005: Graphic Design Rage

Why is it when you Google Image "graphic design" you always get this?

From napleswebdesign.net

It's worse when you Google Image "graphic illustration". Now, I'm not saying this bad, I love these kind of things. But this is what a majority of people must think of right away when you think of a graphic designer: minimalism and a thousand circles and lines with gradients all over with eye-popping colours.

Obviously that's not what it's limited to but it's something that has always bugged me even before I wanted to start doing this. It's cool, but it just seems very overdone now and I haven't seen any unique examples that stand out from the rest lately.

Breaking my Tuesday-Thursday schedule plan to update this blog since I don't have outside work this week until the end of it. (When I say outside work, I mean a job that is not related to graphic design, but let's not get into that just yet.) I've managed to personalize this blog a little with a new banner as well as some other things added. Note the word "personalize" and not "spice things up/make it look better" since I know where the fine line is between those two. Let me know what you think with some comments or some feedback!

I'm also looking for some affiliates, as well as anybody who wants to promote their website or services right now. Hit me up as well on the comments or drop me an email at vcruz (at) live.ca and I'll get back to you ASAP!

004: Sexism Rage

Why are women not as prominent in New Media industries as men?

I'll take this time to write about something not quite related to graphics again, but more so gender, as well as linking to a few good reads for those who crave knowledge like I do. Now, this debate has been going on for generations. Heck, you don't even have to use New Media in this case - this debate has been going on forever.

Allow me to turn your attention to this article about the lack of women at the top of Web 2.0 companies on All Things Digital. It's a fairly interesting read, if not something we've all read before. Did this headline catch my attention because I am a woman? Absolutely. Now, I'm not entirely sure if I want to get involved in the social-networking side of new media in the future, nor the programming side - I mean I've taken one class for the only New Media course in my city and targeted school, which had Flash programming, and I can safely say that is not what I want to do - but the point is this is something relevant to my interests, both as a person and as somebody whose career falls into a niche in New Media.

Now there was one thing that brought my attention back to that article, and it was when I was browsing around Wikipedia (because, you know, Wikipedia is just so reliable, or so according to CNET). I was Googling Mark Zuckerberg's girlfriend - no, this is not creepy at all when there was a movie just recently released about this and might I say it was a very good, thought-provoking movie - and landed on Zuckerberg's profile. There was a sister listed on that page. I clicked there.

Found on Brian Solis' flickr
www.briansolis.com and bub.blicio.us.

Randi Jayne Zuckerberg^[4] (born 1982) is the marketing director of Facebook, and sister of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.   

...wait, hang on, I thought that article from earlier just said that...

...the Facebook board is all men, all the time, composed of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, prominent techie and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, investor Peter Thiel, Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer and Washington Post head Don Graham.

The last time I checked marketing directors were part of that board, and Randi, who is not only Zuckerberg's sister, is a woman. 

For goodness' sake, this is the 21st century. We are overcoming enough stigma as it is, so is this merely over-exaggerating in favour of the article and its message towards women? Granted, yes, I don't see enough women discovering the more well-known, mainstream companies, but they exist and they have still accomplished just as much financially, famously, and perhaps even mentally. 

Arguably, is sexuality and physical different still a reason why this gender issue has not been settled? Harassment lawsuits and women getting fired for being "distracting" apparently still happens? iJustine, a female graphic designer and technology buff and reviewer, who has dominated in the niche of Youtube partnership and video, falls under criticism for this all the time - I mean, just look at some of the comments on her videos. A good handful of them (usually straight males) are not there for what she has to say or review. I myself am quite sure she could very well be a model and still live with the same income she earns from making videos on Youtube, but there are many women who could do that, simply because it's easier based on their gender dominance in that industry. 

Found on newsrealblog.com

Yes, women and men are biologically different. Yes, some of them are geared towards certain things more than others as studies have shown, whether this is something they cannot control like puberty or something they can control like, oh I don't know, their career path. Once again, though, this is a new age, this is new media, and no matter what your gender is, this age has majorly accepted that it is the skills and the success of a human regardless of gender that matter. It's anybody's game, and you just have to play it right.

(On another note, I will be setting up a schedule now for when my blog posts appear, which has tentatively been placed at Tuesdays and Thursdays as must-post days. Yay for content!)

003: Bot Rage

I woke up to this:

What in the name of Halle Berry is this?

This entry will be the start of something a little more out-of-topic with the blog's main point but divulges into the aspect of internet - that is, the case of why on earth are bots starting to attack the Contact Form on my website, which you can see here.  I would basically get e-mails listed from myself but instead of a filled-out contact form, it would contain stuff that looks like this:

Values submitted from VC:
Send-contactus : 1
Author Name : [php]echo('casper'.php_uname().'kae');die();[/php]

I have no idea what it's supposed to execute but at the very least it has the word "die" in it, so of course I'm suspicious. 

Now, I think I have a slight idea as to why this massive influx happened. In the previous post before, I had linked my website again as I did just now on this website. I'm going to go ahead and safely guess that the spambots took advantage of this information and now I'm dealing with some type of malicious code. This has happened before, though, so I'm not new to it. This, however, is the first time I have to wake up to find more than 2 - 3 emails of this sort sitting in my, for lack of better terminology, crappy Hotmail inbox.

After finally finding something on Google about this today, it definitely appears to be some type of malicious coding known as a "content injection attack". I'm not going to pretend I have any clue what that means but this is probably bad either way, and I'm probably going to have to look into getting a captcha installed.

