I was lingering there, I was early for something and had a few minutes. But after a time, I felt like I was “using” the place. I wasn’t planning on buying anything. At that moment, it was less a store than a fresh-stocked library.

Regarding this guilt:
1) I wanted to make a donation, a tip jar for the store itself, not particular employees.  I wanted to treat it like a WiFi connection, with an optional, pay-for-use “jar”.

2) Could frequent tipping, with no purchasing, buy you into the discount club? The co-op…*

* I draw heavily from Clay Shirky on the local bookstore problem, a post I’m still digesting.

Believer Magazine

I was at Porter Square Books, leafing through their magazines and found the Art issue of The Believer was out.  I’m not a reader, but I decided to pick it up.

Leafing through it, I found this nice “discussed” device they use at the head of each of their articles:

It’s another kind of teaser to tell you what’s in store, what’s touched on.  For instance, this piece touches on “Three-Dimensional Storytelling”, that caught my eye.*

I’ve noticed that I’ll miss out on reading New Yorker articles because the titles are a bit oblique or because of the frequent lack of supporting images.  An article that I’d like to read, if I was willing to give it a 2 minute trial, I’ll just page right by because of impatience.  The New Yorker sets their articles’ barrier to entry pretty high.  There’s not much seduction in a wall of text.  (But wow it’s the best thing going…)

Thanks Believer, I like that trick.  I hope it’s cool for others to use it.

*There is a strong narrative/imaginative aspect to the Discussed. It’s worth re-reading it after you read the piece to try and imagine how the article did touch on these things/themes/ideas/tangents.

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/karin-fong/between-spaces/spaces-between-leave-us-betwixt

This is a great post by Karin Fong, a motion graphics/designer at Imaginary Forces.  She’s talking about 2.5 d.

Depending on when/if you choose to read her post.  Wikipedia defines 2.5 D as

2.5D (”two-and-a-half-dimensional”), also called pseudo-3D, is an informal term used to describe either a) graphical projections and techniques which cause a series of images or scenes to fake or appear to be three-dimensional (3D) when in fact they are not.

Here’s the full entry

Here’s a stellar example Karin Fong cites in her entry:

Tara was all shot stop motion with real lights and everything.  That, in part, is what makes it so beautiful.  As the director Jamie Caliri put it, to paraphrase, ‘the stop motion animation gives you warmth for free’.

Most likely, I’ll just be applying adobe’s drop shadow to sketches I scan in and cut out.  But it’s a start.  Seems a fantastic device for transitions.  (See Karin’s reference to this scene in The Kid Stays in the Picture)

………….

I’ll also toss in this similarly not-easily-forgettable presentation by Scott McCloud, courtesy of Michael Surtees/Design Notes .  Check out his rapid fire transitions (my favorite kicks off at 4:55):

Click To Enlarge

I was leafing through Brookline Massachussetts Adult & Community Education Catalog for 2010, and I noticed this nice move.

Probably much more common than I realize, but in the outer margin they included a teaser for other class listings on other pages.  They also had famous quoutes and the like.

But this other dimension of communication caught my attention as I browsed.  I think this may be a useful browsing pattern.

Google’s kinda trained us for relevance in the right margin, I wonder how this should inflect print.

The blog will focus on thoughts related to media.  Not links, I think I’m not gonna include that stuff now, the one’s I’m liking can be found on delicious: http://delicious.com/jeffgoldenson
I’m also interested in overall issues related to design, but at this point, those are more personal, so I put them down on notecards.  This is where all the rest goes.

Wabi Sabi page of  amazon.co.uk, as opposed to amazon.com