Mailbox. Open mailbox.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766

Design humor doesn’t often enter the mainstream. Serif jokes are generally left to the province of wrists and pixel-pushers. I think that’s a shame, since comedy could open up the field of design to those who normally have a very passive relationship with it—It takes away that elitist separation sometimes associated with the profession. So, naturally, I was delighted to see a video posted by Collegehumor.com based entirely on typographic wit that not only gets people to take a closer look at type and how we use it, but is actually pretty funny.

The video personifies the classic font library, imagining how individual fonts would look and behave if they were humans. Characters are realized largely based on punning of their names: Wide Latin is an overweight Latino, Comic Sans is a comic book hero, and Futura a time traveler. A designer might criticize that these simple puns do not represent the true nature or origin of the typeface they parody. However, this very basic representation offers non-designers a window into the larger font world (Most casual viewers would likely be turned off by a pure history lesson). But looking past the caricature, there exists a fairly interesting and nuanced peek into the interplay of different typefaces and how they communicate. The video manages to walk the fine line of being funny and accessible to laymen and type-nerds alike.

Some particularly insightful parodies I found were both the overall dominance of the businesslike Times New Roman and the interchange between Old English (a highbrow gentleman) & Joker Man (a clown). Old English declares, “Our charge is to illustrate ideas, reason and logic,” harkening to the oldest and most noble directive of the scribe. Joker Man, agrees less articulately with the sounding of an air horn. This is a great juxtaposition of the ideologies between the two typefaces. One is classic, ordered and serious while the other is inanely loud and flippant. Even when trying to be formal, Joker Man cannot be taken on the same level as his colleague—though he’s probably fun to have around.

For me though, nothing is more hilariously pointed in the skit than the nonsensical Wingdings. Dressed as though he were a mental patient, he desperately tries to communicate vital information to the group, but only manages ridiculous exclamations: “Pencil telephone hourglass! Diamonds candle candle flag!” If Joker Man represents the degradation of “ideas, reason and logic” Wingdings is even worse: He can’t communicate at all, not even with the other fonts. His message is entirely subverted by his gimmick.

On the surface, the video is laughable and light, and can be enjoyed by most everyone as entertainment. At a closer look though, it opens up a discussion of how our ideas find a voice through our typefaces. More affable than a literal history of typography, it allows the everyman to appreciate that these fonts have become adapted in our panoply of common type. Maybe if more people were aware of the larger world of fonts, they would be less caviler when using them.

And as for designers who watch the video, they might not learn to appreciate fonts any more than they already do. They might just be upset that Comic Sans saves the day and that Curlz MT survives.

Wall-E & Our Humorous Future

Discussing our human condition in the middle of downtown Los Angeles must be similar to pondering Catholicism in Vatican City. I found myself ensconced in that very topic with a stranger during a recent trip to L.A. As she sat comfortably, her hand over her seven-month pregnant belly, the stranger mused over the psychological impact on those who live in what many consider to be an unlivable city. I myself could almost concur, as Mike Davis’s Ecology of Fear had been my choice in light, airplane reading. The stranger, who turned out to be an artist dabbling in the medium of puppetry, expressed her concern with our general outlook on life, fearing that society can only evaluate itself is through a veil of sarcasm and irony. She referenced Team America and Idiocracy, films whose statements are valid and simple while also brutally steeped in cynicism.

It is with this in mind that I took my $10.50 and saw Wall-E, the story of a robot left to clean up an Earth whose condition was declared to be uninhabitable after being trashed by human’s addiction to Buy N’ Large, a Costco-like corporation that revels in excess. While the first half of the film is a silent homage to Buster Keaton, only focusing upon the solitary life of Wall-E the robot, the second portion focuses on the humans and their massive spaceship that wanders aimlessly through the galaxy, awaiting the day that one of several robots will return from Earth with proof that life can once again be sustained. Yet unlike the biblical Noah’s Ark that only had a waiting period of forty days, the humans in Wall-E remain on their ship for several centuries, causing their bodies to devolve into helpless blobs that rely solely upon hover chairs. Ultimately, the eradication of all physical activity causes the humans to be morbidly obese and lose half of their bone density.

