the book reminded me of something i'd known but consciously forgotten by now: one of the most valuable things i learned from getting my degree in writing is that <em>writing itself isn't difficult -- it's sitting down and getting the writing done that will defeat you.... we had to write in the middle of the loud and noisy cafeteria, we had to write on the grassy lawn in the sun with sleep calling us; we had to write in cold classrooms, we had to write at computers, and with pens and by hand to break us of the habit of getting attached to any one form.... pressfield makes a list of things that generate Resistance, and i thought it'd be interesting to put in bold the ones that currently apply to me: <blockquote><strong>1) The pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance, or any creative art, however marginal or unconventional.</strong> [should be pretty obvious] <strong>2) The launching of any entrepreneurial venture or enterprise, for profit or otherwise.
Read Morewebsites for $30?
i'm willing to do work for friends and acquaintances that i would never dream of doing for clients i don't know -- because i know them, know of them, or know where they live and can come collect in person.... those type of clients, i've learned the hard way, are a Royal Pain In My Ass. those are the clients who are either decent people who really have no idea what they're asking and can be trained to be good clients; or they're clients who really just want you to work for them for free.... It is committed to improving conditions for all creators of graphic art and raising standards for the entire industry.… The Guild is a union that embraces creators of graphic art at all levels of skill and expertise who create works of graphic art intended for presentation as originals or reproductions."
Read Moredesk cleaning
i must be the only web producer/graphic designer who, while cleaning their desk, finds their long-lost copy of: "Critical Theory Since Plato" (Hazard Adams, Leroy Searle) literary criticism, web design, graphic deign, illustration, portraiture, technical writing, and IT knowledge -- man, my skill set is bizarre.
Read Morehelpful hints from your friendly neighborhood design professional
i just got off the phone with a client who was appalled that i had asked her to decide how many flyers and posters she wanted. "i didn't think it mattered at this point," she said.
um… yeah. i explained to her that both the quantity and the method of printing mattered a great deal. if she wanted to print a 4-color flyer on a press, i'd need a substantially higher-resolution image than the 72dpi one she'd snagged off the internet. if, however, she only wanted five copies run off from our color laser printer, it would be fine.
feh.
so, when you call up a design professional, please:
- either know what you want, or tell them right away you *don't* know, so they can help you decide.
- "a couple," and "some" are not considered quantities for bidding purposes. and yes, there is a difference between two and three.
- -get permission to use the photo you want included in the project, because when your design professional sees a watermark or copyright notice, they're going to ask about it. i don't want my stuff being used without my permission, and i extend the same professional courtesy to others.
- -"oh, just do something creative," is going to elicit groans and sighs. if you want something to look a certain way, say so. preferably <em>before</em> the designer starts designing, not <em>after</em>. if you are specifically asked about color preference, layout preference, typeface preference, or any other spec, and you say you don't care, you better be damn ready to accept the entire thing being set in nambypamby narrow and done in florescent ink.
- -do not try to use the jargon of a design professional unless you are one. you will be mocked. or worse, called on it by being asked very industry-specific questions.
i have that sinking feeling about this client that says, 'trouble.'
sigh.
don't just do something, stand there!
thinking about the article on torrid i read this morning got me thinking about how that store offers itself as a solution to a problem… a problem which lies mainly in the customers' minds.
"The function of advertising became the production of discontent in human beings. One of the sub-texts in all advertising is you're not OK, you're not OK the way you are, things are bad, you need help, you need salvation. And in that sense advertising is designed to generate endless self criticism, to generate all sorts of anxieties, all sorts of doubts, and then to offer the entire world of consumer goods as salvation. That's where salvation rests, anything and everything that you can buy."
that's from one of my professors, barney mcgrane. another thing he used to say regularly: "That's one of advertisement’s most brilliant accomplishments, to get us to believe that we're not affected by advertising." it's so seductive, the material world.
i miss barney. i spent i don't know how many semesters with him, either in one of his classes, or being a TA for one of his classes. i was the copy editor for his book, The Un-TV and the 10MPH Car: Experiments in Personal Freedom & Everyday Life. the book was a collection of the experiments done in one of his sociology classes, and students' reactions to them. the "un-tv" experiment has been posted to the internet, if you're curious. i highly recommend it (and the rest of the book). to give you an idea of what a typical class with barney was like, here's the reading list from one of his classes:
SOC 320 - Sociology of Death Required Texts:
1. Bernard McGrane - The Un-TV and the 10 MPH Car
2. Inge Bell - This Book Is Not Required (Revised Edition)
3. Leo Tolstoy - The Death of Ivan Ilich
4. Simone de Beauvoir - A Very Easy Death
5. John James and Russell Friedman - The Grief Recovery Handbook (Revised Edition)
6. Mitch Alben - Tuesdays with Morrie
7. Philippe Aries - Western Attitudes Towards Death
8. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross - On Death and Dying
9. Ernest Becker - The Denial of Death
10. Stephen Levine - Who Dies
11. Raymond Moody - Life After Life
12. Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan
13. Sogyal Rinpoche - The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying
14. Reader: "Bardo" [Library Reserve]Recommended Texts:
1. Philippe Aries - The Hour of Our Death
2. Michel Foucault - Madness and Civilization
3. Norbert Elias - The Loneliness of Dying
4. R. Kastenbaum - Death, Society and Human Experience: Is There Life After Death
5. Jacques Choron - Death and Western Thought
6. Richard Selzer - Mortal Lessons
7. Audrey Gordon - They Need to Know, How to Teach Children About Death
8. Philip Kapleau - The Wheel of Death
9. Da Free John - Easy Death
10. Trungpa and Freemantle - The Tibetan Book of the Dead
11. Herman Feifel - The Meaning of Death
12. Edwin Schneidman - Voices of Death
13. George Bataille - Death and Sensuality
14. Colin Wilson - Afterlife
15. Avery Weisman - The Coping Capacity
16. Joel Whitton - Life Between Life
17. Stephen Levine - Healing Into Life and Death
18. John Robbins - Diet for a New America
19. P. Sargent, I. Watson - Afterlives
20. Marie-Louise von Franz - On Dreams and Death
21. Robert Bosnak - A Little Course in Dreams
yep, you read it right -- 14 required texts, 21 recommended (and that "recommended" was really more like 'required' if you wanted to get the most out of the class). for a semester-long course. and we're not even getting into the papers, assignments, or experiments. how i can read so much text so quickly should be pretty apparent. even though his classes were extremely demanding and challenging, i enjoyed them, and barney's teaching style immensely. he is a warm, kind, insightful person. you would never guess that he's a friend of robert pirsig* or a student of chögyam trungpa rinpoche. barney once brought pema chödrön to come talk with his students, when i was a freshman. meeting her was so very cool. i'd never met a buddhist nun before, and i watched her field mundane questions about why she had shaved her head just as gracefully as she answered questions about bodhichitta and steadfastness. the next week, he'd have us calling up funeral homes to find out just how much it would cost to die in this culture. the week after that, it'd be breaking into our dorm rooms to learn enw ways of thinking about space. it's funny how applicable barney's work is to the feri study i'm doing now. i should tell him about it; i think he'd be interested and amused. and his advice would probably be the same as it always was: "see what you can see." *barney showed my one of my essays to pirsig. his reaction: "she's either brilliant, or insane. or both." i've still got that essay with pirsig's comments on it, somewhere in my filing cabinet.