Camp Conde Nast.

The magazine behemoth is hosting a cocktail party for us this afternoon. There will be a hyooge banner across the lobby welcoming us CPCers, and then upstairs in the reception area, two bars and the finest hors d'oeuvres we may ever try will be fueling 100 students schmoozing with the editors of GQ, Vogue, Glamour, Self, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Details, Wired, etc. I mean, it's not like we're doing it just for fun; it's practically a class requirement at this point. After all, career fair is in two and a half weeks.

More than cute.

I just downloaded my first album on my MacBook tonight, and I'm getting even greater vibes than I got when I bought Panic! At the Disco. Cute Is What We Aim For has the same spirit in their song names and lyrics and their pop sound, but on a much more refined note. It sounds both restrained, and yet more expansive then Panic!; comparatively, Panic! feels like they rely on gimmicks, while Cute focuses on a straight-up, fun, yet biting tone. They're like Saves the Day but without the underlying darkness. Whatever the case, to use Mischa's words, I approve. Oh most definitely.

ETA: I also just bought Reinterpretations by the Shanghai Restoration Project. I am going to have some damn good music to design to next week during the magazine workshop.

Unprofessional.

Last night, on the phone:

Lee: I was in the office the other day when you called, and Michelle got quite a hoot out of it.
Ryan: She told me she was still at work and couldn't talk, and I'm like 'Come on. I'm quite certain this is not the most unprofessional thing to happen there this week.'
Lee: Yeah, I can't see us getting in trouble for it.
Ryan: 'Uh-oh! A personal phone call with 20min. left in the work week! Shut down Duke TIP Kansas!'
Lee: 'We're moving it to K-State!'
Ryan: Holy shit that's funny.

Forza Italia! (pt. 2)

So Italy came through, as I, um, predicted. Yeah, I totally did. Though I hate hate hate penalty kicks to decide a match, let alone the championship of the world. It's just so unsatisfying. But I loved this Italian team, and I think the cursed Frenchmen are a bunch of a brutes. Seriously, head butting someone in the chest?

I got up a little after 7am this morning and headed out towards Central Park for a good run. I ran up the Great Hill along West Dr., going south until I pulled off onto a sidewalk past the tennis courts. Then I realized I was at the running track for the Jackie Onassis Reservoir. Oh. My. Gosh. It's my new favorite place in Manhattan. The reservoir stretches across a good quarter or so of the park, and at the north edge, the skyline of New York is arrayed before you, with the grand apartment buildings of 5th Ave. and Central Park West guiding your eyes to the whole of Midtown, Hell's Kitchen, and Gramercy. I loved the view so much I took a second lap, and then came back to watch the Wimbledon final.

After the first set I felt very sleepy, so I came back up to my room and listened to the BBC feed while resting (I love a good 10am nap). I watched the final set with Kristina who is way super cool, and then set out to find a barbershop to follow through on my decision of last night. It felt so good to get rid of all that stuff and get back down to my 1/8th of an inch; I need to remember that my hair looks much better as a Wimbledon court, not a fairway rough.

I got some juice and a big cookie to hold me over until lunch, which I was going to eat with some classmates while watching the World Cup final. When I found out they were going to the other side of the isle, I said that I was going to be fine right here. I got a crappy beef burrito across the street, which barely lasted through regulation, let alone overtime and penalty kicks.

Afterwards came the highlight of my weekend (MoMA excepted). I went down the street to Le Monde, a "student-priced" brasserie, in the words of the Not for Tourists guide (I actually found the restaurant on my own the first week I was here, and then looked it up later). For $28 it may not sound all that spectacular for a burger and frites with a beer, and some vanilla ice cream for dessert, but it was truly sublime. I can't wait to go back next weekend for a true brunch.

Now I'm in for the night; I'm supposed to be doing a homework assignment tonight, but there are a lot of us who never got the assignment on Friday (which should have been expected, considering that everybody couldn't wait to get out of that building after being stuck there for an entire week). I'll just read and listen to the internet radio station from P.S.1, a MoMA-sponsored museum/center in Queens; they play great techno-lounge music, and I hear the museum is fantastic. Just another listing for another weekend.

Meh.

