My commute to work is short. Very short. About 1/2 mile in my car, a total of maybe 8 longish blocks with loads of hills. Yes, I should be walking but I’m always shlepping WAY too much stuff. Yes, I should reduce the amount of stuff in my life. Yes, I live/work in The People’s Republic of Takoma Park making all of this driving and stuff-shlepping very ironic, but that’s not the subject of this post.

I’m also a morning person, and at this time of day, well-caffeinated and hyper alert, I’m bound to find myself thinking hard about something, noticing things I might not otherwise, or having a wild creative idea or two or three. Pardon the pun, but today I was STOPPED in my tracks by the above image. Such a simple problem, thought I, a STOP sign cocked to an angle. Yet it looks so incredibly wrong; the entire landscape suddenly taking on a crooked through-the-looking-glass kind of feel.

Knowing you might not quite believe me, I shot an image of the Stop sign on the opposing corner of this 4-way. See? We are restored to balance again. But what does this mean? Is one of these Stop signs right and the other wrong? If so, why? What if I like a jaunty Stop sign... it is Takoma Park, after all! And the fact is, arguments could potentially be made for the effectiveness of either. One sign fits our expectations, but doesn’t the other really make us notice even more and isn’t that the point of a Stop sign? The whole scenario got me thinking about design, of course. About how the smallest decisions can add up to a very large impact on the viewer. Don’t get me wrong… designers sweat the big stuff too. I love to sink my design teeth into a conceptual problem, a messaging problem, or even a tough layout challenge. But I honestly get just as much pleasure from sweating the small stuff.

Font choices are arguably not at all a small aspect of design, but suppose we’ve made a (very good, imho) decision to use Helvetica on a city’s street signage. It’s a nice start. But within that font family there are oh so many choices. Medium, bold, light and black. Condensed, regular, italic. And now with these fancy schmancy computers we can even do MORE things to the type, squishing it, drop-shadowing, outlining. WHEEEEEEEE… so many choices! Above is the signage at an intersection I probably pass 50 times a week.

Remarkably, this intersection shows not only a plethora of type choices (weight, kern) but also editorial choices. Av? Ave.? Yes, I know… I’m sweatin’ the small stuff here.

Is one typography solution better than the other? Arguments could be made for both. If I had to choose, I believe the older sign, Tulip Av, is superior to the newer sign for Holly Ave. Tulip is kerned better (more on kerning later), fills the space better, and is simply more readable… the main design criterion here. Holly is too tightly kerned, is difficult to read, and although Ave. is more correct, the period seems fussy and unnecessary.

On the very next block over, Holly gets a type treatment that is all together different from the earlier version. Oh my, what to think about this?? The font size and choice is much better. Still tightly kerned, but this time there’s a reason… our designer has generously provided MUCH more information on this sign. Not only Ave with an E and no period, but the block number, 7300. I could write an essay on all of this, but I’ll spare you. Just noticing it is really enough for now, don’t you think?

So… what should the typographic standard be for consistent, readable street signage in Takoma Park? Above is the most egregious of the decisions made. Here, the word Dogwood has been horizontally scaled (that’s squished to you lay people), so that the block number information would fit! Consistent with its companion at the intersection? Yes. Hideous, and wrong, wrong, wrong? Yes, yes and yes!! No self-respecting designer EVER uses this feature of his/her software. Why? Because the design of fonts is one of the most careful, specific, and beautifully architectural things known to man woman. And b/c that’s why god type designers invented condensed versions.

Now, what is this thing called kerning? Kern is the space between letters of a word. Yes, the empty space. And it matters greatly with regard to both readability and aesthetic. Above, Barclay has a very open kern; compare this to Holly in the previous images. Which is more desirable?

Sigh. I love kerning. I love worrying and fretting over something so infinitesimal, something so obscure, yet so important to effective communication. The only thing I might love a little more than the act of kerning is my KERN sweatshirt, designed by Veer (just ask my family how sick they are of seeing me in this thing at home). Not only is the Kern sweatshirt a lovely reminder of a cherished aspect of my profession, but ingeniously… and humorously, it allows for an instant demonstration of the meaning of kern. Unzip… open kern… zip… close kern. Get it? Get it!

