Findings

Yesterday before I nearly dozed off in a lecture (not my fault but clearly the fact that my sleeping gate is at 3pm and I have an excuse that sounds scientific make it alright) I discovered that apparently in the UK women do earn, on average, less than men do. The good news is there is a correlation between their university degree and the amount of money they earn, naturally, as if you get a degree you earn more.

Except..and this is where it gets interesting and funny at the same time. Except when you’re a male art or design student apparently. Males who have received higher education in arts, designs, crafts or whatever earn less than those who haven’t graduated.

This either means all designers are rockstar dropouts or design school dumbs you down. I’m not sure what the vast majority would say about this but it made me giggle – there must be a lot of very gloomy men somewhere out there. Probably hoping someone will buy their art?

 

So if you’re a designer …

Two on Youth Studies

First a presentation 

 

Second the relaunch of UK Tribes. 

 

Good ones too.

Why I Like Typography

I don’t usually go round explaining myself to people but this apparently is subject to much controversy. Today I heard this song while shopping in Zara with a woman singing about some planned or imaginary holiday with her boyfriend (nothing mainstream, just random muzak I guess) about how she hopes it’ll be all she ever needs. Apart from pondering whether it’s what she needs or wants for a few minutes, I realised how important dreaming appears to be for some people, from those who audition for the X Factor to all the other achievers. Either way you could probably stop someone on the street and ask them what they dream for and ta-daa, a car, a holiday, a bag, a happy life, a God knows what.

It’s not that I gave up dreaming or anything but speaking of dreams I always wonder this when I’m on the bus going home: by that time (about 5-ish) people have this sort of blank stare and it’s curious to know what the heck they’re thinking about. Do they dream? About what? Are they thinking about food? Are they going to break up with their boyfriend/girlfriend when they get home? Do they live with their parents? Hate their flat mate(s)? 

No one seems to look in any particular direction when they walk on the street either – I just stare around at everything. I like typography because in a sea of boring visuals, banners, posters, I never really see what they’re advertising, just the font and wonder who came up with the idea of using it in that particular instance. It’s a rather damaging habit once you get over the initial excitement that there’s always something new wherever you go. Your friends get annoyed that you only remember restaurants by font names, that you go into shopping malls and pick up leaflets for local events just to look at the design and typography.

But it’s a good habit. It does make you more visually aware and it helps make suggestions to others less visually aware. It reduces stress on your eyes and brain when you can surround yourself with aesthetically pleasing objects – it’s not haphazard that we’re attracted to symmetry and we perceive symmetrical things as more beautiful than those with imperfections. And it’s pretty much the same with typefaces (in case you didn’t know it’s rather incorrect to say ‘font’ instead of ‘typeface’) – good fonts please you in ways you can’t explain if you’re not the sort of person into typography For us, it’s like pornography almost. 

You’re pleased to notice that the place you like going to uses a font that no one else does. Or in a different way.

You’re delighted when someone actually takes interest in this, rather than leaving it to fate. Even academics like Koostra seem to be fans of good design and typefaces.

It’s terribly exciting to see movie posters, brochures, corporate stuff, read Penguin books, buy books judging them by their covers, receive the FontShop newsletter in your inbox once in a while. Take photos of every tube station sign, group your photos by letters, colours, numbers, signs. Take photos of ‘Mind the gap’ signs. Go on holiday and forget about the monuments, buildings and statues but get all giddy with excitement about local shops you don’t have at home.

 

It’s a good distraction. While others can only play with their mobile and pray that the Nokia standard message tone is their phone buzzing with a new one, you look at this or that typeface and think ‘hey, it’s not consistent with the one they used before’ or ‘it’s changed’.

You notice redesigns of things which is sad in a way just because no one else pays attention to it for more than two-three seconds before thinking yay or nay but it makes you happy when others notice them and tell you what they like or don’t even if they can’t really express it.

Because it’s also pretty cool to have a notebook with all your friends’ handwriting in it.

