Whatever

eBay article

2009-04-15T18:36:00.000-07:00

The beauty of the bug:
Selling the pottery of nature online

By Mike Shea
4/18/09
Editorial Style

The faded green locust stares out of the dark pictures, its bug eyes following you wherever you look. Its mouth, stretched wide open, stands ready to eat whatever gets close. Its wings fade off into the black background, the thin veins cutting through the thick membranes.

It takes a special eye to see the beauty in something like this. In this case, there were 18 such eyes, as nine people bid on the locust over seven days, pushing the final bid to $787.77.

Glazed in a rich matte olive and speckled with dark bits of charcoal, the locust measures about eight and three-quarters inches in length. Its mouth is wide open because it is a rare wall pocket—a piece of pottery shaped like a vase that hangs on the wall to hold flowers. This wall pocket was produced by Rookwood, a pottery company that dates back to 1880 and is still in existence to this day.

Dated 1911, the wall pocket was designed towards the end of the Art Nouveau period in international art, when subjects taken from nature started to inform the design. According to the National Gallery of Art’s website, after Charles Darwin’s theories became a sensation, “The idea that people belonged to an ever-evolving nature led to the wide use of the theme of metamorphosis, or the fusion of human, animal, and plant forms [in works of art].”

Because Asian art had long been using animal shapes in their art, American companies that were looking to incorporate nature found that assimilating the Japanese style, often by luring prominent designers, could quickly capture the public’s imagination.

“There was a real interest in Japanese art and influence in early Rookwood,” said Wendell Chamberlain, an appraiser specializing in pottery from the Arts and Crafts period. As for the popularity of this piece, Chamberlain explained: “The wall pocket was designed by Kataro Shirayamandani, who is one of the most sought after of the Rookwood designers. It is an old shape, and that is probably why it is selling for so much.”

Old shapes and new technology—that’s the story of pottery dealers on eBay. It’s a story that spans two centuries, combines the beauty of eastern art with western commerce, and allows the most knowledgeable of experts to compete with the completely uninitiated.

It began on Thanksgiving Day in 1880 when Maria Longworth of Cincinnati, Ohio, opened her kiln, Rookwood, as a place where women could fire their glazes. But her interest in creating pottery swelled beyond her sole artistic desire, and she hired Henry Farny, “a well-known painter of American Indian subjects, as the first full-time Rookwood decorator,” according to Rookwood’s website. And while the artistry was widely acclaimed early on, it wasn’t until three years later when she hired a full time manager, William Watts Taylor, that the business took off.

“The pottery [became] very successful in part because Mary Nichols was so wealthy—she could subsidize it,” Chamberlain explained. “And she was able to get good designers—people with very good talent.” People like Shirayamandani.

As part of the effort to make commercial pottery, Rookwood developed a special glazing process—painting their images underneath and then applying special glazes on top, creating much more earthen tones and a natural feel. There were also several levels of collecting, with easily affordable commercial goods available in department stores and special limited pieces that wealthy collectors could get only Rookwood itself.

Those levels hold true to the antique pottery collectors of today. Chamberlain has some rules of thumb for the casual Rookwood collector, looking to make a purchase on eBay: Look closely at pictures of the back or bottom of a piece, where you can often find a signature and an incised Rookwood symbol with flames around it. Pay close attention to the flames, as the number of them are a code for the date the piece was made. (For more tips on buying Rookwood pottery on eBay, see sidebar.)

As to our big bug, “the locust wall pocket was probably a pretty limited piece—they didn’t make many wall pockets,” he explained.

Julie Glazier, the seller of the locust, is far from a novice, buying pieces like this one to then resell on eBay. She first got into eBay as an extension of the antique shop she owned in New York City. Since then she’s moved on to Wilmington, Delaware, where she currently resides, and continues the eBay end of her business, though that business isn’t as profitable as she hoped.

“I would say that my experience with eBay has been successful,” she said, “although, eBay is, first and foremost, a buyer’s market, not a seller’s.

“eBay is viewed as a computerized flea market.” As proof of that mentality, she quotes a statistic she heard that the average sale for the website is less than $10. Though neither eBay nor any reports on the company could confirm that statistic, Glazier believes the mentality remains. “Such an environment breeds the same mindset that flea markets do. You go to them not to pay top dollar or anything close. You go to get a bargain or a real steal.”

That’s not the way Dan, who goes by danj7670 on eBay, sees it. He should know, he was the buyer of the olive green wall pocket.

“I spent way more on that cicada than I wanted to bid,” he said. “I was... hoping the economy would keep the bidders away.” But like happens in many auctions, a lot of bidders started bidding at the last moment. “[During] the last six to eight minutes of the sale, [they] jacked up the price about $200.”

Dan and his wife, who live in central Pennsylvania, have been pottery collectors since the 1980s, but had gotten out of it for the last few years. On a whim he decided to see if he could find antique pottery for sale on eBay. He was surprised by how many items were for sale, and when he saw the wall pocket, it was love at first sight.

“I have always liked figurines based on nature—that's what drove me to Deco and Art Nouveau,” he said. He also thinks that it might be a good investment piece. “My friend’s father [who has been collecting pottery since the 60s] thinks this piece is worth about $1,500.... I was actually hoping that in these troubled times it might be a good time to ‘invest.’ Who knows?”

Though this is just his second pottery purchase on eBay, Dan has already discovered some of the pros and cons of buying online. Back when he used to buy at auctions, “you had to read about auctions in the paper and plan your weekends around them. If they had something you wanted to bid on, ... you might take Friday afternoon off to go to the preview. And then, even if you made the auction, some [jerk] would be there bidding on the same thing you showed up for and have a wad of cash and crush you.” While eBay has eliminated a lot of the travel and effort, “like any auction, if you have enough time to bid on something you will, in the process, spend a lot more than you intended,” he said

In the end, Dan is very happy with his purchase and continues to buy what he thinks is beautiful, with no thought of reselling it. Though, “I guess that stuff I buy now will hopefully appreciate in value so when I die my kids can sell it for a profit.”

