Already 15 years have passed since Tinanamen Square. Do World events influence how you work? Do you get more creative? Are you unable to work? Or does it not make a difference to you?

Care to comment?

We have all heard that all we need, as designers, is a basic collection of classic typefaces to get us through each and any project. (By classic I do not mean a certain style but rather the workhorse typefaces that have been around for a long time and have proved to be effective no matter their application). And maybe you do have said basic collection: Helvetica, Futura, Clarendon, Baskerville and Garamond. (Excuse me if I leave out many classics, but this is not about them). However, if this were to be (practically and technically) true, we wouldn’t have thousands of unique typefaces available would we?

It states in my Speak Up author bio, my occupation is Father / Husband / Owner / Designer – pretty much in that order. Well, at least it should be. I probably need to amend it – President / Coach / Friend – should be added and, of course, Speak Up author fits in there somewhere.

There’s no doubt that sometimes, only designers can really appreciate certain aspects of our craft; not too many people know what a pica is, fewer still can recognize when something on the page is off-balance by a single point or less, or if the leading differs from page to page. Designers have an extraordinary ability to see how things fit together, how to improve composition, but more importantly, they know how to communicate the right ideas at the right volume to the right audience. Like any creative field, from music to photography to painting, a highly esoteric component exists because of the complexities involved in the endeavor…far from being pointless, this aspect helps to define the profession, turn it from an activity into an art.

Flying in the face of adversity, I thought it would be fun to engage in some unapologetic hero-worship. I had been thinking about the Greek Gods, and musing about various designers and wondering where they might fit in the pantheon of design gods. Who, today, is our Zeus? Who is Hades?

I couldn’t do it alone, so I teamed up with Armin. We started with a list of 50 which we had to whittle down to 12. It was very, very difficult and even between the two of us, well … I won’t say we fought, but in the final round we had to do a little horse trading (I’ll give you x if you give me y). I have no doubt that we will be lambasted and skewered for some of our choices, but that’s half the fun.

Given that Mr. Keedy ignited a stingy debate a few days ago I thought it would be appropriate to start with his essay from Emigre 66.

Jeffrey (Mr.) Keedy is a designer, writer, type designer, and educator who lives in Los Angeles. This combination of endeavors seems to be a problem as his critiques tend to finger-wave what he thinks are bad practices in graphic design but has “nothing” to demonstrate his hypotheses. In other, more colloquial, words: he talks the talk but seemingly doesn’t walk the walk. In a Typotheque discussion, type designer, Eric Olson goes as far as urging us to “[Avoid] everything by Jeffrey Keedy. His piece in Emigre #64 is a collection of stereotypes disguised as a critical piece of writing.” Go figure. The man seems uncomprehended – at least in his own time.

As graphic designers, we have a staple of everyday applications: Photoshop, InDesign/Quark, Freehand/Illustrator, etc. Our operating system - the most used application - is what makes it all tick. As with most creative types, my choice of operating system is Mac OS X. While beautiful and stable, it’s not perfect. Fortunately, along with Apple’s operating system redirection three years ago, Mac OS X has inspired a host of talented and motivated developers to fill in the gaps.

In today’s Tech Tuesday installment, I’ll introduce eleven small utilities that can play a big role in any designer’s day.

Oops

I spent most of last week with 2400 designers at the HOW Design Conference in San Diego. Nearly 50 sessions on design, including typography, color, brainstorming, motion graphics, web graphics, trends, sales, freelancing and broadcast design. There was even a session about email marketing essentials. You literally could have come to San Diego without the slightest clue about the business, art and science of graphic design, and you could have left with an overview of just about everything we do.