Steve and Me

It's silly to be upset about someone I don't know. But lord did Steve Jobs help me out a ton. I know I couldn't do my job without his innovation. A bagillion people will say that, and they're all right for a bagillion more reasons. I read a quote today from NYPL's Twitter feed that summed up how I feel about my own field and career goals:

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." – Steve Jobs

After I was done being sad I knew I had to get some regular chores done. I made a spa appointment earlier today but had to cancel it when Yelp.com told me the spa was...less then credible. Anyway, I always set stuff like that up via my junk email, hotmail. I think the end result is fitting for my love of all things Mac.

There's a reason this is only for junk mail.

Yep, wasn't working. C'est la vie.

<3 Steve. and thanks.

SCRIPT—Irene: Preventing a Misunderstood and Unnecessary Revenge.

I just packed up H.H. in a garbage bag and put him in the closet. Right now I'm typing on his predecessor, Calvin Coolidge. Usually in situations like this I wouldn't worry about H.H. However, since last year's snow storm I've had this little brown water stain on my ceiling right above my desk. I'll be damned if Irene is claiming Herbert. I can see this little senario playing out:

ROUGHLY 3 AM.

CAMERA OPENS ON SARAH SLEEPING SOUNDLY IN BED. SUDDENLY THERE IS A LOUD CRASH FOLLOWED BY THE SOUND OF DRIPPING WATER. SARAH SHOOTS UP AND LOOKS BEHIND HER. RECOGNITION TWISTS ONTO HER SLEEPY FACE.

SARAH:

Irene, Irene, Irene, I-rene! I'm begging of you please don't take take my man!

VOICEOVER IRENE:

Ha ha silly little girl! You thought you were immune to 

Irene's wrath simply because you are in Zone C?

SARAH:

Irene, Irene, Irene, I-rene! Please don't take him even though you can!

VO IRENE:

Stop singing Dolly Parton at me, it only makes me angrier! 

SARAH:

It was actually in the style of the White Stripes, but sure.

[Skip beat]

Major Bloomberg said I would be safe in Zone C and 

should only worry if you were a Cat 3 or 4!

VO IRENE:

That little turtle? You listen to him? Don't you remember last year's Christmas snow storm? 

My brother Kevin forced you to stay in Houston for an extra 3 days...

SARAH:

Tell Kevin I said 'thanks' for that actually. I got a few extra days with the fam and...

VO IRENE:

... and then you sat in at Bush Intercontinental for another five hours after that? 

Had you learned your lesson?

SARAH:

[audible gasp]

VO IRENE:

NO YOU HAD NOT! 

And it was I who further trapped you in the airplane once you got to Newark! I personally held back the little cart thingie that connects the jet-way to the aiplane door! 

[evil laugh]

SARAH:

Wait, you have a brother named Kevin? Does he take form in snow or wind? Is it just the over all precipitation that makes you related?How exactly do you... Seems a bit odd...

VO IRENE:

Silence you little turd monkey! Your insolence is only further proof you laugh in the face of my mother, Nature. You follow your turtle mayor's advice dispite my warning. LO! I claim your only prized possession. H.H. as you call him is now mine!

SARAH:

Nooo!

SARAH THRASHES MADLY IN HER BED SHEETS IN A DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO REACH FOR H.H.

PAN TO H.H. FALLING OFF THE IKEA DESK AND ONTO THE SOAKING WET FLOOR. MORE WATER FALLS FROM A HOLE IN THE CEILING ONLY FALLING ON H.H. 

SARAH SOBS INTO HER TWISTED SHEETS AS THE EVIL LAUGH FADE INTO CAMERA BLACK.

END.

Well we can't have that now can we? I'm not sure how you set up a script as I've never written one, don't worry I don't care if it's right or not. 

So yea, to prevent Irene taking my man he's wrapped in a garbage bag and hidden safely in the closet.

Shhhh. It's a secret from looters too.

The weirdest tech problems!

Today was the weirdest day for tech problems, both professionally and personally. Currently I'm fighting with a service that claims I'm allowed to upload photos. It's been a battle of me viciously clicking the "Upload Photos" icon and its button just a-sitting there. So here's a great blog break to complain about today's other unfortunate mishaps.