Thomas Rohrer, another seller of Rookwood pottery on eBay, can relate to that, as he and his wife are in the process of selling close to 350 pieces of pottery for a friend from a church group, who is trying to move into a smaller condo after her husband died.

One piece that sold recently was an indigo bookend in the shape of a rook—a bird that is related to the raven—which went for $157.50. Though more of a commercial piece, the bird bookend was designed by William MacDonald, one Rookwood’s first designers. However, the piece’s popularity might have something to do with its subject: the rook.

“The rook is the symbol of Rookwood,” Chamberlain explained. “Rookwood got its name from the Longworth estate. The place was probably named that due to rooks in the woods.”

This piece, along with seventeen others, has netted over $3,000. That’s much more than the $4,000 several dealers offered the woman to take the whole lot off her hands. The Rohers knew the pottery was worth a lot more and talked her into letting them try to sell the pieces on eBay.

The eBay community confirmed that it was the right decision early on in the process. “A couple of guys in Minnesota bought some of the earlier pieces we sold on eBay,” he said. “They readily shared selling ‘how to’ tips and recommendations on price guides they use to value their items.”

Roher also likes the control eBay has given him, as opposed to local auction houses, which refused to put a reserve—a minimum selling price—for anything under $1,000. “[That] risked having things with modest to high value selling for pennies on the dollar, especially in this uneconomic environment,” he said. eBay also takes a smaller cut of the selling price than an auction house and opens up a nationwide market for the pottery.

Selling this pottery on eBay hasn’t just been an act of charitable kindness for Roher, it’s an extension of his own love for pottery. “[We] also sold a nice piece to a man in Florida,” he said. The man sent back pictures of his extensive collection and they went on to talk on the phone about their shared love of the art form.

The Rohers highlight what is best about eBay, and collecting pottery or just about anything else. The website is a great place to not only buy that rare item you can’t live without, or to sell that item you no longer need, but to connect with people who share your interests no matter how far away they are. That community is what elevates it from being just some online flea market to one of the world’s best marketplaces for finding just about anything—even an almost nine-inch long bug.

SIDEBAR: Tips of the trade

Do your research.

That’s the most important tip any potential buyer should take before buying pottery on eBay. There are a number of price guides and books chronicling the history of Rookwood, which will help you learn the ins and outs of collecting. Here are a few more tips to help you on your way.

Watch out for imperfect pieces, which were incised with an X and originally sold for a reduced price.

Be mindful of cracked and repaired pottery. Blemishes and other imperfections also decrease value.

Ask questions. If you don’t get an answer from a seller, then don’t bid.

Look at the seller’s previous items. If they all look exactly alike, and are in perfect condition despite decades of use, be suspicious.

Use the eBay community. There are a number of buying guides on the site that can be of help. And communicate with sellers and buyers for advice. Most people get into Rookwood pottery for the love of it, and just might be happy to share that love with you.

Using history to sell news

2008-05-15T05:46:00.001-07:00

As you can tell from the post about American Gladiators, I am a big fan of anything that uses classic American iconography in new and interesting ways. So it's no surprise that I'm loving the ads for the Newseum. They take classic scenes from American history and place them at various locations in Washington.

I've seen a couple of them on the Metro, like this one, showing the invasion of Normandy in the Reflecting Pool.

The reflecting pool one is okay, but I really like this one of Ali winning his fight underneath Lincoln. The idea of a black man becoming champion of the world in a sport formerly dominated by whites, all relating back to the proclamation by Lincoln freeing the slaves, is very powerful, heady stuff. I hope they keep more of these ads coming.

Real ads have curves

2008-05-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

I got a lot out of Molly Bang's book, but perhaps nothing as much as the power of curves versus points in shaping the feelings about a layout. Maybe it is because I do a lot of shapes in the backgrounds of my magazine layouts, but I'm very conscious of what's going on in the back of other layouts. And since reading Molly's book, I've been seeing curves eveywhere, like this one for Capital One:

Not only does the Capital One logo contain a curve, it's inside a curve. And I'm not sure you can even notice, but there are slight curves floating through the blue background. All of it is designed to subconsciously make you trust and feel comfortable with the product.

Bad show; great commercial

2008-05-12T18:52:00.000-07:00

American Gladiators is a ridiculously stupid reality show, and there are no real redeeming qualities of it. That said, the NBC promo ads for it are amazingly good. The way they combine the American geographic iconography with the idea of god-sized combatants. The slow-mo, special effects, sound editing, all of it just looks great.

I'd just rather see a movie-length version of the commercial than any of the show.

Superhero chic

2008-05-12T07:49:00.000-07:00

This may be a post solely for Gabe, but I saw this article in the Washington Post's Sunday Style section about an exhibit at the MET in New York about how superhero costumes have affected fashion and vice versa. And while I'm not much of a fan of, nor do I really understand, high fashion (as the people I root for in Project Runway are the people who make clothes I could actually see people wear, and they always lose) but this got me thinking about how comic books have invaded graphic design as well. Fonts, images, logos, styles, storytelling devices, which for ages belonged solely to pulpy comicbooks have been co-opted and made their way into graphic design. But they are only effective in graphic design because superheroes have become such a part of our culture as a whole, that they are free to be riffed upon, and people get the references. They are our new mythology. They are our new archeotypes.

I guess, what I'm trying to get at, is superheroes represent America in ways that the Wild West used to, so it's not really surprising to see them start to invade all of our art forms.

Why Warners?

2008-05-12T07:32:00.000-07:00

I started watching the old Christopher Reeve Superman movie the other day and noted that even though it is a Warner Brothers movie, it doesn't have the classic shield that opens most of their movies. Instead, it had this really boring futuristic w thing going on. So, that got me doing some research.

This is the original logo from an initial stock offering. Notice that the shield isn't fully formed, but the W-B is already in place.

In the 1960s, Warners merged with a company called Seven Arts, and for a short time had this logo. Not good.

And sometime in the late 70s or early 80s, Warner Brothers decided to be the Warner Communications Company, which prompted the redesign of the logo to the ugly red and black thing at the top.

Fortunately, they eventually decided to return to the classic. It's also interesting to note that they've recently added the music for "As Time Goes By," the song from Casablanca under the logo.