What’s better than a leering, sugar-coated, petrified heart candy on Valentine’s Day? How about a FREE FONT designed by none other than Kelley Deal! Yep, ya read that right… Breeder, identical twin sister of Kim, crafter, and all around super cool girl has designed Saltwater and it’s yours for the downloading. I actually discovered it for use in an embroidery project I started last weekend… I love the weird emotional aspects of it. Is it crying saltwater tears? Reminscent of the omnipresent emigre font, Remedy, it has an edgier appeal… wobbly, and a little psychotic.

It’s working out well for the embroidery; I’ll post pics when that’s a little further along. Like in 2011 or something. I’m not so fast at getting these projects done, you know? In the meantime, you can also enjoy Saltwater on the So Charmed home page, along with another shot of this piece of candy that has been sitting on my desk for two years.

And, just what has your favorite Breeder and mine been up to? Knitting, felting and writing a how-to book. You can also buy her very lovely scarves on her web site but be warned, they sell out super fast. GO Kelley!

While some events are high-tech, designed for the cutting-edge Internet policy crowd (see the post before last) others are steeped in gorgeous, late 19th century art. The Phillips Collection Annual Gala is one such event.

The first step in the process is a Save the Date postcard, designed and printed many months before the other materials. At this stage a visual language is established, one that is flexible enough to carry across multiple pieces in a campaign. On the the photo above, taped to a press sheet of the postcards, you can see  sketched ideas for two invitation formats. The vertical booklet format became the program, while the more dynamic, horizontal became the invite.

Held in the beautiful galleries on 21st street, The Gala is the museum’s major annual fundraising event, affording patrons an incredible opportunity to dine amongst the masterpieces, including Dancers at the Bar, by Degas, this year’s key image for the event. designfarm‘s challenge in working with an intensely iconic, highly recognizable, and undeniably gorgeous painting, was to find a way to both respect and bring a fresh context to the work.

Of course, in my mind, it seems tough to go wrong when working with the palette of a brilliant master. Ultimately though, I’m proud of striking that perfect balance and I believe there are many years of experience behind these kinds of confident decisions.

Did you know that when The Phillips Collection opened in 1921, it was America’s first modern art museum? I highly recommend a visit where you will “encounter superb works of modern art in an intimate setting.”

Everyone knows I’m a freak for Chucks (sneakers). I wear ‘em, I blog about ‘em, I love ‘em, and I even found a way to incorporate them into a designfarm project for Friends of the Library, Montgomery County.

This week I received an email from my client at FOL in which she forwarded the following email from Ms. Virginia Hale, President of Friends of Hall County Public Library down in Gainesville, GA:

“I had the pleasure of attending the Friends of Georgia Libraries program last fall which featured much great information about organizing, improving and “growing” Friends groups.

Thanks for what you do, and for how you do it!”

No, THANK you, Virginia!

Some things about event design are very different these days and some things have remained the same over time. One aspect that never changes: A well-branded event ensures that an organization’s message is put forward with clarity and power.

The Center for Democracy & Technology held their annual Gala dinner event recently. It all started with an e-invitation (shown above), saving paper, postage, and allowing for iterations as sponsor committees grew. This is also extremely appropriate for a forward-thinking Internet policy leader like CDT.

Entering the venue, the Gala typography and message–Leading the Internet in Transition–greets guests and sets the tone for an exciting evening.

The event program and a laptop sticker give-away carry the graphical elements from the e-vite to each place setting at over 60 tables.

Color-coordinated centerpieces are a nice touch.

CDT’s tagline–written by Leslie Harris, President– is an excellent example of summarizing a complex organization’s message into a few powerful words. We projected the tagline to the left and right of the main stage at the event.

For the main stage, the event’s theme and the essential elements of CDT’s tagline are combined as a simple but effective backdrop and worked well behind keynote speakers Chairman Jon Leibowitz (FTC) and US Congressman Rick Boucher (Chair of the Subcommitte on Communications, Technology and the Internet). Best of all… that blazing hot red electric guitar! Yes, a group from the tech-community, including CDT founder Jerry Berman on drums–took the stage and rocked the house!

It was really an exciting, lively evening that–most importantly–met CDT’s goal for forwarding their message and agenda.

To view CDT’s previous Gala materials visit the designfarm portfolio.

Mom says: A few posts ago, I ranted on about the fantastic and enduring design of Converse Chuck Taylor Allstar sneakers. Here’s Molly, to talk about hers.

