BuzZ February Recap :: Good Copy is Good Design

This post was written for the AIGA Charlotte's blog as a recap of the BuzZ session I led on February 2nd.

Most of us are aware of the contrived conflict between designers and non-designers, the latter including copywriters. Designers cite experiences with writers who don’t know what the word “edit” means or who simply want a designed template into which they can insert written content without regard for the dynamic between the design of the page and the words on it. 

Likewise, writers put designers into a few general categories: those who let the content inform their design process – more of these please; those who give graphic hierarchy to the copy but don’t otherwise base design decisions on its content; and then there’s that small lot of designers who consider words the bane of their design existence – not fun. 

However, though the training and deliverables assume different forms, copywriting parallels design work in practice. Copywriting is: Creative, Idea-intensive, Client-based, Deadline-driven, a Business, and a Communicative Art. The session’s title, “Good Copy is Good Design,” refers to this parallel and to the broader definition of design as intent, planning, or composition.

Team work, people.

With everyone in agreement that the best product comes from a collaborative process with valuable (and valued) input coming from both sides, it came down to a conversation about how designers and copywriters could better work together. A few suggestions and tools of the trade were discussed.

1. The Copy/Design Brief: Whether separate briefs are involved or the same one is used by both parties, the brief is a proven way of being sure everyone is on the same page in terms of understanding the client and their needs, audience, and core message.

2. Word Bank or Brand Dictionary: While design standards may exist for companies and institutions, this is less often the case for language. I often assemble a list of words and phrases that help me, and the designer in turn, understand the feeling and tone of voice that the final product needs to project.

For example, Google calls their employees Googlers, new employees Nooglers, Zurich employees Zooglers and so on. That in-house language gives off a particular, fun vibe that informs both company copy and design. Compare that to Disney where employees are Cast Members, and visitors are Guests. The behind-the-scenes, event-oriented feeling of that language inspires very different but equally successful, brand-specific copy and design work.

3. Character Counts: I’m not talking about middle school ethics class. The question is how many words must be on the page? This is the most common point of contention between designers and writers in my experience. The solution is simple: decide the count as soon as humanly possible.

But there’s so much to say!

One attendee asked how to present vast amounts of information without building a wall of text. A couple of options were mentioned:  bullet points (which summoned a collective ugh) and infographics. When bullets are your only option, they shouldn’t be given greater design weight than the narrative that the text in paragraph form delivers. The designer and writer must work together to create a visual hierarchy that prevents the “Power Point brain” that bullets induce. Similarly, it’s the go-to graphs created by amateurs in Office programs that make us cringe, not the fantastic graphics by information designers that are rich with data and communicate quickly and effectively to the reader.

Show some respect.

The session ended on acts of professional courtesy. Designers requested an awareness of deadlines and warned against adding multiple paragraphs of text the day of or before said deadline. Writers suggested that, while they understand designs change with development, if you say 500-800 words, don’t  ask the final version to be 400, especially when 650 words of content have been approved by the client after 12 painstaking rounds of review.  (We knew word count would resurface. See #3 above).

Not surprisingly, both designers and copywriters expressed the desire  to work in tandem. Designers prefer to design for content rather than out of thin air, and writers often find inspiration for their work in conversations about a project’s design direction. There you have it – a happy ending.

Written by Jessica Thomas, owner and editor at Speak Your Design, a writing service for arts and design based people and projects.

2010: A Good Year?

It’s the third Thursday in November, which means the release of this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau vintage. To pay tribute to this world wide celebration of the vine, I’ve pulled out a few of my favorite examples of wine-related architecture.

Herzog and de Meuron’s Dominus winery is probably the best known winery in architectural circles for its context-driven design. The building envelope garnered much of the fame, constructed as a gabion system – wire cages filled with large rocks – that screens the light without blocking the free flow of temperate Napa Valley air.