This got me thinking about the essay by Rand, about how a redesign of a logo isn't as important as some people think. A logo is just that, an image representing something bigger. And Warner Brothers' product hadn't changed in all the years since they started - they were still making great movies. So, the logo redesign seemed to fail, because it attempted to redefine a product that hadn't changed. Instead, they just needed to update the original logo, rather than get a completely new one. After all, as long as the quality of their product remained consistent, the original logo would represent that long-standing, familiar quality.

As time goes by, Warner Brothers' movies are as good as they've ever been. And they have the right logo to convey that.

Selling the movie

2008-05-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

I love movie posters. Well, good ones, anyway. I saw this one for the Poseidon Adventure remake a couple years ago, and really liked it (not enough to actually watch the movie, but still). The way it uses the title in a unique and clever way. it just strikes me as cool.

For people who don't know, there are kind of two schools of thought on movie posters. One is to create a striking image like the one above. The other is to plaster the movie star's head as big as possible on it, like below (for a movie I really did like).

This is pretty boring, right? And what does it really tell you about the movie? Not much, other than who is in it. I guess they found that's all people really want to know. Sad.

Anyway, think about the movie posters that have become legendary, and see if they are sold on the stars, or on the image?

Collecting my beer

2008-05-06T05:30:00.000-07:00

I'm a collector. There's just something in my personality - I pick something up and next thing you know I want to own the whole set. I've always been that way, from when I was a kid collecting cards and comics, to nowadays, when I spend too much time in used bookstores and getting cheap DVDs off the internet.

One thing I collect is probably pretty unique. In upstate New York, there used to be a small beer company that made a brand of beer called Michael Shea's Irish Amber.

They've since gone out of business, but before they did, they made all kinds of stuff:

Pint glasses,

hats,

pitchers,

t-shirts, posters, pins, coasters, mirrors and more. I find a lot of this stuff pretty cheap, as there isn't a real big market for articles about a brand of beer no one really cared all that much about, hence it going out of business.

Of course, the reason I get such a kick out of collecting and displaying this stuff is that you can't get much better irony than having a line of beer products named after Michael Shea, when this Michael Shea doesn't drink alcohol at all.

Blogs: For play, but very little work

2008-05-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's because I work on a magazine, but most of what I like to read about work comes from actual magazines: Print, PhotoShop User, etc.

For a long time I didn't read any blogs at all, but I've picked up a few here and there, mainly for entertainment purposes.

As a big New England Patriots fan, I follow the team from a blog hosted by the Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/reiss_pieces/
and because you never know when something about SpyGate or worse is going to come out, I follow a pro football rumor blog:
http://www.profootballtalk.com/

I'm also a huge movie buff, and I like to follow the business behind the headlines, so here are two that I enjoy, The Hot Button and Hollywood-Elsewhere:
http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/

A few of these blogs grew out of more standard websites, and what I've noticed as time has passed, is that as the writers got into the blog mentality, the posts became shorter, less thought out, and ultimately a lot less valuable to me as a reader. One writer noted that he constantly feels the need to post something every couple hours, whether it is worthwhile or not, simply to keep up with the expectations of running a blog.

So, while I sort of get the whole blog thing, part of me also wonders whether it is really worth the commitment of time and pressure to be timely.

I can do that!

2008-05-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

As I grow as a designer, I really like that feeling when I look at an ad somewhere, and not only do I like the look of it, but I realize that I can do something like that. I think sometimes we lose in the mad rush of schoolwork what our ultimate goal is: to become better professionals.

I saw this ad on a webpage and really liked parts of it. Probably because I come from newsletters, I am always intrigued by the ways that people stretch 2-color printing to its maximum use. Mainly I love the way they mixed together the images, turning them slightly drawing-like, and adding certain layers in an elegant, and yet, old-timey way. I don't know what it is, maybe it is just that it seems to be the Crayola color maize, but I just like it.

So, this is one that I'm going to post on my board of ideas, as I can totally see myself doing something with parts of this.

What's that?

2008-04-30T09:03:00.001-07:00

I have a friend who claims that the best movie directors are the ones who can make a movie that is perfectly understandable, even if you don't speak the language, or if someone is watching it on a plane without sound. Can the visuals carry the story without sound?

Sometimes that's a good way to guage the images we use in our designs - would it be understandable to someone who doesn't speak the language?

I found this piece, and though I have no idea what it says, I understand that it is talking about respecting others. Now, I'm not sure whether they're literally asking people not to smoke, or if they're using the smoking as a metaphor for something else, but either way, it's such a striking effective image that I get the message.

All Things Coke

2008-04-28T10:05:00.000-07:00

I have this half-formed theory that everyone has a specific brand that they identify with. We all know the Apple people - the almost religious zealots who feel that Apple can do no wrong and the world would be better off if we all just used Macs. And I'm sure you've known people who are crazy about all things Disney, or Hershey or Ford. The one I mostly gravitate toward is Coca-Cola.

My Coke love has gotten a little out of control recently, as I've been on a mad scavenger hunt trying to find Kosher Coke.

For those of you who don't know, Kosher is a special process by which Jewish authorities determine if something is pure enough to be consumed (and it's especially hard to find things that pass muster for the holiday of Passover). During Passover, Sugar is okay; corn is not.

This is an important distinction for my favorite soda producer, as they switched from using real sugar to using high fructose corn syrup sometime in the 1980s. (On a side note, when you hear old people say that Coke tasted different when they were kids, when it came in the little glass bottles, this is what they're talking about - unless they're old enough to remember it when the secret formula included cocaine.)

So, to make money from their Jewish customers, Coke makes a special batch of their product using the original formula with real sugar for a limited time for Passover. The only way you can tell the difference from looking at the bottle is seeing "sucrose" in the list of ingredients or the Hebrew writing on the special yellow caps:

Anyway, I finally found some at a supermarket selling out their leftover Passover goods, so I grabbed like six 2-litre bottles. The taste is only slightly different, but it's a bit more fizzy, lighter, and doesn't have as strong of an aftertaste. I like it a lot (though my wife makes fun of me for being a Coke afficiando the way some people are wine snobs). Let's just say I've already found it easier to sit down and drink an entire 2-litre bottle of the sugary version.