My mom LOVES her artistic chucks, but not nearly as much as I do! I am saving money to buy a new custom-made pair. The amazing thing about the Converse web site is that you can design your own personal pair however you like.

Pictured above: These happen to be my favorite pair of Chucks right now because I customized them with mismatched shoe laces. And also they’re orange!

Mom says: It’s really cool when successful companies turn their customers into design partners… and it’s super smart marketing in today’s I-gotta-be-me world.

Using a laptop for most of my work at designfarm, means that my projects travel home with me and this invites more opportunities to share what I do as a professional designer with my family. My daughter, Molly  (age 11), has become particularly interested and engaged in all things design-related; discussing logos and book cover design with me when we get home from work and school and even (gasp) talking about being a designer.

For now, Molly mainly needs to concentrate on being a sixth grader–grappling with linear functions, French vocabulary and science projects, among a zillion other things–but the kid just can’t help paying attention to and thinking about design.

So I’d like to introduce a regular column (when Molly’s homework is done!) where she can share her ideas about design… the good, the not so good, and the sublime. Take it away MOLLY!

A table of contents is used to find any item/chapter in a book, right? I can barely call this a table of contents. It was created sloppily and messily, I could hardly find what I needed, when I needed it!  If you can find anything in it in under 5 minutes that’s amazing!

Mom says: This is a kind of trendy/hipster treatment for a TOC, but what good is trendy if it doesn’t work? This is a classic example of form NOT following function.

This took awhile to figure out the words. It’s not readable and is poorly designed! Complaint 1; the “N” isn’t understandable. Complaint 2; the “G” looks out of order and sloppy. This doesn’t work because as an advertisement you would want people to buy from you, but if your ad isn’t readable then no one will know what or why you’re selling that item.

Mom says: This isn’t a new concept (people as letter forms) but I’ve seen it done much more effectively. Perhaps this falls into the “too much of a good thing” category. One word built out of human characters would be plenty. Three words becomes… difficult. There’s also possibly a problem of scale. If this were a billboard you’d have a better chance at reading the words from a great distance. But who reads a magazine from more than a foot away?

Molly and I hope you enjoy this column. If you are a school-age kid who thinks about design, drop us an email, we’ll write back!

With the Blogosphere Christmas Police breathing down my neck for leaving my holiday lights up too long, I bring you the next post in our series: Pixels Are Everywhere. Sometime back, former staffer Sarah Ensminger posted about pixelated Army camo uniforms among other things that brought to mind the way designers have to think about images in these digitized times. This week, while we were iced in at home (no school! yippee!), and as I was ruining my eyesight by cross stitching on black fabric I realized: Aha! Pixels again! These suckers are EVERYWHERE. More about cross stitching in a sec.

Above, one of my earliest and most cherished Etsy purchases, a series of needlepointed portraits by the ingenius artist, Tiny Rat. Look at the edges of the curves here… they’re crude, just like when a missing image file pixelates. Along with being visually brilliant and humorous, the kicker with these is the subversion of an artsy craftsy activity of yesteryear… needle-pointing with childishly hued chunky yarn on plastic. But instead of kittens we have fabulous fat dead drag queens, snarling punk rock superstars, and pop culture weirdos. I LOVE IT! Who is pictured here? You tell me!

Here is one of my first cross stitch pieces, from a kit by another crafts genius, Julie Jackson of Subversive Crossstitch. I created this for my daughter Molly, who didn’t think it was nearly as funny as I did. Mooooooooom!!!! When Julie and I first connected we traded one of my custom charm bracelets for one of her subversive samplers. It’s too subversive for this blog, but you can see it at So Charmed by clicking on one our collaborative pieces.

This close up will allow you to see the pixels. What’s really cool is that (duh!) depending upon how many squares to the inch make up your fabric, the image will enlarge or reduce accordingly. Whatever was done on Aida 14 (cross stitch jargon for fabric with 14 squares per inch) which is easy on your eyes. Fabric is also available in 11, which seems huge when you finish with it but is a good way to learn the craft. Again, it’s the subverting of this old, traditional, “women’s work” craft that really makes me smile.

This is the sort of thing you probably think of when (if?) you think about cross stitch. Super cutesy, sugary sweet animal portraits, sometimes with annoyingly sentimental sayings like: Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Yuck! (Although the doggies are kind of cute aren’t they??)