First up, iMovie. Now don't get me wrong, I passionately hate this product and anything related to it.* But we use it at work to make book trailers on the cheap. It's easy enough to use, but has crazy limitations. Fortunately for us designers, we're really good Googlers and can usually find tricks around it. Can't make a girl fly through the air with the greatest of ease? No worries, tween her coming in and out of frame in Flash, but export at 12 fps as a Quick time to avoid banding issues, then import into iMovie and speed up by 200%. Bam! Flying chick. Only today no dice.


iMovie will not accept changes to a file that you've already placed inside it. I have a picture called girl_1.png but she's too big. I must rename her something other then girl_1.png after I make her smaller. Today iMove said No way Jose! to girl_2.png. After a lot of iMovie bashing, aloud and physically, flying_girl1.png did the trick just fine. Yarg! Anyway, our lady of flight is safely ascending to places otherworldly. This will be a super great book trailer with a lot of sweet flying action. (youtube link TK)


Next up on my journey of "huh?" Indesign stopped allowing the use of the hand tool. This is beyond annoying! Does this happen to anyone else? I can sit there and press the 'A' button all I want, but I am not getting that white arrow. Jerks! Reset.


Now there were other problems today too, but I can't remember how I got my Twitter feed to finally publish to this blog. Now I just have to use Twitter for this small victory to even matter. For anyone who wonders, yes that is a celestial portrait of me done by my friend Becky in which I'm holding a roll of "Awesome Paper Towels" I found at the Red Hook Fairway. No tech problems there, just pure awesome sauce.


*For example, when I went to paste this link here, I noticed that the word "Firelight" within this booktrailer is no longer italicized. Why jerk iMovie, why!? I hope no one catches it—ha! a girl can dream. Ok inevitable more tech problems to explain / blame tomorrow. 

Always listen to your certified Mac genius...

That's right sister! Because if you don't you could end up ass deep in unusable cables, frustration, and crates of empty wine bottles—whose contents were only consumed to ease said frustration. It's a wheel of constant sorrow. Cue the Soggy Bottom Boys!

When I bought H.H. from J she told me to use Set Up Assistant as soon as I got my new bundle of joy. I quickly dismissed this advice as soon as the Welcome video ended. I was too excited!
(As seen here) But I wasn't so concerned to skip over the transferring of important files (i.e. old pictures of my dog, drunken downloads of Ace of Base, etc.) because a co-worker* assured me I could use Migration Assistant at any time of my choosing. Oh how wrong he was!  

Needless to say, Tiger and Lion are not compatible much. At least Lion's Migration Assistant is super hating on Tiger. Oh how many updates must I run dear Lion?! And why can't I just un-install you and downgrade to Snow Leopard in order to use its clearly more effective assistant? Oh, you're an iOS or some shit. Whatever. No fear, I have my little USB man to get music, pictures and other essentials over. Stupid cats.

But in better "ta-da" news:

Could that be any funnier?

* co-worker is not a Mac certified anything.

Migration assistant fail

When I bought my supped up computer I knew I'd have to transfer music, photos, the odd actual work files to it. What I didn't expect is for it to be a huge pain in the ass!

A friend at work was kind enough to lend me his firewire cable, easy-peasy. Everyone with a firewire connection raise your hand...not so fast iMac. What's that you say reader? "Surly the new and improved computer would have easy file transferability via cable!" Alas I regret to tell you no.

What it does seem to have is an excellent Time Machine transferability. A whole lot good that does from OS 10.4.11. (See the old bullshit I was dealing with?) Anyhoot after updating Migration Assistant on the old computer she still couldn't find Herbert wirelessly. I'll have to Google the shit outta this later for now I write this entry while sitting on a friend's stoop in Kensington via my phone anxiously awaiting his arrival. I'm helping him move today and of course it's a huge pain in the ass.

Some people get all the luck!

It's here! It's here!

Once every few years I get to watch this video. I thought I'd share it's latest installment with ya'll. It's a bit shaky from my excitement.

"Yuuuup!" Is right!

Anyway, arriving a few days early, this little bundle of joy is the latest and greatest addiction (pun!) to the Kaufman Klan. I've already admitted to a few friends to singing the opening theme of The Little Mermaid while pulling the beautiful white packaging from the ugly brown box it was shipped in. But let's back up a sec and reflect how this little man came to be.