That’s pretty much it. It gives me something to do and think about in these very interesting times!

Hot Seat

In this edition of Campaign, precisely on page 9 on the right hand side there are a few questions for Gerry Moira, chairman and director of creativity for Euro RSCG London. Quoting for (a lot) of truth:

“Q: Are you happy?

A: When Nigella Lawson lost her sister and then husband to cancer, she spoke of having to ‘choose happiness’. I had to make the same ineluctable decision when my wife died tragically young from the same condition. Blissful happiness is reserved for the idiots and the innocents of this world. The rest of us have to work very hard at it, every minute, every day.”

 

 

Intrigued

It’s really funny coming back into university after a Christmas/New Year holiday but there’s this feeling of looseness and general disorganisation with everyone just because it’s not like in work where you inevitably have to meet everyone you know and talk to them about how your holiday’s just been. It’s not like in school either, where you inevitably meet everyone because you must.

In here, it’s (yes, how funny of me to notice, eh) more like you kinda have to go because some shred of sensibility in the back of your head says you have to be there or else you’re a bit of a loser, or that’s what your parents and relatives kept telling you. You also kinda have to say hi to some people and tell them how your holiday’s been.

Then, unlike work, you don’t get to see everyone every single day unless they have very high morals, standards, feel like they’re missing out if they don’t go to lectures and so and so on.  Sometimes it almost feels as if they’re not there at all. 

Lectures have been pretty empty as far as those unique to our module go and we don’t mix with people doing marketing or retail and things like that. Everyone seems to wonder why people don’t bother going to lectures while the rest seem to shrug and not really have a decent answer. I probably wouldn’t go either if it weren’t for some thought that tells me it’s the sensible thing to do. Because apart from a few, I don’t feel like I’m learning anything new, this being my own fault in a way for having distorted the whole learning process with my enthusiasm when 16-17. As much as I like some, I don’t feel like hearing about what Ofcom is, what the IPA is, what they do, what ASA does, about magical formulas for celebrity endorsement. The last time I had an ‘aha’ moment was when you could actually challenge what had been said in a tutorial, and even that sort of goes back to what I said about good teachers – they take your train of thought down unbeaten paths, making you look at things in particular ways.

I suppose 3/6 is a good proportion, being bored stiff by 3 lectures and rather intrigued by the other 3. I predict a very interesting third year if what I heard yesterday about “less group work” is true. Amen to that.

Clubcard

Did you know that if you want to get a brand new, shiny Tesco Clubcard today you have to either call Tesco or pick up a form and send it by post? This is the 20th century, why does Nectar allow you to register online and Tesco is still in the Bronze Age? A letter? Are you f***** kidding me? 

Also did you know that in Tesco all condoms have plastic security boxes? I found out this a few weeks ago from someone who works there and was shocked when I received the confirmation. Why, dear God, why?

Good Teachers

Having been away for the weekend, I only started ploughing through delicious items in my network very late today. I subscribe to sir Adam Crowe and although I don’t read many of the economy-related posts (I filter them out one way or another), there’s the odd article in a newspaper like The New York Times, The Boston Globe or Daily Telegraph that stands out. Naturally there’s also the process of discerning facts from crap but some get me thinking enough to write an entry.

Like what makes a good teacher and why good teachers are often uncool. 

“Good teachers perceive the world in alternative terms, and they push their students to test out these new, potentially enriching perspectives. Sometimes they do so in ways that are, to say the least, peculiar. ”

I remember having had a few teachers that stood out of what was and still is a norm sadly: repetitive learning with no involvement whatsoever. It’s annoying to notice that some (not counting lecturers or anyone in higher education now) won’t or can’t learn from seminars and conferences they go to, from exchanges with other schools and all the trouble headmasters put them through as long as they care about better learning.