Forget this whole 'hair' thing. I'm gonna try to find a barber tomorrow. After what should be spectacular finals at Wimbledon and the World Cup, of course.

The problem with this city.

I've only been here for three weeks, but I think I've got this one nailed down: too many restaurants. Seriously, when any given block in this city has, by my estimate, approximately 15,000 places to get food, then where am I supposed to eat?

I woke up this morning with a renewed drive to turn this into Ultimate New York Weekend. I should've stuck with Friday. I went out to get a croissant and an orange juice, then walked across Morningside Park (which is really very cool) to the C train at 116th, which I took down to 23rd, in Chelsea. I wanted to go to the Center for Book Arts and look at their exhibits, but I went west when I should've gone east. Forty minutes later I entered the CBA, and walked out within five minutes, thoroughly disappointed with their concept of a 'book.' Going back to 7th Ave., I got on the 1 train at 28th to Times Square, then transfered to the N and took it to Lexington and 59th. I thought I could salvage the morning by stopping by Serendipity, where Tiffany had told me about the frozen hot chocolate. Unfortunately, you can't get it to go, and the waiting list was stretched out to the street. Trying to remain undaunted, I pressed on towards my ultimate goal for the day: the United Nations headquarters. I entered the main building and realized that MoMA has more of a security presence than the UN (and maybe there's a good reason for that). Deciding against a guided tour, I bopped around the gift and book shoppes before leaving to come back to 53rd so that I could at least have the option of going back through MoMA to see the floors that I didn't look at last night. I was getting very tired, as I was in my tenth hour of exploring New York City in the last 24 hours, and, after realizing that the Museum of Arts and Design across the street was primarily furniture and interior design, decided to scrap my Ultimate Weekend. I went back to 49th and Broadway, caught the 1 back up to 110th where I got out and tried to pick one place to finally eat some lunch; had to settle for a slice of cheese pizza that I could bring back to the dorm with me.

I'm going to rest and watch Germany:Portugal this afternoon, and then decide if I should go for a run tonight or tomorrow morning. With all of the walking I've done, I'm content to wait until tomorrow; I'm not planning on much this evening anyway. New York, you won this round.

On the superficiality of politics and the meaning of design, or: What I want to be when I grow up, pt. 2.

I've just finished reading The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd, the assistant art director and an editor-at-large at Knopf, and I must say that it has been as insightful as it was frightening. Insightful in that it gave voice to things I had known only intuitively, and frightening in the scope of what I don't know. You know, the kinds of things that one would, say, learn in art school? But that's crap, because I worked this week with two top tier professionals in book design and they didn't get a degree in design. Their talent is of course undeniable, and in the words of Mr. Kidd himself, makes all the difference in the world. Do I have it? Did I ever? Or was I just always fooling myself and everybody around me?

Last night I had trouble sleeping because I kept critiquing my book covers. All week I've heard praise, along with a few tweaks, and listened to our resource people be quite generous in telling me that my covers were 'lovely' and 'beautiful', and that they wouldn't say that I had talent if they didn't mean it. But over and over in my mind I kept saying 'But I'm not good yet! I can't be! Yes, they look nice. But do they look inspired?' For that, friends, is my goal. To reach the sublime, to capture the essence, so that upon glancing at the cover, or the spread, or the whatever, one's only thought is

"Of course."

I'm a rather humble guy when it comes to this stuff (indeed, I felt extremely embarassed whenever somebody started talking about my covers: 'Talk to the sales or editorial or publicity people; they actually worked this week! I just dicked around in a design lab until I felt like it was presentable!') but I don't think I'm out of line to say that as far as the technical stuff is concerned, I'm getting it down pretty good. All of my picked-up typographic knowledge (ascenders and descenders; x-heights; the difference between the Didot/Bodoni families and, oh, say, Garamond perhaps?) served me well, and my thorough knowledge of InDesign and PhotoShop allowed me to transfer exactly what was in my mind onto the screen, and then to the page.

