Archives for the month of: December, 2006

Happy Holidays!

December 23, 06 //
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To every one of you that I’ve had the plea­sure of being friends with and enjoy­ing the good times of 2006, whether that be at an office party, SXSW or at the super­mar­ket, aisle 5, right in front of the crack­ers and cheese whiz, thank you. You mean a whole lot to me, espe­cially dur­ing this hol­i­day sea­son and I wouldn’t trade you for a pack of Big League chew.

It is my sin­cere hope that you all have a won­der­ful hol­i­day break and remem­ber to cher­ish the time spent with your fam­ily and friends. Here’s to 2007, that it will bring many oppor­tu­ni­ties and mem­o­ries that we will reflect upon for years to come. 

Hello again, Mr. Whelchel

December 14, 06 //
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When I decided to recon­nect with my High School World Cul­tures teacher, Mr. Whelchel, there was mild con­tent­ment that what­ever he chose to do, either reply to my mes­sage or not, that after 8 years of devel­op­ing myself (since that time), I know had the oppor­tu­nity to express my grat­i­tude to some­one who left a impres­sion on my youth.

I never expected that he’d be on Myspace — of all places — and while at first it seemed strange to use a ser­vice that was orig­i­nally intended to net­work with friends and express one­self, that didn’t pre­vent from finally mak­ing con­tact after so many years.

My mes­sage was short and sweet, much like his response. Yet, I find that the older I get, the less I have to say, the better.

The fol­low­ing is my mes­sage to my for­mer World Cul­tures teacher, fol­lowed by his response which I believe is short, con­cise, and sweet in its prose:

My Mes­sage

Hey Mr. Whelchel,

It’s been 8 years, or close to it. Not sure if you remem­ber me and hey, that’s okay if you don’t con­sid­er­ing the vast amount of stu­dents you’ve taught over the years, but..

It’s Erik Sagen. I was in your class sev­eral years ago, loved it more than you’ll ever know (and that’s say­ing some­thing) and often reflect on the expe­ri­ence of high school.

My friend Adam and I worked on a class project wherein we com­bined the sound­track of Brave­heart with the graph­ics from a com­puter game (Doom) to tell the story of Napoleon Bona­parte. It was sub­mit­ted on a VHS tape and I believe we received an A, or better.

Let me know if you might remember.

Oth­er­wise, hey, I remem­ber being there and was ecsta­tic to find you on here.

Just wanted to know that you made an enor­mous impres­sion on me then.

Take care,
Erik

Whelchel’s Response

Yeah, I do remem­ber you. First of all, teach­ers are weird crea­tures. Think about it, we go to a place with hor­mone rav­aged teenagers all the while with some crazy idea that we can retard their think­ing into, well, think­ing. With all of this, we do tend to remem­ber most if not all of our students.

Thanks for the kind words, these are the fringe ben­e­fits of the job.

I am glad to see you doing well. I jumped into your page and noticed you are mak­ing a liv­ing off of your imag­i­na­tion. Great for you and I wish you all the luck in the world. The yel­low trans­former was cool.

I offer only one piece of advice; love your kids and enjoy them. They grow up way too fast. I have one in eigth grade already and he is seem­ingly a wastoid teenager (mom and dad aren’t cool anymore).

Have a great day and do what you gotta do, what ever the hell that means. ciao.

 

The Legacy of Matthew Carter

December 12, 06 //
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Matthew Carter [profile]Matthew Carter, born British but now resid­ing in the Boston area, is the cre­ative force behind many widely used fonts today includ­ing Ver­dana, Tahoma, Geor­gia, New Cen­tury School­book and Hel­vetica, to name a few.

Carter began his career as a tra­di­tional type­face designer, study­ing under Jan Van Krimpen’s assis­tant P. H. Raedisch, where he learned the dis­tinc­tive craft of punch cut­ting and even­tu­ally tran­si­tioned into using dig­i­tal meth­ods to cre­ate his fonts, a more expe­dited method than tra­di­tional processes.

In a pre­sen­ta­tion given to mem­bers of the AIGA (New York Chap­ter), Carter reflected on his many expe­ri­ences with devel­op­ing the fonts he’s so famously known for and revealed that many, if not all of his cre­ations, were inspired by actual type­faces from his­tor­i­cal architecture.

Accord­ing to Wikipedia, Matthew Carter “co-founded the Bit­stream type foundry in 1981, which he left in 1991 to form the Carter & Cone type foundry with Cherie Cone.”

Bit­stream, Inc. was a first of its kind, a com­pany formed solely for the pur­pose of the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of dig­i­tal fonts and their respec­tive licenses. Unlike tra­di­tional type foundries, where the typog­ra­phers would sell wood and metal type­faces, Bit­stream dealed exclu­sively with dig­i­tal fonts.

If not for the hard work and impres­sive efforts of Matthew Carter, design­ers would be lim­ited as far as font selec­tion for print and web.

Whether he knows it or not, Matthew Carter has left behind a legacy that will con­tinue to thrive in future gen­er­a­tions, all because of his desires to pre­serve his­tor­i­cal typefaces.

