It’s probably true for a lot of celebrities that their public personas are not accurate reflections of their private lives. One striking example is actress Megan Fox, who’s famous for being a sex goddess. But the fact is, as she told Harper’s Bazaar magazine, she has only slept with two men in her life, and it makes her ill to even contemplate having sex with someone she doesn’t love. While it may not bother her to have a reputation that’s so different from her inner world, I wouldn’t say the same about you — especially now. I urge you to do what you can to create more harmony between the version of yourself that you project outward and the version of yourself you actually live in.

– Rob Brezsny, Free Will Astrology, Cancer horoscope for the week of 08 April 2010.

Several lifetimes ago, when I still believed in such things as romantic relationships and true love, I was one half of a committed, very long-term relationship. This particular boyfriend’s BFF was another gay man, who had enjoyed a profound influence on my boyfriend’s “coming out” and subsequent life as a gay adult. Because of this poignant history, I always tried to be respectful of their relationship, but as the BFF was one of those overly flamboyant, drag-performing gay men who historically provoked epic eye-rolls from me (largely due, I shall freely admit, to my own latent self-hatred; my best gay male friend from college still jokes about potential gay-on-gay hate crimes whenever I set foot in Manhattan’s Chelsea district to meet him for coffee), I was always secretly glad that the BFF lived far away from my boyfriend and me, in a distant western state.

On one evening at some point early on in our relationship, my boyfriend hung up our telephone following a particularly effervescent long-distance conversation with his BFF and exclaimed, in the overly melodramatic fashion that he always adopted when speaking with his BFF, “Chanelta Deveraux is dead!”

I rolled my eyes and ashed my Marlboro Red before replying sarcastically, “What.”

“Chanelta!” my boyfriend repeated, probably with a hand over his heart. “He’s murdered Chanelta!”

I can’t remember, now, if “Chanelta Deveraux” was actually the name of my boyfriend’s BFF’s drag persona, but it seems highly probable, since both men were obsessed with Madonna’s “Truth or Dare” (the “Chanelta” reference appears in the “shopping in the Paris Chanel boutique” scene) and Aaron Spelling’s “Dynasty” (“Dominique Deveraux,” incidentally my least favorite “Dynasty” character, as played by the otherwise fabulous Diahann Carroll) to an extent that vaguely nauseated me. Anyway, as I knew from experience that an extended, overly-detailed explanation was forthcoming, I quite likely poured myself another three fingers (no ice) of Glenlivet and lit another Marlboro Red while the one I had been smoking sat smoldering still in one of several overflowing ashtrays scattered about our studio, and asked the dreaded question that I knew would incite the entire protracted story: “Whatever for?”

I can’t remember, now, additionally, what my boyfriend’s BFF’s exact reasons were, for (and I quote) “throwing Chanelta Deveraux down the stairs” (and anyway, that’s not my story to tell), but I do recall that they stemmed from him “outgrowing” his drag persona, and feeling inspired to “move on.” I also remember that hearing this information provoked still another epic eye-roll from me. Because I, so confident and proud of (only seemingly, of course, I realize now, in hindsight) my own self, my own heritage, and my own name, could not conceive of even constructing such an alter-ego, let alone “murdering” her (or, in my case, him) after expending all of the intellectual and emotional energy it must have required to construct it. Er, her. Er, him.

Ironic, then, poetic justice, even, that I find myself, well over fifteen years later, following in the footsteps of my then-boyfriend’s BFF, with whom I even shared three initials. (His real name, not Ms. Deveraux’s. And, my real name, not Mr. Bartelby‘s.)

At one time, in the not-so-distant-at-all past, when I was a vastly different person than I now am, I would have published, in gratuitously minute detail, the story behind the demise of Atherton Bartelby. (For, believe me, there is a story, as with me there always invariably is.) But my experiences over the last eight months, and the life I’ve subsequently moved into, will not in good faith allow me to tell it so publicly. I’ve come, it seems, finally, to be taking my own advice on oversharing, and on Barthes’ “where the garment gapes”, to heart: I am keeping the story to myself. And, at least attempting to, if the great Rob Brezsny will once again and for the final time forgive me for paraphrasing his all-too-often spot-on words, create more harmony between the version of me that I project online, and the version of me in which I actually live.

As “Atherton Bartelby” enjoys an astonishingly prolific online footprint, “Curious Affairs” will remain online indefinitely, for there is nothing that annoys Atherton Bartelby (um, and me) more than dead Internet linkage. (Also, experience has taught me very well that from time to time I will likely need to remember a lot of what Mr. Bartelby has taught me, so I shall need to refer to this blog in those instances, for I certainly am not migrating this blog yet again.) But this post of memory and of farewell shall be the final content published here. I will still be publishing elsewhere online, but as the content will likely be vastly different from that which I’ve produced here, I’ll not be leaving behind here any linkage to my new site (“site,” not “blog,” N.B.), my new Twitter, my new Facebook, etc. I may have written the words “it’s the end of an era” perhaps too many times in this space over the past decade for them to still retain any veracity whatsoever, but this time, and for very good reasons that are entirely too private for me to enumerate here, it really is.