But that's the problem. I knew what I was capable of doing, or what I brought to the table and out of the technology at hand. I still don't know whether I felt myself reaching for an idea because I knew that I could take something from a lesser branch and through the magic/curse of desktop publishing, still be able to create a work of suitable design. (Though each cover does have a great idea behind it, esp. 'Devil's Chord' and 'Pin Factory.') There's a reason why Sara Eisenmann (who hired Chip Kidd at Knopf!) has been said to say that CPC students who come in with little or no design background usually do better at the covers. It's not hard to understand: they don't know what's possible yet. They don't know what the programs are and aren't capable of doing; they're not thinking in terms of kerning or halftone screens; the purity of the mind can allow for a greater reach of ideas. When they asked me how to curve text into a circle or a wavy line, I had to express my apologies, for I never did that before, and thus did not know; though I had always wanted to learn, I never took the time to explore those possibilities. I knew what I done before, and that was enough. It cannot be anymore.

You can take all of this for what you will; it is after midnight and I've yet to get a full night of sleep during this most intense week of my life. As for the title? I've yet to read a single daily newspaper or read more than a few stories from the NYTimes.com that wasn't World Cup or Book/Arts-related since I arrived in NYC. And I'm not freaking out. In fact, I'm somewhat relieved to know that the world can continue on without my spending three hours a day on political blogs. Spend enough time talking about a fake book on the Republican Revolution and you realize that it's all crap anyway; the conservative/liberal dichotomy, the perceived 'traditional values' or 'progressive wave', and the 'It's 900 days until Bush is out, and then everything will be well again!' No it won't! The problem isn't Bush. It's never been Bush. It's the system that allowed him to become president. It's the system that says that two parties are enough, thank you very much. It's the system that encourages a flag-burning amendment to come to the floor every fucking year and keeps the words 'minimum wage' from even being uttered within earshot of Congress. I realize I'm ranting here, and the point isn't that this is a thunderbolt from the great blue; it's that I'm done. Not with the ship of state, mind you; I'll still keep up on the goings-on, and chit-chat and vote accordingly. But as far as the game is concerned, put me on the bench, coach; it's not fun anymore, and I'll be damned if I'm going to do something that isn't fun.

Let others write their screeds, and I'll even respond occasionally, but I've got enough on my plate with this design business. And if I work really really hard, and spend more money on formal classes, and catch a few breaks, then maybe I'll actually get into a position where I can spend the better portion of my life racking my brain and body over a sketchpad and a cinema display. Ideas, when given expression on a page, or a sign, or a façade, have more power than we can possibly know. They are the very essence of meaning, and inevitably, invariably, bring us up to the ranks of the inspired.

Ultimate New York Friday.

7am Run in Riverside Park.
8:20am Breakfast in the J-School.
9am Final copy-edit for the prospectus of Hudson University Press.
10:50am Final printing of HUP catalog, designed by yours truly.
11am Magazine orientation meeting.
12pm Prospectus complete and ready for submission.
1pm Walk into Columbia University Security to report that my iPod nano has been stolen from the desk in my room sometime in the past week.
2pm Emerge in Union Square Park at 23rd St., spend next 15min. or so finding my way to the Strand Bookstore.
3:15pm Leave Strand, head south on Broadway towards SoHo.
3:30pm Get to Spring St., find the bakery I've been wanting to try for years to purchase a croissant (my new favorite breakfast food!), a brownie, and a cup of Earl Grey.
4pm Emerge in Rockefeller Center at 49th to find a place to sit down and eat my treats. Walk away thoroughly unimpressed by both the locale and the food.
4:15pm Get in line for Target Ticket Free Friday at the Museum of Modern Art on 53rd.
4:30pm Get in the building.
4:40pm Get through the checkroom.
5pm Leave behind the actual museum to check out the bookstore.
5:30pm Exit MoMA after looking at half the exhibits (with resolve to come back at a later date and see the rest), check out the Design Store across the street.
6pm Enter Niketown at 57th and 5th. Consider buying a Netherlands ballcap; realize I never look in good in ballcaps. Consider buying a NY Niketown t-shirt; realize that I can no longer wear anything larger than a small without looking like a loser.
6:30pm Leave Niketown, and with weary legs, push on to 59th and Columbus Circle to come back to Columbia. An already full train is forced to disembark all of its passengers due to mechanical failures, and what seems like half of humanity packs itself into the next one, with me in the middle.
6:55pm Exit at 110th and Cathedral Parkway, go down the block to a walk-in Chinese place (which I have been craving all week).
7:15pm Satisfy craving for General Tso's Chicken back in the dorm while I regale all who will listen about my iPod travesty. Proceed to make everybody both hungry for real (read: non-Columbia) food and paranoid about leaving valuables in our locked dorm rooms.
8:35pm Still unsure of my plans for the rest of the night; seriously considering just reading, but worried about others having fun without me. Being in New York City, I really need to get to used to this feeling to preserve my sanity.

