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It’s Aliiive!

After many late nights, I have met my personal deadline, and have finally launched my online portfolio at www.martz.ca.  The ‘folio’ button at the top of this page now takes you there, so now hopefully I’ll stop getting e-mails asking when it will be active.

I’m happy to have the site up and running, and especially happy that I was able to meet the deadline imposed on me. (Thanks, C.F.)

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Defeet?  I Can’t Even Spell It.

The Design Observer has posted a list of The Top Ten Things I Never Learned in Design School.

It treads a little on the stuffy side, but it mostly rings true, except for point Number Two: 95 percent of any creative profession is shit work.

I don’t believe this.  It’s true that you have to put up with the bad along with the good, but I will never resign myself to believing that I can only ever enjoy 5 percent of my work. 

You will only ever be doing the work that you don’t want to do if you don’t go after the work that you DO want.  Why bother striving for happiness if you don’t believe it exists?  I can’t dismiss the fact that all creative work requires effort, dedication, and sweat, but I know too many designers who bemoan their stagnant careers without doing anything about it. 

Someone recently taught me “don’t talk about things you don’t do,” and it’s the most important piece of advice I’ve heard in a long time.  I now think it’s the key to success and happiness in a creative life.  What do you want to do?  Do it.

Screw that 5 percent shit.

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Steeerike One!

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To Read or Not to Read

I don’t like to give up on books.  If I start a novel, I want to read it until I finish it.  Michael Chabon wrote one of my favourite books in recent years, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.  I recently read his Wonder Boys, which I also loved.  But now I’m reading something of his that I can barely get through after each page.

Summerland is Chabon’s Narnia.  He apparently wanted to write a book for his 11 year-old self—something that as a child, he would have loved to read.  This book is part J.K. Rowling, part J.R.R. Tolkien, part C.S. Lewis, and Part W.P. Kinsella (perhaps proving that this stuff is best left to those authors who identify themselves by their initials).

Simply put, it’s a magical tale about baseball.  Maybe that’s my problem, since I’ve never quite cared for America’s favourite pastime (no, not that one).

I’m only on page 55 and already I’ve encountered a magical island, an alternate universe, a werefox, pixies, hobbits fairfolk, a mystical oracle, and—surprise surprise—the prophesied destiny of an unlikely hero.

I love Michael Chabon, but this book is just bad.  I can look past the baseball, but the fantasy world that I should believe in just seems forced and convoluted, as if it was made up as the author went along. Has anyone else read it?  Should I give up, or does it get any better?

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Random Thoughts on a Thursday

Attention all convenience-store owners in the greater Toronto area.  Do not let me purchase Hershey Skor Bites®.  I will eat the entire bag.

Also, yesterday I stepped on Air Farce‘s Don Ferguson’s foot on the subway.  I apologized at the time, but after further thought, I think he deserved it.  Although it was a far too lenient punishment for countless years of bland, flavourless “comedy”.

CHUD.com has compiled a list of 100 movies that deserve “more love”.  Some of my personal favourites made the cut: The Hudsucker Proxy, Gremlins 2, Ed Wood, L.A. Story, and The Temple of Doom…

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For All Intensive Purposes

The 100 Most Often Mispronounced Words.

What is it that makes me want to smash someone’s head in with a shovel when they say, “for all intensive purposes”?  I can think of several people to whom I need to forward this list. Last night while flipping past Fear Factor, for example, a contestant warned another that soon he’d have to “excavate the premises.” I guess they were going to search for fossils or something.

Missing from the list: chooseday in lieu of tuesday, dezember instead of of december, and for God’s sake—why doesn’t the list lambaste (or lambast!) those who can’t pronounce the glory that is sandwich?  This world is filled with too many people who pronounce it sangwidge (undoubtedly the same people who drink malk instead of milk).

I will say, however, there is something kind of cute about supposably (exspecially, if it’s a little kid saying it).

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New to the Sidebar

In an effort to make it easier for you to completely document my consumption of media, my sidebar now also displays (in addition to books and movies) the current-most albums I’m listening to… Judge away.

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Cause and Effect

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Enemy, Thy Name is Spam

We all hate spam, don’t we?  One of the reasons it bothers me so much is not because it is an annoyance to get rid of, taking up valuable space in my inbox.  I have a special dislike for spam simply because as much as I want to hate it, sometimes it makes me smile just reading the names in the From: field.

Here I present to you, my top ten favourite Spam e-mail culprits… direct from my inbox:

1. Groupie Bang
2. Betty Pagan
3. Pamela Dickme
4. Elaine Tasty
5. Teresa Jugs
6. Nicolas Schwarzeneggar (sic)
7. Lickme Cherry
8. Jerry Fakamule
9. Regina Slideit
10. Donna Getsum

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Grading Spaces

There’s an interesting discussion over at Typophile about the practice of typing two spaces after the end of a sentence. It’s a rule I was taught by my mom growing up, and then again in high school typing class.  It’s also a habit that has become so natural, that I can’t easily give it up; it’s become something my body does without thinking, like looking both ways before crossing the street.  (You won’t find an example on this site, however, since HTML automatically removes superfluous spaces)

Technology and common sense has made a second space unnecessary, and if you open up any professionally typeset book you won’t find it in between sentences.  Like several readers of the forum, I always thought it was a matter of “house style,” but if no one does it, does that make it bad style?

Do you add a second space at the end of a sentence?  If so, why?

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More Found Type

A friend just sent me this link to some nice examples of found hand-drawn type in London.

I knew there must have been more sites like this out there, so a quick Googling brought me to a fellow mechanical automaton with a taste for the alphabetic: say hello to Itchy Robot!  It seems to be a group effort of sorts, and there are some great pictures within.

(Also, check out this batch of hand-painted Disneyland signs that surfaced earlier last week)

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Spellbound

So I’m browsing my latest free issue of MacWorld (courtesy of the registration of my Apple Airport), and there’s a whole article on OS X tips and tricks, which are incredibly handy, but it’s all stuff that the average user would love to know.

Why are the handiest features of Apple’s software always something that you have to find out by accident? 

Anyway, Safari has a built-in dynamic spellchecker. Go up to the Edit menu, then under Spelling select Check Spelling As You Type, and now when you make a typo in any text box it is underlined in red and a simple control-click will give you proper spellings like any word processor.

I’m a fairy comprtent speller I thnik, but I oftnn type rather quickyl, so this feature is a dogsend, and it totally maks up for the lack of spellcheckingg in Movable Typ.

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God’s Comic

I got the chance to briefly meet Elvis Costello again last night after his Massey Hall show with Steve Nieve.  I didn’t manage to get a picture this time, but I did think ahead and bring something for him to sign:

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Drawing at the Green Room

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Found Type

Toronto is a great city for found type.  Work your way outwards from the heart of downtown and you’ll find all sorts of hand-painted signs and fading pieces of typography that are all beautiful.

I am always looking at type and wishing I had a camera.  So I took the bull by the horns this weekend and went type-hunting.  This entry also marks the creation of a new archive category: photos.

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