Scene from a Stephen King movie, observed today driving home:
Interesting choice of type for this story:
And by “interesting” I mean: I’m sorry, what? I misunderstood you. I thought you were using an ersatz optical character recognition font used for Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock” in a story about an item that symbolizes, like few others, how the future does not shock but delight, and how our appetite for innovation has caused us to embrace new technologies with such speed that we seem surprised to look back a few years and realize they did not exist. For example - I started writing this outside in the gazebo, decided it was too chilly, threw it in the Dropbox folder, went up to the studio, and called it up on my main computer. The file ran off into the ether and landed upstairs in the time it took to walk up the stairs.
This is normal and expected and we get annoyed it if it doesn’t work. That’s the Shock of the Future: when commonplace miracles are not as immediate as we have come to expect.
It’s an ugly font, too. But it’s 70s! It’s retro-vintage! It’s the sort of thing you’d see someone use in a low-budget movie to indicate TECHNOLOGY and all the scaaary things that it implied. I don’t get why it’s used here, except that it stands out; my eye was drawn to it, if only to cock a Spockbrow and say “fascinating.”
Elsewhere in typography: look at this product redesign. SERIOUSLY look at it.
I know we’re straying into Tuesday Product territory here; heaven forfend. But my eye was drawn to this for two reasons:
1. It was in the Jimmy Dean section at Target which never has the Jimmy Dean omelettes anymore. Doesn’t matter; the Crystal Fams version are the same thing, and probably the same manufacturer. But I keep looking for them, because they periodically disappear, and one of the signposts of the week is splitting one for breakfast with my daughter on Wednesday: a mid-week tradition. With sausage and OJ. It’s the only way I can get grub into her, since most mornings it’s clothes-and-hair until the bus comes, and I have to give her a Bar containing Oats and Vitamins.
2. That’s a nice redesign, and reinforces my suspicion that a techtonic shift in package design is underway. The logo: simplified. That annoying and ubiquitous red banner: gone. Those nutritional chiclets: downsizes. The caloric content duplication: banished.
It’s the end of swooping things. Note this well: Swooping Things were the bane of packaging design for the last decade; a great reordering is underway, with scripts giving way to san-serif. Honest Sturdy Rigor shall be the watchwords.
2008 is still rolling through the culture.
2009-2012, for that matter.
And that’s about it. Sorry for the lesser bleatage today, but I think it’s been a good week, overall. My mind’s on other things tonight, and to be frank I’m in a low trough, writing wise. This will change very soon; new experiences en route, which always help.
At least the usual mubblefubbles of winter haven’t set in yet - oh, when winter is here, teeth bared, that’s different. But when fall fades and there’s that vacant fortnight in early November when you realize you missed the moment when 25% of the trees still had their leaves, and now they’re all bare, and the sun starts to feel like a candle in a tomb - I haven’t hit it yet.
Why, this morning: sent daughter off to school (HAH, school: they had a trip to a roller rink today. Why? I’ve no idea. No school tomorrow. But, as I tweeted a few days ago, there’s just no way to avoid having school stretch deep into June and start up at the end of August. I’m sure tomorrow is a “release day” or some such euphemism -
But these are carps, and I shouldn’t have a single carp. Walked the old dog around the block today, pausing as he sniffed at every shrub and hosta and phone pole and blade of remnant grass on which some other beast had sprayed his Kilroy. Leaves on the boulevard, thick brittle sheaves on which summer’s story was once written. Enough sun; enough warmth; enough of everything.
There’s nothing better than having enough of everything. Except gratitude. You can never have enough of that.
Thank you for reading! See you Monday - with a new adventure.
