The other day I did something that I rarely do; I re-read an article. It was from 2008, a piece by Nicolas Carr from The Atlantic entitled ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ and it took a look at some of the effects that the proliferation of content across the Internet are having on our brains.

Of course, the easy answer is no, Google is not making us stupid. The Internet and, in particular, search, gives us almost immediate access to vast seas of information. It connects us with the collective knowledge of the world and allows us to be immeasurably more efficient than if were were left on our own to scour for the answers in a library.

Few would argue that the technologies brought to us by the Internet have benefited humanity in more ways than they’ve harmed it, but Carr’s concern is not so much to do with accessibility as it is with process.

He compares today’s Internet-obsessed, caffeine driven culture to a jet skier, skimming only the surface of knowledge where we were once scuba divers, engaged and immersed in deep thinking. Online, we are able to absorb only so much before something distracts us and urges us onward.

I’m sure most of us have noticed this. The Internet, with it’s endless supply of content, links and flash have made us a less attentive society, but it also seems to have jaded us, as we rely on our smart-phones and laptops to be the keepers of a knowledge we once stored in our heads.

Over the last few months I’ve noticed that my memory isn’t as sharp as it used to be. I’ve trouble recalling things like places and names that I clearly should remember (the word ‘verbal’ escaped me recently as I tried to argue that a particular TV show helped to improve children’s verbal skills). Because of this, I’ve become what you might call ‘a concerned citizen,’ trying to figure out what all of this technology is doing to us and to our ability to think.

The simplest conclusion one might draw from Carr’s argument is that, in the future, people will no longer be able to focus long enough to complete an entire novel and the New York Times will simply be a collection a blurbs, no longer than a few sentences, with content spanning the entire world. We will know a little about everything, and a lot about nothing. And that future may be here sooner than Carr anticipated.

When the article was published back in 2008, e-readers had just hit the market market, the iPad was still about two years away, and few would have predicted just how quickly these technologies would suffocate the world of the printed word (a world that had stubbornly refused to become antiquated since Gutenberg).

Though I’ve positioned myself as a sort of Luddite-technologist (one who does not see technology as inherently evil, but is skeptical of how society is coming to depend on it), tablet computers, which I have little practical use for, have seduced me to the point of nearly pre-ordering one of Amazon’s Kindle Fires.

For now, in an effort to retain what’s left of the cognitive capacities I nurtured through 17 years of schooling, I’m still able to escape the digital reach and finish a novel or read a magazine cover-to-cover. But if I do end up buying an e-reader or tablet, then I’ll inevitably make the transition from print to digital, and the entire world will once again be at my fingertips.

That’s not to say that people are incapable of finishing a novel on a tablet, but if Carr is right, and our brains do evolve into devices that subsist by jumping from one thing to the next - if we do become skimmers, incapable of stopping for a moment to absorb very much of anything - then it will become increasingly difficult to do.

My worry is that even those of us who want to escape the noise and clutter of the digital age by hunkering down and sinking thoughtfully into story will no longer have the capabilities to do so. And, if this is any evidence to that point, Carr has a book out which expounds on the ideas presented in the Atlantic piece called The Shallows. I was able to make it about two thirds of the way through before becoming disengaged and deciding to read the article instead.

I’m still battling, though. After all, the act of re-reading Carr’s article was geared, not so much towards re-familiarizing myself with with his claims, but as a way to prove to myself that I still could.

I love Corporate America, I’ve seen all it’s ads. Like most people, I throw money at it with the hope that it will someday make me the epitome of the human species. I’m seduced by it’s brands, I’m smitten by it’s celebrities, I’m infatuated by it’s scandal.

But if you’re not Corporate America - i.e. if you own a coffee shop - and you decide to brand your cups, then you’re a generic hack.

There isn’t much logic behind that statement, I just don’t trust coffee shops with branded cups. I love Dunkin’ Donuts, and I’ve become lukewarm to Starbucks, but I don’t consider those to be ‘coffee shops’ (more like the cafe in the lobby of the Corporate America headquarters).

