Ten Best of 2009.

Okay, everyone has a list and here’s mine. I’m sticking to it. Here are the ten (10) best things to come out of 2009, from the exclusive Deckchairs deck:

10. Cool writing tools for the Mac. Between the brand-new and beautifully crafted Ommwriter to The Soulmen’s Ulysses 2.0, these applications are serious tools with different flavors, functions, and features.
9. The development of Twitter from a small-time, cute messaging tool to a massive, multi-user global communication tool that helps support grass roots social change.
8. The potential, though seemingly remote as of this writing, that a new and binding agreement on climate change will come about in Copenhagen.
7. A general recognition that spending money that one doesn’t actually have is not so great.
6. In Winnipeg, the production of Strike! The Musical at Portage and Main and the construction of the new Human Rights Museum nearby.
5. New blogs about design and designing, ranging from the excellent and beautifully crafted idsgn to the busy but helpful Web Design Ledger.
4. Unusual musical collaborations like those between Vic Chesnutt, Guy Picciotto, and Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra and Jim James, Conor Oberst, and M. Ward.
3. The advancement of non-digital, non-preachy kids movies, like Fantastic Mr. Fox (along with good music and subtle wit).
2. The election of Barack Hussein Obama to President of the United States of America. ‘Nuff said.
1. The probability of possibility. And the fact that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider didn’t create a black hole yet.

99.

I’ve been mulling the future of design for the past few days, as I’ve had a few brief but turbulent encounters with clients around cost and deliverables. Most of my worries have been around this incredible rapid race to the bottom. Every day I receive emails from (semi-legitimate or real) companies in India, Russian, or Romania that, in essence, are offering web design and/or development services for $8.00 per hour or less. I fully understand that, in this race, everyone is hungry, everyone need to make money and that developed countries (e.g. Canada) has an inordinate leg up on against developing countries.

Where it gets incredibly messy and grotesque, in my opinion, is on sites like 99designs.com. There, clients don’t need to argue with designers to provide a lower price for high quality service. That’s simply the modus operandi. Clients go to 99 because they only want to pay that amount and, from my observations, it looks like they’re all getting a good deal. The designs are competent, the quality is quite high, and the timing may be on. But what’s missing is that inexplicable construct which comes with truly great design - a personality, a spirit of assurance or a logic that escapes the traditional. Does this mean that only well-heeled and monetarily blessed individuals and organizations can afford enlightened or unique design? It does. And the reality is that this is how design (and aesthetic production more generally) has always worked. Because nearly anyone with a computer today can be a knowledge or culture worker (or both), the playing field is level. The same goes with video editors, journalists, and programmers. But, because this has happened so quickly, we still don’t have mechanisms to rule out what is merely good from what is great.

Sites like Haystack, recently launched by 37signals, make an attempt at helping people choose a design firm that matches their requirements. But their model, where some agencies and designers can pay for an elevated position on the site, belie and undermine their intention. Taking money from companies that may or may not be better at communicating prospective client needs and showcasing those companies is not a useful proposition. Instead, Haystack takes the 99designs.com model and turns it around; the wealthiest and most marketing-focused design firms are provided leverage in the competition. In this way (and in this way only), I believe that the latter is, ethically, on more solid ground; 99designs.com, at least, honestly allows multiple entities to compete for a given (albeit low) amount of business.

What is missing here, in this novel short-sighted design context, is the relationship. I’ve always said that, for my little company, the relationship is everything. The auctioning or advertising of services (two sides of the same ugly coin) won’t buy long-term design, unique imagery, or usable and accessible production. In this supposedly “democratic” connectedness, it’s not connection that buys good design, as nearly everyone has that. Rather, and simply, the best design today stems from relationships and the unfolding of solutions through dialogue and time.

Four Months.

It’s been four short months since I last wrote on Deckchairs. I want to apologize to my (few) but dedicated followers who have, during that time, consistently urged me to get my writing act together and to pay more attention to the damn thing. I don’t have much to hold up in defense of my absence. I didn’t get run through the washing machine. I didn’t win the scratch-and-win at the 7-11. I didn’t forget how to put sentences together (well, maybe a little). I simply lost the feeling for writing anything other than business proposals. That, and Twitter. Stupid Twitter, which I quite adore. According to the Twitter statosphere, I’ve tweeted 755 times, all of them brilliantly, of course.

I’ve been compelled to write because I just came back from a wonderful evening event sponsored by New Media Manitoba, where they featured a 45-minute film showcasing industry folks in the province. I was one of them and I’m so completely humbled by the whole thing. I, nervous Nelly, sat two-stories high at the IMAX theatre (note the new spelling) expounding on my travels North and my satisfaction at doing so. I’m extremely thankful for the incredible production work that Blink Works did on my segment - taking bits and pieces of visual logic, portfolio items, photographs, and their video production and making it into a stunning little vignette. It’s truly genius work and I promise to post all or part of the production here as soon as it’s available.

Thank you NMM for this and more.

Alive with Pleasure.

Okay, this rocks: a video entitled “Alive with Pleasure” by Viva Voce. Great vocals, Guy Maddin cheap effects, a white double-neck guitar, and a story that is funnier upon second watching. Over one year old, but a valuable procrastination tool:

The Last of Newsweek.

I promise that this will be the last post on Newsweek (probably) for some time, but I figured it was worth following up after having attempted to redesign a few pages of the magazine.

First off, a number of other sites picked up on the design and their reviews are worth reading. In particular, magCulture.com writes in Newsweek relaunch: “Unless I’m missing something here, this is a bit of of tricksy over-design that doesn’t suit a magazine claiming depth and intelligence.” I think this sums up the entire experience of the magazine. Further down the page, a commenter writes “I feel like I lost a close friend.” My sentiments exactly. Great site, magCulture, by the way.