 

The Mythology of Heroes

December 6, 06 //
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Heroes [stillframe]If you haven’t seen NBC’s Heroes, I’d sug­gest either Tivo’ing it or watch­ing it every Mon­day (9PM/EST). Next to Lost, it’s been one of the only shows in recent years that I’ve been so involved with — includ­ing hav­ing side con­ver­sa­tions with friends and fam­ily — and that’s due to a few fac­tors that make the show so engrossing.

Apart from the great act­ing, the writ­ing con­tin­ues to amaze me because the story is chock full of inter­est­ing twists, turns and free falls.

There are so many lay­ers and angles the writ­ers have cho­sen to explore and the story itself is rich in char­ac­ter explo­ration and inter­ac­tion. At it’s sur­face it seems like just a show about peo­ple with var­i­ous tal­ents and pow­ers, but if you look fur­ther you begin to unravel the puz­zle and mythol­ogy that is Heroes, which tran­scends the small screen in the form of an online comic and web blog.

Over the course of the first sea­son I’ve made some men­tal notes (mostly spoiler-free) and I’d like to share some of those with you. In turn, I invite you to share your own, as I know we all have our own thoughts and the­o­ries on where the story arch might lead and where it’ll con­tinue to go.

The­o­ries on Heroes

  • Bib­li­cal names used for some of the main char­ac­ters; Gabriel (arch angel), Mica, Eden and Peter.
  • Over­all story arch (so far) has a delib­er­ate sense of urgency and fore­shad­ow­ing: some plot points uncov­ered, ques­tions both answered and unanswered
  • Reminds me a bit of Steven King’s The Stand in that a group of peo­ple, who pre­vi­ously had no con­tact with each other, have come together for a greater purpose
  • The writ­ing is multi-faceted and intrigu­ing, much like Lost, and while it’s inten­tion­ally seri­al­ized it does seem more self-contained than Lost.
  • The char­ac­ters them­selves and their sto­ries are intrigu­ing because of the emo­tional state they share; urgency and for the most part a deep rooted nonac­cep­tance of their tal­ents, almost a resilient self-doubt.
  • Hiro (named appro­pri­ately) comes across as the glue hold­ing every­thing together. He seems to be the favorite for most view­ers and that’s because of his per­son­al­ity and will­ing­ness to work within the lim­i­ta­tions of his power.
  • Mr. Ben­nett (Claire’s father and code­named: HRG for Horned Rim Glasses) seems almost as if his align­ment is neu­tral. He’ll pro­tect those he cares for, but also obeys his supe­ri­ors’ wishes. The writ­ers have men­tioned that he is a but a cog in the big­ger wheel that is his employer and at the moment their true inten­tions and/or motives are still unclear
  • The Hait­ian, while mys­te­ri­ous and obey­ing of HRG’s com­mands, seems like he has his own motives beyond the scope of his employer


Now, what about your the­o­ries? If you have some, please share by com­ment­ing or send­ing me an email at erik(at)kartooner.com.
 

I am for the art of…

December 2, 06 //
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Egg Sketch

An inked sketch enti­tled Bar­baric Eggs Storm­ing the Enemy Fox­hole, inspired by a series of descrip­tive state­ments called ‘I am for the art of’ by Claes Old­en­burg (1961).

This sketch along with some oth­ers are part of a book I cre­ated called ‘I am for the Art of Imag­i­na­tion: A Book of Oddly-inspired Illus­tra­tions’, and it just so hap­pens to be one of the most off-the-wall projects I’ve worked on all year. 

Patience

December 1, 06 //
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We’ve all heard, at one time or another, the old adage “Patience is a virtue”. Sure, it’s vir­tu­ous to be patient but to learn patience is no dif­fer­ent than adding a new skill to your per­sonal repretroire.

The Ran­dom House Dic­tio­nary of Pop­u­lar Proverbs and Say­ings traced the ori­gin of this infa­mous proverb to an alle­gor­i­cal nar­ra­tive called Piers Plow­man by William Lang­land and it hap­pens to be sim­il­iar to the Latin say­ing, Max­ima enim..patientia vir­tus (Patience is the great­est virtue).

As with all things, impa­tience is not always imme­di­ately rec­og­niz­able. Rather, we tend to rush things through so as to appease the part of our­selves that loves the end result to hap­pen now, not then, but right now. This is where patience comes in and gen­tly reminds us, “Look, you might not already see what’s to come, the end result, what­ever, but that’s okay, it’ll be worth the wait.” How­ever, just when you think you have a good grasp of it, it can eas­ily slip through your fin­gers, fall through the cracks or hide under the rug (right next to that flat­tened piece of ABC gum) and only then you’ll real­ize it’s importance.

No one likes an impa­tient per­son. If you were to poll a thou­sand peo­ple from var­i­ous eth­nic, age and geo­graph­i­cal back­grounds, you’d find that a great major­ity of these peo­ple if asked, “Do you like an impa­tient per­son?” would all have the same answer. It’s a no-brainer, but it’s amaz­ing how many impa­tient souls are out there in the real world.

Next time you don’t get that Frizzo Latte Supreme in under 3 min­utes or if that guy behind the counter at the store is mov­ing at a snails pace, just remem­ber that patience really is the great­est virtue. It’s some­thing on a daily basis that I have to remind myself to embrace it’s impor­tance and uti­lize it’s strengths.