To those who’ve read Atherton Bartelby, I thank you. To those who’ve blogrolled “Curious Affairs,” you have truly honored me. And to those who actually got something from my tales, if reading of my own experiences helped you in however small a way to deal with your own, then I am profoundly happy. That was, after all, my only real intention in publishing my stories on this Great White Way in the first place.

And, finally, to the BFF of that long-ago and now-ex boyfriend: thank you. I may not be “throwing Atherton Bartelby down the stairs,” as you did your “Chanelta Deveraux.” But all that I learned about saying goodbye gracefully to an alter-ego, about “moving on” from a persona when it is so clearly time for us to do so, I learned, originally, from you.

These things never happened…but are always.

– Saloustios, Of Gods and of the World

SuperCW And A Really Goode Job Application

Last evening I received an email from a dear friend of mine from back in my days of The Cocktail Circuit in Honolulu, Christa Wittmier. It was a brief note explaining that she was applying for a job, asking her friends and contacts to vote for her video application, and linking us to her application page at Murphy-Goode Winery in Sonoma County. The “Really Goode Job” is for a social media whiz whose title will be “Murphy-Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent,” and I think that the concept of requiring job applicants to submit YouTube video footage of why they deserve the job is amazingly fitting.

I really can’t think of a better way to test the talents of a potential social media maven than to request an application via video, and Christa, of course, rose to the challenge, compiling her extensive online curriculum vitae into exactly one minute. The video condenses a Google search into only the most essential information, and showcases it all remarkably well.

As a friend who is very well-acquainted with Christa’s tireless photoblogging efforts at Honolulu Nightlife Diaries, jealous of her constant VIP passes to only the hottest of Honolulu nightlife and arts events, and enamored with her ability to socialize and write it and photograph it all at the same time, I suppose it is no surprise that I voted for Super CW here.

(And also no surprise that I think you should, as well, since I give good recommendations like that.)

But more so I think that this is where job applications should be heading: concise, simple, creative communications of our talents.

In only sixty seconds.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this weekend also saw the resurgence of a particularly thought-provoking blog meme started last year by advertising industry blogger Jane Sample, who published a humorous and engaging graphic representation of all of the major brands with which she came into contact throughout the course of one day. The piece was published one year ago to this day, and I remember reading it last May (and reading the ensuing comments and plethora of other advertising and media industry bloggers’ versions of their own Brand Timeline Portraits) and placing it as a line item on that List Of Fun Personal Projects That Atherton Bartelby Somehow Never Seems To Get Accomplished. This weekend, however, thanks to a revival of Sample’s original post by the Rocketboom blog, and an additional mega-boost from a reblogged mention by Linkage King Jason Kottke, the “Brand Timeline Portrait” meme has been, as Alan Wolk noted today, entirely reanimated.

So I brushed off my epic “To Do” list and recorded my own Brand Timeline Portrait today.

Brand Timeline Portrait Of Atherton Bartelby

I’m really glad that I took the time to do it, and to reflect on how it looks, on what it says about me, and also on what it means about brands in general. Because not only does it tell me a lot about the differences in my life now versus if I had completed it when I first saw it last year, but it presents me and others who see it with a timeline of my experiences, a visual narrative of not only my daily life, but of me as a person. In some ways, the brands represent me more individually than do the color of my hair or my green eyes; in others, they evoke a striking sense of community, i.e., they’re not only my brands, but those of my agency’s colleagues who share my work space, of the other New Yorkers who take the same forms of branded transportation as do I, or even, for that matter, of those who live in the same branded city as do I. Brands are, or can become, as much of an integral part of our individual and collective consciousness as our experiences, or of our very memories. So I don’t suppose a vehement consumer reaction to a seemingly unnecessary rebranding, that has at first glance been executed with little or no thought given to the previous brand experience that has been shared by so many different individuals, is really so very surprising.

Obviously, much thought goes into any rebranding initiative or redesign. I in no way mean to imply that all rebranding campaigns are executed with no thought whatsoever paid to the brand and to how its consumer base will receive its new identity, beyond the initial studies of profits or the eye-roll-inducing evangelizations of the “Personal Branding Experts” on Twitter. But I do think that, more often than not, rebranding initiatives get a bit too caught up in themselves, a bit too blinded to the products’, well, connections to a vast group of other human beings, a bit too ignorant of the hearts, souls, and experiences that consumers have invested in the brands themselves.