But make no mistake… like anything, cross stitch can get WAY (way) out of control. I love this partially completed Mona Lisa, which is, in a way, unintentionally subversive. What would Leonardo think? Probably not much!

And, BTW, just to let you in on the insanity of this craft, we are discussing counted cross stitch. What this means is that the pattern is printed (see above) on a piece of graph paper and you are left facing a blank white piece of fabric with which you will be counting each and every itty bitty square as you stitch. So, it’s not as mindless as it seems. It’s actually pretty challenging. In a semi-mindless sort of way.

Here is one of my works-in-progress. I’m using cross stitch on little pairs of mismatched cuffs created from reclaimed men’s shirts… adding lots of lacy goodness and other crap Jodi-ish embellishments. I’m selling these cuffs at So Charmed and Courtney Love Cobain bought one of the first pairs!

Here is a finished pair… I love the juxtoposition of the oxford shirt fabric with frilly ventian lace. Cross stitch alphabets come in all kinds of crazy fonts too, including lots of sans faces, Celtic-influenced calligraphy, and super fussy monogram styles. Alphabets, and other patterns are often available free on the Internet.

I’ll leave you pondering Stitching with Pixels with one last Tiny Rat piece (really, you MUST visit her shop). In this case, there’s perhaps less subversion… I think Andy Warhol would have absolutely LOVED this, don’t you?

More of a “Festivus for the Rest of Us” kind of gal, even an old Scrooge like me can appreciate certain things about the holiday season, one of which is the over-the-top glittering lights display of Hampden. What? You don’t know Hampden? Hon, let me en-lighten you (heh heh).

Located in Baltimore, MD, the neighborhood first came into being in 1802 as a cluster of houses built for workers who manned the newly erected flour and cotton mills along the Jones Falls Stream Valley.

The small-town atmosphere still has a distinct blue-collar vibe, but has also been gentrified, becoming a highly desirable address for artists and other Bohemian types. 36th Avenue (known by locals simply as th’Avenue) now boasts trendy boutiques (Ma Petit Shoe sells fabulous shoes AND fancy chocolates… what more can a girl ask for?) and eateries sprinkled between funky thrift- and bonafide junk-stores.

Also famous for a certain type of big-hair B’More Girl (think John Waters… and drag queen/actor Divine as Edna Turnblad in the original 1988 film, Hairspray), she who addresses everyone as “Hon,” Hampden hosts HonFest every summer, a festival of beehive ‘do’s and all things retro-tacky.

This time of year, head a couple of blocks over to 34th Avenue to see a neighborhood that takes its Christmas lighting VERY seriously. With everything from hubcap-decorated trees to lights strung back and forth across the street, this is a seasonal must-experience. Arrive just after dark to beat the crowds, and see if you can get a table at Cafe Hon afterwards for a bite to eat, making sure to save room for an enormous piece of coconut cake or the best bread pudding ever.

See you down th’Avenue, hon! And, happy hols to you and yours from Jodi-hon, a big-haired B’more Girl.

No, not to some futuristic alien-infested location straight outta your favorite sci-fi novel… in fact, we’re going to take a trip into the Past, the Present, and the Future. Simultaneously. Without a time machine! Designers have dubbed this adventure The Press Inspection, and with increasing rarity in our cost-conscious, hyper-paced profession, I relish these opportunities to visit favorite local print shops where good old-fashioned American industrial manufacturing meets frighteningly cutting-edge digital technology. The alienesque photo above? We’ll get to that in a minute. Or two. But first: How did we end up here on a gray day in November?

Today’s field trip actually begins on the other side of the world in a small children’s residential school called Yemin Orde Youth Village, near Haifa, Israel. Founded in 1953 to accommodate Holocaust orphans during the great immigration waves of the fifties, today the 77-acre campus is home to more than 500 children from war-torn and otherwise devastated countries around the world.

Crossing the ocean quickly to Washington, DC, a small office in an apartment building on Connecticut Avenue, we find one of designfarm‘s longterm clients, Friends of Yemin Orde. The American-based fundraising arm of the Israeli youth village, FYO financially supports the programs, the children, and the graduates of the school, as well as other disenfranchised youth who are served by outreach programs.

Next stop, a small unassuming brick building facade in Baltimore, Maryland, home of one of The Whitmore Group‘s printing plants, Schneidereith & Sons (fine printing since 1849, 5 generations of printers). This will all come together, you’ll see.