I bought it form a friend—an excellent friend—who shipped it from her store in LA to my office in Manhattan. Since I wasn't expecting it until Wednesday, most likely Thursday, I wore a very pretty blue dress and ballet flats to work. Interestingly enough this huge box was wedged into my cubicle before I walked into work this morning. Oh the pure joy I felt! Oh the excitement and disbelief of the United Parcel Service's speed! As I bend over to pick up my new baby I realized, this shit's heavy! 

Home Depot has an excellent array of trolleys and pushcarts for your purchasing pleasure. 

$30 later I had my trolley, all bungeed up and ready to wheel Herbert Hoover out the spinny doors of my building and down to the underground. Onward to Brooklyn! Did you know the service entrance to the R train at 57th St has been dismantled due to MTA budget cuts? Neither did I! Ramming poor Mr. Hoover through and over the turn style hurt a bit, but I'd be damned if I was walking back up the stairs and dragging his ass across 7th Ave to the other entrance. Plus I was already getting pit stains on my dress...which is of course a cheap form of polyester. Stupid synthetic fabrics.

But! The two of us had a lovely ride home. I read my book, The Inverted Forest, while he sat fat an happy in a bushel of apples. Roughly an hour later we'd reached 25th St BK, no one the wiser that I was lugging around a very expensive brown banged-up box. 

Three flights of stairs later and a small snag in my dress, BAM! We're here, alone at last. And I sit, stare at it's awesomeness, type away on it's wireless keyboard and click it's smart mouse. Yuuuup!

iMac of my Dreams (prt 1)

Finally OS X Lion! Took you long enough, geesh. Ok to be fair I know you were hammering out issues with the new Final Cut--also I've been on vacation for quite some time so we haven't really had a chance to meet. That all changes this Thursday(ish). I finally bought my new iMac! Let the peasants rejoice! Here's to our bright future together, 21.5", 2.7 GHz, 1TB hard-driving friend. Cheers.

So come this weekend I'm starting on my digital portfolio project, how about we watch it grow together? Awesome! Of course I still have to finish up that whole "how to do it" part of the project, but that can't stop me from fiddling with it, right? Totally. I've already started some old fashioned sketches:

I realize these are the most boring sketches of all time. Hell blue prints of colonial homes are more dynamic. And really this doesn't tell us anything of how the piece will function or even look. But I feel like it's excellent rough draft of ideas. Clean, simple, and not too flashy. Ok maybe that's too much justice. But it did help me organize the piles and piles and piles of PDFs I would love to showcase. The market for picture books and throbbing teen supernatural and/or dystopian novels won't know what hit 'em.

Now on to HEX color guides! Color gurgle.

iCloud, uCloud

So Apple moves towards the Cloud—happy day! Honestly, I didn't know what the Cloud was until those commercials with those people stranded at the airport said it. It's also interesting that commercial is for Window 7 but I'll digress on that. I've been using the Cloud since... forever? Seriously when's the last time you can remember not having total access to everything you've ever downloaded no matter where you were? Ah, iTunes... right. Bit of a problem.

I'd never backed up anything I'd bought on iTunes. I stupidly believed if anything ever happened to my computer I could access the MP3s I bought through my Apple account through a different computer. Nope. I first realized this huge problem in 2005(ish) when I switched jobs and didn't think of taking the music I downloaded on my work computer with me when I left. Imagine my surprise. I can't have something I bought within an environment that provides me with just about everything imaginable? And Apple never fixed that! It's odd that it took Apple so long to get on board with this idea—at least for MP3s and downloads. But I don't know the legal issues involved, frankly I don't care. I want access to all my files 24/7. I expect it. Hell I even demand it! Now as a devoted Mac person, I get to have it. Happy Day!

An interesting topic turns out through all of this though. We've all been using Cloud for years, whether we knew it or not. But the main company we all use to buy and listen to music hadn't. With iTunes we bought music, we had it on our hard drive, and in a sense we owned it. But now we don't have to. We still buy it, but now it can be accessed from anywhere. So do we still think we own anything? Or we just have access to it all the time?

I'm not sure what this means really. I know that I need to change my way of thinking when it comes to marketing within publishing and design. I'm interested in how I'm going to take an idea I use every day, an idea I wanted to happen for every company I'm heavily involved in and make it work for my job. Is the future of publishing just a big 'ole paid-per-check-out-library? That'd be pretty awesome. It wouldn't sell many books, and I'd be out of a job, but I'd love all the access to all those sweet words.