Dominus Winery by Herzog and de Meuron, Napa Valley, 1998. 

hen there’s the barrel cellar, my favorite part of the winery, where the mass and density of the surrounding earth stabilizes air temperature and humidity while minimizing vibrations – ideal conditions for wine storage. I’ll limit myself to three examples here: the 18th century cellars of Loimer winery in Austria, the sweeping arcs of the concrete cellars at Bodegas Otazu in Spain, and Stephen Holl’s restoration of the labyrinthine wine cellars dating back to 1100 AD for the Loisum Visitors’ Centre in Austria. I know this last one is mostly for looks, but what can I say? I have a thing for old world tunnels.

Loimer's 18th century cellars, restored by Andreas Burghardt Architect, Austria, 2002.

Bodegas Otazu's barrel cellars by Jaime Gaztelu Quijano Architect, Spain, 1997.

Loisium Visitors' Centre by Steven Holl Architects, Austria, 2003.

 On to the drinking part of this tour! Tasting rooms have become architectural jewels in and of themselves, but I appreciate the subdued simplicity of Peregrine’s tasting bar in New Zealand by Architectural Workshop. 

Peregrine Tasting Bar by Architecture Workshop, New Zealand, 2003.

Let’s end on a ridiculous, obviously pre-Recession example: the Radisson BLU Hotel’s Wine Tower in the London Stansted Airport. Within a 13-meter high, temperature controlled cube where bottles are illuminated by NASA-engineered lighting systems, trained acrobat servers called “wine angels” move wine safely from tower to table via a computerized pulley system. Ticket change to Vegas, anyone?

Wine Tower by Elimun8 & Speirs and Major Associates, London, 2004.

Hometown Hero

NCDT's David-Ingram (Costume by Erika Diamond. Photo by Jeff Cravotta)

This weekend’s North Carolina Dance Theatre performance was still on my mind this morning so indulge  me for one more post. I took another look at the program, searching for the name of the choreographer and lighting designer on my favorite piece of the night called Arson. That’s when it hit me – Choreographer: David Ingram. I knew it sounded familiar. Ingram hails from East Tennessee, more specifically, Kingsport, Tennessee, which happens to be where yours truly was born and raised. In fact, I think David was Fritz the year I played Clara. Let's just say he's grown up quite a bit since I saw him last, and I approve.
Enough of that, let’s talk about Arson. I’ll admit, the design did it for me: costumes by Lindsey Bruck, set and lighting design by John P. Woodey. The backdrop to the stage was removed, exposing the architecture of the Knight Theater backstage that normally lives hidden from the audience’s view. A single sheet of white fabric draped the back wall from the flyspace to the stage floor.
The great height and added depth were magnified by the performers occupying the stage space and the lighting design, which included several utilitarian metal light cages like those you’d find on a construction site hanging in rows downstage. These pendant lights would increase and decrease in intensity throughout the number, the light shifting from a bright white to a warm yellow, while dancers alternated swinging specific pendants front and back as they moved between and around them.
The effect was such that the entire space of the theater was altered, the scale reconfigured, color drained to sepia tones.  Music by Hangedup, Ben Frost, Rachel Grimes and Piano Magic alternated strings and distortion over heavy bass tones that made the entire theater seem to expand and retract in rhythm like a diaphragm. I was mesmerized.
So here’s to David Ingram, the hometown hero who made his professional choreographic debut at this year’s Innovative Works series, and to the designers, musicians, and performers who made it more than choreography.