A real coffee shop is one of those places with the crooked screen door and the suggestive Marilyn Monroe poster on the wall of the men’s bathroom. A grey cat with one ear lounges around outside and no one knows who it actually belongs to (but it has become the unofficial mascot and helps keep the mice out of the basement). They offer exactly two types of biscotti and, on rainy days, if you stare at the outside of the shop at just the right angle, it looks strikingly similar to the Bates Motel.

The point is that a real coffee shop doesn’t have to be any of those things, but it can just as easily be all of those things…. There are no brand standards, there are no trademarks, there is no employee dress code, there is no need for consistent decor or even consistency. There’s autonomy in that - a freshness that transcends the rigmaroles of a typical work day.

If you brand the cups, then you add a certain structure to that freedom. The corporate mentality begins to creep in and you start to draw attention away from the thing that matters most…

No, not the cat - we’re pretty sure he’s rabid - it’s the coffee, you dope. It’s a coffee shop after all. Focus on brewing the best possible cup that you can.

And stick with the generic cups. They keep you unique.

COMIC SANS:

SANS COMIC:

COMIC STAN:

Since Wells Fargo has taken over all my Wachovia Banks, I feel compelled to blog about them.

Take a look at their logo. Specifically their tagline slash tagline logo combination (aka ‘taglo’).

Isn’t rocking the horse and buggy a bit archaic? Especially the long trip Dubs Fargo wants to take you on…

This is what happened last time I tried that…

Dubs Fargo needs a brand refresher and, lucky for them, Charlie Sheen is temporarily relevant.

…good thing there are a lot of brothels in the Wild West, and it’s better than being attacked by robbers…

Or, Dubs Fargo can simply continue to rest on its laurels…

Second best square logo in popular culture!

Third most awesome use of Clarendon!!

And still better than actual Fargo!!!

…sorry Eureka fans #:-(

A lot of the issues that people are raising about spec work have nothing to do with spec work as a business model, but rather how that business model is being abused by its users.

For example: arguments claiming that spec work is wrong because people are plagiarizing logos, because of the existence of logo mills, or because no thought/effort is put into any of the logos being created are all invalid. They don’t actually address the spec work model or, as NO!SPEC (http://www.no-spec.com/about/) defines it: “any kind of creative work rendered and submitted, either partial or completed, by a designer to a prospective client/employer before taking steps to secure both their work and an equitable fee.”

Of course that’s not to say that these arguments have no value. But instead of a NO!SPEC initiative (as NO!SPEC actually uses a lot of the above arguments), shouldn’t it be REFORM!SPEC?

All I’m saying is that we need to actually step back and take a look at what exactly we are arguing about. Is spec work a bad thing if a jobless college grad, eager to build a portfolio with real-world examples, submits a design to a company that really doesn’t care all that much about its brand / doesn’t have the budget to afford a professional designer? Isn’t it worse for professional designers to think that every business should care as much about design/branding as they do or chastise a young designer for for working for free (when all they really care about is building a portfolio).

Obviously the system doesn’t work that way all the time. But if we can’t find anything wrong with the above scenario, shouldn’t we be looking to reform spec work instead of eliminate it altogether.

Finally, I’m tired of the analogies that people keep using to knock spec work. Sorry, NO!SPEC, but defending someone in the court of law is not analogous to designing a logo. There’s no market for lawyer spec work because almost everyone sees the need for a good lawyer, or a good mechanic or even a good DJ (http://www.davidairey.com/spec-work-request/). Design spec exists because a smaller percentage of people see good design as an absolute necessity.

But if you still want to use the argument from analogy, you also have to consider this: we might laugh a person who uses a cheap auto mechanic when their car breaks down, but that doesn’t mean that they were wrong to choose the cheap auto mechanic in the first place, nor is the auto mechanic wrong for offering their services at the cheap.

“But what if people start creating contests for the opportunity to fix their car and all these unskilled, auto-novices jump in with shoddy service and taint the whole auto-mechanic industry and take legitimate business away from the real mechanics???”

Again, this is why the analogy doesn’t work. There’s no market for auto mechanic spec work. Everyone wants their car to be fixed…not everyone wants a banging logo.

At the end of the day, it’s all business. Adapt or become obsolete.

