Back to the Drawing Board

Last night I found myself watching an excellent documentary on the font Helvetica. The film, which explored the history of the font, its role in contemporary design and the artistic responses to its (perceived) over use was fascinating but it was the segment on how the systematic styling of the actual letters - the uniform, almost scientific spacing between them, the consistency of the curvature – created enough routine to provide the brain with a sense of comfort.  

Some designers hold the opinion that this is to the ultimate detriment of society, that it cultivates this embrace of the status quo and that the utilitarian appearance is both uninteresting and even indicative of corporate oppression. I guess, rather predictably, I tend to disagree. The child of a process-loving engineer, routine and discipline were personal qualities to be aspired to. Growing up bouncing around Europe I had a natural appreciation for simplicity, tradition and history (as it happens, the Belgians, Dutch and Germans are big fans of Helvetica so perhaps I have an ingrained bias).

Anyway, the whole thing got me thinking about the need for rhythm in life – that an existence based in structure (whether based on values, goals, whatever) often creates the efficiencies opportunity. Somehow I’ve always understood that and valued it, even in the halcyon days/years I don’t really remember.  The times where I’ve felt lost or - to use the more dramatic term adrift - it’s because I don’t have a plan. Generally speaking the longer it goes on the more it bums me out.

This morning finds me drinking tea, listening to Yo La Tengo and feeling very much like I’m treading water, lacking the vision and diligence to move forward creatively. Specifically, I’ve started thinking about how this affects my productivity with regards to writing – the fact of the matter is I don’t write with the same frequency or level of quality that I used to (this is not to say blogging about “America’s Next Top Model” is rocket science; it’s not). Microblogging tools like Twitter or even Facebook updates are fulfilling in that they’ve allowed me to stay connected to friends far and wide, but I’m not sure that ultimately it’s enough.  What do I write about? What do I say? 

Even if it doesn’t matter to anyone but me, I’ve grown tired of feeling incapable of doing more.  I miss writing and writing misses me. I haven’t even logged into a blog (that I’ve had for five years) since last fall.

Articulating all of this, which I’ve done periodically over the years, is probably as good a start as any right?

 

 

Comments

[Richard Yoo]

dig it

[Matt]

I find the biggest problem to be finding a topic that isn't trivial. I love to write as well. And I do a lot of writing for work, but not for myself.

I find what most people blog to be rather trite. Reading about someone's day at the baseball field or what they ate at Casa Romero last night isn't all that interesting. Rotely repeating what you did yesterday is like reading an accounting list of goods purchased. Everytime I sit down to write I ask myself not "Is this interesting for me" but "could someone else possibly find this interesting".

I think that mere fact holds a lot of people back from keeping up with the writing phase, especially blogging. So much blogging just devolves into a mere tally of items. But what people really want is a story, or an opinion lined out with facts and proper documentation, or even just flat information on a topic that they are interested in.

Microblogging, hopefully, will continue to take away the massive amount of pagelong data about what Sean McDougalson did during the day cause he can tell me via facebook or twitter that he had a coffee at starbucks and it was a bit too bitter and I'm not resigning myself to an hour of painful blog sifting in the evening.

I think that you always manage to find topics to discuss which are interesting, or a way to relate them to your own experiences, which is why your blog is interesting. But the fact that you, like everyone else in the world, tend to get bogged down in the every day workload, its hard to really sit and derive real interesting opinions and ideas about what is going on in the world around you.