Picking up the Slack

NCDT's Kara Wilkes in costume designed by Erika Diamond. Photo by Jeff Cravotta

Thanks to a thoughtful friend, I had the pleasure of attending North Carolina Dance Theatre’s “Innovative Works” performance last Saturday night, which as you might have guessed, featured a series of original pieces by emerging and established choreographers created specifically for the NCDT dancers. While this outpouring of new ideas and energy can sometimes go amiss here and there, Saturday’s performance was one stellar performance after another.
That said, if I had to choose a weak link, it would have to be the opening number, which mixed language and movement in a way that frankly didn’t work. I enjoyed the movement, how can you not enjoy watching these performers own the stage, but the premise – a beatnik-inspired setting complete with bongo drums and moments of spoken word between which the dancers would perform a movement series – seemed oddly dated, considering the “eco” theme that drove the evening’s program. More than that, the words didn’t connect with the movement.
That got me thinking. The arts have such power because they defy words. Art replaces words with movement, sound, images, color. Architecture, too, does a bit of this, offering spatial experience as explanation of what architects do. How do you add words with it becoming forced? Didactic?
Art and architecture should never have to pick up where words leave off or vice versa. It the dialog between the two that gives texture and depth to the experience.
The first number on Saturday night required the dancers to pick up the slack, and, believe me, they did beautifully. While it didn’t detract from my evening, that uneven exchange clarified to me why I care about what I do as a writer and editor in design and the arts. Maybe NCDT will get one of my kind involved next time.

Marginal Behavior: Book Graffiti

In “Marginal," featured in the June 28 issue of The New Yorker, Author Ian Frazier relays his experience at the New York Public Library event focused around marginalia, aka those markings sketched into the body, cover, and/or margins of books, what NYPL's Anne Garner calls "book graffiti." Of course, the library wasn’t displaying just any marginalia. Selected from the library’s collection were the in-text scribbles of literary giants like Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac, William Coleridge, and Vladimir Nabokov to name a few.

Image from here

 For designers, marginalia are probably best equated with one of our favorite ideas – the palimpsest. Great marginalia takes on a palimpsest-like quality – the layering of thoughts, intersections, and outside references that inform and reform the text in question. This is why ebooks for all their convenience are lost on me. Sure, a digital book is great for a beach read I never plan on picking up again, but for those texts that are important to me, a digital highlighter will never replace the physical act of underlining an exquisite sentence or marking a particularly convincing passage. (Sue Halpern speaks to the digital marginalia problem in "What the iPad Can't Do" on the New York Review of Books blog.)

Image from the New York Review of Books

The most serious marginalians I’ve known in my life were philosophers. I once noticed that my philosophy mentor, a certain Mr. Casey, having read everything on the planet at least half a dozen times, created a key with dates on the inside front cover for his marginalia, i.e. black ink for the first read, blue for the second, pencil the third, double underlines on the fourth, and so on.

As an interpretive device, marginalia inspires a certain kind of faith. When returning to a text weeks, months, or years later, I always glance at my marks to get a feel for my prior readings of the material. I’m no longer surprised when my marginalia seem to be written by someone else – someone better read in some instances, more naïve other times, or enamored with an idea for a reason inconceivable to me today.

Read Frazier’s piece and decide what sort of marginalia-maker you are (I’ll admit I enjoy hostile marginalia or what I’ll call satirical marginalia, but seeds of ideas and cross references fill most of my margins).
Do you have a good example of marginalia in your library? Send it in. Perhaps an online exhibition is in order.

I Heart Bookshelves

Another tip of the hat today, this time to Bookshelf Porn, the online photo collection for people who *heart* bookshelves, i.e. erotica for book-obsessed individuals like myself. (A big thank you to my art historian friend, Roberto, for sharing this fantastic find.)

Below are a few examples to whet your appetite. More are added to the Bookshelf Porn site daily. By all means, if you have a bookshelf to show off, submit it!

 And I can't resist this one - a rule by which I try to live (she says as she completes her entry for the day). Ah, the contradictions of modern life.

Staying on subject, here's one of those fun intersections of life. I came across this book last week while browsing the shelves at Paper Skyscraper (which is incidentally the best design bookstore and best gift shop overall in Charlotte): Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books.

Featuring bookshelves in the offices or homes of starchitects like Tschumi, Williams Tsien, Toshiko Mori, and Michael Graves, the book offers what everyone knows to be the truth about a personal book collection: revelations of heart, soul, and mind. Of course, despite all those big architecture names, it's really the scholar's list I want to see: that of Michael Sorkin, also in the book and a potential subject for a future "I heart" post.

