Sagmeister

This is self indulgent but I feel it is justified since it’s a follow-up to a topic I wrote about nearly a year ago. Tonight Stefan Sagmeister the graphic designer came to KC for a lecture event on his book tour. A and I went because I’m a big fan. Afterward he signed my book and this happened.

To explain why this happened I need to say that a few friends/co-workers have mentioned in the past that I bare a resemblance to Sagmeister. Two of those people happened to be standing near by. If anything, I think he bares a resemblance to me.

So Long, No Depression Printed Magazine

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19246307

This was a magazine I loved. It covered the type of music I play and listen to. Then like everything in my life I took it for granted and sort of ended up ignoring it. I guess I’m part of the reason it’s discontinuing it’s printed version. But I will probably always hang on to the copies I have because my bands are featured or blurbed in a few of them. And that bolstered my ego and made me feel good. That attention sort of validated what I was trying to do as a musician even though I wasn’t making any money at it.

Happy 50th Lego

http://gizmodo.com/349509/lego-brick-timeline-50-years-of-building-frenzy-and-curiosities
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1707379,00.html

Playing with Legos as a kid taught me how to be creative. Without knowing it at the time, I was learning to be resourceful (I never had all the pieces I wanted so I made work-arounds to get what I wanted.) And I learned how to be in “the zone” of creativity and build for hours by myself. (Years later as a graphic designer I discovered I was doing essentially the same thing only with different tools.) It was always the process of building and not so much the acting out of scenarios that I liked – which is still true today for what I do as a graphic designer and musician.

“We Brought a Pedal Steel Player with Us”

This past October I toured with the New Amsterdams from Lawrence, Kansas for six days. It’s been a few years since I’ve done anything like that since now I have a jobby job that I like. But since I was a hired gun I for the trip, I was able to take unpaid leave from work. That’s a rare thing.

Because I’m vain, I’m posting a youtube video from that tour (this one’s from a Boston church) by a New Ams fan.

New Amsterdams myspace.

flickr images of the tour.

Christmas Redesign

Studio 360 may be one of the best weekly NPR shows for anyone interested in the creative process. Below is a link to one of my favorite segments and its description from its website.

http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2006/12/22

Studio 360 commissioned Pentagram, one of the country’s leading design firms, to give Christmas a makeover. They came up with a new typeface, color scheme, fir tree surrogate, and a radical proposal to channel the rampant commercialism to good ends. Pentagram partner Michael Bierut presents the plan to Kurt Andersen.

Be sure to check out their visual presentation kit as well!

Side note: I met Michael Bierut (and Kurt Andersen) briefly this last year at an AIGA conference. He is sort of a Wynton Marsalis for the graphic design profession in terms of respect, work, and being an industry spokesman. He’s the media’s goto source for smart commentary for graphic design developments and contributes to magazines like Print and his own shared blog Design Observer.

Take care and hope you are enjoying your life

We know it’s easy to find people from our past on the Internet. I’ve looked up childhood friends out of sheer curiosity and likewise people have found me too. But the recent myspace messages below really stopped and gave me a deeper realization of what I’m doing with my life and how much different it could have been had I decided to do things another way.

The following is part of a short correspondence with a girl I may have talked to five times or less in the time we went to school together from 4th grade all the way through high school in a town of five thousand people. It boggles my mind that our brief messaging likely added up to more than all of our conversations back in those days.

I’ve changed her and her family members names.

From her:
Hey I am not sure if are the Nate I went to school with. My name is Christina Smith but Christina Jackson back in the days at Eudora High School. If you are him send me a friend request so we can stay in touch and get to know one and another again. Thanks for your time. Chris

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From me:
Yeah, hi Christina. God, it’s been forever. I think you were class of 93 right? How’s it going?