Because brands are not just products, or logo artwork, or packaging, or pixels and vectors and typography arranged nicely (or not so nicely) in space and time. Brands represent shared experiences. And brands (and rebranding) shouldn’t always only be considered from a profit standpoint, or from the standpoint of failed artists who are now ad men and attempting to impose their own aesthetics on products that are not only parts of their own experience, but parts of the collective experience of the rest of the society that consumes them, as well. Because brands are not just about profit (or shouldn’t be); they’re about hearts, souls, and memories, as well.

It turns out there’s an awful lot in a brand. And it would behoove a lot of people, particularly those who are directing and manipulating them, to keep this in mind.

Design by Hannah Ljung - Grafisk Utbildningsfonden - Uppsala Sweden

I first became aware of the significant importance of visual communication the day I helped banish all art on my college campus.

It was during my sophomore year of my undergraduate schooling, when, as a member of both the lesbian, gay, and bisexual student group, as well as the AIDS awareness student group, I assisted in the implementation of Visual AIDS‘ Day Without Art, in observance of World AIDS Day. Launched on the first day of December in 1989, the observance (since renamed “Day With(out) Art”) was intended to make the public aware that AIDS can touch everyone, and in order to inspire positive action, some 800 art and AIDS groups in the United States participated, shutting down museums, sending staff to volunteer at AIDS services, and sponsoring special exhibitions of work about AIDS. On my college’s campus, we raided the theatre department’s stash of black fabric, and covered nearly the entire campus with it, draping every sculpture, every art installation, and every painting (even the portraits that were displayed in the administration building of our college’s founder and of his wife, our school’s namesake) in the heavy black cloth.

On a campus such as ours, noted for its art and artists, it was a visually arresting display of how much a part of our daily lives art actually was; it was profoundly compelling, to see all of those expansive swatches of black fabric obfuscating the art that was all around us.

Years later, having graduated from college and fallen rather unexpectedly into a career of graphic design, the importance of visual communication was made abundantly clear to me once again, upon my first reading of what is still one of my most treasured essays on the practice of graphic design, by designer Jessica Helfand. Although excerpts from this essay appear in many places throughout this blog, it seems fitting to repeat them here, again, today, on the anniversary of the founding of Icograda, the International Council of Graphic Design Associations, and on the 15th annual observance of World Graphics Day.

Graphic design is everywhere, touching everything we do, everything we see, everything we buy: we see it on billboards and bibles, on taxi receipts and on websites, on birth certificates and on gift certificates, on the folded circulars tucked inside jars of aspirin and on the thick pages of children’s chubby board books.

Now, as a jaded designer who has practiced the craft of graphic design for nearly fifteen years, this passage may read like a no-brainer. Of course graphic design is everywhere, all around us, communicating its messages to us either explicitly or, if it is done very well, implicitly. However, as a designer who was relatively new to his field when he first read this essay, its message was one of awesome importance; it is not every day that one realizes what a profoundly privileged place one inhabits, when their career is entirely about the effective communication of messages, both textually and visually.

This realization was almost as powerful for me, if not more, than the realization of how profoundly important art was in my everyday life, on that first Day Without Art of years before.

Graphic design is the most ubiquitous of all the arts. It responds to needs at once personal and public, embraces concerns both economic and ergonomic, and is informed by numerous disciplines, including art and architecture, philosophy and ethics, literature and language, politics and performance.

It is this power, this special, ubiquitous nature of graphic design and visual communication, and its ability to effect change in the world around us, that Icograda’s World Graphics Day celebrates. Informed by and informing countless disciplines and practices, design and its designers wield the power to effect change in equally countless arenas of daily life. We see this power in TEDTalks that link design to technology and innovation; in the branding and rebranding of corporations, products, and services; in the efforts of designers to practice their crafts with gazes toward the future, and sustainability; and in the work of experience designers, designing to effect change in the way in which an audience interacts with content on the Internet.

Graphic design is a popular art, a practical art, an applied art, and an ancient art. Simply put, it is the visualization of ideas.

Ideas that, when executed effectively, may facilitate real change. Everywhere. And all around us.

I am aware, on a nearly daily basis, of how fortunate I am, and of how proud I feel, to be able to call myself a designer, and to practice the art that I practice.

But it is on this day, every year since I first became aware of this design “holiday,” that my pride swells just a little bit more than usual.

Happy World Graphics Day!

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NOTE: The above-quoted passages are excerpted from Jessica Helfand’s stellar essay, “Paul Rand: The Modern Designer,” which appears in Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture.