Tip of the Hat to: Josef Frank

After admiring Google's tip of the hat to Josef Frank this morning, I couldn't help but take another look at his whimsical textile designs. If you're unfamiliar with Frank's work, consider the recent movie version of Mamma Mia! Whether you like musicals or not, the sets in that movie were absolutely breathtaking: clean whites and blues of the Greek coast as backdrop to brilliant textiles, which happen to be, eh hem, Josef Frank designs.

 Textile design by Josef Frank featured in Mamma Mia!

Watching that movie, (and yes, I like musicals), I immediately wanted to know the origin of those fabrics. Leave it to Design*Sponge to show the way. You know it's good design when even 60 years or more after their original creation, the patterns still seem contemporary. Gotta love those Scandinavians. Design is in their blood.

Textile design by Josef Frank

Exhibiting qualities of whimsy and the baroque as well as a surrealist approach to form, Frank's fabrics invoke such a different side of the imagination than his contemporaries in the Bauhaus and moderne movements. When all was being whittled down to streamlines or orthographic formalism, Frank produced these refined but expressive forms that we still love today.

 Textile design by Josef Frank on sofa by Anthropologie

2010 Color of the Year

The color of the year is...(drumroll, please): Pantone 15-5510 or, in layman's terms, Turquoise. Now I know I'm behind on reporting this. It was announced last December, but lots of other color-focused companies (Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams, London's Global Color Research) are jumping on board.

Now forgive me, but really? I find the choice a bit uninspired. Don't get me wrong, turquoise is actually one of, if not my absolute favorite color. It can be simultaneously earthy and airy, rich and whimsical. Its variations conjure up sea-green glass bottles, tropical water, and heirloom hydrangeas. The stone for which the color is named happens to be my birthstone. Suffice it to say that I have an attachment to the color.

My question is when was turquoise not a color of any year? It has somehow transcended decades of fashion, design, and popular taste to remain a happy, beautiful color in everyone's book. I think it deserves a better title than color of a single, stinking year.

Ah, well. Here's to you, Pantone 15-5519.

Lee Bonticou - Sculpture in 2D

MoMA is currently running a Lee Bontecou exhibition through August 30.

I first experienced Bontecou's work at MoMA Queens in 2004. I was initially struck by the tactility of the work and her use of materials - felt, metal, clear wire, canvas. Bontecou's compositions range from kinetic whimsy to Star Wars inspired wall art (in a good way), but each piece, for all its tactility and three dimensional qualities, works remarkably in two dimensions. Take the press image that the Museum chose for the exhibition:

At first glance, this could be the work of a (very) talented graphic artist. It is actually a photograph of one of Bontecou's kinetic sculptures (Untitled. 1980-98), which also happens to be the centerpiece of the exhibition. Don't get me wrong - seeing this piece in the flesh is breathtaking, but I wouldn't mind hanging this print on my wall either. 

Some might say that all great sculpture works in 2D - art in the round means it should present well from any angle, however flat, right? Fact is that few sculptors cross the graphic divide so easily. Let's just say that Bontecou's sculpture exceeds the qualification of photographing well.

As has been my fate recently, writing about these events takes the place of actually attending them. If you're in NYC this summer, check it out and tell me what you think.

Lee Bontecou: All Freedom in Every Sense

Canned Beer

Call me a snob, but I refuse to let the metallic taste of aluminum interfere with a good beer experience. I understand there are advantages to cans - lightweight, more easily crushed against the average frat boy's skull, etc., but food and drink is one area in which I fail to see how the utilitarian argument prevails.

Then comes along Oskar Blues Brewery out of Colorado, and, you guessed it, their line of specialty brews are available in cans only.

Why?! Our local beer guy (here's the plug for Brawley's in Charlotte) told my boyfriend that it's designed for campers (the lightweight factor coming into play), but we all really know that the cans raise the beer's hipster quotient. That alone made me want to dislike the beer, but... erg... it's actually good beer.

