Fill/Stroke.com
Fill/Stroke Supports Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
I would like to take a moment to express our views of the upcoming election. Though it may be obvious in our posts, we here are all supporters of electing Barack Obama. We believe he is the best option for our country, given the past 8 years that we’ve all been put through. He supports a new direction away from our current downward spiral, both economically, as well as in foreign policy. John McCain, though a good man, is not right for the position of President, least of all with a running mate as ignorant and corrupt as Sarah Palin.
This post, this public support of a candidate will likely beg the question “Why are you talking about this here? Why are you talking about politics on your design oriented blog?”
The first reason is the importance of being part of an alternative media from (i.e. blogging, the internet, social networking media) and adding relevant, thoughtful and timely information and opinion, to counteract the simple-minded and incorrectly focused news casting methods of the television media.
Another reason ultimately connects in large part to our general approach to design as a profession:
Design is more than design.
This might seem like a redundant and pointless statement, but its importance can be seen through some explanation.
Design is affected by everything. Being a designer who only reads design blogs, design books and looks at other designers work, will become a mimic, an uninformed, and therefore, unimportant, part of a large body of thoughtless, meaningless design work.
Being part of the global community, being an active member in all parts of society, life and the future are how designers can really affect the world through their work. One track mindedness only leads to repetition and uninspired end products.
I personally find that reading about science, politics, societal trends, global connectedness, the ideas of how language is formed and interpreted, advancements in developing countries, etc etc etc all effect me as a person and me as a designer. My magazine list doesn’t just include Print and Creative Review and Dot Dot Dot. It includes Seed, Scientific American, The Economist, Skeptic Magazine, Buffalo Beast, and many others unrelated to design at all.
So, while we are a design magazine, while we focus and live and breathe design and those things directly related to it, we find that all of what we are, all of what we do, can benefit from a broader intelligence level and a broader, more rounded interest collection.
With that being said, here is a list of links talking about issues related to the campaign. We will continue to post reasons for our views, articles that we find express ideas we believe in, and in general try and point out the reasons you should vote for Barack Obama.
We fully appreciate feedback and debate here.
Letter to McCain Supporter Pt 1
Letter to McCain Supporter Pt 2
100 Reasons Not To Vote For McCain
3 comments. Posted by md in politics, rant, writing on 18 September 2008.
Rejecting the familiar with Intel’s Digital Home Initiatives team
Since I moved to Arizona four years ago, I’ve been working tirelessly for the man, specifically designing web sites and other digital miscellanea. Tired of the same old song and dance, I set out to spend my summer working for as small a firm as possible, exclusively in print.
Its funny how often I am reminded; life cannot be planned.
Intel, for those of you in the dark, is the world’s largest semiconductor company and employs nearly 90,000 worldwide. They invented the x86 series of microprocessors, or for the technophobes, the brains that power most personal computers. Read more. →
2 comments. Posted by tanner in conceptual, experimentation, innovation, writing on 14 August 2008.
Since the original post regarding incspring.com and it’s practices, we got a lot of responses and comments, good and bad, incspring got a new logo (I guess they wanted to brand themselves better, the first time wasn’t right for them. hmm…) and Speakup did an indepth review of similar logo websites.
No comments. Posted by md in branding, interwebs, opinion, writing on 11 August 2008.
I went to Drexel University before I transferred to Arizona State. I was only there for a little less than two years, but I still remember a few of my teachers: A somewhat crazy, but awesome teacher named Mircea Popescu, who had a thick Romanian (I think?) accent, and who reminds me of the professor in The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd. Jack Cliggett, part of the reason I left, because he threatened to fail me for who knows what reason anymore. I ended up passing, but had already made up my mind to leave. A teacher for my color theory class, who during a final review hated my project so much, he would reference it when critiquing the other students “Well, at least its not as bad as his.”
I remember, too, the head of the department, Sandy Stewart, who I had for a branding development class. She reminds me of Paula Scher and was infinitely nice, but scary intimidating too. Whenever I work on a logo, I hear her say something along the lines of “It must work in black and white before it can work at all.” in the back of my head. I remember her letting me go forward with some crazy logo involving a fly wearing glasses, and I remember when I was so flustered during a presentation that I started pronouncing silent letters (I said sub-tull instead of subtle, and felt like an ass) she laughed it off and calmed me down.
And John Langdon, who was just a really decent person, politically active, long-haired, kind teacher who invented really trippy typographic illusions called ambigrams. I enjoyed his classes a lot, and was sad to not get more opportunities to learn with him when I transferred.
It wasn’t until a couple years later, when I’d already left, that I came across his ambigrams in Angels & Demons by Dan Brown.
Read more. →
5 comments. Posted by md in art, interwebs, typography, writing on 3 August 2008.
I found this gem floating around the blogs, and I think it’s just excellent.
The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.
3 comments. Posted by md in advice, writing on 19 July 2008.
