This week’s WTF Wednesday submission comes from photographer David Ingram, who took this lovely photo of me in front of Mr. Weenie’s artwork a few weeks ago. He also took the first two photos you see below. Here we have signage that’s goal isn’t to be beautiful, but rather to inform. It is exactly halfway successful. The photo below is by an unknown photographer, but apparently he has the same passion for graphic design that I do. So that’s all for this edition of WTF Wednesday. Feel free to send me your photos for future posts. Now, go out there and make things pretty!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of Tuesday’s Type Tip. Today we delve into the seedy side of typography with the letter “X.” The “x-height” of a typeface is the distance from baseline to meanline. The meanline runs across the tops of the main bodies of lowercase letters, excluding ascenders & descenders. This critical distance helps determine a typeface’s identity and influences its legibility. The letter “X” is used for this measurement because it has a flat base and top. (Unlike those degenerate curved letters that screw everything up.) *See last week’s post for more on the beautiful but challenging letter “O.” Although the letters below are set in different typefaces, they’re all the same point size! It boggles the mind. Note that letters with serifs (above left) tend to have smaller x-heights when compared to their sans serif cousins. (More on the fascinating nature of serifs in a future post.) Now check this out: See how the type in the upper two paragraphs appears less dense than in the bottom two? That’s because type with a small x-height has longer ascenders and descenders (protruding/danglin’ parts of lowercase letters such as d, y, h and g). This factor creates…

I’m not going to waste a keystroke on discussing how f*cked up this sign is. Instead, I will show you 3 signs that are better than this one. ~ Now, go grab a camera and send me your favorite WTF examples. They might be featured in an upcoming edition of WTF Wednesday!

I have a confession to make: I’m in love with letters. Not in the cool, romantic way literature buffs and poets love letters; but in the dorky, glasses sliding down the nose, masking tape stuck to chin, graphic designer’s way. And I’m on a mission to share that love with you. Initially I had grand plans to do this in a somewhat organized way, but that’s no fun, so I’m starting with one of my faves: The One, the Only, the circle of life herself… O. (No, not Oprah.) Did you know some capital letters are taller than others? (Shocking, but true.) Rounded capital letters, such as O and C, may extend just above the cap height (illustrated below as the line across the top of the letter “H”) and just below the baseline. If they didn’t do that, it would cause an optical illusion where the O would appear to be smaller than the other letters, and that would just look funny. Pretty cool, huh? Now you have something interesting/relatively useless to tell your friends. Think of how much fun you’ll be at parties! Next week on “Tuesday’s Type Tip” we’ll be discussing the finer points of everybody’s favorite…

Once upon a time, I was scared to get on Twitter. I didn’t really understand the concept and thought it was kind of silly. I’d been on Facebook for a while and understood its value as a way to relive the humiliation of high school all over again, but Twitter seemed pointless. When I finally bit the bullet, I started out as your garden variety Twitter-lurker and had some fun while trying to market my name. (In hindsight, I probably should have considered the ramifications of naming myself after lunch meat, but that’s neither here nor there.) I was recently mentioned by a productivity coach as one of his favorite people to follow in his list of 7 Twitter tips. I noticed that his list wasn’t a round number, which compelled me to even it out with 3 of my own Twitter tips: 1. Pepper in a few profanities throughout your tweets. It will give you credibility with the degenerate crowd that hangs out on Twitter after midnight. (You know who you are.) 2. Direct message people at 3am in hopes that they have all DMs set to go to their phones. People love that. 3. Be sure to tweet…

My husband and business partner, the extremely talented Bill Haddad (aka: Mr. Weenie), is a true Renaissance man. In one week he might edit some video, drywall the kitchen, design a stage, build a ramp for our decrepit poodle, mix sound for a show, create a 3D rendering of downtown Austin and install a new toilet. His latest endeavor was to create a video piece as part of a photography and video art exhibit shown at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin. His piece, “Who’s Watching the Kids?,” consists of 164 channels of video playing simultaneously. The video streams were simulated surveillance camera angles he shot on the UT campus. (Yes, he was the strange man carrying around a camera attached to a very large pole. I was on standby in case bail needed to be posted.) Here’s Mr. Weenie’s piece on the main cluster. There were 3 additional screens with similar video streams. One side of the room had video of Bill’s eyeball looking through a peephole. (That’s my man—rather cute and kinda creepy.) (Photo courtesy of David Ingram) Friend, UT professor and recently named Guggenheim Fellow, Lawrence McFarland, also showed several great…

As I discussed in last week’s blog post, “Owning Photoshop Doesn’t Make You a Graphic Designer,” design is about much more than knowing the latest software. The real meat of this profession is in knowing how to use the tools effectively to communicate visually. A friend’s husband recently finished a six-month course in Adobe CS4 and wanted some objective feedback on his portfolio. The following is an edited version of the message I sent after reviewing his work. All names have been changed to protect the innocent, as well as the criminals. ~~~ Dear Newbie, While I appreciate the fact that you’re taking steps to improve your technical skills, it is clear you haven’t been exposed to the basic principles of graphic design. Here are a few things you can do right now to improve your chances of landing a job in the design field: But first, are you experienced? I see a good bit of pro bono work in your future. Research non-profits in need of a logo update or website revamp. Hit up your friends for gigs jazzing up their Twitter backgrounds. Take any opportunity that presents itself to practice, practice, practice! You should be having dreams of…

I own exactly 2 tools: a hammer and a screwdriver. Fortunately Mr. Weenie has nails and a saw, so I’m pretty sure I could build a house if I wanted to. Now that I think about it, I also have a box of pens and an art degree, so I’m fairly confident I could draw up a set of blueprints as well. Wow, that would really save us a lot of money! So how many architects/builders/potential neighbors have I insulted/terrified so far? Probably the same number of graphic designers living in constant fear of the CEO’s Macbook-toting nephew, Zach. Having a kitchen full of pots and pans doesn’t mean I can cook (just ask Mr. Weenie), and owning Adobe’s Creative Suite doesn’t mean you can (or should) whip up a company logo on your day off. Having the right tools for a job is important, but using a tool without the skill, knowledge and experience to back it up only leads to inferior work (and possibly an unexpected trip to the emergency room). Some tools, such as computers, change over time (The hammer? Not so much.), but the purpose for which we use them generally remains the same. What used…

Okay, so I’ve been sitting in front of a blank screen for about 20 minutes (or a year and a half if you want to be literal), trying to think of something earth-shatteringly profound to say in my first blog post. I have an irrational fear of blank space—the beginning, the unknown. All the possibilities leave me, well, speechless. I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember. Even in high school I’d find myself staring down a piece of loose leaf paper like it was my mortal enemy. (For those of you born after 1980, that falls somewhere between the stone tablet and a touchscreen.) I have the same problem when I’m about to start a new design project. Sitting in front of a blank monitor kinda freaks me out, so I use a trick I picked up when I hit a brick wall of writer’s block while working on my graphic novel, “The Talking Horse,” in the 2nd grade. I walk away. That’s right, TeenieWeenie knew something most folks take years to learn; that sometimes the best decision is to go do something else for a while. Granted, in 1974 that “something else” may have involved…