I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Linkee-poo sees if this will swim

An excerpt of Arctic Rising by Tobias Buckell. and if you like it, you can try to win an ARC here. Be the first kid on your block to know what happens next.

Jim Hines tries out posing like women on fantasy covers. And we'll put here that the covers are from books that are nominally "pro-strong-female" types and not ones that are exploitative (as their primary motivation). I don't think I can look at Jim in the same light again. Confusion is going to be interesting (btw, Jim is Toast Master this year). Also, I'll note here, this is actually one of the exercises that is used to "cure" people (mostly men) of "porn addiction" (that is, having the patient pose in similar positions as the models). As someone who knows (a very limited number of) fashion models, even your magazine and catalog poses can approach some of these problems (models holding their bodies in exceptionally painful and demanding poses). Not to mention what can be done to "enhance" (ie. retouch/photoshop) the images which makes them even more unreal. As a final note, I'll say here it's disheartening after some progress to normalcy in the middle 2000's that fashion photography seems to be heading back toward the "meth chic" look, and the 70s "violence toward women" aesthetic (granted, I'm not paying that close attention to it these days, so my impression maybe off).

What our logos would look like if comic sans was the only font in the world. And now you know why us designers hate it when a random computer screen font is used for actual printed materials (I'm look at you IKEA and your mistaken use of Verdana). We shall not discuss Arial.

Karl Schroeder has just one word for us, plastics. Polyethylenimine sounds pretty good. I'll have to look at it more closely when I have time because I'm reminded of a medical truism, "all drugs are toxic." At the very least they hammer your kidneys (nephrotoxicity), at the worse they can lead to a faster death. What you look for is an acceptable trade-off between the risks and benefits of the solution.

Just in case you still don't think that the conservative fuckery of the past year has had any effect. Fortunately it hasn't derailed the recovery, just delayed it. Except high heinous fuckery in the next few months. Why? Because it generally takes a quarter to half a year for people's emotional perception of the economy to change. So if a "good" (for relative values of good) economy is going to help Obama this fall, it's the economic news of the next 6 months that will make or break the impression of voters in the booth.

Paul Krugman makes my point about wanting a business man to run the country (or the "my business 'success' makes me uniquely qualified to be President" fallacy). Plus, you know, we tried that one before with the (shhh, don't say his name) Bush Presidency. Didn't work out so well did it? How are all those governors that were "business men" (like Ohio's own Kasich) work out this year? As you get to local politics it works better. Even on the Governor level it's not so bad. At the Federal Level, it's a handicap. Plus, you know what, all my life I've dealt with "successful business" types. I barely trust them to run a boy scout troop. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

4 comments:

vince said...

So what fonts do you recommend for print? Sometimes editorial guidelines will require writing submissions be in a serif font?

And Comic Sans can be used for fun things, but otherwise arrrrggggghhhh. I had a client that loved it, and it took me a couple of years to finally convince them that for a website it was a bad thing.

Steve Buchheit said...

Vince, it really depends in the application. However fonts like comic sans were developed for screen presentation, not print fidelity. For sans serif use I personally prefer Univers and avoid Futura like the plague. For serifs, I like the garamonds, although I've been known to set goudy, Americana, new Baskerville, and a few others. I also have a special place for Trajan, but that's strictly a low incidence and display font.

vince said...

Thanks Steve. I appreciate your input.

Steve Buchheit said...

Hey Vince, forgot to mention, if this is for submissions, use whatever is in their submission guidelines. For me, if there is no font specified, I default to Courier. But that's not what I would use to set type for printing.

Also, there's a difference when setting for websites. Then it is perfectly (maybe) okay to select your standard screen fonts.