He must be stopped.

Is it me or is this man getting an inordinate amount of press lately?

No. 6.

Colophon: Artwork found at this website. Type is Gotham Extra Light, from H&F-J, and Didot (standard).

No. 5.

Colophon: Artwork found somewhere on the internet (I know, I'm getting worse at this). Type is Jenson, Onyx, Bulmer, Runic, and Poplar. Colors are Pantone 292 and 294.

No. 4.

Colophon: Can't remember where exactly the images came from; it took me two days to find them. Typeface is Flood.

No. 3.

Colophon: Image via Wikipedia. Typefaces are Bodoni, Latin, and Cyclone, which is from Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

No. 2.

Colophon: Image by myself. Typefaces are Adobe Garamond and Didot.

No. 1.

Colphon: This is a fake book cover; this is not in print, nor is it for any commercial or promotional use whatsoever except in a course project. Image from Express Train. Typefaces are Gotham and Cyclone, and are from Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

By the way.

I made my first trip to Central Park yesterday on my little field trip to the Museum of the City of New York. I of course got lost, and spent a good 40 min. traversing the park before getting to 5th Ave. The trip itself was a bust; I found no good artwork at that museum (but I did get in for free!) or at the Museum of El Barrio. But I got to see a bit of the Park and that's always a good thing.

The most ridiculous night ever.

Until tomorrow night. Seriously, fuck publishing.

I can get away with saying that after 1am in the morning.

Intensity.

This is my first wireless posting ever, thanks to my lovely MacBook. I'm writing this from the World Room of the Graduate School of Journalism, where the Pulitzer Prizes are awarded every year, and which serves, since Friday night through this Saturday, as headquarters for the Hudson University Press ("Jerry Orbach is our dean!"). This workshop is absolutely intense, but only for everybody else; they're all dealing with numbers and math and editing press releases and stuff like that. I just design six covers, and on this, the second day of workshop, I already have two pretty much locked in. I'll try to post them later in the week when they get finalized, but let's just say, these are most definitely portfolio material.

The most beloved cover so far is the one that nobody thought I could pull off. For a book titled The Devil's Chord, I wanted to stay away from satanic imagery and instead show the devil at play. I thought it would be great also to stay away from stock photography (which sucks when pulled off the internet) and do my own. I went out and found some faux parchment paper and hand-drew this tritonal chord onto it, and after three attempts, I managed to set it on fire, get it into position where the flame starts to engulf the staff and notes with one hand, and aim the camera with my other hand to take the photo (without my fingers in the frame), all the while it started raining. With absolutely no editing to the image, it became the cover, and has met universal acclaim. My other cover, a black & white subway photo I found on the internet, has also received lots of compliments due to the (of course) selection of typeface, and the way I balanced text in the tonal areas of the image. I'm working with a couple of legends in the business, and I can't wait to get started in the morning and start researching our other titles. As Dean Orbach would say, "Kick-ass."

Holy. Shit.

This workshop is gonna be insane. ETA: I never changed the time settings on here; it's still on Central Time, so everything I post is really one hour later. Thus I was talking about getting done with the first night of workshop at 1:45am after sitting in a conference room for six hours coming up with book ideas. Natch.–10:20am

Exile, pt. 2.

I found out this afternoon that I will be a design director in our book workshop, which starts tonight. I still don't know what kind of house I'll be working for, but I know that I will have to do six book jackets (and potentially a catalogue or other promotional materials), and will be pretty much sequestered away from the rest of my group for six days while tucked away in a special studio with two professional designers (meaning that I won't learn much about the rest of the process, but oh well). This is so exciting I can hardly stand it. Now I just hope I can live up to the hype.