Second, it appears that the design was executed (my word) by Number 17. I can’t speak to their other work, which looks fine enough, but they have a lot to answer for with this project (or their client does). (FYI, Number 17, your site doesn’t work on the iPhone and isn’t accessible.)

Next, I found some interesting commentary by James Robinson about the size and losses of the magazine, which is sad on top of sad. Writer and art director Mark Porter writes about the design’s fundamental randomness on his site. As well, a really nicely crafted new design blog called idsgn writes Newsweek, can a redesign save the dying magazine? and pick up my redesign.

Font identification update: It appears that the redesign uses Village’s Flama for headlines. Most of the magazine’s new text itself appears to be using Christian Schwartz’s Farnham. And then there’s Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ Archer used for much of the body text in the front of the book. On their own, each of these typefaces are elegant, unpretentious, modern, and extremely legible. Mixed into the cauldron of the Newsweek redesign, they look like hell.

Finally, some inquired as to where I work. I run a small design firm called MANOVERBOARD. I’d be happy to hear from anyone with thoughts or questions.

Oh: I cancelled Newsweek and I was kindly sent a check for the remainder of my two-year subscription.

Redesigning Newsweek.

A few weeks ago, I kidded on Twitter that I was redesigning Newsweek because I was so utterly disgusted with the publication’s recent redesign. You can read my full venting on the subject, if you’re interested.

Newsweek’s new design takes relatively staid stock imagery, some very well written content, and a few strong typefaces and somehow manages to ruin all of them in one fell swoop. The totality of the presentation is a mess, with sloppy layout, poor typography, inconsistent styling, and a seeming lack of interest in engaging the reader.

So, I decided to redesign to Newsweek—or at least a few pages of the magazine.*

I had the following overarching objectives:

• Use the same or very similar fonts
• Make use of the general look and feel of the magazine that I’ve known for many years (and even capture some of the nuances of the current magazine)
• Ensure that the presentation could actually be used by the magazine

These objectives were defined to better put myself in the shoes of the art director and to feel that the assignment would have a result that would be useful and utilizable.

Concomitantly, I set up the following limitations:

• I would not spent more than 2 total hours on the project
• The redesign would use exactly the same copy as in the original magazine
• No truly new graphics (e.g., icons, textures, etc.) would be introduced

These restrictions would ensure that I felt that I didn’t have free license to do whatever the hell I want. Rather, as the Fake Art Director, I had to make use of the same basic resources available to the real one.

The Original

I chose to use the Crazy Oprah issue of Newsweek (June 8, 2009) because, in part, the cover felt so angry, and even mildly racist. Here the magazine used an unflattering photograph of a powerful and influential person and subjected her to an unsubtle and unsophisticated visual presentation.

I also chose two interior pages from this same issue that interested me. These were Fareed Zakaria’s “Boom Times are Back”, a piece about the potential decline of influence of the United States, and an back-of-the-book article on Elvis Costello by Seth Colter Walls entitled “He’s a Little Bit Country.” The latter also had a strange column at the bottom of the page called “The Prognosticator”.

A Revision

I started the revision by reworking Zakaria’s piece. I wanted to try to use, as much as possible, the exact same font families that are in the original design. Included was Hoefler & Frere-Jones’s beautiful slab serif Archer for headlines, which does not work at all for the magazine. I believe the main font used for the body is a grade of H & FJ’s lovely Mercury Text, but I’m not sure. I wanted to see if I even had a chance of making it work.

As you can see, I failed. It’s no better than the original.

The Revision

I looked through my toolbox and found that two relatively new font families would work beautifully here: Christian Schwartz’s Stag for headlines and callouts and Veronika Burian’s fabulous Karmina for the body. Stag is a sturdy but smart slab face with roots in the magazine world; it was originally commissioned for Esquire. Karmina was developed for difficult print conditions and it reads crisply and elegantly at small sizes.

Using wider margins and gutters and larger images and these typefaces, I restyled the same copy with cleaner, clearer headlines that actually spoke to me.

I then replicated the general styling of this page for the piece on Costello and “The Prognosticator” section.

Finally, I tackled the cover. In some ways, this was the easiest part of the redesign. Through the power of Google, I found a much more flattering photograph of Oprah Winfrey. If the editors wanted to insult her or her fans, at least they could do it in a more subtle way. Using DINSchrift for the knocked out headline, I placed it over the mouth, which is also the central spot of the book. The sub-header is less important but I gave more prominence to the byline, which to my eyes should have more weight.

I found an older version of the Newsweek logo for the masthead, which I prefer. It’s chunkier, thicker, and feels more honest, somehow than the leaner, Slim-Fast version on the newsstands. Related, I extended the red masthead left and right to bleed off the page; this makes the cover feel more full, more serious, and brighter. Finally, I centered the dateline above the logo and placed the coverlines at the top that showcased top stories within the magazine. (While I appreciate the simplicity of a minimalist magazine cover, by not indicating featured content, I’m not sure what I’m buying in a magazine besides for a cover story.)

The end result is not perfect by any means. My revision, if anything, feels a bit too colorful and too People-magazine for a Newsweek audience. At the same time, I can honestly say that I’d rather read my redesign than theirs.

If you’re interested, you can download a PDF (quite large at 2.6 MB) of the redesign to see some of the details.

*Disclaimer: the logos and all content used in the redesign are copyright Newsweek, Inc. Photos of celebs and other images used in the redesign were gained via Google and are copyright their respective authors.

I Want You Back.

It didn’t get much better than this: the Jackson Five play for the first time on Dick Clark’s Bandstand. I’m guessing this is around 1970.

R.I.P. Michael.