As lavishly expensive as my small liberal arts undergraduate college was to attend at the time, it was a bit late to connect members of its student body to the world wide web. My friends from prep school who had matriculated at Amherst, Swarthmore, Vassar, and Williams boasted .edu email addresses from their first days on their respective campuses; I did not receive my official “abartelby@mail.slc.edu” email address until close to the end of my sophomore year, in the spring of 1994. I remember the occasion as if it was only yesterday, however: the newest building on campus, the Science Center, had just been completed and opened for business. But the lines of students snaking out of the building’s main entrance on that first day were not there for tours of the new science labs, they were there for the assignment of email addresses, and to finally explore the new and expanded collection of Apple Macintoshes in the Academic Computing Center.

My friends with whom I lived that year and I were among the first students in the lines. We collected our new email addresses and passwords with the excitement of Christmas morning, and spent our first strictly limited hours during those first few weeks in our little adjacent workstations, emailing each other back and forth.

From: Kramer @ mail.slc.edu
To: Atherton @ mail.slc.edu
Date: Thu, Apr 23, 1994 at 8:13 PM
Subject: Re: Re: OHMYGODISTHISNOTEXCITING?!?!
Mailed by: slc.edu

This is kind of retarded. You do realize we’ve been here nearly an hour sitting right next to each other but emailing instead of talking, right?

Write me back.

Love,
Kramer

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From: Atherton @ mail.slc.edu
To: Kramer @ mail.slc.edu
Date: Thu, Apr 23, 1994 at 8:15 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: OHMYGODISTHISNOTEXCITING?!?!
Mailed by: slc.edu

WHO CARES?! ISN’T IT FUN?! WE HAVE EMAIL, DUDE! IT BEATS WRITING THAT PAPER ON 17TH CENTURY METATHEATRE, OK?!?!

Write me back, too.

Love,
Atherton

+ + +

From: Kramer @ mail.slc.edu
To: Atherton @ mail.slc.edu
Date: Thu, Apr 23, 1994 at 8:16 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: OHMYGODISTHISNOTEXCITING?!?!
Mailed by: slc.edu

OH, TOTALLY! I wish we could smoke in here. I need a cigarette. Where the fuck is Amory? Why is he on a WINDOWS machine?! He’s such a loser. Wanna go to Bates after they kick us out of here?

Write me back.

Love,
Kramer

And so on.

It was exciting, because it was new: this foreign mode of communication.

Time spent at the Academic Computing Center became even more exciting, however, during the first semester of my junior year, when, after befriending the 1337 g33k students who staffed the Center, I acquired access to flatbed scanners, the single Macintosh workstation that housed Photoshop and Pagemaker, and advanced knowledge of the world that existed in the tubes beyond those of our college’s mail servers. It was not long at all before I was exchanging emails with friends on a site called “Hotmail,” developing my very first (of, tragically, far too many) Internet crushes on the “Intellectuals” “floor” of a chat site called “Gay.com,” and, perhaps most exciting of all, establishing my very first home on The Internet, on a site called “GeoCities.”

WANDERING THROUGH SOHO

GeoCities - Circa 1996

I seemed to understand intuitively that my GeoCities page would be seen by “everyone” on the world wide web, and therefore took great care in selecting which “Neighborhood” I would “move into,” knowing that this would be “everyone’s” first impression of me. “Athens?” I did adore philosophy, and Plato, and…no, no, no, because then “everyone” would think I was an uptight, too-serious academic and wouldn’t “get” that section of high resolution scans of pages from Madonna’s Sex book that I intended to “feature” on my “page.” “SoHo?” I did have an internship in the neighborhood that year, and that was where I invariably hung out when I was in Manhattan. Trendy. Cosmopolitan. Artsy. Yes, totally, “SoHo” is so me!

And so, “SoHo” it was.

My “page,” as I remember, was hideous. White text set in Times New Roman on a black background. Garishly hued, animated navigational buttons. Graphic headers that I “designed” in Photoshop: thick, indelicate text banners, that I embossed, outer glowed, drop shadowed, and lens flared the hell out of, each color-coded to match the content of each section. (I still give myself props for at least being consistent in the color arena, despite the hideous aesthetics of the rest of my “page” architecture.) Aside from the Sex book scans, I can remember precious little other content. I can vaguely remember a “Literature and Philosophy” “section” in which I posted my course syllabi each semester, as well as a few seminar papers, and there was almost certainly a “section” devoted entirely to gritty, scanned, pseudo-sexy self-portraits over which I imagined my Gay.com crushes would drool, but that’s about all I remember.

I was always embarrassed to mention my very first GeoCities page, once I settled into my own personal design style and graduated to CSS and a properly designed and self-hosted site from my early, clumsy HTML coding and GeoCities hosting, until a few weeks ago, when I stumbled upon a screen grab of noted designer Jeffrey Zeldman’s web page circa 1996, which made me feel a whole lot less embarrassed. Now, I wish I had had the foresight to take screen grabs of my own, all throughout those first laughable infant steps of mine into the world wide web, if only to be able to laugh at their hideousness when held up to the clean, minimalist white tundra of my current blog theme.

