Blog Category: Random


Brand Your Meat with Moveable Type!

By Erika Goering,

This will satisfy my letterpress/bbq needs. Metal type and food are together at last! http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e91e/

Despite my vegan status, I’m seriously considering ordering one of these to brand my veggie burgers, sandwiches, and other foods that need some typographic love.

  Filed under: KCAI, Random, Typography3
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Just a Thought…

By Erika Goering,

For those who don’t know, we’re working with Gertrude Stein’s poetry in Type3 and Narrative in Sound & Motion.

Gertrude Stein’s poems are based on sounds and rhythms and tones, rather than meaning. The meaning is very loose, if existent at all. Reading her work, I find myself rocking back & forth and tapping my foot in a syncopated rhythm to the words. It’s literary jazz.

…And we’re doing jazz posters in Visual Language.

Coincidence? I think not.

  Filed under: KCAI, Narrative/Sound&Motion, Random, Typography3, VisLang
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Compare & Contrast: Dan Mall & Erika Goering

By Erika Goering,

I’ve recently stumbled upon the original slideshow in which Dan Mall states that technology over technique produces emotionless design. (Slide 13 is where that happens.)

And for comparison, here’s what I did with his quote (this is before I ever saw his slideshow, by the way):

What struck me as interesting is that we each approached the communication and composition of this statement in a completely different way. The hierarchy has a totally different feel from one composition to the next. In my blue composition, I have “technology over technique” as an eye-catching, “I wonder what this is about” kind of moment, with “produces emotionless design” as a quiet, passive, cautionary message at the bottom. My red composition aims (but ultimately fails, because of an insufficient hierarchy) to send a message of “technology produces emotionless design” before elaborating that it’s in contrast to technique. Daniel Mall has the hierarchy set up so that “emotionless design” is the large, menacing warning in all-caps, with “technology over technique” as the explanation.

It’s amazing how different typographical hierarchy can show different aspects and dimensions of the same statement.

Design is awesome.

  Filed under: KCAI, Random, Typography2
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Speaking of Printing… (Find & Share)

By Erika Goering,

Imagine a book about printing, made by various desktop printers from history. Printed through a chain of 4 printers representing a point in desktop printing history, each with an assigned color in the CMYK process.

What?

I know. Crazy.

Crazy-awesome.

Xavier Antin uses an array of four vintage printers to print this book. Each one prints one of the CMYK colors, then sends it through to the intake feed of the next printer in the queue. So, there are four types of technology, progressing through 100 years of history on one sheet of paper. And this happens with every page of the book. The registration of colors (or lack thereof) shows both the separation and the unity of these technologies. All of them serve the same purpose. All of them have small, convenient form factors. But the method of getting an image on paper is different for each printer. These methods include inkjet and laser printing, as well as a stencil duplicator (mimeograph) and a spirit duplicator (the ones from back in the day that made grade school worksheets smell good when they came off the press… Mmmm…. printing…).

Stair-stepping through history.

Just In Time, via BoingBoing

  Filed under: Find&Share, KCAI, Random, Typography2
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Why Kerning is Important

By Erika Goering,

Yeah. It’s supposed to say “flicks” but it looks like… something else.

It’s what Ironic Sans calls keming.

So be careful with your kerning, kids. You could end up forming words you didn’t intend to make.

  Filed under: Find&Share, KCAI, Random, Typography1
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Victory!

By Erika Goering,

The people have spoken! Gap has decided to keep their old logo because so many people had a passionate hatred for the new one.

Well, that’s not exactly how they worded it… They said they reverted to the old logo because people loved the classic look so much. (Good job seeing the glass half-full, guys.)

The president of Gap Brand North America had this to say:

“There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a different way.”

Yeah, I really hope so, Gap.

  Filed under: KCAI, Random
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Gap’s Lapse in Judgment

By Erika Goering,

I’d like to reveal to the world my new logo:

Beautiful, right?
No?
Aw, man…

…But in all seriousness, It’s come to my attention that Gap clothing co. has redesigned their logo.

I’d just like to go on the record as saying it’s not so much the cliché use of Helvetica that bothers me. It’s that horrid blue box that does it. Seriously. It looks like some middle school kid from the ’90s did this. (Corner-to-corner gradient? Really? Ugh.) Aside from the box itself, the placement of it is not well thought out at all. Why is it there? It honestly looks like an afterthought. (There should never be afterthoughts in design. Because every aspect of a design needs the same care, attention, and development.)

I’m certain that the people who would be attracted to the new Gap logo are the kind of people that I wouldn’t want wearing my company’s clothes. (In their ignorance of aesthetics, they might end up doing one of these numbers, and that just makes the clothing look bad.)
I hope Gap changes their mind and drops their new logo designers like a bad habit.

If you’re feeling particularly masochistic, take a look at these Gap-ified beauties. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

  Filed under: KCAI, Random
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