________________________________________________

From her:
Yea 93 is right!! Everything is going fine. Married and with three kids!! I am a mom of a teenager now!! Taylor turned 13 on the 3rd of May!! Wow!! I still can not believe it. He is in 7th grade now. Janna my daughter is 11 now and in the 5th grade. And the baby gal of the family is 6 soon to be 7 and in the 1st grade. I am a school bus driver 3 years now. My husband is a mechanic and an spray tech. He works alot sun to sun down most days. We live in Tecumseh Kansas now. When my husband’s dad died he left us the house. It is small and needs a lot of work but it is ours. It is in the country and on an dead end road. We have almost 3 acers with it. I am at home or work most the time I am a home body!! I am excited because when school is out this year I hope to finish painting the house and get the yard looking a lot better!! I have a lot to do this summer alone with going to the ballfields a lot for Janna. She plays softball. And then taking the kids to the pool. Well glad to find some eles I know to talk to. There is a couple of classmates I have found on myspace page. I do not have many on there I only talk to people I know on here. To many freaks to just talk to anyone!! Well I will send you a friend request and hope to talk more latter. Take care and hope you are enjoying your life!! Chris

________________________________________________

So why did she find me and why am I unexpectedly interested to hear from this 32-year-old mom? Simple: At this age, we’re all more aware of getting older and we can now for the first time look back at 10 years (give or take a few) or so of living independently and see what we have to show for it and to compare that with others that grew up in the same small town.

DAX Madness

Early 1950s Eames DAX chairs of Zenaloy (D = dining height, A = armshell, X = four point rod leg base)

These came from a Catholic elementary school here in town. I made an offer initially thinking that they were replicas or knockoffs of Herman Miller Eames chairs since I couldn’t find the HM logo molded on the bottom. After the buy and doing more research specifically about these chairs I now think it’s very likely that these predate the HM logo* and are real Eames chairs.

I had two nearly simultaneous “Oh, shit” moments. The first was in realizing that these were probably real Eames chairs and that I got them for a great price. The second was in that I may have dissuaded the elementary school teacher from her first thought that they were real Eames chairs. I told her that I wasn’t for sure if they were real but in my experience the real items had Herman Miller branding. We both looked and she took my first offer based on that assessment. And even though I was operating under the best information I had at the time (which wasn’t much), I now wonder if I need to let her know that I bought six chairs from her for less than the price one chair would fetch on ebay. (Please know that I’m not bragging here.) In that case, I’d probably end up with one chair.

Is it narcissistic to feel this kind of guilt? Or is that question a way to justify my feeling better about this all? It seems we both brought to the purchase the knowledge we had at the moment and used it honestly.

I’m told that I “just stumbled on (my) first mid-century modern find. That kind of thing does happen.” Clueless, dumb luck might be more like it.

* I don’t know when the HM logo did or didn’t go on similar chairs but eamesoffice.com and ebay both show models with and without the logos

—–

Guilt aside, now I see why these chairs have endured. Not only are they sturdy and weighty but they also seem to defy gravity! The skinny legs are surprisingly solid and the fiberglass seat seems to floats above them. After more than 50 years these chairs live both in the 1950s and today effortlessly. Though, for some reason, when I became more aquatinted with these I could only think: laundromat.

Does this chair seem dated to you?

Guess Who

Another designer at work forwarded this around the office this week. Stefan Sagmeister is very well known as a graphic designer and I am not. So this will be the only comparison between us. But why is he such a copy cat? Thank you Stephanie.

Stealing

I want to steal the blue Eames Aluminum Group chairs that have been sitting carelessly near the cooker in front of the firehouse that is down the street. They are too expensive for my budget. But I’m not going to steal them. That’s wrong. So if they go missing don’t ask me about where they are because I won’t have them.

April in Chicago

Go here to see picts.

My mom, my sister, and myself met in Chicago for a few days. My sister is a grad student at the University of Chicago Divinity School (soon to graduate and then pursue another graduate degree in education). My mom is in town for her professional association’s educational annual conference. And I come to town to see them both and gawk at (and take pictures of) the architecture.