Social media goes on forever and the training never ends

My job moves a little slower then most marketing design jobs. Working in books we market and advertise a lot of stuff via paper. We print a lot of words on paper, we advertise on paper. Recognize! I'm getting into that whole digital space, but I will be the very first to admit I'm behind. Yes I've been in that digital space for some years, and yes I know front-end Flash. But banner ads and facebook profiles are really the extent of it. Truth be told, I'm more comfortable in the printed world. I would love to move completely to digital and online—I don't need convincing as to why but a reassurance that it's worth it is appreciated.

Todays extensive training on online advertising brought up a lot of interesting points on traffic I'd never considered. Our VP pointed out that a lot of authors/agents/editors like seeing actual printed pieces. For example, a full page New York Times ad is deemed an accomplishment. "I'm a big name author, here's my big budget ad in a big national reputable newspaper." But she pointed out something very important, what did we, the publisher and by way of that the author gain from such an ad? Who saw it and what did they do after they saw it? Did they move on to the style section or run to Barnes and Noble?

I've never thought about that. Maybe it's because I've been trained not ask. Or maybe it's really because I don't necessarily care. Either way it did spark an interest. I know that people see the stuff I do, we've basically got that revelation covered. But what I show them, what they see, does it have an effect? Are they following through or simply going "Oh that's cute/sucks/is irrelevant/life changing."?

The good thing about online advertising is all of it is tracked. We know how many times someone clicks on something and where they go after. We know if they buy something, if they simply look at it, and creepily enough, how long they look at it.

I once looked at a pair of boots on Zappos.com. I didn't buy them because I didn't have enough money for them. Every time I was online, an ad featuring those shoes followed me. They haunted me, ok more like taunted me. Buy me Sarah, I'm so awesome. I'm a little black suede bootie that would look super hot with dresses. It took a few weeks but I bought them. What's the parameter on this? How far can tracking clicks and ads go? I understand the appeal. In theory I can show two ads at the same time, and see if one ad gets more relevant feedback then the other. And I'm exhausted at the very idea.

Big time in-store marketing—wah-wah

I've often done promotional pieces for in-store displays. Oh, wait, that is the majority of my job. Back track... it used to be the entirity of my job. Now that we (i.e. publishing) seem to be working less and less with paper, creating printed material is becoming scarce. It's rare to print an ad for a magazine... it's rare that people pick up magazines. Ok that's a bit dramatic, but still the printed advertisement or marketing tool is slowly melting away. Downloadable activities, internet mumbo-jumbos, apps and the dreaded e-book interactive back ads have pretty much taken place of everything I learned in design school.

Every once in a while a store or event takes place that will really use all the print knowledge I mustered in school, exciting! Usually reserved for conventions and expos, the big ass printed poster is a headache of scant scratch-disc memory, complicated rivet placement, and how exactly do we showcase this without it screaming at you? Figuring out this puzzle can be a lot of fun. Because usually (and if you do it right) the visual of a big ass poster can be awesome. Behold the awesome problem of Pinkalicious.

The author of Pinkalicious is having a cupcake decorating party Dylan's Candy Bar tomorrow. If you've never entered Dylan's Candy Bar I highly recommend. The store itself just oozes sugar shock. Bright colors and shiny floors of printed candy gleam around every treat you could possibly imagine—except Snaps, I combed that place for my father's favorite candy coated licorice to no avail.

I couldn't think of how set off a gigantic pinkerrific poster against the extreme colorful and intense store decor. We did our best, of course. Pinkalicious floats awesomely from her books, wand waving proudly at all her Pinkerbelles. It'd been a while since the pieces were printed and I was wondering if my efforts in the Pinkalicious poster would stand out against Dylan's already candy-crazy decor.

When I ran up to the shop on 3rd ave, at first I couldn't even find her! I mistakenly thought she'd be in the frames within the window. Instead she was sort of propped up against the glass of the building. One poster had "Three Floors of Candy" etched across her face, for shame! I seriously hope the managers at Dylan's change this for the event, it's so slap-dash. I did snap a picture of the one unobstructed Pinkalicious I saw.

 Eh. I'm more drawn to the marshmallow shooters myself.