Oskar Blues started with Dale's Pale Ale, the "first hand-canned craft beer,"  but the label has now grown to seven brews. We tried the foundational Dale's Pale Ale as well as their Gordon Ale, which the company describes as an Imperial Red/ Double IPA. Being an IPA fan myself, you can guess which I prefer, but I'm not cool enough to say I didn't notice the metallic tinge.

So while I'll admit this is worth trying, my advice to all those hip campers: carry a glass or, er, enameled tin cup for pouring.

Ode to Ovation

A simple ode to Ovation, the cable channel that exists for the pleasure of the nerdy few. It is no Bravo - no omnipresent, handsome gay man or beautiful rich bitch. How it stays on air, I don't know. There can't be that many people interested in things like a honky-tonk singer turned opera performer or the design origin of greeting cards, but I don't mind minimal company. So here's to a few favorite Ovation moments:

Designer People - Ovation, why didn't you come to me before Amy Devers? I'm so much cooler (though I'll admit my wardrobe isn't).

Later with Jools Holland - Here's to musical talent and small venues but why 4AM?! Another reason to have TiVo.

Bathroom Divas - That honky tonk singer I was talking about? Episode 3.

Reality TV - About up and coming photographers, dancers, musicians, artists, and designers. Sure Project Runway started it all, but Ovation took into disciplines other channels wouldn't dare.

Documentaries -  On every artist, architect, musician, and designer worth mentioning and beyond. I celebrate a channel whose core content is built on these sorts of productions.

Tar and Feathers

Despite nearly a quarter century of involvement in the dance world, I had never seen the work of Czech choreographer Jiri Kylian. So when a friend who formerly danced with Pittsburgh Ballet Theater was raving about his work yesterday, I did what any educated person would do - I found him on youtube. I was not disappointed. 

There are a number of clips from his long works online. "Falling Angels" demands noting, but I prefer "Tar and Feathers," which is absolutely stunning from the dancers' movement (formalism meets the womb) to the music (ambient sound overlaid with notes from Mozart's "Jeunehomme") to the set design. And yes, that piano! For those not into dance but interested in Surrealism, watch the first clip below just for the piano. It's less than two minutes and worth your time, trust me. The second clip is a 1 minute section from the same piece.

For those with time and money to spare, take a field trip to see the Boston Ballet perform "Black and White," a five-ballet program of Kylian's work scheduled for the third and fourth weekends in May.

Tar and Feathers by Jiri Kylian
Tar and Feathers by Jiri Kylian (Clip #2)
Photo: Netherlands Dans Theater

The Musical With Something Extra

Part of my job is to read. I know, it's terrible but someone's got to do it. One genre that I follow on a daily basis is criticism. Literature, art, theater, architecture, film, typography, you name it: criticism speaks directly to its subject and attempts to engage the reader - novice and expert alike - in evaluating that subject, not as being good or bad per se but, instead, relevant or no, influential, tangible, topical, etc. Criticism puts creative work into perspective. It provides informative reviews of a given object, play, or building's place in the historical/cultural/socio-political spectrum and how it may exceed or fall short in comparison. Information equally prepares every creative professional to jump the quality divide - thus how good criticism can alter the course of careers and professions.

Architects hate criticism, but I think that stems from years of brow beating in school by smug professors who have never learned how to be good (read: constructive) critics. So I will not list an architectural review today. Instead, let's talk theater posters.


Yesterday the New York Times reviewed the new production of "La Cage aux Folles," the French musical production that became in the 1996 English movie translation, "The Birdcage" starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. It is a well-written piece by Ben Brantley (click here for the theatre review), but more interesting is the interactive feature on the design development for the production's poster art, "Ad Evolution: La Cage aux Folles." The interactive feature reveals a number of proposals for the ad campaign by NY creative agency SpotCo with voice overs by agency founder Drew Hodges. Click on an individual poster, and you get a closer look with Mr. Hodges relaying the inspiration for each design and the reason why it was (in the case of the final version) or was not chosen for the campaign.