So, since I started thinking about how Coke used to taste in older times, I've also been thinking about how it looked in older times, too. I've been looking at a lot of old Coke advertisements, like these two:

I love these old ads. They're so effective at selling, not only the product of Coke, but the lifestyle that they want associated with their product. It's young and carefree, but wholesome and very American. We hear a lot about how brands are now trying to sell lifestyles rather than just products, but it's clearly not a new concept to Coke, who have been doing it masterfully for more than a century.

It's also cool to see that Coke isn't content to sit on their laurels, with their best designs behind them. They are constantly inviting the best designers in the world to reinvigorate the images, like this one, which I particularly like:

You can see a whole lot more here.

Okay, now I'm thirsty, gotta go...

So unnecessary

2008-04-25T12:38:00.000-07:00

For show and tell, we have to bring in examples of unnecessary instructions. So, while looking around on the web, I came across the site for the Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, which, in an effort to show how lawsuit-happy we've become as a nation, hosts a contest with the stupidest warning labels.

I like this one for a letter opener:

One of the lines under caution is Safety goggles recommended. For a LETTER OPENER!

Crazy.

You can see more here.

Fingerprints on ads

2008-04-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

I've been seeing ads like this one on the Metro a lot. I really like the way they used fingerprint smudges to make the famous faces.

You can see more about them and the Library of Congress (who the ads are for) here.

What happens when you're not paying attention

2008-04-22T11:15:00.000-07:00

I had to take a photo of a bunch of people out by the White House for the magazine I work on. I was so focused on what was going on in the foreground and in getting the White House and Washington Monument in the shot that I sort of missed what was happening in the upper righthand corner.

So, now it looks like a metal horse is taking a $#!% on my people. Yay!

This would be a good time to talk about the ethics of digitally cleaning up photos.

The look of noir

2008-04-10T17:23:00.001-07:00

I'm trying to find a quick and easy way to turn color images into a noirish monochromatic look, that will reflect the feel and mood of my story, as well as forgive a lot of PhotoShop flaws. Let's start by grabbing an image that reflects my story, in this case an image from Life on Mars, a British detective series.

I am a big fan of PhotoShop filters, as I think they're a quick and easy way to do some interesting things with photos. So, my first attempt used the Stamp filter from the Sketch family. I've used this before, and I really like the rich contrast and globby feel to the blacks. Unfortunately, you have to be real careful with it, as you lose so much detail that it can be difficult to see what is going on in the image.

To keep my detail, I next tried just turning the photo black and white, increase the contrast quite a lot and add some noise to give it a rougher look. I then added a bit of blue tint because, well, sometimes that's just the way I roll. Unfortunately, your images have to be spot on for this, and with all the images I'm going to have to produce in too short of time, I don't think I'm going to make this work to the level I'd like.

This last one is an old trick of mine, which I like and use quite a bit. I went back to the original photo and went to the Cutout filter in the Artistic family. I usually change the settings to limit the amount of the filter as much as possible (a little dab'll do ya). This flattens a lot of your colors, to make it look like your shapes have become screens. Then I add the Poster Edges filter from the same family. That puts a nice thick line around your shapes, giving them that illustration look. I turned the thing black, added my color tint, and bam, I was in business.

I think this is an effective way to create a unique, noirish look to my images. It also allows for a lot of sloppy work as the filters cover over a lot of detail work, allowing me to add some special effects inherent in a sci-fi setting.

So there we go. Mike's look of noir.

Sci-Fi Noir

2008-04-09T08:11:00.000-07:00

Since Blade Runner popped on the scene 20 years ago, science fiction has become the home for mordern film noir. Filled with detectives and shady characters, mixed with great black and white imagery, it's a sub-genre that has a lot going for it.

This is an example I found from The Animatrix, the direct-to-DVD release that heralded The Matrix sequels. It's a little story that I think is really cool. It's worth checking out, if you like this sort of thing.

It comes up, because as I've been thinking more about what to do with my movie, I've been thinking about just how far I can take it. Maybe I'm just not realizing how hard a project this could be, but maybe because I don't know any better, I might just make something no one else has thought of. There's a good chance I'll end up falling on my face, but if not, it could be pretty cool. Anyway, we'll see...

Accelerate

2008-04-07T08:28:00.001-07:00

In high school, I was a big R.E.M. fan, but haven't really liked many of their cds for quite some time. The new one, Accelerate, came out last week and had been getting such good reviews, I decided to pick it up. It's good, but that's not really what this post is about.

The cover art for the cd has a harsh contrasty black and white image of a grungy cityscape. As I've been struggling to come up with an idea for my video, this image was one of many bits I've been tossing into a stew, which I hope will make a really cool movie.

So, you may end up seeing something like this again...

2008-04-03T07:29:00.000-07:00

Every year, our magazine does an article about how hard it has been for letter carriers having to deliver during the cold and harsh winter (snow, savage rain, mudslides, whatever the season has wrought across the country). And every year, I look for new ways to design it. This was a little snippet from Print Magazine, and it seems like a cool design that I might try to work off of the next time we have a difficult storm.

Graphs and charts outside of the box

2008-04-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

My boss gave me this printout to encourage me to think about doing graphs and charts in a different way. Creating pie charts out of an image like this is a quirky way to have fun with numbers. It's nice to work in a place where we're allowed to have some fun with our content (though sometimes I'm the one pulling back on him to keep it serious).

Little touches of type

2008-03-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

One of the magazine's I subscribe to at work is Print Magazine, as I like when they show a ton of what they consider the best designs. I tend to ignore most of the really heavy graphic art or typography, as those really aren't practical for the work I do. But I love the little touches with type that can set a normal magazine article apart. So here are three I noticed and liked:

I'm not sure where this piece came from, but I love the idea of clipped dropcaps and decorative type as a design element to go with a story about missing something:

Good publicity, as long as you appreciate irony

2008-03-24T07:13:00.000-07:00

They say that any publicity is good publicity. It helps to keep a sense of humor about it, though.

One of the many hats I wear at my office is as the official photographer. So, when the union I work for endorsed Hillary Clinton quite a while ago, she came to my office and I got to take a number of photos of the press conference. It was quite a lot of fun, and a highlight for me.

