said: “The idea of consuming writing the way people consume music makes me want to become a farmer.”
That sounded kind of classist and elitist to me. What’s wrong with farming?
Why I’m not panicking
There’s an upside to all of this. People who are not ready to evolve will, eventually, die. They’ll just go away. And in the meantime, the new generation will come up, do its thing, and then, when it’s time, fade out.
See my post inspired by a TED talk, called “Many to Many: How the Internet Revolutionized Media.”
Maybe the web way of talking isn’t neat around the edges the way magazines are trim and glossy and full. But the new way of sharing words and ideas is just getting formed. Like the primordial soup from which life evolved on this Earth.
OK, I know this is a stretch, but things start from embronyic places. They germinate and flower. They don’t just start out being perfect, and then, when they evolve enough —like the “beautifully typeset magazine you can sink into your couch and disappear into” that Hodge described when he talked about Harper’s—they die.
The beauty of a page typeset with care and love is amazing. I admire everyone that does this with pride and certainty and craft. But if lovely typeset books and magazines are beauty, I’m more partial to the beast.
The uncouth, uncertain about itself but bumbling about because it can beast. Like Twitter streams, teleconferences, messaging chats, and blogs. And… I’ll even give in. Facebook. Even if the CIA is behind it.
I’ll tell you why. New media outlets like blogs are free, mostly, to publish and to read. And I’m an idealist, so I’d like to think they’re independent. Democratic. A place to critique and offer counterpoints. They’re interactive—you don’t have to be a longtime fan or wait a million years to get your Letter to the Editor published, you can just comment right now. Conversations spark other conversations in real time.
What do you think?
Tell us @designkompany #beautyandtheblog
I’m really curious about this since I just moved back to Durham from Seattle, where we lost one of our daily newspapers (the Seattle Post-Intelligencer).
“My Rise and Fall: Roger Hodge on the State of Magazines”
Center for Documentary Studies Auditorium
Roger Hodge, until recently the editor of Harper’s Magazine, will discuss the prospects of long-form journalism into the future as he recounts his experiences working with writers and offers his perspectives on the shifting landscape in the publishing industry.Hodge began his journalism career as a freelance writer in 1989. After a lengthy detour through the thickets of academic philosophy, Hodge was hired by Harper’s Magazine as a fact checker in 1996. He joined the magazine’s acclaimed Readings section in 1997 and edited the section from 1999 to 2003.
I’m curious what Hodge will say, especially in light of the fact that the Independent Weekly has changed drastically since 1999, when it seemed to have more gravitas. Can anybody tell me what happened?
Who’s going? I am.
Singapore film festival designer talks to DK
Written by March 3rd, 2010 in Design Inspirations and Desk Notes.0 Comments
DK just discovered Silnt, a really intriguing design studio in Singapore.
We corresponded wtih Singapore designer Felix Ng, one of the co-founders of Silnt, whose design for a film festival they’re organizing there really caught our eye.
Check out the website for the film festival. It’s beautiful. Nice to use. Lovely interface, and very appealing.
DK really likes happening on things that are modern and engaging in a contemporary art spaces. Olafur Eliasson at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Copenhagen—all of it. The Kenzo Tange buildings in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The Venice Biennale. The Seattle Art Museum expansion. And of course, the Seattle Public Library, designed by Rem Koolhaas, whose name peeks out of the corner in this image:
Felix Ng of Silnt and Anonymous
This is a still from an interview by a group called Commonpeople. The video clip is embedded below.
Here’s our correspondence with Felix:
DK: Both Akira and I have been to Singapore for travel/work and, like Vancouver, we admired the cultural diversity.
But, I wonder if we were missing the real picture as we were just passing through.
Do you find you have full creative freedom?
FN: I think the reason why we chose to be designers rather than artists is because we enjoy the challenge and ‘boundaries’ that are ubiquitous with a client.
of course, when the client is open-minded and trusts our ideas, will there be more creative freedom - but rarely 100%. fortunately, most of our clients are in one way or the other related to the creative industry, so that helps.
DK: Are your clients ready to take risks with you?
FN: well, it depends. most of the time, the better and clearer we can put across how the idea will be successful, the more willing the client is open to trying them.
DK: Have you had a chance to work with foreigners outside of Asia?
FN: yes, we do actually. we work with a few companies in tokyo, new york, kuala lumpur and berlin.
DK: How did that feel comparatively?
so far it’s been good - most of the time the budgets are much much more realistic then there are in singapore.
More about Felix and how he thinks about design
This is a clip where you can see some of the thinking behind the design for the film festival, and more importantly, the reason for creating a non-sponsored film festival at all.
How four generations built a 90 years strong brand
Written by March 1st, 2010 in Design Inspirations, Desk Notes and Interesting Finds.0 Comments
Building a solid brand takes more than hiring a great designer. It takes more than just an owner’s blood, sweat and tears. And way more than just launching a spiffy online presence.
Brand building takes time. It takes attention. Constant revisiting, adjustment, and recalibration.
And, according to what I learned yesterday from a very successful camp’s director, more than anything, brand-building lies squarely on the shoulders of the people you trust to propel your message.
Interviewing Cheley
Nine years ago DK journeyed west to Colorado by Greyhound from Durham NC, where we’re now based once again, to become part of the summer staff at Cheley Colorado Camps.
Then, a few years ago, I ran into someone I met at Cheley Colorado Camps on the streets of Seattle. It was like reconnecting with a grade school friend, and we immediately went for drinks to catch up. Both of us were camp counselors in 2000. The summer program is for children of all ages in the blue-and-purple mountaintops of Rocky Mountain National Park. Sound amazing? It is. The setting is absolutely impeccable.