Movement is the key these days.  Allow me to illustrate how design has evolved over the years by using something I like to call the ‘designers just ripping off Adobe’s CS packaging’ effect:

	2005: Adobe Photoshop CS2 introduces designers to feathers for the first time. Every design between 2005 and 2007 incorporated a feather, or bird, or some sort of nature-esq theme.  We quickly abandoned this approach once we became so isolated by technology that we forgot what nature was.
	2007: Adobe Photoshop CS3 a.k.a the birth of the swirly graphic.  If you were savy with Illustrator or could sensibly navigate Shutterstock, you could turn a thoughtless, mediocre design into a thoughtless, mediocre design with a swirly graphic.  It was the shortest distance between a blank screen and  beauty…an empty, ‘America’s Next Top Model’ sort of beauty.
	2008: Adobe Photoshop CS4 when layers of curvy lines became too much of a burden, Adobe introduced us to the idea of simplicity.  Blocks of related color became the design standard of 2008.  No gradients, no drop shadows…it was a developer’s dream. 30 hours to figure out what two colors to use for the design, and then a cool 45 seconds to throw the finished product onto the web.
	2010: Adobe Photoshop CS5 is a warning to everyone essentially declaring the death of static design.  Look at how the CS5 packaging conveys an uneasy sense of instability and motion.  I will no longer think a design to be of any worth unless it looks like it’s about to topple over and crush me.

With CSS3, HTML5, webkit transitions, jQuery and all that other stuff I don’t have the knowledge base to speak eloquently enough about, there is no reason that a website should load and then site there idly and wait to be fondled by your cursor. Even fades should be banished at this point.  Effective and interesting movement is the key.  If your design feels like it’s about to jump off the screen and stab you in the chest, you’re on the right track.

…check out how Spritely is using movement to effectively bludgeon that Flash product out of more of it’s usefulness: http://www.spritely.net/

Nowadays, Internet folk tend to filter into one of two categories:
 
Category One:  The quasi-tech savy blogger / web developer who spends his or her days trying to make any sort of noticeable splash in the great HTML filled pond of the web.  This person is convinced that his/her blog idea/web design is unique, fresh and cool (‘the next Perez Hilton!’ they might ironically say) instead of the cheap, hackney rip-off it usually turns out to be.  I’d like to generalize this type of web user by saying that they shop at Urban Outfitters and aspire to be one of those ‘unassuming hipsters’ which, in reality, would just make them another one of those ‘stereotypical hipster knock-offs’….but I’ll refrain from generalizations for now.  Generalizations are cliche.

Category Two:  The quasi-computer illiterate mom / singer/songwriter / emo kid (I had heard on National Geographic that the Emo Kid was extinct but haven’t been able to confirm).  This person doesn’t know a lick of HTML and has trouble setting the background color on their Twitter profile.  Nevertheless, they overcome the obstacles and manage to bang out 670 WordPress / Facebook / Twitter / Flickr / Tumblr / YouTube / MySpace / Friendster / Blogger / BlogSpot / SpotBlog updates per day.  This is usually the person who writes about their dog, or how many stickers they got in the Cracker Jack box at the ball game and think that people are genuinely interested (“I got four likes on my Facebook post today about my new plaid cap from LIDS! I should go buy another plaid cap so everyone can LOLZ!”).  Poems about nature also tend to materialize, although less frequently than angled or slightly skewed pictures of highway signage.

The point of all this is that originality is, for lack of a better cliche, dead.  The people who try to be original end up imitating everyone else and the people who don’t try to be original (and instead try to simply be themselves) are boring, trite and superficial.

My goal with this blog is neither to be original nor myself.  I simply want to traipse around the web (and hopefully acquire a bunch of new, badass knowledge along the way) searching for the answer to an age-old(and/or relatively new) question: Is there a truly original idea left out there?

Oh, I suppose there is a third category of Internet folk that I fall into…those who just go around aggregating stuff. Those people are cool in that they at least accept the fact that no one really cares about what they have to say…might as well throw a bunch of crap into a hole and call it a swimming pool.

Handpounds,

#:-)