I mention all of this, of course, in response to Yahoo!’s media release yesterday stating that it will shut down GeoCities entirely before the end of 2009. I know, right? It was still around? I forgot all about my once-treasured GeoCities page after I was graduated from college in the spring of 1996, once I entered “The Real World” of living in New York City on an Editorial Assistant’s salary, when I no longer boasted constant access to The Internet.

But I remembered it, yesterday, and became, I dare say, a bit nostalgic for the old pixelated “SoHo” in which I used to “live.”

THE DEATH OF THE REPUBLIC

This most recent occurrence of Internet nostalgia, however, is only the latest in a series that began back in late February, when I first read of the death of The Designers Republic. February has for many years been a month of death for me, following the death of my father in February of 2002, and the death of my mother in February of the following year. So it seemed fitting, somehow, that this most recent February should herald the death of not only my most recent romantic involvement, but also that of one of my most revered design studios.

But for me Ian Anderson’s Designers Republic was far more than an important design studio whose work I admired and whose business practices and client list I sought to emulate and achieve myself. It was also, much like Joshua Davis‘ Dreamless.org before it, of which I was also a member, an international community of designers who met in its forum, Neue.DR, to socialize, brainstorm, and share work and music. In those early days of the new millennium, when both my personal and professional lives were constantly in flux, Neue.DR was my one constant, my one home, the one thing on which I could always depend. I could escape into its tubes, away from my hectic job, away from my relationship that I knew was nearing its end, to find solace in the conversations I had with the other designers, humor in the flirtatious antics between the Icelandic woman and the French dude, and inspiration in the latest Photoshop battle.

It was my haven on the world wide web.

So, even though The Designers Republic had (again, much like Joshua Davis had done with Dreamless.org before it) long since shuttered the Neue.DR forum before its own ultimate demise at the end of this January, I still felt a bit of nostalgia when I read of its passing during my dead month. Because, much like GeoCities had, Neue.DR marked a specific time in my life, and became, like any of the physical senses will become, a trigger for memories of events, and of work, and of people: a road marker on the map of my life’s experiences.

The passing of both online “homes,” for me, really does signify, if one will pardon an oft-employed phrase in these Curious Affairs, “The End Of An Era.”

THE ONLINE MAPPING OF A PERSONAGE

In some ways I feel that these words and ruminations that I am recording here are only the beginning of a more expansive project, inaugural notes for an endeavor that will eventually record my life and experiences, not only in words or images, but also in the URLs at which I have left traces of myself, and which have left their own traces on me. As an individual who almost obsessively records his experiences and memories based on sights, sounds, scents, and other senses, it seems only natural to begin recording them also based on my online activities. Because, much like I can vividly recall the scene outside of my apartment’s balcony when my brother told me over the telephone that our mother had died, or describe in minute detail the scents that filled my nostrils as I lost my virginity, so too can I recall precisely which design forums I was frequenting when my father died, or which blog I was maintaining when I was told that my first friend to die of AIDS had just been diagnosed with it, or exactly how many subdomains resided on my website when I experienced the most soul-destroying breakup of my life.

And, as someone who, almost quite literally, lives online, I think it is important to document these sojourns throughout the great white web as faithfully, and as thoughtfully, as one records his experiences IRL. If only to be able to, many years and several lifetimes later, look back on design forum conversations and Photoshop battles, and on the hideously designed pages of his first “home” on the Internet, and marvel at just far one has come.

And at just how much one has changed, as the URLs have gone by.

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RELATED ARTICLES FROM ACROSS THE WEB

• There Is Always A City by AV Flox: “Perhaps more than places of residence, spaces online are like lovers. We enjoy many people who touch our lives, but there are only a number of them that really change us so deeply, and teach us so much, that we remember them forever. In a sense, GeoCities was that. It may not have been the moody codependent relationship I had with Diaryland, or the drama-filled, torrid affair I had with LiveJournal or the wild, no-strings-attached fling I’ve been having with WordPress, or the warm marriage I enjoy on this self-hosted blog—but it shaped me. Maybe it was my first crush.”
• RIP GeoCities by Maria Diaz: “What this ending of Geocities does make me realize is, for all our scary talk of how we need to watch what our slutty, drunken selves put online because oh no someone who may pay us to do something might see it, is how not permanent so much of the web truly is. This is why I think talking about the Internet’s history is so important. So much of what happened is gone now. We have to discuss it, there’s so little evidence of it but our memories and a few pages with dead links.”