This is the only photo a co-worker got of me with Hillary (with my serious work face), but it's still cool:

And here's some of the images I took of the event.

Anyway, at about the same time, we had started to get into a fight with Rush Limbaugh over some comments he made on his radio show. That became a running thing back and forth between the union president (Bill Young) and him. We ran an article about it in our magazine, too. (Here's a larger version of the page below.)

So, one day, a friend points out that the article from the magazine and one of my photos have landed on the lower left corner of Limbaugh's webpage (you can see a larger screencapture here):

I think it's the first time that pieces of my work have gotten such national prominence. It's silly to be highlighted this way, but I still sent the link to all my friends (and my mom), who at least said that they were very proud.

How sad...

2008-03-21T08:54:00.000-07:00

I see this ad on the wall of the Metro stop near work. It has an awful headline and graphic design that looks like it was done by someone who has never been through a Publications Design class. Seriously, why doesn't UB simply have a contest asking students to design the ads? I guarantee you, they'll be better than these.

Making "dog bites man" look like news

2008-03-20T12:58:00.000-07:00

We just finished up the magazine, and while I'm not terribly happy with the way it all turned out, I do like this layout I did. There are some hierarchy issues, and the headline font could have been better, but I really enjoyed mixing full-color photos with duotones, to interesting effects. Ultimately, I think a red cross imagery comes through, which is really what I was after.

Anyway, you can see the larger version here.

Constructing a cover

2008-03-13T08:04:00.000-07:00

I'm working on the cover of the magazine I work on again. This month, the cover story is one about the Thrift Savings Plan, part of the federal retirmement system for letter carriers. Because there is matching funds, we try to encourage our members to take advantage of the program.

Anyway, we went around and around trying to come up with some sort of imagery for the article and decided on the headline "Thrift Savings Plan: The keystone fo your financial future" thinking that the idea of a keystone would give me something to design around.

I quickly headed to iStock to see what I could find. On a sidenote, I don't sketch a lot for my designs, primarily because I never know what I'm going to have for art, and I tend to design from my art on out. So, I prefer to get samples of art, and build quick little thumbnail graphics from that, which I'll show to my co-workers and go from there.

Anyway, here's the first thing I found. I really liked the look of the columns, and figured I could add a retiree couple and some stock graphs for a layered look.

But this didn't go over with my editor. He was more thinking of having the keystone be at the bottom, supporting the retirees. So I wnet back to iStock and played around with combinging images of keystones and retired couples and came up with the following.

There wasn't a clear consensus on what was the best, so I made the call that the beach one would probably be the most "grabbing." So, I bought the art and started to combine them. I also took out the 2004 and put in TSP in engraved letters. I'm still playing with adding a see-through graph layer on top of the sky (or maybe not - I can't decide), and obviously the text and its colors need work, but you can start to see where the cover is going.

I think I might move the couple a little left, so they're not completely centered, and to give me a little room for the Thrift Savings Plan text. I'll also add a cool shadow across the sand from the text: "The Keystone..." (and I'll take the cap off of keystone), but I think it's coming along.

26 of my favorite words

2008-03-13T07:14:00.000-07:00

avatar/biosphere/clever/dig/ephemeral/fur/graft/hunt/icicle/juxtapose/kangaroo/lam/morph/ninny/opine/paladin/quixotic/ranger/Sox/texture/undermine/vulpine/watershed/Xavier/yelp/zinger

You make the call: Good or bad design?

2008-03-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

We do a lot of montage covers for our magazine, and coming up with new and interesting ways to make them work can be difficult. I came across this one and liked it a lot. I like the orderly way it is presented and the white and black bands at the top and bottom. It feels elegant and approachable to me.

The part that really made me hold onto it, though is the way the designer handled the year. The use of vivid colors is interesting, as it draws attention to the eye, while the real thin font tries to do the exact opposite. Some people I've shown this to think of that as a design flaw, but I like it, as I think it makes it so you see the year, but you can lose it too, to focus on the montage pictures.

What do you think, good design or bad design?

The Mystery of the Metro ad

2008-03-08T19:04:00.000-08:00

Riding the Metro every day, I like to look at the ads, sometimes getting inspiration from them. One I've been looking at recently, really struck me. It's an ad about wind energy, but uses a construction worker image so effectively that I keep staring at it. Because the worker is essentially dangling there, welding away, he appears to be performing quite a feat. It doesn't hurt that the ad's colors are so vibrant, combining blues, oranges and blacks in such a vivid way. Take a look:

But, the image always bothered me. How was this guy hanging there? He has no safety harness or cords attached to him. And so, I started to look a little closer. Do you notice the ladder in the background? It's turned sideways, but it doesn't look like it is resting on the ground. See:

So, after much looking, it occurred to me that this photo is laid out sideways to create a much more striking image. There's no way that person could be doing that work at that angle. So, I took a photo and turned it sideways, the proper way for the image within the ad. True, it isn't as dynamic, but the photo is still strong and the colors still vibrant. See:

So, I'm not sure what to make of this. Is it okay to change a photo's placement to create such a dynamic change, knowing that you haven't altered the photo's image, or is it essentially visually lying to your viewers? If your photo is strong enough, is the dynamic lie really necessary? What do you think?

Classifying you

2008-03-07T06:25:00.000-08:00

While searching high and low for a classification article, I stumbled across one on Slate.com about the way people use search engines to hunt for data. You can read the whole thing here. It was really interesting, not just the way that the data can be broken up (I'll get to that in a second), but in how the writer got the data.

Apparently AOL kept a treasure trove of records of what each user put into their search engine. This information accidentally got out, and AOL wasn't able to get it back. And though the users are only identified by a number, some pesky journalists have tracked down a few of the numbers to names of real people. So, if you're a longtime AOL user, your searches might be traceable by anyone. Privacy has become a big issue in cyberspace, and this is one more case of people losing their rights to it.

