Category Archives: design

Thinking Differently

Steve Jobs changed my life. It was a gradual process that began in the fall of 1984, when I first interacted with a Macintosh. I had moved into Castle Moose, a house full of game-playing Harvard graduates and later the … Continue reading

Posted in culture, design, influences | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Evening at the Improv

I don’t always have a week’s worth of meals planned out in advance. Sometimes I get so immersed in work that I forget I have to put a meal on the table at the end of the day. Recently I … Continue reading

Posted in design | Tagged , | Comments Off on Evening at the Improv

Beautiful Soup

Most major science fiction conventions have an art show, an area of the convention devoted to the display of artwork by the Artist Guest of Honor as well as other who hope to sell their work. I’m not a fan … Continue reading

Posted in design, food & cooking | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Re-Make, Re-Model, Revisited

It’s been a little more than a year since I last updated the appearance of the blog. It was beginning to feel cramped and claustrophobic, so I went for the look you see here. The gray background is gone, the … Continue reading

Posted in design | Tagged | 8 Comments

Rock That Font (Slight Return)

After writing yesterday’s post about the remarkable Rock That Font blog, I sent them a one-sentence email: “Submitted for your approval, my homage to your remarkable blog,” along with the link. Less than ten hours later I had a reply … Continue reading

Posted in design, music | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Rock That Font

A friend and reader of this blog sent me this email about a month ago: About the typography of rock album covers: http://rockthatfont.com/ I have never seen a website that seems more precisely designed for [you] — except that there … Continue reading

Posted in design, influences, media | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Best. Client Bribe. Ever.

A Good Client thanks you for quality work done on time or ahead of schedule. A Great Client thanks you for the work you’ve done with a gift, what my friends in the biz call “client bribes.” I’ve received some … Continue reading

Posted in design, food & cooking | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Multitasker, or Multiple Unitasker?

Alton Brown’s conversion of a fire extinguisher into a smoothie maker got me thinking about unitasking devices in my own kitchen. (A digression: The fire extinguisher in that demo is a CO2 model, which is hardly ever sold for kitchen … Continue reading

Posted in design, food & cooking | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Information is Beautiful

One of my secondary careers — book designer and typographer — began with a commission to design this book. Before the project started, the author gave me a copy of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte, telling … Continue reading

Posted in design | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Irving Penn, 1917-2009

Photographer Irving Penn died yesterday. Anyone with even a passing interest in modern American design is familiar with his work. He transformed fashion photography from overcrowded set pieces to minimalist abstracts that focused on the clothes and the models themselves. … Continue reading

Posted in design, food & cooking | Tagged , | Comments Off on Irving Penn, 1917-2009