Scallywag And Vagabond - A Salon of Cultural Affairs

When I first received the list of suggested assignments for my column at Scallywag & Vagabond this week from my fabulous editor, I groaned inwardly. Not because the topics were uninteresting or unseemly (quite the contrary; my fabulous editor’s assignments are always unflinchingly flawless and titillating), but because I knew immediately that “How To Tell If They Are All That, Plus More: A Guide To Assembling The Clues” was the topic I knew I had to attempt to tackle. This distressed me for a variety of reasons, and the most bothersome of my thoughts on the topic were: 1) I have never enjoyed sustained, long-term fortune in deciphering such clues about My Others on my own, so who in hell am I to give any advice on the topic whatsoever?; and 2) despite over six years of on-again / off-again relationship writing in this blog, I had not attempted it in any sort of serious fashion in quite some time, and was frankly frightened that I could not accomplish it effectively anymore, or, worse, that if I could, my words would convey a pale imitation of the passion with which I once wrote about love.

However, always one to rise to a challenge as opposed to run from it, I decided to cover the topic anyway. I began with a recent dream I had about a man, and my relationship with him, and worked backward through memories and my own relationships, to compile what I believe to be a fairly accurate foundation list of how one knows that the he (or she) one is dating just may be “All That, Plus More.” As it turned out, I am rather pleased with the piece, not only because I think it was a successful return to relationship writing for me, but also because it is a pretty nice compendium of only the most positive attributes, words, and actions of each of my previous boyfriends (and even non-boyfriends).

So please do stop by and have a read, won’t you, of “How To Tell If They Are All That, Plus More: A Guide To Assembling The Clues,” and tell us what you think?

The Bartelby Brew tea this week is only slightly bittersweet, and significantly less bitter, and sweeter, than one might have imagined.

Not Your Average Twitter Listicle

I was inspired recently by GrainEdit‘s curated list of designers to follow on Twitter. I admire it because it not only includes the “Design Rock Stars” as one would expect (@ilovetypography, @DesignObserver, et al.), but also highlights some truly amazing designers who are currently doing some truly awesome work. So, for this week’s #followfriday phenom on Twitter (in which I do not usually participate, and when I do attempt to do so it seems, to me, to be entirely awkward and therefore inorganic), I thought I would put my own spin on recommending designer-ly types to follow on Twitter.

I employ the completely made-up term “designer-ly” because not all of the individuals on my list are graphic designers. But since, as a designer myself, I always gravitate toward those thinkers and designers who speak on a variety of topics (because, really, design inspiration can come from anywhere), I decided to highlight those individuals whose content inspires me. I also tried to select “designer-ly” Twitterers who maintain impressive blogs and / or websites, as well, and whose Twitter streams augment their excellent thoughts on design, art, or technology as presented in their forums that go well beyond Twitter’s 140 character confines. Lastly, I sought to focus on those thinkers who tend to be more engaging with their followers on Twitter, and not only follow / engage with the “Twitter Design Elite”; I am not criticizing those who do this, but I personally get more out of following design thinkers when they actively engage with their audiences.

With that, I give you my top choices for the “10 Design Thinkers To Follow On Twitter”.

@brainpicker

Maria Popova of Brain Pickings

I have been a huge fan of Maria’s for awhile, and have written of my admiration of her blog before in this space, but my love of her content bears repeating. Brain Pickings “picks culture’s collective brain” for innovation, inspiration, and brilliant ideas, and Maria’s Twitter stream follows this up with bite-sized bits of brilliance on art, culture, design, photography, sustainability, technology, and, of course, all things TED. She is an awesome resource for inspiring some very heavy “outside of the box” thinking about design, innovation, and the inter-connectedness of ideas.

@changeorder

David Sherwin of ChangeOrder

David Sherwin’s ChangeOrder is an amazing resource because it focuses on the business and process of design in a way that makes its content truly accessible to all designers, not only to Creative Directors or Principals. His articles never fail to inspire thought concerning the business side of design, and allow one to see the design process not only from the design side, but from the all-important client side, as well. All of this amazing insight is, of course, nicely supplemented by David’s Twitter stream, which is a resource I could not imagine being without.

@darrylohrt

Darryl Ohrt of Brandflakes For Breakfast

As the most recognizable online voice from the greatest agency in all of the land, Plaid, it would be an egregious error on my part if I did not include Darryl’s Twitter stream and Plaid’s blog in my list of most valuable Twitter design resources. With a sense of humor, frankness, and shockingly accurate eye for detail and all things branding, Darryl consistently delivers the best of what internet culture, pop culture, good design, and branding trends have to offer. Pair that with an amazing attention to how (and how well) companies are using social media to their (dis)advantages, and you have, well, one of the greatest Twitter streams in all of the land.