Anyway, forgetting the scary parts for a minute, here's how this writer broke down how people search on the net:

The Pornhound. Big surprise, there are millions of searches for mind-bendingly kinky stuff.
The Manhunter. The person who searches for [names of] other people.
The Shopper. The user who hits 'treo 700' 37 times in three days.
The Obsessive. The guy who searches for the same thing over and over and over.
The Omnivore. Many users aren't obsessive—they're just online a lot. My taxonomy fails them, because their search terms, while frequent, show little repetition or regularity.
The Newbie. They just figured out how to turn on the computer. User No. 12792510 is one of many who confuses AOL's search box with its browser address window—he keeps seaching for 'www.google'

It might not seem it, but it's a really funny article, and you might recognize yourself in more than one category. If you've got a couple of minutes, it's worth a read.

Remembering 9/11 well

2008-03-05T14:18:00.000-08:00

I don't know why, but I feel like I've seen waaaaaaay too many graphic designs for 9/11 imagery. It might be just because I'm quite sick of pretty much all 9/11 references. But graphically, I've found that most of them don't do much for me, as incorporating the flag or just two large rectangles feels like an easy cop-out. For some reason, I really liked this one. Graphically, it is very simple, but it shows a level of professionalism that I don't see in a lot of the others. By linking the towers to the 11, I think the design is strengthened and made cohesive in a way I don't find in some others. Anyway, see what you think. (Sorry for the bad scan - it should just be black and blue.)

Design ideas

2008-03-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

We're not doing much design in the office this week, so I've decided to blog about ideas. I keep a corkboard in front of me at my desk, and as I see bits of design or colors I like and think I might incorporate into the magazine, I tear them out and post them to my board. So this is about one of those ideas.

We do a lot of pictures of meetings in the magazine. They're usually dull, and just show a bunch of people sitting around a desk. It gets hard to find new and interesting ways to show them. Then I came across this piece from... um... well, I'm not sure where it came from. I like the idea of splitting the photo up into parts to individualize the people in the photo and using the splits to give it a lot more energy. So, I guess the morale of the story is if your art is boring, try doing something interesting with it, it might make it better.

Blood Runs Red on Mike's Whatever Blog

2008-02-27T05:38:00.000-08:00

This week's show and tell (in which we have to bring in a poster or ad from an awareness campaign) is probably the easiest thus far, as our Typography class last semester had to create awareness posters for a personal "pet peeve." I chose to do a poster to raise awareness about not driving while talking on your cell phone.

This was one of my favorite assignments, as it allowed me to create an extreme, Frank Miller-ish image, playing off the old "Blood Runs Red on the Highway," driver's ed videos. Anyway, see what you think.

Magazine work - Part 3

2008-02-22T10:51:00.000-08:00

The idea, "Your first thought is usually right," is often incorrect. When I do my work, during any given issue, I find that the first bunch of pages I lay out are among the worst. It takes me a while to get my brain working right. Unfortunately, by the time my brain is on, I no longer have time to go back and improve what I've already done (we work on a tight schedule around here).

So, one of the first stories I laid out this last month was one about the daughter of a letter carrier whose apartment in Knoxville, TN, burned down. Her dad, a carrier in Longmont, CO, couldn't travel to make sure she was okay, so he called the local union branch in Knoxville and asked if they would look in on her for him. They did, doing a lot more than just look in on her and her sons, they donated all kinds of money, clothes, toys, etc., really going above and beyond. It was a great story about solidarity.

So, I did my my first layout without a clear idea of how to tie the design to the story beyond a vague idea of overlapping to convey solidarity:

You can see a larger version here.

It was okay, but didn't do much for me. But after I finished it, I had to move on to other things, and mainly forgot it. Except, the idea that it wasn't going to live up to the rest of the work in this issue bothered me for quite a while.

Fortunately, I found a little time just before we had to send this magazine in, so I went back to do more work on it. The basic layout is okay, and I like the way the headline is structured, but it needed more to convey the distance in the story. So I grabbed a map off my boss's wall and scanned in the states between Colorado and Tennessee. It fit almost perfectly to take up the space above the story. And I reworked the color on my headline to make it fit within the new art and I really liked what I had.

Running out of time, I put the two cities in the story in red to make them pop a little and sent it out. I probably should have done more, linking the two cities with a line, and put a little box to spell out the distance in miles between the cities to make it really look polished. But time waits for no man, not even me, so this had to do:

I think it works better. You can see a larger version here.

Magazine work - Part 2

2008-02-22T10:44:00.001-08:00

One of the challenges that comes up a lot in my job is trying to make a lot out of very little art. For a winter weather story, I only had two photos of letter carriers in the elements (usually they don't stop long enough to take pictures of themselves in the cold for some reason). So, I had to figure out how to stretch those out to make for a visually interesting spread.

To me, that meant I was going to have to do something with the headline to make it visually interesting. So, I placed my images at opposite ends of the spread, laid in the text and saw the big hole I had for the headline. Fortunately the writer gave me two headlines to work with, allowing me to play them off each other, coming up with this:

The nice thing was that because this was a story about winter, the white background really helped give the idea of snow, allowing for a certain amount of minimalism to work.

You can see a bigger version here.

Magazine work - Part 1

2008-02-22T10:30:00.000-08:00

Well, we finally finished our March issue, and I didn't save enough working files to go through them the same way I did our cover, so I'll just highlight a couple of spreads that I put together. This first one is for a cover package on how rebuilding America's infrastructure would be a good way to kickstart the economy and help rebuild good middle-class jobs.

I've been trying to work more with layers and textures, to get a more polished and professional look. Here's a case where we didn't really have any art in mind, much less a good organizing main image, so I put together this montage of three images (the workers prominently, the bridge and the construction crew working on a school). But that didn't seem to be enugh, so I found a cool metal texture, which I lay over the montage. I put on quite a bit of feather and selected the areas around the main montage images and clipped out of the texture, allowing for it to blend together pretty smoothly.

I liked that so much, I faded out the main texture image and used it as a background for my text, to tie the whole package together. And to create a little balance, I brought the unfaded texture back as my outer margin.

For the text, I wanted something strong and industrial, but more modern and not so harsh. After going through about every font I own, I settled on this Carbon Block.

You can see the whole story here.