For those who have ever experienced the same problem, here's the blog post I found which explains what this is in more technical detail as well as a conclusion on internet security.

002: Comic Sans Rage

Why is Comic Sans so hated in the graphic design industry? 

I was about to do this whole entry in Comic Sans as well as a blinding default 8-colour font, but luckily for you, Blogspot knows what people don't like.

I used to use Comic Sans MS very frequently for things like my emails with backgrounds and colour fonts, for my pictures and fanart, and for school projects. This was when I was 11 years old. Now, I've since grown up, and I have seen something in a new but terrifying light, kind of when I learned what a Mary Sue was when I was still involved in fandoms. 

After much careful observation as well as research, it appears that the only appropriate time to use Comic Sans is:

1. if you want to be ridiculed by designers who have jumped on an elitist bandwagon
2. if you want to be ridiculed in general
3. never

The hate for this font is astounding. I'm quite sure it has even become a bandwagon, which I have happily hopped on to protect my budding career path as a graphic illustrator and designer myself. There has been many reasons presented as to why it is a bad font, which I will not discuss here, and there are plenty of good sites out there on Google that explains why - one of them being why it isn't even appropriate for comics. 

(Some good links will be posted up some time in the future when I make a part two to this.)

However, all of this still has not stopped people, nor in fact, cities. I just came back from a trip from Vegas for the holidays. This is a photo of a tour bus I immediately whipped my head and wide eyes at while near the Circus Circus hotel and casino which I invite you to click for full view of this amazing feat:

This bus uses Comic Sans. 

Oh my God.

That surprisingly wasn't the only example there! Las Vegas is the most prominent example of Comic Sans use and abuse that I have ever seen, and it amazes me how much they get away with it garnering from its reputation as the city of entertainment and flashy ads. You don't need Comic Sans with the things Las Vegas gets away with. Their souvenirs, their signs, their billboards...heck, I'm pretty sure even the prostitute cards they hand you in the streets at one point had Comic Sans.

(I would have grabbed one for the sake of example, but I had parents with me and I was hesitant on accepting pictures of naked women from shifty and silent strangers. But it also would have been a good example for a possible Retouch Rage entry in the future.)

I noted this to my mom, who gets annoyed when I pointed out "the most pettiest things". It essentially went something like this:

Me: Noooooooooo!
Mom: What the heck is your problem now?
Me: That bus has Comic Sans.
Mom: You always say that like it's the bane of existence. It's just what works!
Me: But that's not how it should be!
Mom: Well it works so too bad, let them do what they want to do.

This is not the only time I've raged at Comic Sans. While walking through a college with a good friend of mine - who is a budding entrepreneur with knowledge and abilities for graphic design - we walked through about God knows how many posters with Comic Sans. He made a joke about how he knew what font to use on my Christmas card.  

This reminds me of my hate for Ke$ha. Yes, I'm going to use a modern pop music analogy, please forgive me if this ends up sounding very distasteful. Now, most people talk about how haters are hating simply because they are jealous of the success of the other person. I "hate" plenty but I hope I ain't jealous of these people if the definition of jealous means I want to be them. However, I will fully 100% admit that yes, I am jealous that Ke$ha can't sing worth a dime yet she's gotten this far and somebody that is far more talented and can actually sing has not hit that level of mainstream.

This is what my hate for Comic Sans is. I am jealous and bitter that a font that people have been constantly teaching other people not to use for their marketing, branding, or on anything ever, is still being used very frequently in such a manner to the point where it is easily gotten away with. How is it that this typeface continues to be used to such a degree when it's not even that good? Is it because for many years it has been used to the point where, as my mom says, it works because either people are used to it, it has been linked with likability and friendliness, or just nobody cares anymore?

However, the important point of the rage against Comic Sans seems to not be about the font itself. Aspiring graphic designers all around the globe will know from careful research and not blindly following the wagon completely that the reason it is so loathed is because of how it represents poor typography choices, something that many amateurs such as myself struggle with when designing logos or print media. You are not going to see anything other than a serifs font for a jewelry brand - there are exceptions, yes, but it remains unusual to see a sans serif typeface on the logo of jewelry.

 

Here is a mock logo I have designed for a pet fish supplies brand about two or three months ago. There were many copies of this since it never ended up being final due to mixed responses from the public, which you can see on my website, Virtual Crisis Media. But this one was the one I liked. However, friend from earlier pointed out how the font for the subtitle of "pet fish supplies" (which is Franklin Gothic Heavy) said that it did not match the brand at all, so I changed it.

Here is the changed logo with a Lucida sans serif font in place of Franklin Gothic. I think this fits much more, but that's debatable. In the end, this wasn't a logo I continued developing since I really had no client other than myself and the public's feedback as this was a test logo.

Here's me having fun with the subject at hand with some Comic Sans. However, I'm currently sitting here staring at this wondering why it doesn't look as bad as I thought it would. Whoa.

In the end it is popular topics like this in the industry that makes for good research and learning. As somebody who is still doing that, Comic Sans has certainly taught me a lot. From what I noticed, though, it doesn't end at Comic Sans, though - Papyrus is another example to note, as well as even the staple Arial and Times New Roman, but that's another blog entry. In the end, it's how you use it.

Jester, however, which I used to frequently use as well, is just one of those fonts I don't like anymore for the same reasons as Comic Sans.