@hellyeahdude

Patrick Algrim of Hell Yeah Dude

I remain a longtime fan of Patrick’s Hell Yeah Dude, which was initially launched as a forum to which young authors trying to break into the design world could contribute their own thoughts, beliefs, and topics concerning design and the design process. Hell Yeah Dude has, through numerous incarnations, retained this contributory, collaborative focus, and it is one of my top go-to sites for fresh design ideas and perspectives. Patrick’s Twitter stream is an excellent supplement, focusing on design, art, Chicago, and the web with refreshing insight.

@jackcheng

Jack Cheng of JackCheng.com

I first began following Jack Cheng’s work and ideas back in October of 2008, when I read his article, “I am my own boss (and so can you!),” published on his site. A former copywriter and UX / web design lead, Jack has an amazing talent for conveying innovative ideas concerning design, writing, working, and living in a way that I find very engaging and useful in my own life and work as a designer and thinking visual artist. His Twitter stream also never fails to give one pause with its ideas and textual images painted in less than 140 characters.

@jomc

Joanne McNeil of Tomorrow Museum

The Tomorrow Museum is a collection of images and speculative essays exploring how technology, science, and economics are affecting the fine arts. Curated and written by science and technology writer Joanne McNeil, the original essays themselves, as well as the curated links in the blog’s “Asides” column, always inspire one with their observations of how technology, science, and the web inform the processes of creative thinking and artistic production. Additionally, Joanne’s Twitter stream augments the blog with a characteristic wit and keen eye, and should definitely not be missed.

@kitsunenoir

Bobby Solomon of Kitsune Noir

I discovered Bobby Solomon’s rather excellent blog collection of links to and ruminations on all imaginable goodness related to art, design, fashion, film, and music via the previously-referenced list of top Twitter designers compiled by GrainEdit, and I am so glad I did. Bobby has an amazing eye for all kinds of visual and aural awesomeness, and presents them with a wit and candor that make reading and seeing them all the more enjoyable. One should follow his equally engaging and informative Twitter stream to remain abreast of all of the action occurring on Kitsune Noir.

@michaelSurtees

Michael Surtees of DesignNotes

I cannot imagine anyone remotely related to design being unfamiliar with Michael Surtees’ DesignNotes, but if for some unexplainable reason one is, one should rectify that immediately. Michael writes widely on graphic design and all things visual with a candor and frankness that I find refreshing in the arena of design writing. He has a unique eye for finding interesting sites, projects, and events online and in New York City (and chronicles them in his impressive weekly Link Drops), and can always be counted on for unique, innovative content, both on his blog and in his Twitter stream.

@rbtlshow

Aaron Heth (@aaronheth) and Matt McInerney (@mattmc) of Read Between The Leading

One of the great new resources that I recently began following is Read Between The Leading, a podcast that focuses on graphic design and typography, and produced by two extremely passionate design students at the Savannah College of Art & Design. The two designers have produced some amazing episodes thus far, including interviews with Glenn Garriock of FormFiftyFive and John Boardley of ILoveTypography, and never fail to direct thought-provoking questions toward their interviewees or other design topics. Their show’s Twitter stream is a must-follow resource for anyone interested in design on any level.

@serial_consign

Greg J. Smith of Serial Consign

Greg’s truly amazing site and more casual yet still truly amazing Twitter stream are in my top list of immediate go-tos for design brain candy. A designer and researcher interested in media theory and digital culture, Greg’s work focuses on how “contemporary information paradigms affect representational and spatial systems”. What this means is that one can always be inspired to think about design in vastly different ways once one reads Greg’s take on design as manifested in illustration, information design, visualization, and writing. Another definite must-follow.

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There are many, many other impressive designer-ly thinkers on Twitter, to be sure, and I follow a lot (but by no means all) of them. Do you follow anyone on Twitter (“designer-ly” or not) who you consider to be a “must-follow”? If so, leave some tips in a comment so that I and others can check them out!

Scallywag And Vagabond - A Salon of Cultural Affairs

To say that I was elated when Christopher Koulouris, Chief Editor, Cultural Correspondent, and Scallywag himself, invited me several weeks ago to become a contributing correspondent to Scallywag & Vagabond, would be a woeful understatement. As I was already a loyal reader of the “Salon of Cultural Affairs,” which promises a daily “dissection of popular culture, arts, fashion, manners, etiquette, and the stimulants that accompany them,” I could not think of an online publication that would be a more fitting stage for my prose, observations, and sometimes arcane wit. So I jumped (albeit graciously) at the invitation.

A forum for critical reviews, interviews, insights, and interactive dialogue, Scallywag & Vagabond pays particular “attention and grace to charmed and perhaps outlandish individuals, institutions, and icons,” and “sets forth to engender marvel, giddy delight, and provocative repartee.”