There are some fantastic ideas here. I love the yellow show "girl" with the big red lips, but Mr. Hodges is right - that text is too small for Times Square. The simplicity of the pink poster with falsies, mustache, and the show's name in lights is another favorite as is the neon option near the end. The final version is excellent of course, but forgive me if I feel like I've seen it before - someone please help me remember where. Yes, I get the playful notion of the sex objects in heels and feathers being men instead of women, and this ad is so New York City.  I guess I just go for whimsy or Studio 54. When this show hits Miami, one of these other posters should travel with it.

I Heart Millinery

I have an undying love for all things hats, especially those which refer to that beautiful time in history when gloves, hats, and stockings with perfectly vertical back seams (or the wearer risked a tarnished reputation) were the rule rather than the exception. Okay, okay. I know there are many aspects of that time that I would never tolerate as a contemporary woman, but forget all that for now because we're talking about hats.  

I have a collection, which I know I should photograph at some point – little portraits, my children since I have neither spawn nor a pet – and each one is chosen for both its unique, individual character and its place in the collection. 

One item that is still missing from the collection is a top hat. Whether rooted in a recent affinity for the Victorian or my love of the burlesque, I have searched high and low for that perfect top hat for three years now to no avail. More easily found are the ultra traditional (refer to your local equestrian shop) and the tiny, whimsical versions (hello, hair clips), but I’ve not gotten as close to satisfying my mind’s eye as I have with topsyturvydesign’s millinery on, where else, Etsy.com. 

Below are a couple of my favorites - and yes, I realize they're all black, but top hats are traditionally formal wear. Topsyturvydesign does other colors, but, call me traditional, I dig the black.

What I think these clearly show, besides beautiful objects for the human body, is that quality millinery never strayed far from careful hand craft. It’s not just the details that require the hand’s attention, but the shaping and care with the fabrics and stitching as well. 

One of these will be meeting the other kids soon.

Architecture as Social Critique: Holl in Beijing

Architecture as a form of social critique: we’ve moved past that, right? As practitioners, as historians, as a society that learned the lessons of modernism and reveled in the erudition of postmodernism?

Here’s what sparked this post: Holl’s new building in Beijing, the so-called Linked Hybrid. Now some would argue that architecture cannot be critiqued in the same way as, say, a sculpture or painting, but art criticism is where I started - those be my roots- so forgive me if I want to talk about the cultural production that we call the built environment in ways that reflect the social, political, and aesthetic context of its making. So perhaps you understand how, when that glossy AR cover (Architectural Record, January 2010) came to occupy my breakfast table this morning, I saw a building that spoke to a social condition in a way that the buildings on that cover have not in some time. 

Full disclaimer, I was one of those who spat venom at the starchitects and little guys alike who went running to the money pouring out of China and the Middle East in the past decade. Many defended their work under the guise of buzzwords like “global community” or argued that they were bringing inspiration to the oppressed masses in the form of a free, democratic building style (Architectural Record, July 2008). Let’s just say that I found those excuses unacceptable, simply means by which they could avert their gaze from the reality of those situations – slave labor where expenditures could sometimes mean the occasional life or money being pulled from the starving underclass to feed a newly developing upper class and an ambitious government’s deadline for presence on the world stage.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against the dollar. I like money and wish I had more, but I also have ethics which lead me to despise those who would gain a dollar at someone else’s expense, especially a disenfranchised cog in the authoritarian machine.

Take that for what it is. Let’s talk about what I saw on that cover.

At first glance, Holl’s building elevations are oppressive, concrete grids, stiff exoskeletons that provide the primary structural support. The effect is heavy and there’s no tripartite scheme here to lighten the mood – just the grinding monotony, the equidistant spacing, the squares multiplying up and down, left and right. No cornice to end the march; the building just stops. And there are eight of these buildings, clustered in this new development just outside Beijing’s Second Ring Road. Honestly, the scheme immediately brings to mind Soviet architecture in East Berlin, which did a good job of this sort of building-for-the-people that lacks any sense of life’s color or vitality.