But the camp’s marketing materials did a lot of the selling, too.
How to build a brand
I remember receiving the application package, and getting excited with its sheer weight and size. Now I know that the brand was there, strong and clear and evocative right there. Standing on the front porch of our apartment on Ninth Street, the sale was made right then.
When I look back over the decade intervening, I realize I’ve never seen a better sewn-up package for marketing a brand experience. Cheley did a good job delivering on the promise, too. The friend I reconnected with in Seattle and I shared a long leisurely evening talking about the camp, the rituals, the scenic beauty, and the people. All of that was part of the brand promise, right from the start.
Clearly, Cheley has done a lot of work to build its organization.
Yesterday I asked Jeff Cheley, the director of the summer camp that’s been in his family for four generations, how they did it.
He said: staff, strategy, and quality.
“We have two people who just hire staff, all year,” said Jeff. Identifying the right people to share enthusiasm and push energy forward to create a brand experience is that important.
“Some people will just work for a paycheck,” he said. “They don’t really care where a company’s going.”
But real leadership means people can rally their people around a clear and well-articulated vision. They can infuse a sense of enthusiasm into everyone who works for them. Cheley employs 12 people year-round, and expands by the dozens during the summer season.
Leadership and vision
Without leaders who communicate confidently what it is their company is about, staff won’t buy in to their ideas. The meaning of the Cheley camp experience—that nugget that I got a sense of when I got my application packet—runs deep through generations of the Cheley family. “It’s in our blood,” Jeff said.
High-quality marketing materials are another key to their success, he said. From the time the camp began in 1921, “everything sent out was very high quality, from brochures to bills to letters.” Now things are done more often by e-mail, but the idea is the same: communicate quality.
Take the time to recalibrate
Cheley revisits its strategy plan several times a year. The idea is to stay in touch with the vision and mission. It’s worth paying for an outside consultant to come in and ask the right questions. They’ve worked with a group of strategy consultants on different occasions, including Cathy Sunshine of Sunshine Consultancy in Denver.
“Most of the smartest people out there realize they’re not the best at what they do,” Jeff said. Hiring an experienced person or team makes the time spent thinking about big-picture questions more focused, more productive, and well worth the money spent. “I’d rather spend more and work with someone who knows the right questions to ask.”
UPDATE:
Given the recent earthquake in Chile, one of the largest in history, this graphic we created about the history of the world’s major earthquakes becomes especially relevant. Note the clustering that occurs in waves over time. —DK
GOOD magazine features an illustration by Design Kompany, an infographic about the earthquake in Haiti:
About our design
People are too busy to look at busy graphics.
We wanted to put the size of the Haiti earthquake—7.0 on the Richter scale—in context. How many other earthquakes have there been that were bigger? How big was the biggest? When did these happen?
It really helped that I’ve worked on deadline at a daily newspaper: our task was to find story ideas that answer the question “Why should a reader care?” quickly and in a compelling way. Writing solid copy means knowing what you want to get across. Then you can be clear and concise. For brand design, this can be really important—especially if you blog. Have you heard of content marketing? More on that in a blog post soon.
Back to our story about designing an infographic.
To focus just on size and date, we eliminated a lot of other information you might otherwise see in an infographic. Like maps. Our style of design is all about clarity and eliminating clutter, so we wanted to zero in on exactly what to highlight and make that an obvious focus.
More about the contest
GOOD asked designers to highlight the scope of the Haiti earthquake, as well as the aid given to help recover from the disaster.
Create an infographic that explores some or all of the following: the toll of the earthquake, why the earthquake was so devastating, the recovery efforts, and the world’s donations of money and aid.” Judging by Perry-Zucker and the editors of GOOD. —GOOD
What isotopes can tell us about anxiety
Written by February 19th, 2010 in Design Inspirations, Desk Notes and Interesting Finds.1 Comment
This is going to reveal some nerdiness, but I can’t stop thinking about halflifes.
Remember high school science? Uranium? Isotopes? Radioactive decay?
Halflife: the time required for something to fall to half its initial value. In particular, the time for half the atoms in a radioactive substance to disintegrate.
I was thinking about how we get to our midlives, and those of us who happen to have our basic needs met quite comfortably and happen to have lots of time and means on our hands start letting our minds wander. And then we get anxious.
We start thinking about all we’ve lost, rather than what we still have.
We get all anxious about everything we could have done. We think back to jobs we had, places we lived, loves we had. We put on our rose-colored glasses and pine for the past what ifs. Or at least wonder. The less strong among us—and everyone falls into it when we’re in our slumps sometimes—compare ourselves to other people we knew way back when. There is that awful thing called Facebook (disclaimer: yes I have an account), that’s just a warped window to the person those little icons say they’ve evolved to become.
Life crises
By the time we’re in our midlives, we get to thinking, “What did I miss?”
But it’s not just those of us in our midlives who get all anxious and everything.
Enter the quarterlife crisis.
Have you heard of a “quaterlife crisis”? Hits people in their 20s and early 30s who live, most often, in urban centers. Angst, aimlessness, and anxiety are among the top symptoms.
Here’s a description of what it’s like:
You can’t make any decisions because you don’t know what you want.
And you don’t know what you want because you don’t know who you are.
And you don’t know who you are because you’re allowed to be anyone you want. —Kate Carraway , “Welcome to your Quarterlife Crisis,” Eyeweekly.com/article/55882
Pink is for Monica in 2010, too.
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