#137 Hot & Humid

137 Hot & Humid
#137 Hot & Humid
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#137 Hot & Humid was eas­i­ly inspired: 

July 2019 is the hottest month in recorded history

Glob­al warm­ing used to be a phrase I’d pret­ty much ignore, but no more. It’s real­ly hap­pen­ing, & I feel worse for the ani­mals (from hip­pos & whales to the tini­est insects & fish) than I do for the humans; after all we caused it. Let’s hope it’s not too late to reverse the dam­age. Here’s a Newsweek arti­cle on the subject.

July 2019 is the hottest month ever record­ed, accord­ing to accu­rate, sys­tem­at­ic, glob­al ther­mome­ter mea­sure­ments of sur­face tem­per­a­tures — that means only since 1880. Still, it’s the hottest July in over 100 years.

Going back fur­ther, start­ing in 1639, with the inven­tion of the rain gauge & evap­or­ime­ter, & sev­er­al years lat­er, the barom­e­ter & con­den­sa­tion hygrom­e­ter, new instru­ments made it pos­si­ble to stan­dard­ize the record­ing of mete­o­ro­log­i­cal data from place to place. More at earth​magazine​.org


Too hot to cool off

Zero table fan
This is the cute lit­tle fan our fam­i­ly grew up with in the 50’s & 60’s.

It’s so hot — mean­ing every­body in town is run­ning their a/​c at max — that my air con­di­tion­er keeps cycling on & off due to lack of pow­er, so to save it from burn­ing out I just turned it off & sur­round­ed myself with a bunch of box fans, table fans, and even a lit­tle per­son­al fan. (They are also keep­ing the place cool for the cats.) Inter­est­ing how fans keep us cool: By blow­ing air around, the fan makes it eas­i­er for the air to evap­o­rate sweat from your skin, which is how you elim­i­nate body heat. The more evap­o­ra­tion, the cool­er you feel. (A fan alone actu­al­ly increas­es room tem­per­a­ture from the heat gen­er­at­ed by the motor.)


Concept & design

I’m cre­at­ing this piece in 100º weath­er with no air con­di­tion­ing (rea­son explained above) so there was no lack of inspi­ra­tion for the art­work. Swel­ter­ing sun, and humid­i­ty that caus­es glass to fog up, lends itself to the very device I used in my teens to learn the art & nuances of hand let­ter­ing: draw­ing on the bath­room mir­ror right after a steam­ing hot show­er. I used to draw on the mir­ror, my fin­ger repli­cat­ing the exact shape of a ful­ly loaded let­ter­ing brush or mark­er, some­times using the side of my thumb, some­times using my fin­ger­nail, but always pro­duc­ing nat­ur­al script & hand­writ­ten style let­ter­ing. I still do that to this day. (Fin­ger­paint on that slick paper accom­plish­es the same thing.) That’s where the amper­sand came from in #137 Hot & Humid. The rest of the design was inspired sim­ply from the heat & humid­i­ty I cre­at­ed it in.


Here, cool off:


 Please comment here.


chaz sez

Want more?
Rants & raves most­ly about design, some­times about the universe.

An occa­sion­al bit of use­ful advice.
des​i​monedesign​.com/​c​h​a​z​-​sez


Production notes for #137 Hot & Humid:
Original size: 20x30 inches

Program: Adobe Photoshop
Fonts: Block Berthold, Boli

Ampersand: Boli
Credits:
Artwork images: deposit​pho​tos​.com
Fan: apart​mentsi​like​.files​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​1​/​1​0​/​z​e​r​o​-​f​a​n​.​jpg
Note: &” replaces “and” in most or all text, including quotations, headlines & titles.
You may repost the image & article. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster, click on the image.

An excel­lent com­pa­ny, prod­uct or ser­vice needs brand­ing and graph­ic design that is prop­er, per­fect and professional.
Please vis­it Des­i­mone Design.

Desimone? Damn good!

#119 Drag & Drop

#119 Drag & Drop

#119 Drag & Drop
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Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

 

Drag & Drop. The mean­ing is obvi­ous to any­one who works with a com­put­er, along with “copy & paste” & “blue screen of death.” But right now, crank­ing this issue out just before the dead­line, drag & drop is how I feel at this moment. 

I promise the next issue, Amper­Art #117 See & Be Seen, will be lots of fun, will intro­duce you to a fan­tas­tic guy, & will be sat­u­rat­ed with red, red, red for Valen­tine’s Day. Look for it next Tues­day morning.

Now, dear read­ers, I’m going to drag myself to bed & drop with a thud on my pil­low. Good night. 

 

chaz sez ...

My clients are scream­ing at me to pub­lish more arti­cles  for the chaz sez blog at Des​i​moneDesign​.com (my pro­fes­sion­al graph­ic design web­site). So I will attempt to pub­lish one arti­cle per month, just like Amper­Art. That is, if I can pull it off before I real­ly drag & drop — I hard­ly got this one out on time.

chaz sez is most­ly about design, typog­ra­phy, print­ing, pub­lish­ing & mar­ket­ing, but on occa­sion I’ll divert to a side­ways top­ic that just can’t escape my rant­i­ng & rav­ing. They even want more of that — do I actu­al­ly have a cult following?

Join the cult:

 


Production notes for #119 Drag & Drop:
Original size: 20x30 inches

Program: Adobe Illustrator
Fonts: Myriad
Ampersand: Myriad
Credits:
Whoever invented the mouse (thanks, although I prefer a trackball)
You may repost the image. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster, click on the image.