Pixar, a company who made its name by producing classic, animated Modernist cartoons about heroes who work their way to the top despite adversity, finally broke from their mold by crafting a storyline that is relevant to current societal problems. Yet once the humans are introduced in the latter half of the film, Pixar resorts to over-the-top sarcasm, seemingly one of the few ways we are able to deal with the possibility of a self-made, bleak future. While it seems unfair to criticize anything that attempts to discuss our political and environmental dilemmas, it raises the question of whether satire and irony are successful modes to translate an ultimate message. We all know that we have an oil dependency issue, and sure, we got a good laugh from the “I’m Not A Plastic Bag” bag. Yet, did that bag actually deliver it’s environmental directive, or are we simply satisfied with just a laugh?

Now when I think about my artist friend, surely battling her way through L.A. at this very moment, I can’t help but feel that her fears are just. Is it possible to make something, anything, that evaluates our condition without resorting to the sarcasm that quite often comes along with being creatively clever? And if it is possible, will everyone still think you’re cool? Until then, my Tivo is still set to record The Daily Show, and there’s not much you can do about that.

Derrières on the Frontline

In an age where design meets needs we didn't even know we had, how is it possible that we are still living with fashion that does not function?  When the iPod revolution has made our listening and viewing experiences elegant, ubiquitous, and affordable in the same stroke, why must we still suffer from poor devices for sitting?

A few months ago I went to a job interview, as I had been beating the streets trying to find my place here in NYC.  I had landed an interview with a graphic design firm whose work was extremely profound, and whose website had all kinds of personality.  Naturally, I expected the same from the environment of their office, but I was in for a surprise.  Their building was on Broadway in SoHo and the hallways were honey-colored warm, wood-floored, and reminiscent of historical school buildings, but what lay behind the boardroom door was a monster disguised as high design.  Just as future employers judge their prospective employees by their attire or shoes, this experience launched my need to analyze my prospective supervisors and officemates by their choice of workplace furniture.

I entered the office: a nearly-empty, not-even-a-receptionist, pseudo-foyer with an extraordinarily-low black foam couch.  I was asked to wait for a few minutes and then was led into the boardroom with its ever-so graceful Saarinen dining/conference table, peachy walls, swiveling yellow-fin dividing wall, and what are these?  Philippe Starck Ghost "La Marie" chairs.  Hmmm.  How could one balance on this crystal polycarbonate?  Luckily no one was there to witness my game of musical chairs, as I was still waiting for the interviewers to arrive.  I wondered, "Is this a test?"  I chose the lone Ghost "Louis" chair with a seat more than 19 inches wide, but I was already done with this interview.  I think it lasted 10 minutes.  Perhaps my interviewers didn't want to sit there either.

Is there a moral message being promoted by such seating?  Has the role of the humble worshipper on an unpadded bench become the model for chair design and technology?  If this is the case, it is time for Vatican III.  I am finished with the hand-carving, flying buttresses, and cantilevers that cannot deliver good circulation or support.  And no one should feel guilty for this.

On the other cheek, I know that I can spend a cool G per Aeron chair for my office or conference room, but will that meet my needs at the dinner table or in my boudoir?  I'm afraid I do not want to see the super-sporty-tennis-racket chair in such places, much like I don't want to wear my trainers and white socks with my suit skirt, even if they are more comfortable.

Somewhere in a mass of breathable webbing, dovetailed wood, powder-coated steel, titanium hardware, and invisible casters lies the perfect chair.  Since our tools build us as much as we build them, is it possible to develop such a seat without sitting on one to first ponder the idea?

The New Yorker thinks you're stupid

I'm not on board with the explanations of illustrator Barry Blitt and The New Yorker regarding this week's cover caricaturing the Obamas as militant flag-burning terrorists. My complaint is not with the image alone, but rather with the bungled delivery of its supposed message, and The New Yorker's defense that the cartoon was simply misunderstood. Both Blitt and the magazine claim that the image was a satire aimed at those who create false impressions of the Democratic candidate. If this was in fact the case, the lampoon proves to be poorly executed and ineffective: it missed its mark completely (the media), ricocheting toward the very people it purportedly defends (the Obamas).

The cartoon’s visual humor is ambiguous, and its front-cover placement—sans headline, in keeping with The New Yorker tradition—only adds to the confusion. Had it been paired with an explanatory article or even some type of caption clarifying the image’s intent, a great deal of misinterpretation could have been averted. At a first glance, the cover works to play up rather than send up the media attacks.