While some still think engagement takes one away from actually remembering anything of use, it’s the ‘American’ system that gets blamed most of the time, at least among my friends who think I was somehow tainted and my brother and sister are going to end up stupid because it’s not ‘proper teaching’. Because learning is mostly based on experience as you grow up, practical skills, ambidextrous writing, socialising and all those other activities they do now, no one considers giving it a chance because, well, any American system can only lead to an American outcome/view on life, and if you’re still following that means ending up a rather stupid grown-up.

It’s not always a measure of how intelligent someone is or can be whether he can remember how to tie a knot or land an egg. If you don’t know what the egg landing thing is, you’re asked to find a way to throw an egg off the school and make sure it lands intact on the ground – how you do it is up to you obviously. Whether you choose the handkerchief-parachute option or coat the egg in styrofoam, it’s your option.

What I do believe is that the ‘American system’ is a very good way of giving people a measure of what they want to do in life as it evolves towards independent learning. While they encourage everyone to be part of society, it segregates them when some make it and others don’t. Whether you get a scholarship to a good university or not. It’s just something that they can get away with – 200 million people almost and importing their best talent does play a part. What I don’t agree with is it gives you a false feeling of security. Making a lot of things “ok” takes away some part of self motivation from my perspective. That is, making things okay without giving someone a view of what the consequences are. It’s ok if you’re not as smart as Billy but…and the ‘but’ is the problem. 

My best teachers were a very strange hybrid of these Prussian-American models of teaching. It would be facts, facts, facts, with very simple truths behind them: learning is boring. And then some form of engagement. At the time they didn’t even need authority over us, expert knowledge and relating things to something we could understand was good enough. It seemed interesting enough at the time to make us pay attention. I’ve heard this so many times, and even if I hadn’t I’d still be aware of it. Every learning process (non-voluntary) you go through is boring because you’d rather be doing anything else but this. It has to be boring one way or another and it gets boring trying to figure out how to land an egg without breaking it too. Either way, coming back to teachers, I think I forgot most of the things I learnt in school anyway – not because they were rubbish but because my brain probably isn’t big enough..even so, it filters out things selectively. Sometimes I forget things I really, really want to remember and  remember all the rubbish I don’t want. But I remember the people and out of over thirty I can only remember three.

And they were all the most amazing teachers until you failed their subject. They didn’t even need to tell you it was going to be bad, you just knew it would be very, very bad. They only had to remind you of it when you were heading off the tracks. If facing them during resits didn’t make you go all red, nothing did.

The only annoying thing is that you miss good teaching when you realise how boring other things can be. And the best teachers are those who encourage your learning and train of thought by taking it down unbeaten paths. Making you think of things in ways you hadn’t thought of before and letting you discover the obvious. Now that’s learning in my opinion.

The HSM Effect

Is it just me who sees the High School Musical sort of ‘let’s burst into spontaneous song and dance’ influence?

Stuff our Friends Wrote

I just received my copy of ‘Things our Friends Wrote on the Internet 2008′ by Ben & Russell and such and I must say I’m impressed. It’s number 277/1000 and I must say twitter in print looks pretty strange.

 

Sometimes I wish tea with milk was a food too. And things our friends wrote was a monthly publication. At least.

 

Oh and I love the food series. Typing it up in my browser from print feels like something very old-fashioned which I haven’t done in ages.

Hospital Records Does…Interesting!

Much to my delight, I just discovered yesterday that Hospital Records are very present and active on both Twitter, Vimeo and other places! I’m now fascinated by videos I’ve never seen before, like the ‘Production Tips’ series with Nu:Tone and Danny Byrd which to me, a fan/enthusiast of the genre means a lot, especially because I know I’ll never produce any but I find interesting to watch others do it. If I could go backstage just to stare at it all night I’d be fascinated personally. 

So far I’ve only started following London Elektricity as his tracks have grown on me and have kept me company through many rainy bus and train journeys – and it’s great. It’s not the kind of Twitter stream you’d expect from a musician that says ’see me here, there, this is where I’ve released my latest album, download a free track now’. It’s human! And I like it a lot! Big up to them for bringing all this to us