Truth in design, Truth in production

There's a design principle that I've often taken for granted. Distilled down to one word, it's Truth, with a capital T. But what is Truth in design? How does it apply? What, in short, does it mean?

There are two examples I like to use when explaining Truth in design. They both have to do with materiality. Here goes. Say you're designing a poster. You want it to look a little old school, a little messy, but still a little official. In short, you want your typography to have the look of an old-timey typewriter font. An easy reaction, when pressed for time, is to grab a typewriter font. I'm not talking about Courier, but instead about something that tries to mimic the little errors and ink blots of a worn out typewriter. But that font isn't very true. Use it and you'll find that all the letters look the same, each instance of a letter exactly like its siblings. It's not organic. It lacks soul. Not only that, but it's obvious that it wasn't done with a real typewriter. Then there's the truthful way. You dig out the old typewriter and honest to goodness type out the text you want. Scan it, clean it, integrate it into the poster. Each letter is a little different and the whole thing comes by its blotches honestly. In short, it's true. It's meant to look like the product of a typewriter and it does because it is.

Truth, however, is also utilitarian. That's where my other example, the one with the corkboard, comes in. Say, for the sake of argument, that you want the look of pictures or notices pinned to a corkboard. Sure, you can open up your graphics program and plunk a stock texture of cork in. You can drag whatever you want onto it, even simulate the shadows cast by the tacks. But why would you? In real life, light casts shadows for you. If you actually print the photos (or notices, or whatever) and pin them to a real cork board, it looks right, automatically. Why add shadows when light can do it for you? If you try to do it digitally, you'll miss something, or agonize for far too long in order to not miss anything. Do it in reality and the details are taken care of. Nature does half the work for you.

In essence, Truth is about materiality and reality. It's about doing it properly, with the right materials. In an idealistic sense, it's about knowing that you've got something right, that it is how it should be and isn't just an imitation. In a practical sense, it's about covering your bases, not by thinking out every eventuality, but by letting reality do the work. It may not always be convenient, but it will always be right.

I hope I don't see anyone I know

I've been thinking about it and have come to the conclusion that the phrase "I hope I don't see anyone I know" is profoundly flawed. We think or utter this phrase out of worry, because we hope that by not seeing anyone we know, we can avoid embarrassment. (I know there may be other reasons, but this post deals with the embarrassment factor.)

My conclusion is that there's no reason to be embarrassed. Why? If you're doing something which causes you to hope no one you know is there to see you doing it, you must perceive the activity to be embarrassing, wrong, or somehow out of character. (What spurred me to think about this was a trip to the mall. Very out of character.)

But here's the good part. There are two likely outcomes. If you do see someone you know, and if they also perceive the action/location to be embarrassing, then they, too are guilty. The two of you have equal leverage. You both know something embarrassing about the other. You both keep the secret for your own sake.

The other scenario is more pleasant. It's quite possible (like in my mall experience) that the person you know will take the location/activity to be completely normal. S/he enjoys visiting/doing it, which means that it should seem completely normal that you do, too. Your stock rises in the eyes of your observer. S/he perceives you to be more a member of her/his tribe than before the encounter. Win.

In short, it's a flawed sentence, provided that it's uttered out of fear of embarrassment. Whether through mutual squeamishness or increased affect, you avoid negative judgement. As I said before, win.

Home is where the power outlet is

I just came back from an incredibly short trip. In fact, I think I spent more time travelling than at my destination. While travelling, something occurred to me. My packing priorities don't run along traditional lines. I didn't pack any clothing or toiletries. Instead, I packed adapters and chargers. After a little thought, that packing decision makes sense. Toiletries don't need to be packed. They're available everywhere and are extremely standard. Clothing isn't necessary either, other than the bare minimum. But adapters and chargers aren't so simple. They're neither standard nor optional. Laptops eat power and uncharged MP3 players are a death sentence in crowded transport. I'd rather sleep in my clothes than go without data and connectivity. Toothpaste is ubiquitous, but specific cellphone chargers aren't. This is why I've determined that home is anywhere I can plug in my laptop.

Mission Statements for people

I've written before about annual reports for people. Annual reports are all well and good for talking about what people have accomplished. But I think there needs to be something more. Most businesses have a mission statement, or a vision statement, or something of the like. It occurs to me that mission statements could be even more vital for people. I find that I sometimes get caught up in the drudgery of every day life and work. If things go badly, I can wind up in a funk. And then it generally takes some kind of great big revelation to get back out of the funk. This is where the mission statement comes in. I think it would be awfully handy for people to have something that enumerates what and who they want to be. It just needs to be some kind of document that makes you say "I remember, now. That's who I am."

I think this already exists in an indirect way. People have books or music or other cues that make them happy and remind them about themselves. I just think that having a mission statement would make the whole process of remembering and realizing a little less chancy.

The week-old pizza flowchart

I humbly present to the reading few a handy tool for deciding whether or not to eat the pizza that's been sitting out for a week. I take no responsibility for any un-tastiness or food poisoning that might result from consulting this chart.

