Month: June 2007

See you in Seattle?

India4 Comments

Elephant Super Car Wash

Anybody going to TypeCon?

Despite saying last year that “I probably won’t go again,” and despite adding a mental “and especially to the one in Seattle,”* I just registered for, oops, the conference in Seattle. Because I realized that the way things are shaking out, otherwise I’ll end up not taking any summer vacation, and that’s just sad.

So I’ll drag myself out there for a week, see some friends, and maybe visit Vancouver. But also, because I’m already committed to flying across the country, staying in a hotel, and taking days off from work, this year I will be attending two full days of workshops (including “Bezier Curves for Cowards”!!), which I think will make the whole expedition much more fun and worthwhile.

And you?

Photo: elephant car wash by Jason Brackins; some rights reserved.

  • Lived there for a year. Didn’t like it.

How do you find out about design-related stuff?

India7 Comments

Advice

Book designer B., soon moving to New York, wrote today to inquire,

  1. How do you find design jobs?
  2. How do you find out about groups to join for discussing design, books, etc., and for going with to conferences/seminars/talks?
  3. What are your favorite sites for knowing when design-related things are happening?

I get asked this first question every few months, and perhaps you do, too. My answer is always something along the lines of—

I also sometimes recommend that people contact the Lynne Palmer agency, which is a headhunter specifically for book publishing. I’ve never gotten a job through them, except through the power of Magical Thinking—whenever I contact them, I get offered a job by someone else—but I do know that they get cool listings that you will not find online.

For the second and third questions, I have no idea. I skim so many design blogs’ RSS feeds that if something worthwhile is going on, I assume I’ll get wind of it. But maybe I’ve been missing out on all the fun. Are you all going to events and not inviting me?

Please discuss. Tips on entering design communities in other locales also very welcome.

Photo: Advice by NineFingers / dustinotariumatron; some rights reserved.

Two things I looked up today

India10 Comments

Power Tool Drag Race

  1. How to remove all hyperlinks in a Word document:
    Select all, then hit shift-command-F9 on the Mac (or shift-control-F9 on Windows).
  2. Which fonts can be safely deleted in OS X:
    Download the document “Best Practices for Managing Fonts in Mac OS X” from Extensis.com.

These are both things I’ve had to look up a dozen times before. Perhaps you have, too.

Looked anything up lately? Share!

Photo: Power Tool Drag Races by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid; some rights reserved.

Do you feel lucky?

India4 Comments

raffle ticket of the beast

If so, you might want to go buy a raffle ticket at Clusterflock, a scintillating group blog where I have occasionally been known to talk some trash. What’s being raffled?

iPhones, baby, iPhones.

You know you want one.

All the money received will be disbursed in the form of iPhones—with recipients to be chosen at random by celebrity random-name-chooser Jason Kottke—or will go to charity. So the more $20 tickets get bought, the more $499 phones get given away. Your chance of winning is therefore pretty close to 1 in 25, unless I’m really bad at math. (Which I am, by the way, so work it out for yourself; you may use a separate sheet of paper; I’ll wait. Correct me in the comments if I’m being totally stupid.) The no doubt exorbitant monthly service plan will, of course, be solely your problem.

The deadline for buying raffle tickets is noon CST (that’s Dallas time, y’all?) on June 26. Winners will be announced on June 27.

Photo: raffle ticket of the beast by squacco; some rights reserved.