Since, in the public consciousness, the idea of Obama-as-Manchurian-candidate has not been dispelled, it’s understandable that a reader might take the cartoon’s meaning the wrong way. Its comedy is too subtle: For some, the scene might not be read as preposterous, but rather somewhat plausible. The target of the criticism is also too vague. In order to know that the media is being parodied, the scene needs to change in some way. Something aside from Barack and his wife need to be so instantly jarring, so obviously a crack at the media, that the reader couldn’t possibly take the scene as an attack on the prominent couple. Ultimately, the problem with the illustrations is that this joke about sensationalism, as presented by the creators, is an inside one—and much of the nation is not in on it.

No good ad-man would ever think this situation was merely accidental. As a visual communicator, I find the circumstances highly suspect. It's unconvincing that both an experienced political cartoonist and a major US publication could have so grossly misjudged the public reception of this cover. Perhaps the illustration was never actually intended to be an attack on the media: Could The New Yorker just be cynically exploiting rumors about Obama to generate press and sell magazines? When confronted for being incendiary—rather than owning up to their sensationalizing—the magazine insinuates that the public isn’t sophisticated enough to get the joke. I call shenanigans.

The Sperry Topsider, A Shoe for all Reasons

The Sperry Topsider, suddenly, is everywhere—in the pages of fashion magazines, at Barney's, on the feet of young, trendy dudes and dudettes here in New York City...

Not bad for a boat shoe that, until recently, was associated mostly with sailors, yuppies and grandpas.

Like many of the old-is-new fashion trends of recent years, the Topsider’s resurgence is fueled by a number of factors: a timeless shape, which in the Topsider’s case has changed little since the shoe was invented in 1935; perceived versatility and durability, which are less commonly attributed to unproven fashions; and, on at least some level, nostalgia and irony.

The Topsider's somewhat idiosyncratic look—loafer-ish body, with floppy leather laces and a low-profile rubber sole—is dictated by its function as a shoe for wet, slippery conditions. That makes the Topsider great for boating. But for the average, non-seafaring citizen, form and function add up to a shoe that's distinct, looks good with jeans or shorts, and lets you walk in the rain without falling on your head.

That people would choose the Topsider for nostalgic or ironic reasons, though, has more to do with preconceived notions about who would wear it. There's a certain comfort in wearing something familiar, something you remember from when you were younger. At the same time, there's ironic pleasure in reappropriating the preppy, fuddy-duddy Topsider.

Urban Outfitters, the popular clothing chain that sells thrift store styles at department store prices, began selling the shoe in 2007. Many of the store's products feed off of the same qualities that make the Topsider relevant now: a classic, sometimes quirky design, good functionality, nostalgia and irony. The national mood, it seems, is calling for products like the Topsider.

Maybe it's because technology is rapidly changing the world and we want to surround ourselves with the familiar. Or maybe it's because people just want a good, comfortable shoe.

Irma Boom, in 3D

A few days before Irma Boom came to Portugal to give a talk I asked a friend — and true Irma Boom fan — if she was worth seeing. It's a bit like asking someone if Feist, for example, is good live (I recently did see her live, and she totally is), or if I should be happy with listening to the albums at home (I'm the proud owner of just one Irma Boom book, her 1998 Vitra Work Spirit catalogue). My friend said she was definitely worth the 3-hour train ride to Porto (Boom would speak at ESAD, a design school just outside Portugal's second biggest city, as part of the Personal Views talk series). Plus, Boom rarely talks in public, my friend said — so I knew I was in for something special.

Personal Views is itself something worth talking about: it's a world-class series of talks by renowned graphic designers and educators promoted by ESAD since 2003 which, as a Portuguese design critic wrote last year, managed over the years to prove there is an audience for graphic design in the country; the school's small auditorium fills up entirely for each of the talks, and at times the public even overflows into other rooms.

On June 6th, and despite the bus-load of design students and professors from Lisbon's Fine Art School, everyone managed to get a seat and indulge in over two hours of Irma Boom's books, stories, confessions and everything she managed to share with us until she grew tired of talking.