Lists can be good description, honest

2008-02-15T07:26:00.000-08:00

So our homework for this week was to bring in an example of good description, and for the longest time, I've been having trouble coming up with something. So, I tried to come up with something high minded, like something out of Love in the Time of Cholera or Crime and Punishment, but then decided, nah, screw it, I'll just use one of my favorite movies of all time.

If you don't know the story, High Fidelity tells the story of a 30-something record shop owner, who is going through a horrible break-up with his live-in girlfriend Laura. Anyway, he decides to look up a number of his exs to see what went wrong and why he never stays with anyone for very long.

Anyway, the book and movie are both told from a first-person point of view, and everything is told in record-geek speak, like the top five break-ups. A great way that Rob, the main character, describes each person is by telling you their top-five bands, to let you know exactly what sort of person the character is.

I was thinking about including a quote from one of those, but then I remembered that this bit might be my favorite bit of description in the movie:

"Top five things I miss about Laura.

"One; sense of humor. Very dry, but it can also be warm and forgiving. And she's got one of the best all time laughs in the history of all time laughs, she laughs with her entire body.

"Two; she's got character. Or at least she had character before the Ian nightmare. She's loyal and honest, and she doesn't even take it out on people when she's having a bad day. That's character.

"Three; I miss her smell, and the way she tastes. It's a mystery of human chemistry and I don't understand it, some people, as far as their senses are concerned, just feel like home.

"[lipsyncs four, while holding up four fingers] I really dig how she walks around. It's like she doesn't care how she looks or what she projects and it's not that she doesn't care it's just, she's not affected I guess, and that gives her grace.

"And five; she does this thing in bed when she can't get to sleep, she kinda half moans and then rubs her feet together an equal number of times... it just kills me.

"Believe me, I mean, I could do a top five things about her that drive me crazy but it's just your garden variety women you know, schizo stuff and that's the kind of thing that got me here."

Breaking onto the cover - Part II

2008-02-12T08:11:00.000-08:00

I work with a bunch of writers, so it is hard to get feedback on the designs I do for the magazine (which is good, in that they let me get away with trying a lot of things, but limits me in that it's hard to get another set of eyes that can offer helpful critiques). Anyway, so if anyone has any critiques, I'd be grateful.

Today I'm working on applying some text and colors to my magazine's cover.

I started off by matching the masthead color to the cool red of the flashlight. I also put a bit of text on and tried a bunch of different fonts. I'm looking for something a little sinister and cold, without being completely over-the-top. I started with Albertus here, but wasn't too pleased.

I went through a bunch of fonts and finally decided on Swiss911 here, which is cold and businesslike.

This worked pretty well, but I wasn't happy about the placement of the second bit of text. There seems to be an invisible line for the viewer from the flashlight to the file jacket that looks weird if it gets interrupted. So I moved the text more to the bottom. I also wanted to try some variations on the color, to see if there were any other combinations that worked better.

I gave some thought to the idea that most of our readers will recognize the masthead, so the color doesn't need to emphasize that as much as it does the story. So I made the masthead a more neutral color for the image and tried to mix some red into the text and came up with this:

Hmmm... maybe not. The masthead still felt like it was drawing too much attention. And I really didn't like the stacking text colors. Maybe something darker. So, I tried this:

This might be too dark. So after all that, I think I liked the first idea the best:

Ultimately, we'll put a headline for a second story in the box on the bottom (that's a regular design feature), but I don't have a headline for that one yet. Anyway, I'd love to hear your opinions on which you think works best, or if there are other things I should try. Thanks!

Design on tv

2008-02-11T12:28:00.000-08:00

My wife and I have been watching reruns of Mad About You, the show with Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser as neurotic New Yorkers, and it occurred to me how much I like the simplicity of the MAY logo. The oversized sanserif capital, followed by italic serif letters, with the other words having normal caps of the serif font, but not italic, all in a solid color box. They kept this design throughout the opening credits, with the names appearing with the same design in different colored boxes.

Honestly, I think I could see this design anywhere, advertising anything, with any words, and I would instantly recognize it as the Mad About You style. That's both good design and good branding.

Anyone else have tv show logos that they'd recognize anywhere?

Breaking onto the cover

2008-02-08T07:41:00.000-08:00

I'm working on the cover for the March issue of our magazine. The story, still quite unfinished, is about a government agency that oversees the Postal Service unlawfully checking into the medical files of postal employees, and how we're filing suit against the agency. Anyway, we wanted to go for a spy themed cover, to show how crazy what this group is doing is.

I poked around on iStock but couldn't find anything I liked, so it was time to come up with my own photo. From poking around iStock, I found I liked the use of a dark figure and a flashlight, as they quickly conveyed Watergate and other silly spying scandals.

So here's a picture of my co-worker Joe standing at one of our photo filing cabinets. Don't worry, he's normally quite mild mannered, and rarely breaks into buildings to spy.

I like to play around in PhotoShop to get different feelings and effects. And I love using certain filters to create an illustration feel. So I tried that here.

Here's a closeup, so you can see it has a more illustration feel.

This wasn't quite stylized or ominous enough for the story, so I decided to work on giving the whole thing a cooler, bluer tint. It also makes the "CONFIDENTIAL" lettering pop out more.

So I liked this enough to try putting it into my Quark template for our cover and came up with this.

Obviously, it needs a headline, and I'll want to change the coloring on the masthead, but you can get an idea of what the ultimate product is going to look like.

Pregnant pause

2008-02-06T06:04:00.001-08:00

In class we talked a little about whether to use the "uhs" and pauses that come up in any interview. What follows is the sidebar of a much longer story about bone marrow donation by members of my union, in which I pointed out a pause in an interview. I think it's the only time I ever did, and I had to fight with my editor to keep it in. Anyway, here it is:

Luck of the draw—twice a donor, twice unsuccessful

In many ways bone marrow donation is a numbers game: the low chance of matching, the right amount of marrow, the longshot procedure. Just ask Paul Ferri, one of the early members of the Warwick, Rhode Island, Branch 3166 marrow donation registry committee, who was called upon twice to donate to separate recipients.

"At the time I got that second phone call I started to think I should play the lottery the way my chances were going," he said with a flat laugh.

