Postcard from the Past

Mon 31 Mar 200305:53 PM

An old interview with Alan Moore sent me running back to my old issues of his 12-part “Watchmen” series, probably the best comic books ever produced. To do this, I had to dig through three cardboard boxes of comics from the early 80s, a dusty, aging booty from my adolescence. In my mid-twenties I nearly threw them all out, not wanting to deal with the hassle of lugging them around as I moved from one apartment to another. Luckily they were stored at my father’s house and he didn’t have the heart to pitch them.

March On

Mon 31 Mar 200312:44 AM

Well, it’s the end of March, which was the deadline that I gave myself for getting version Six.0 of this site all put together and ready for public consumption. The last major chunk of work that needed to be taken care of was importing the 200-plus remaining posts from 2002. This was probably more difficult than it needed to be.

Unfavorable Conditions

Sat 29 Mar 200307:32 PM

Richard Ashcroft, who was responsible for three of the best albums of the nineties when he was the face and voice of The Verve, has lost it. His latest album, “Human Conditions,” is competent yet soppy and unremarkable, and utterly lacking in the bravura of his older work. It made me glad that I bought it for only five under-the-table dollars from a flea market vendor on Avenue A (I also got a cheap copy of “Run-DMC’s Greatest Hits”).

Separating Style from Substance

Fri 28 Mar 200306:05 PM

The extranets that we set up for our clients and projects at Behavior have always been rather low-tech. That is, they’ve been updated manually, with designers and technologists painstakingly editing HTML code each time a new posting was added. This has been a royal pain in the ass, but we’re trying to change this by creating an extranet infrastructure with Movable Type.

Think Gig

Thu 27 Mar 200304:55 PM

There are almost 13,500 posters promoting live performances by over 16,000 bands at gigposters.com, a testament to both the vibrancy of grassroots advertising arts and the futility of trying to break into the big leagues of music. Lots of these posters are terrible of course, and lots of them are great, but the site is suitably ambitious in its attempt to give credit to each poster’s designer. If you have enough patience to wait out the overburdened server, you’ll doubtless dig up some gems.

Guiding Lights

Wed 26 Mar 200306:48 PM

While doing some research on style guides at Behavior, I came across two interesting specimens from Apple and Microsoft. They’re both valuable references, but their approach to covering similar design concepts is indicative of the reputation each company has developed for design advocacy.

How Now, Brown Logo

Tue 25 Mar 200301:53 PM

We’re incrementally losing the 20th Century: today, United Parcel Service has officially done away with its venerable, Paul Rand-designed logo in favor of a sleek, dimensionalized replacement. The new logo was created by Futurebrand as part of UPS’s strategy to become more than just a shipping and delivery service.

H-E-Double Toothpicks-site

Mon 24 Mar 200305:42 PM

Signs are good for the 2004 cinematic debut of Mike Mignola’s “Hellboy.” Director and writer Guillermo Del Toro seems to be creatively invested in the character, and I’m so thankful that the title role will be played by an actor with a bit of real grit — Ron Perlman — rather than a vainglorious Hollywood drip like Vin Diesel or some such. The movie’s promotional Web site, cleverly called “Hellsite,” is even up and ready to go a year early. When’s the last time a Web site launched a year early?

I’d Like to Thank the Academy

Mon 24 Mar 200312:30 AM

Five random notes on the occasion of the 75th Academy Awards: 1. I saw “Far from Heaven” earlier today and while it was excellently made, there was almost nothing surprising about it. What’s more, Julianne Moore, while talented and beautiful, has a zillion teeth. 2. On the way back from a short vacation in Miami at New Year’s, I sat next to Adrien Brody on the plane. I remember thinking, “When’s his career going to go somewhere?” 3. What, exactly, is the point of the Best Animated Feature category if its only purpose is to honor these kinds of nominees? They may as well add a category for ‘Best Instructional Workplace Video.’ 4. “Adaptation” should have been nominated and chosen Best Picture. 5. I still hate the Academy Awards.

See CSS Run

Sat 22 Mar 200310:24 PM

It wouldn’t take much to get me to admit that the way I’ve used Cascading Style Sheets for Subtraction.com Six.0 is a bit, er, ad hoc. My expertise with CSS is minimal, but with this redesign I made a concerted effort to look to the future and to try and learn as much as I can. My somewhat hazy goal was to follow the principles of transitional layouts and to wean myself off my dependence on nested tables. Though I’m nowhere near mastering CSS, I’m steadily climbing the learning curve, thanks to two books by noted expert Eric A. Meyer.

About

Subtraction.com

Khoi Vinh’s Web site

Archives

Postcard from the Past

March On

Unfavorable Conditions

Separating Style from Substance

Think Gig

Guiding Lights

How Now, Brown Logo

H-E-Double Toothpicks-site

I’d Like to Thank the Academy

See CSS Run

Khoi Vinh’s Web site