The very nature of a talk, or lecture — and a design talk is no exception — is one of sharing. We expect to gain something from the person on stage when we see her "live" and "in the flesh", as much as we expect to enjoy a concert or a show by our favourite artist. The success of that talk — as with so much else in life — depends on the balance between our expectations and our experience of it. That day, Irma Boom not only met my expectations — she surpassed them. Sitting at a table on the right-hand side of the small stage, next to a pile of books, Boom started her talk by reading aloud a list of things she considered fundamental in a book. A long, almost never-ending list, which became a kind of litany of verbs and nouns and adjectives that she seemed to need to get out of her system, so she could be ready — and get us ready — for what was to follow. Over her head hung a (I was told auction-style) video camera, and on the projected image on the wall, to her right, we could see a portion of the table in front of her, not — as could be expected from a design talk — slide one of a Keynote/Powerpoint-style presentation. She then started to bring the books, one by one, from the pile into the image on the wall, live and in real time. Assuming a posture she admits to be both wrong and frequent, she had her back too often arched, her head down and facing her hands — hence on camera; her hands, constantly moving, on and off camera. Boom did not want to call our attention to her, but rather to her books: that was what had brought her there in the first place. If the design world has its anti-heros, she is surely one of them.

Considering the main goals of her work as a book designer to "explore the meaning and significance of the book" and to "give another life to a story", Boom admitted only to accept jobs where she can be part of the editorial board of a given project, and where she has the complete trust of her commissioner. She will not be satisfied with being just the "form giver" of the books she works on, the person who will put other people's images and words together in pages sandwiched between a cover and back cover. That simply won't do it for her, and she shows it to us on camera, live and in 3D. With a career that spans just over 20 years and 250 books, today she is perhaps the best example of a designer who fully understands the book as an object, as something that has a physical, three-dimensional presence in our lives.

All of her books are unique, almost precious objects, but Boom is the first to reveal their true nature: she despises handmade books, and insists her work is always the result of an industrial process. From the SHV "Fat" book (her well-known 2500-page, 11cm-thick, stainless-steel-bound mammoth of a book on which she worked on for over five years) to her three-day-fast small book jobs for Rem Koolhaas' OMA, from a much criticised stamp book to "butterfly porno" stamps and the exquisite miniatures she uses as sketches (the ones MoMA wants to get in order to complete her entire body of work, something it has been collecting over the years — but she won't give them to anyone), I would say everyone in that room felt hypnotised by Boom's hands, as they handled many, many pieces of her work, almost of herself. Her hands held the books, opened them, closed them, picked them up, put them down, pushed them aside, pulled them back, leafed through their pages, revealed their paper, their spine, their very existence in the room.

On that day, Irma showed (with all due respect to Eric Gill) things, not pictures of things. That made all the difference to what she does as a designer, and to the way she talks about what she does. But it also meant everything to us, who had the privilege of sharing the same three-dimensional space with her that afternoon.

Irma Boom's talk will soon be available on video soon on the Personal Views website, as other talks by other designers. The Personal Views 2007/2008 season will end with Ian Anderson's talk on June 20th. Photo credit: Luísa Ribas

Vintage Oral Hygiene

On a recent trip to Rhode Island, I stopped off at an antiques market. It was a fairly typical arrangement: a red barn with vintage cars parked out front, and loads of vendors inside. Tables carried the usual country junk popular for decorating beach homes and offered no shortage of stuffed and mounted deer heads.

In the back of the market, I came across a glass case containing tiny, precious objects. On its very bottom shelf I found something that totally blew my mind: a gun toothbrush, for kids.

Now, clearly this toothbrush came from another era—a much more innocent one, fixated on cowboys, Indians, and the romantic side of shooting things. It was basically a form of something we see all the time: a toothbrush that’s also a toy, aimed at enticing kids into maintaining better oral hygiene. Well that makes sense, I thought, I see cartoon character toothbrushes all the time, why should this be any different? Still, this one really set me thinking.

The “Gun Brush” (labeled above the pistol grip) is “Made in the U.S.A.” probably in the 1950’s or 1960’s, and not only is it a brightly colored plastic gun, but is has a functioning trigger! So you can click away while you brush your teeth, eradicating Plaque, and any inhibitions that you may have had about putting the barrel end of a gun in your mouth. Can you imagine a company being able to get such a toothbrush on the shelves in this era of drive-bys and schoolhouse massacres—let alone finding a parent today that would buy a toy gun specifically designed to go, point blank, into their child’s mouth?

But, despite being so incredibly wrong by today’s standards, I am attracted to this crazy thing. I feel invited to play with it, and can’t help myself. The kid in me thinks its “cool!” and wants to know if it comes with a holster, and if it can be loaded with toothpaste too?!