friday i went to see stefan sagmeister and hillman curtis speak. i had never seen either one, but am fairly familiar with their work.

i am not a great fan of sagmeister's work but can see the importance it has in both commercial design and fine art. sagmeister's work almost always challenges the viewer to look beyond the visual. much of his work is in your face. his text treatments go against everything you were ever taught in typography class (if you graduated before 1990). much of his work looks both organic and un-natural at the same time. probably his most well known work is the disturbing poster (above) done in 1999 for a speaking engagement.

so, with those opinions in mind, i expected his personality to be harsh, arrogant, and annoyingly opinionated. i was completely wrong.

sagmeister discussed work done after a one year break from commercial work. he was very humble, soft spoken and very likable. further confusing the presupposed persona i had manufactured in my head, was his austrian accent that sounded like a kinder and gentler treminator. sagmeister is one of those people that is not just smart, but frighteningly intelligent. one of those freaks connecting dots that i can't even see.

curtis spoke about the creative process and success factors of the process. one factor, is to erase cynicism. yep, erase cynicism. something i am unable to do in the current economic/political environment. a world without cynicism is a world without griff. i can not exist. i might argue cynicism can fuel creativity, but i can see that it might be cheap fast burning fuel. anyway, he is a better man than i if he can erase cynicism in todays world, and i know he is probably right.

curtis showed some interesting work. one piece that directly reflected a video piece done by another designer. he admitted that it influenced him. it was kind of odd to see such a well respected designer mimicking elements of another's work. it exemplified the rip, remix and burn culture we live in. regardless, his presentation was on target. curtis also frightened me with his intelligence (even though he was hopped up on cold medication and had to bail out of the q and a session).

every time i attend something like this (or thumb through print magazines design annual) i go through the same predictable emotions. first is am in awe. awe changes to a feeling of being inspired and a desire to build some cool shit. finally an overwhelming feeling of hopeless bleak despair. realization that i am not worthy and that i am a pathetic insult to the design profession. i could never design something at that level. it's a good thing i don't have a handgun at those moments or they would be my last moments.

truly disappointing was the fact that not a single one of my design students showed up for the event. where is the love? kids today.

the great thing about having a blog is having readers much smarter than i serving as technical support.

my mac loses things. I have lost my iTunes library and playlists 3 times. I have lost all my Safari bookmarks (and what seems like preferences) twice. I have lost my iChat settings twice. I have lost Entourage settings once. I have lost xPad entries once. all over the span of 3 months.

there is no noticeable rhyme or reason. the level of destruction can vary. some times it happens to an individual app and other times it will affect multiple apps at the same time. i can not recreate any of the conditions. it seems completely random.

the only connection to these errors may lie in .plist files but it is only a guess.

I am on a power book g4 with 10.3. Nothing new installed recently.

help.

i wonder what doctors showed expectant mothers before ultrasound.

in preparation for our trip to dizny wrld, my wife bought me a fanny pack. no you didn't just fall into a time portal, i will type it again for you, fanny pack.

when you are 19 you're cool every breathing moment, intentionaly or not. at 19 you could wear... oh, say, a plastic mesh truckers hat from 1972 and a pair of jeans cut so poorly your ass crack is visible and it looks cool. at 19 you could say something like "fo shizzle my bizzle" and it sounds cool.

at 37, you are only allocated 3 days of cool per year, and you are not told which days they are. might have been yesterday, might be tomorrow. you just don't know.

there is no way i am strapping on a fucking fanny pack.

just returned from spring break at diznywrld. i am leaving for the sxsw conference in the morning. mickey left me with no beer money.

so, if you see me and buy me a beer, i will give you 2 hand crafted fonts. one made from my handwritting (great for ransom notes and fraudulent activities) and the other is a dingbat font of character heads.

it also includes a limited edition fancy little jewel case and cover art!

i prefer bass ale or st. pauli girl! see you in austin.