For pro­fes­sion­al graph­ic design, please vis­it Des­i­mone Design.

Desimone? Damn good!

#104 Time & Time Again

 104 Time & Time Again
#104 TIME & TIME AGAIN
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Know anyone who screws up, arrives late, forgets something…time & time again?

Amper­Art #104, Time & Time Again, is about those peo­ple. The term could just as eas­i­ly refer to a car that just won’t start first thing in the morn­ing, or a com­put­er pro­gram that keeps crash­ing, but it usu­al­ly refers to peo­ple — & espe­cial­ly neg­a­tive instances such as always being late, for­get­ting to stop at the clean­ers, or get­ting the facts wrong. Time & Again could also have been the title, but Time & Time Again just sounds so much more wor­thy of a good rep­ri­mand or pink slip.

See the scenario?

This Amper­Art design, #104 Time & Time Again, presents a com­mon sce­nario, espe­cial­ly in the work­place. Can you fig­ure it out? Well, I know you can because only the bright­est peo­ple sub­scribe to Amper​Art​.com, and that means you. But if you’re in a hur­ry here’s the answer:

Sce­nario: In Amper­Art #104, Time & Time Again, there is a “team” of amper­sands, com­prised of 5 mem­bers: red, blue, green, yel­low, pur­ple. Each row of amper­sands rep­re­sents a group meet­ing. As you can see, all are present at every meet­ing except one of the team, Mr. Red. He shows up now & then, miss­ing most meet­ings time & time again.

Charles!

That meant I was in trou­ble. Oth­er­wise I was “Char­lie” or more recent­ly “Chaz.” I’m also called “Chuck,” “Char” & “Hey Ass­hole” but nev­er Charles, unless I’ve been a bad, bad boy. I can still hear Mom rep­ri­mand­ing me: “I’ve told you time & time again!” Was I try­ing out my new Cray­olas on the walls again? Who knows, but the phrase still rings clear in my memory.

The dreaded pink slip

Time & time again an employ­ee is late or does a lousy job, until they are “canned,” “let go,” or “giv­en the pink slip,” all of which mean you’re fired! (No, the pink slip does­n’t mean you’re giv­en the title to a new car for being late.)

"I'm what?!!"The “pink slip” has become a metonym for the ter­mi­na­tion of employ­ment in gen­er­al. Accord­ing to an arti­cle in The New York Times, the edi­tors of the Ran­dom House Dic­tio­nary have dat­ed the term to at least as ear­ly as 1910.¹

The phrase most like­ly orig­i­nat­ed in vaude­ville. When the Unit­ed Book­ing Office (estab­lished in 1906) would issue a can­cel­la­tion notice to an act, the notice was on a pink slip (“The Argot of Vaude­ville Part I” New York Times, Dec. 16, 1917, p.X7.) Anoth­er pos­si­ble ety­mol­o­gy is that many appli­ca­tions (includ­ing ter­mi­na­tion papers) are done in trip­li­cate form, with each copy on a dif­fer­ent col­or of paper, one of which is typ­i­cal­ly pink.¹

In the UK & Ire­land the equiv­a­lent of a pink slip is a P45; in Bel­gium the equiv­a­lent is known as a C4

Anoth­er theory:

The very ear­li­est exam­ple we have is where a pink slip is a note sent to a typog­ra­ph­er indi­cat­ing that he’s made a mis­take. If he got enough of them then he would be fired. Yet anoth­er inter­me­di­ate one in 1905 where a pink slip is specif­i­cal­ly a rejec­tion let­ter from a mag­a­zine. So a writer would sub­mit a sto­ry, & it would get a pink slip back, mean­ing that the sto­ry was reject­ed. So clear­ly there is some­thing going on at around this time where pink slip is being used to refer to var­i­ous kinds of rejection.²

The term is an Amer­i­can­ism. In oth­er coun­tries they have dif­fer­ent col­ors to refer to dis­missal from a job. In Ger­many the expres­sion is to get the blue let­ter. In the French mil­i­tary, you would be dis­missed with a yel­low paper, carte jaune. ²

So typog­ra­phers were giv­en the pink slip? Time & time again I’ve issued the mon­th’s Amper­Art just under the wire. Bet­ter get this edi­tion out on time before I’m canned.

Please comment here.

 


chaz sez ...

Check out the new “chaz sez” blog at Des​i​moneDesign​.com, my com­mer­cial graph­ic design web­site. It’s most­ly about design, typog­ra­phy, print­ing, pub­lish­ing & mar­ket­ing, but on occa­sion I’ll divert to a side­ways top­ic that just can’t escape my rant­i­ng & raving.


Production notes for #104 Time & Time Again:
Original size: 20x30 inches

Program: Adobe Illustrator
Font family: Gill Sans
Ampersand: Gill Sans
Credits:
Reference text (verbatim & edited):
¹Wikipedia https://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​P​i​n​k​_​s​l​i​p​_​(​e​m​p​l​o​y​m​ent)

²Jesse Sheidlower is an editor-​at-​large of the Oxford English Dictionary. From https://​www​.mar​ket​place​.org/​2​0​0​9​/​0​4​/​0​9​/​w​o​r​l​d​/​t​r​a​c​i​n​g​-​o​r​i​g​i​n​-​p​i​n​k​-​s​lip
You may repost the AmperArt image. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster, click on the image.

For pro­fes­sion­al graph­ic design, please vis­it Des­i­mone Design.

Desimone? Damn good!