I do so hope that my debut Scallywag & Vagabond slice of life, a slightly disquieting account of my last personal experiences with psychiatry entitled, “The Curious Affairs Of Psychotherapy,” lives up to such dashing expectations. Go have a read, won’t you, and let us know if it does? Hopefully this will be but the beginning of a long and mutually advantageous editorial relationship between Atherton Bartelby and Scallywag & Vagabond.

As the Scallywag himself would write, “Tea is now being served. Sip carefully.”

Sip carefully, indeed…particularly when partaking of The Bartelby Brew.

We Are Not From Kalamazoo - Proposal For La Reunion Artist Residence

Sustainable design, the philosophy of designing products, architecture, and services to comply with principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability, has been one of the fastest-growing trends in the world of design for the last several years. A movement to eliminate all negative environmental impact via innovative design, it is a philosophy that may be applied throughout all fields of design, from large-scale urban planning to small-scale product packaging.

Design Green Now, a touring think tank of leaders in sustainable design and development, is an invaluable resource for any designer or entrepreneur who wants to know what designers are doing to improve the current state of our environment. The Design Green Now collective has confirmed three New York City panels to take place during the month of April, during which panelists will address the challenges they face and methods they have utilized to succeed in designing to achieve sustainability.

• Innovative Materials: 01 April 2009 at Pratt Institute; featuring Dan Rubinstein of Surface Magazine, Paul S. Mankiewicz of Gaia Institute, Jason Salfi of Comet Skateboards, Andrew H. Dent of Material ConneXion, and Mitchell Joachim of Terreform 1.
• Totally Wasted: Reusing, Recycling, and Reclaiming Resources: 02 April 2009 at FIT; featuring Andrew Personette of EcoSystems and Tiffany Threadgould of TerraCycle, Inc.
• New Approaches To Energy: 13 April 2009 at Parsons The New School for Design; featuring Susan Szenasy of Metropolis, Serge Appel of Cook+Fox Architects LLP, Stephan Von Muehlen of Energy Hub, Brent Baker of TriState BioDiesel, and Anthony Pereira of altPOWER.

Design Green Now has also been selected as a March 2009 Finalist at ideablob.com, and thus has the chance to win a $10,000 grant toward fulfilling its goals of educating designers, entrepreneurs, and the public on the importance of sustainable design to the environment and to the future. Voting for Design Green Now is possible from now through Tuesday, 31 March 2009, and requires only a quick verification of email. I voted for Design Green Now because as a designer who is a strong proponent of sustainable design, I believe in the programs and education that this collective is affording me and my peers. I voted for Design Green Now so that it can continue to reach designers and entrepreneurs with its messages of design change. And I voted for Design Green Now in order to help myself and others become not just designers of pretty things, but agents of transformation, as well.

Won’t you join me?

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RELATED ARTICLES

• Props to Design Green Now from Core77: 24 March 2009.

Strategic Designer Emily Chang - Photo From Designer's Flickr Stream

I first became acquainted with the work of strategic designer Emily Chang early in 2008, when I became a more active participant in the Twitterverse, searching out peer designers to follow for inspiration, conversation, and exchange of ideas. Chang, co-founder and principal of Ideacodes.com, a web consultancy in San Francisco that focuses on the design and user experience of next generation websites, social applications, and networked communities, boasts an impressive résumé of award-winning web and interactive projects and technology strategies. But it is her minute attention to anything that is designed, whether it exists in the world of technology, on the plane of the web, or in more traditional media such as sculpture, paintings, or architecture, that I have come to admire even more. For it is this minute attention to aesthetic details that seem to breathe beauty into all of her tech and web projects.

On her blog at EmilyChang.com, Chang writes widely and eloquently on web and user experience design, technology, and the next generation web, and has most recently begun sharing her love of design, the web, and tech with a larger community with the launch of her site PicoCool. “A new site that is dedicated to bringing you tiny and obscure content from the world of peer media, social networks and subcultures; cool content from real people,” PicoCool is the first site of its kind to focus on the content being created by people on social networks and through peer media.

Although her impressive work on the internet and in technology has garnered dozens of design and interactive awards, it is her limitless passion for technology, the web, and good, clean design that makes her one of the outstanding women in technology whom I admire. It is all of this, in addition to her willingness to freely share all of the beauty that she finds, curates, and creates, with a wider audience of peers, that makes her the subject of this blogger’s Ada Lovelace Day post.

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Note: The title of this post is a pun on the title of the famous poem by Ada Lovelace’s father, Lord Byron, “She Walks In Beauty.” I thought it slightly more fitting, given Ms. Chang’s love of design, than any excerpts I could find from Ada Lovelace’s “Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage”.