The forced mirth is understandable because few know better than Ferri that not all donation stories have a happy ending. Both times that he gave, the recipient did not survive.

"People want to hear the success story," he said. "Someone would ask me how it went and I would just groan."

Everything seemed fine with the first donation as he went through the matching and extraction process. But shortly after returning to his normal routine, the 46-year-old father of seven was told that his marrow had been rejected by the recipient’s system, ultimately the patient died.

"I was devastated," he said solemnly. "I blamed myself."

The weight of guilt hung heavily on his shoulders for a long time. And perhaps if he hadn’t come to terms with it, he wouldn’t have been able to donate again when he was called a few years later.

"I can’t explain it, but (my sense of acceptance) was more about God and that peace. I knew that whatever happens, happens. I couldn’t change it."

At first he was jubilant when the second donation succeeded, with the recipient processing the new marrow easily. But then, like painful deja vu, he got the call three months later that whatever ailment the man suffered from had returned, killing him.

"My marrow took too well, because it didn’t fight what it was supposed to fight," he said. And though he knows that he gave someone a chance to live, it’s hard for him to acknowledge that. He chooses instead to praise the program and the caring and courteous professionals who run it.

"The procedures, from signing up, matching, donating through the hospitals, it couldn’t be a better experience on that end. I would always try to promote the program, but..." he trailed off, his train of thought dissolving into a moment of silent reflection.

If there is any value in his experience, he said after collecting himself, it’s what he’s learned about life.

"I learned to value life. To enjoy every day and the important things you forget about every once in a while."

Appreciating conservatism

2008-02-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

I'll admit it - I'm not good at conservative design. I think it's easier to do new and innovative things with design, because it's easier to fudge and not have anyone notice. Conservative design has to be on the top of its game, otherwise it'll appear either boring or off (or worse, both). It has to be elegant and appear as though it took no work at all, which is the hardest work for me.

At work, I've been asked to design two posters that will be put into a display case for our building's rededication. I was given two pieces of text and two pieces of art.

I started here, as it was the suggestion of our chief of staff. But, you don't really get a sense of what picture goes with which piece of text. Also, there will be two display lights above the piece, so I'm worried that any items in the middle will get lost.

I tried this next, but still felt it lacked something. The image of the crowd on the left seemed to be an afterthought, and the logo dominated the right section. I also changed the titles to small caps, but didn't think they'd be big enough to be seen across the room.

After some tweaking, I liked this the best, thus far. The titles pop out and seem elegant, but also look like someone designed them rather than just dropped them there. The crowd now leads you into the text on the left, which I prefer. I'm still working on the right as the logo doesn't feel quite right yet.

The plan is to produce the poster and then put it into a frame with a nice, elegantly-colored mat. But, just in case, I also prepared a color version, in case The-Powers-That-Be just want to do a gold frame with the poster in it (you just never know what TPTB will do next--but you should try to be prepared).

The color needs some tweaking, but hopefully this will keep them from wanting to go down that path.

Anyway, if anyone has suggestions on how to improve, please let me know. Thanks!

Finding inspiration

2008-02-03T09:30:00.000-08:00

The question is: "What inspires me?" The real question is: "How much time have you got?"

I'll try to limit it to something that captured me at an early age: comic books.

Growing up, I read a lot of comics. I don't remember how old I was when I read The Fantastic Four versus The X-Men number four, but looking back, this image is probably the one that has stuck with me more than any other. It's a flashback image, nothing flashy or memorable, but it's the one I always think about when I try to recall the first time I recognized "style." The clothes, the lines, the colors, the expressions, the bad pants, all of it stuck with me. Each character is unique, and it's more than the color of their hair or how their faces look. It extends to what they wear and how they wear those clothes. If you covered up their faces, I could still tell you who was who, solely on their clothes and how they held themselves. That to me is style.

I think reading comics was what fueled me to want to get into design. Both focus on the combination of images and words. And few do it better than Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

When V for Vendetta was published in the late 1980s, it was described as everything comics weren't supposed to be. It was an intelligent, literate, dystopian vision that acted as a condemnation of the conservative politics of Thatcher England, cleverly dressed up as an action story. Many years ago, I was lucky enough to find the original art of the page above, from late in the story. It has blue line marks, White Out, corrections, all showing how art doesn't start as a final product.

Having stared at this page a lot, I marvel at the way the writer and artist manage to tell a single story in one page, while still using it as part of the larger whole. This page starts with one recurring character who is so depressed by her increasingly marginalized state, she's considering violence to herself through the use of an imaginary gun. It's an everyday expression, and doesn't invoke as much horror and understanding of depression as it probably should. But don't worry, the authors know how to add to this story's power.

The page then cuts to a scene of totalitarian police acting out on a crime of necessity. While the police story plays out silently with characters who are never identified and don't appear before or again in the larger story, we hear the voices of the masses talking about the situation, never seeing their faces. And then we get the moment of violence with no sound effects or anything other than the looks of horror on the faces of the crowd. Not only do we finally realize that this isn't a lighthearted story, with the funny costumes and sci-fi trappings, we are reminded of the violent thoughts the woman from the first panel is considering. Suddenly, the gravity of the story can't be ignored.

We finish the page with our hero explaining what we are seeing, summing up his point in an amazingly short, pithy and effective line. This isn't the story about one hero; this is a story about masses and what they'll put up with.

This is a page of amazing power in the brief and effective way it talks about violence and totalitarian governments. And this was just one page of however many that went on to make this chapter in the story.

When I started examining this page and what the creators did, I couldn't help but marvel at the way the images and words worked together, creating something with such power. And yet it starts with only a single panel telling a story. And then that is added to other panels that make a page that tells a richer story. And that page is added to others that tell an even more full story. This idea of layering is something I find amazing and hope to be able to bring to whatever I create.

I started my career as a writer, getting into design later. But as I've done more and more of that, I've looked back to the way comic books told their stories, using the interplay of words and images, one panel at a time, to tell a rich, layered story, where no one part is more important than the rest. I think designers, especially those who work on publications, rather than pure advertising, would be well served to see how effectively comic books use this interplay. It certainly inspires me.