Maybe it was the fresh coffee and morning light, but something sparked. Before I read the feature article (and Holl’s statement that he would never do a project that “relocates” people – Good for you, guy, I guess) I suddenly saw the building grid as representative of the people in the Chinese communist system, each counting equally, square by square, separated from each other by the heavy hand of government supervision. The containment of each individual is palpable.

But then Holl and his Beijing-based partner Li Hu begin to offer opportunities for subversion, slight changes in the grid that suggest an unstoppable human spirit. Diagonals run across small sectors of the building, not breaking the grid or even severing the barriers between squares, but connecting two, sometimes four individuals at a time. This is a slight subversion of the order but enough to hint at the human will to connect and engage, even while operating within the grid’s structure. (Yeah, yeah, after reading the article, I understand that these diagonals are actually the lines of structural support, but why should that deflect interpretation?)

Then come those large swaths of color – the bridges that penetrate and connect these blocky volumes, reordering the grid at its moments of intersection. Like a beam of colored light bouncing off of surfaces, these bridges seem to represent those streams or digital flows of information that are cutting through the society. Try as you might, you cannot block out those outside influences and dialogs. People will connect to the world. They will be exposed to the outside. Being found out is inevitable.

All of a sudden what looked like oppressive blocks with novelty bridges become a subversion of power. Revolution in construction.

Is this what Holl and Hu intended with their building? Probably not, but I will persist. Irony in design is too rare in architecture. To find it in Beijing is the only positive sign I’ve seen in the field recently. I’ll take it.

A Late Arrival.

To all those who know me well, I know what you're thinking. For years I've commented on the self-aggrandizement and narcissism of blogging, my upper lip curling when thinking of the mundane drivel that so many bloggers take for content, a smug smile when wondering "really, who's listening?" Yet, here I am, equipped with my formal apology to (most) of the blogosphere. I'm here because like so many others, I wanted an outlet that (1) got me writing on a regular basis; (2) increased the web presence of my new small business venture; and (3) allowed me to participate in the vibrant virtual community of designers, writers, architects, and scores of other creative professionals out there (many of whom have probably been blogging all this while, dismissing my snears as ignorance - and justly so).

So what is this blog about then? The good stuff. Ok, some days I may write about writing. Other days, in fact most days, I prefer to talk about the latest article on architecture I read or the new bottle of wine I discovered. I love the arts and design, and these days those words cover a lot of territory: architecture and cool products, sure, visual culture and dance, of course, but, also, food & wine, fashion, and travel. Basically, this spot is for me to talk about what's interesting to me today. Is that narcissistic? Perhaps a little, but maybe it's interesting to others as well. And if it is, let me know? I'm all for connecting to a creative community that sees the traditional boundaries between disciplines as suggestions rather than requirements.

Background:
This blog represents part of the new act of putting myself out there in ways I never would have previous to my experience of the past year, namely unemployment which took me to various levels of uncertainty and despair before converting to resolute determination.

One day, I just woke up and realized the plan I've nurtured for myself was not working. In fact, the plan was dead in the water. No life plan is foolproof. None can stand up to Great Recessions or government bailouts or other catastrophic circumstances without giving way. Some plans bend, some break. I decided mine was broken for the fact that it was never flexible enough in the first place.

So what to do? Cliché as it sounds, I decided that if I was going to live life, I better start now. "Waiting for the right time" became the most ridiculous phrase to me because there's never a "right time." There's now and there's later. And if this little niche business was (surprisingly) bringing in work, then stop half-a**ing it and take the world by storm.

Thus my new year's resolution: To be a "better boss of me." I'm investing all my spare energy into really seeing if this self-employed bit can work for me in the long term. So now the stack of books on my coffee table are all new non-fiction, not cultural history or theory as usual but, rather, books on business strategy, viral networking, and start-ups. I've become one of those people... but with spunk.