the current state of my desk

(remember how i was going to do that daily desk thing? how clever and alliterative that was? yeah... we're back to the "when i happen to look down at my desk, find its collection of papers & process to be interesting and relevant, and take the initiative to document its condition" desk. doesn't sound anywhere as nice as "daily," but is infinitely more accurate.)

in any event, here's what my desk looks like right now, and to follow, why!

these are some 16 or so sketches of potential typographical hierarchy for my letterpressed postcards. you'll recognize the quote, i hope! in these sketches i explored three different hierarchies. some had their emphasis on design (i find it helps if you shout the emphasis in your head when you read it), some had their emphasis on the juxtaposition between science and art, and some focused on the idea of breaking even. ultimately my mini-critique-group and i decided that breaking even doesn't really mean anything on its own, and its being highlighted was not so much eyecatching as it was slightly confusing. marty agreed. we also discussed it being slightly more interesting to bring out design is than simply design. the emphasis on science & art worked pretty well on a first try, woohoo! 

so these two sketches are contrasting hierarchies of the same text, from which we can derive slightly (or maybe rather) different meanings. the next step (which is already littering the margins) was to go into the littlebittyteenytiny press room and sift through drawers of metal and wood type. like a fool an ambitious person i have big letters and also small letters, so i will be using both wood and metal type, meaning i will run each card twice to get the entire design on there, because wood and metal do not get along very well. fortunately they're not interspersed, it's big letters and then small letters, so it should go pretty well. finding type that is pretty close in size and personality to our intentions, we labeled our sketches and now set about digitizing to "sketch" and layout with more precision.

now is perhaps an okay time to explain a bit better why it is that i personally chose this quote. aside from the fact that it is a snappy, interesting take on design, it speaks to me directly because of trying to balance the science brain and the art brain, and hoping that you come out with something stronger and more useful than either of them alone. i love science. in another life, i would've gone to regular-college and pursued neuroscience. in this life, i went to art school to pursue design. the success in combining the power of each, two forces that many people might consider opposing, is what brought me to this discipline, because i don't think either science or art interests me quite as much as where they intersect, the point at which they break even: design.