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March 8th 2008 - Humiliation Come In Size Small
Image by Stephen Poff
Okay... so... I've never really owned a suit before. One would think it's because I'm just a "Jeans and T-Shirt" guy, and one would be partially correct, but it's not the full story.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm a really small guy. It's something that really kind of haunts me on a day to day basis. I'm the only guy I've ever heard of that's 110 lbs. I have an incredibly small frame and It makes it really tough to find clothes to fit me properly. Especially if I have to buy those clothes from the mens department.
But I needed a suit for our wedding and I wanted something that I could walk away with afterwards and wear for business occasions and other events. We had just done a commercial for a suit company and thought that it might be a good idea to start there.
It wasn't.
The lady there was friendly, but I don't think she really understood what a suit is supposed to look like on a man. She kept picking suits many sizes to big for me... jackets that made me look like David Byrne from that video "Letting the Days Go By" (where he had on a GIANT suit). It was not good. But it wasn't all her fault, they really didn't have my size.
So then we went to Burlington Coat Factory. Again, they started at two sizes above my size. I then decided to take a trip over to the boys section... where they had coats to fit me. I tried on one to show Tam. She seemed really embarassed to be with me trying on a suit jacket in the little boys section and frankly... I was even more embarassed. The jackets fit, but they were clearly made of quality material... I mean, you don't need suit for a growing kid to last more than a couple of wear cycles.
So needless to say I was very frustrated. After that we decided to try one more place and we headed over to Men's Warehouse
I was delighted to find that after just a minute of being in the store and having someone actually measure me, they found a splendid coat for me. Before long I had jacket, pants, shoes, vest and tie... but then we ran into a snag.
The shirt.
They didn't have a shirt to fit my neck size and couldn't order one for me. But that was okay right... I'd find a shirt somewhere else. So we paid more than I had ever paid for an outfit before in my life and left to find me a shirt.
We spent about three more hours looking through the men's section in many stores only to find that they all started a size and half to big for me. Frustrated, I headed to the JCPenny's boys section and began to look through thier dress shirts. The worst part was having to unpack them from these little bags and try them on. Little boys looked shocked to see me in their dressing rooms. I was humiliated. But after a trying on about 3 shirts, I found a shirt that fit my neck. One size down would've fit my neck better, but the sleeves were too short.
After all that, the worst part about it was that it came with this tiny little clip on tie.
I was not amused.
How to stop people stealing your Photos
Image by Pete Foley - Mostly moved to Ipernity
This is an old shot, grabbed for the archives I was clearing out, and I selected it because a similar shot taken at the same event is one of my most stolen.
This morning I did a quick audit on Google images of some of my most popular shots (one way to do this is to pull up the image on google images, scroll over, an click on all sizes, and you can find virtually all of the versions of that particular photo on the web). Not only was I surprised by the number of copyright infringements I found, but I was saddened that most of them were by small businesses and other artists, dancers, or writers, exactly the people I would have expected to respect the ownership and copyright of a fellow artist and small enterprise. So if you are one of those people, and are reading this, SHAME ON YOU, you should know better!
I actually have no problem with anyone blogging my photos, or using them for non commercial purposes, provided they give me a photo credit and a link back, and I'll often give photos away if someone asks nicely. However, I do object to people who steal photos without giving any credit, especially when they then use them for commercial purposes and for their own profit. I think that is particularly mean, as I have downloading blocked, so capturing an image requires a deliberate and conscious act of theft. I know it is easy to get around Flickrs security with screen capture, but it is not an innocent mistake, it requires conscious effort, and is just plain dishonest.
So how about if everyone were to run that kind of Google search every now and then, and catch people out,. Maybe it would discourage this kind of bad behavior, and at least encourage them to be polite enough to ask permission in the future? That would ultimately be better for everyone. One thing I've done on every website I caught was to add a comment that says "this site uses stolen photos".
One final thought, this doesn't mean I disagree with creative commons, I think its a great idea, but open licenses are something that should be freely given, not stolen. To that point, I've given this an attribution NON COMMERCIAL license, so feel free to spread the word, and the image, but not to make money from it!
basilico
Image by semiotheque
Helvetica. There's an upcoming movie, I don't know if you've heard.
So I've been doing this for three weeks, and the trend seems to be this: designers will play with lowercase letters, kerning and stroke width when the typeface is sans-serif, and the kinds of places that do this kind of playing are a) small businesses eager to seem modern and hip, b) big old stodgy companies eager to seem modern and hip. I never see pubs and bars with one-word all lowercase Futura or Helvetica. Clubs, yes, but never pubs.
Pubs are all gold wood-cut serifs set on a black field. I will take a few shots of those just so you get an idea.
Coming up soonish: major UK chains and their uses of type, and Holiday type.