Entering the building, the acrid but weirdly pleasant and somehow comforting smell of printer’s ink threatens to potentially knock you out… until your senses adjust. And as soon as you get past the front office, you know that as a designer you are about to enter another world all together, far from your  groovy little office with its cheap-&-chic Ikea furnishings and an Apple computer or two; a world with a rich century-hopping history AND incredibly up-to-the-minute digital technologies. This is where the rubber meets the road the ink hits the paper. Yet, it’s so ultra-sparkling clean you could eat off the floor.

Just down that long shiny hallway and slightly to the left, is housed one of the most monstrous printing presses you’ve ever seen. The Heidleberg Speedmaster XL-105-41 (at a prices topping 3 million dollars, you may want to buy one used here) is just that… a fiercely speedy piece of German engineering, which when fully revved up will put 18,000 6-color impressions of your project onto paper per hour. A run of 750 pocket folders for Friends of Yemin Orde (two sides!) is completed in about half an hour. And I get to watch!

In fact I am invited to climb aboard the beast (I stupidly ask: Do I need a hard hat? Because I’ve always wanted to wear one…) where I am able to witness–close up and personal–the fact that despite the amazing computer technologies running this badboy… it’s still a lot of beautifully messy gloppy wet inks being laid down with perfection onto luscious bright white paper. The image at the top of this post shows the front end of the press where said paper begins its ridiculously fast journey.

The real reason I am there of course, is NOT to climb around the equipment squealing with genuine excitement and taking photos so I can write another endless (but fascinating, right?) blog post. It’s so I can do the job I am paid for by my client, the aforementioned press inspection.

We will look through a magnifying glass called a loop, refer to our Pantone color guides, check our ink draw downs (for this project, we had ink specially mixed and tested because we wanted something we just couldn’t exactly find amongst Pantone’s 6000 choices)… all to make absolutely certain that the end product is drop-dead gorgeous and will perfectly support our client as they approach donors for millions of dollars on behalf of the children of Yemin Orde (we call this full-circle).

But wait, there’s more.

While I’m at Schneidereith & Sons, “on press” as we say, I am treated to a few other eye-popping lessons in modern printing. Lying around the Epson Digital Press (a machine 1/10th the size of that Heidleberg but pretty impressive in its own right) are sheets from another of our projects. At right, designfarm‘s post-move updated business cards, along with former business partner, computer consulting experts MacLab‘s promotional folder inserts… looking so… well, Warholian.

Left, is a lovely water color painting. Do printers paint too?? Maybe. But this in fact is not a painting. It’s a high-end digital reproduction, output on archival canvas. A legal fake! Whoa! How’d they do that?

Turns out, The Whitmore Group has been doing a lot of that lately. Pictured left, the beautiful Hasselblad H3D 39-Megapixel Medium Format Digital camera (German engineering again, and with a price tag of $32,000 this ain’t no Powershot, ok?) with which ancient works of fine art are photographed, including many important corporate and government portraits, in order to create amazingly authentic reproductions on archival canvas. (Memo to self: If graphic design career tanks, think forgery, ebay, &tc. JUST KIDDING!).

Pictured right, Whitmore’s digital reproduction of a painting of Paul Morton, Secretary of the Navy, 1904-1905 with whom my rep, one Joseph Wagner, shares a certain uncanny bald-guy-with-bushy-moustache resemblance. Joe, and his moustache, have been in the industry for 30+ years. Talk about expertise. And in case you don’ t know, printing experts are truly an endangered species of sorts. Which is why we value the partnership with the few and the proud, like Mr. Wagner. And his moustache.

Not to get all sentimental or anything, but there is a definite price–and I’m not talking just monetary–to all of these present and futuristic advances in what was once a vibrant outgrowth of industrial-revolution America. If you are of a certain age (who me?), as you are escorted through the pristine plant, you remember a time when instead of the muted hum of enormous and enormously sophisticated machines, there was a constant deafening noise… and there were people (wearing ear plugs). Lots and lots and lots of people. Whole huge shifts worth of apprentice and master pressmen, plate-makers and strippers (NOT THAT KIND)… to name a few of the profession’s occupational casualties. So although this blogging queen loves watching technology march on, I acknowledge that there are losses. And it does make me sad.

But let’s end on a cheery note. Thank goodness we can still smell that ink in the air. Because baby, when that goes, I am SO outta here.