Late night grocery stores

There's a late night grocery store on my way home. I hardly ever use it, but I appreciate that it exists. In that sense, for me at least, it's similar to a falafel restaurant. Tonight, however, I got the chance to use it. Wandering home from a late movie, I got a jones for orange juice. But where can I possibly get orange juice at one o'clock in the morning? Quite simply, I can get the orange juice about one block away from home, on my path from movie to bed.

Most of the time, the late night grocery store is a service I don't feel the need to use. Even though I seldom use it, it's something I like to have around, just in case I find myself needing it.

Evolution and personal grooming

Every time you leave the house without removing stray eyebrow hairs, you admit that you are descended from apes.

The life ruiners

There are people who ruin your life by being terrible. They make everything collapse around your ears through malice or other negativities. Then there's the other kind of life ruiner. These people don't want to ruin your life at all. Sometimes, though, it feels like they have. They ruin your life through goodness. They ruin your life by being wonderful. Most of the time, you don't feel ruined. You feel better for having known them at all. It's only when you realize that no one else is as wonderful. That's when you see the good, the wonderful and the true as life ruiners.

The chicken or the egg

I'm sitting around, reading a book on my computer. It's a .pdf that I'm looking at in KGhostView. I've got the whole page, that's two pages of book on one page of the .pdf, displayed on my screen. That means no scrolling, except to go to the next page. And that's what's got me thinking.

There's no button clicking. Every time I want to hit the next page, I just move my middle finger a little on my scroll wheel. Just a little, though. It's a tiny fraction of an inch, just dragging the little bit of mouse wheel that comes into contact with the very tip of the pad of my finger. Just one drag. I don't need to go back and drag again, I don't need to extend my finger to the end of the wheel and drag the whole thing. It's perfect, it's lovely, it works with minimal effort. And like most things that work well, I didn't notice it when I was doing it right. I only noticed what I was doing when I accidentally scrolled too much and skipped ahead two pages instead of one. It's like the computer/mouse/program/mouse driver is teaching me to be subtle.

That's where the question comes in. I'm trying to decide whether the way my computer asks me to do things makes me more subtle, or whether humans just are subtle and computers are designed to work with that. I can't decide whether it's teaching me, or we've taught it. For me, because I lack the insight that would give me the real answer that I'm sure exists, it's like the chicken and the egg. Is the computer subtle and teaches us to be, or are we subtle and teach computers to be? I know that I possess the ability to be subtle. I know that the computer does, too. I just don't know who's driving that subtlety.

Settling and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

We watched The Umbrellas of Cherbourg last night in my film studies class. It may be a musical (entirely sung, no dialogue), and it may have killer sets and costumes that verge on the hilarious, but it's still incredibly sad. At least, I thought it was sad. What makes it sad (spoiler alert!) is that there are two characters, who epitomize young love, who end up, through circumstance, being separated and settling for other people.

The two main characters have the wild, irrational, crazy love that we prize so highly. During a period of separation, for social and economic reasons, they both end up settling for security instead of passion. Fine. They both end up fairly happy, in lives that they find comfortable, with reasonable partners who care about them. However, they have regrets. There are a million things I could take issue with in this premise. I could argue that crazy, irrational love is a relatively recent construct, and that mercenary marriages have long been seen as normal. But that's not what's bothering me, this time around.

What bothers me is the reaction of the other people watching the film. The main complaint was that all of the grand, swooping music and over the top set design didn't match the fairly pedestrian plot. Over and over, people complained that there wasn't enough excitement and conflict in the plot. The other viewers found it problematic that the characters had small issues, but managed to move on with their lives. I'm a little shocked by that viewpoint. I'm worried that we've been so conditioned by Hollywood to expect big things that we can accept reality.

In real life, people live with what they have. People make choices based on their immediate situation and their future happiness. People like comfort and certainty. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg presents a story in which characters react in realistic ways. In movies, people hardly ever settle. In real life, it happens all the time. Based on the reactions of the others in my film studies class, I get the impression that people want grand romance in their movies. They want the hope that unrealistic things can happen. That worries me, just a little bit.

Nothing is perfect, but many things are good enough.

I keep a whiteboard in my front hallway. I often get tiny stubs of ideas, little soundbites, that need to be documented before I forget them. Those stubs often end up on scraps of paper, random pages of my sketch book, and generally in difficult to find places. The purpose of the whiteboard is to aggregate the stubs so that I can actually find them when I'm ready to turn those little ideas into bigger projects. Yesterday, on the whiteboard, I wrote the words "Nothing is perfect, but many things are good enough." I like that statement. It sounds pithy. It shows good use of rhetoric. I'm troubled by it, though. It bothers me, as an inveterate perfectionist, to be embracing the "good enough." Should we reconcile ourselves to a world of "good enough?" After all, the quest for perfection leads to so much heartache. At the same time, we need to be able to dream. I'm wondering if the realism of my "good enough" statement is productive or not. Is it actually good to be able to settle? Is it worse to aim for perfection and fail often than to aim for good but never get the lift provided by actually attaining perfection? Is "good enough" good enough?