I like to design websites using Textpattern, an open-source content management system based on PHP and mySql databases. Both Prairieopolis (you are here) and my portfolio site, Ann Foley Design, are developed using Textpattern.

I like the efficiency of databases, and how they’re like puzzles. I’m always looking for ways to make fewer parts do more. Fun game, and it uses a different part of my brain than the one that obsesses over the minutiae of colors and alignments.

This month I’m working with Textpattern pretty much all the time. When I run into problems, I post a question on the Textpattern Support Forums and someone from Washington DC or the Netherlands answers my question in a couple of hours. How cool is that?

Some people go outside and play in January. But when I’m out there all I see is dirty snow with Miller Lite cans sticking out of it. January can be a long and bleak month.

My friend and former teacher, Mike Martin, knows film. He’s also a great designer. I don’t think those facts are coincidental.

In class at MATC, Mike told us that designers have to be culture-vultures, always immersed in the stories and images surrounding them in the media. Designers have to watch TV and surf the net and read magazines and go to movies and look at what’s out there all the time. From the sublime to the absurd.

Design is a conversation we have with all our various audiences: each other, the buying public, other artists, our clients. We play with symbols, presenting them in fresh ways to entertain and communicate.

For symbols, designers use what’s all around us in the media. If you’re not immersed in what’s going on out there in the culture, both high- and low-brow, you’re limiting your design vocabulary. You can’t afford to be so pure you never watch TV. But you also have to explore what’s best in the media and art worlds — such as great movies.

Mike is a demanding teacher, but he always saves a little time in class for movie reviews. He brought some great movies to my attention (Errol Morris!) and cracked me up with his commentaries on the duds (and continues to do so – see the above Photoshop cartoon he posted on Facebook today).

I asked him for a list of the best movies from the aughts. He produced this list in about ten minutes.

(in no order)
1. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
2. In The Mood For Love (2000)
3. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)
4. Memento (2000)
5. The Fall (2008)
6. Talk to Her (2002)
7. Amelie (2001)
8. Maria, Full of Grace (2004)
9. Kitchen Stories (2003)
10. The Hurt Locker (2009)

Runners-up:
11. The New World (2005)
12. V For Vendetta (2006)
13. Best in Show (2000)
14. Dancer In The Dark (2000)
15. There Will Be Blood (2007)
16.The Station Agent (2003)
17. Wall-E (2008)
18. Quinceanera (2006)
19. Half Nelson (2006)
20. No Country For Old Men (2007)
21. Synecdoche, New York (2008)
22. Milk (2008)
23. Volver (2006)

Thanks, Mike!

I’m working on my holiday card for 2009.

Above is a sneak peek. It’s coming together well, now. I hatched the idea quickly, but the actual final product is coming together slowly.

Because, the holidays, yo. THE HOLIDAYS!!!! ZOMG, the holidays!

Not really. I’m a terrible holiday lady, a complete slacker. My kids laugh about how our holiday traditions change every year depending on what I get around to doing. I think it’s good for them all because they learn to go with the flow. Flow with it, boys and girls! There you go.

But I have lots of other projects, so I have to work on it here and there and things are the tiniest bit behind. It’ll all work out. I’m happy.

All I knew about J. Peterman, until I received this catalog, was that it was a running joke on Seinfeld. The fictional Elaine worked as a copywriter for the non-fictional catalog. She says, “A pair of pants, a stupid story, a huge markup. I can do that.”

But I hadn’t actually seen a J. Peterman catalog until we got this one in the mail.

J. Peterman is an illustrated book of aspiration and nostalgia. The products appeal to rich urban people who secretly long to be cowboys and flappers. (Why urban? Because those of us in flyover country buy our dusters at farm stores, like McFarlane’s).

Each product has a long, goofy story for a description. Here’s the opening for men’s 4-Wale Corduroy pants:

Out of the corner of your eye, you notice the man thatching the roof of that sensational thick-walled cottage in Dorset isn’t merely wearing corduroy pants, but extra-wide-wale corduroy pants…

What interests me most about the J. Peterman catalog, though, is the oddness of the layout and design. Watercolor sketches, rather than photographs, display the products. So there’s a fair amount of guessing about what a Moulin Rouge Bodice or a 90210 sweater might actually look like on a person.

The type is set with tight leading and kerning (not much space between letters or lines) and has a five-character indent at the beginning of each paragraph. The font is Belwe light or something, I’m not really sure, but you don’t see those goofy art nouveau fonts used for body text very often, and for good reason. It’s awkward and difficult to read.

Also, the catalog is not organized at all. Outwear and underwear, men’s and women’s, accessories and garments are all randomly scattered through the 75-page book.

If a designer presented this comp to a client who was starting a new catalog company, the client would politely scoot them out the door. Clients want catalogs that look like catalogs, with nice photos and user-friendly layouts. And way less copy. More products on fewer pages = money.

If a student designer presented it in class, they’d get an “A” for the illustrations, a B+ for creativity and an F for the typography. And in the crit, someone would suggest removing most of the words because it’s about the design, right?

J. Peterman works, though, and has (with a few bumps along the way) since 1987. Maybe mainly because of smart product placement on Seinfeld. But I hope partly because the enterprise stubbornly sticks to its ideosyncratic vision.

It’s a charming and odd way to waste 10 minutes perusing. And I think the World War II boxers on p. 25 might make a cool holiday gift.

I stumbled across a website/idea so sublimely perfect I want to share it with the world: nerdboyfriend.

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