Happy Magic Fun Time has caused (t)his posting (of 2011.02.07) to disappear. It remains of value.
Making friends
A complete moment of cowardice: I was sitting about five feet from Frank Chimero on Friday and I was a pansy. Even moments before he graced the table with his presence, I was speaking about his Kickstarter project. I failed to ask him the one question I wanted to: Why is there a fancy cover, special editions, macaroni art, etc. instead of a written book?
I like Kickstarter because it provides a platform for people to finish projects. Studio hours take time and it’s hard to reproduce the quality of a recording studio. It makes sense that people would need funding. Printing a book takes money. Where’s the book, though? One need only look at the struggles of Merlin Mann’s nebulous Inbox Zero to wonder if a great blogger can finish a book. Frank can take a shit in a pretty cover and ship it, and you all just funded it.
Internet Famous
Frank just pocketed 67 grand because he’s Internet Famous.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being Internet Famous. Many of my friends have tried it and say they enjoyed it but wouldn’t do it again. Some of them do it to help them sleep at night. I know one guy who just can’t live without it – intervention soon, Mark.
Internet fame definitely starts with a high-quality production rate. Somebody does something really clever or interesting – or writes something amazing – and we all latch on. Frank is currently a producer. Then they all go the incredibly boring route where they stop producing and start yapping. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Soon you’re the Web-nerd-community equivalent of a newscaster – a Ron Burgundy. Congratulations on your promotion to local radio disk jockey on Slammin’ 97.3 or 91.1 the Edge.
I’ll be at Web Design Directions North Future McWeb and Design Plus Conference of Nottingham Steel in Yorkmanshire in May. You should come – and thanks to Randy for the great invite to this marvellous event.
This blog has a decent amount of readers, but, besides my client work, I’ve actually been a terrible open-source programmer. I’ve not given a single thing back. My GitHub is completely empty, like the vapid words of a typography blog. Obviously, that’s really nice for me – and I’d love to take every bit of your money and reputation – but I’m tired of everyone nodding in agreement.
We’ve pseudo-elected a representative body of like-minded people. When the IFs do disagree it’s over some trite bullshit like the HTML5 brand. They all chew and spit the same dogma. It’s not difficult to agree with platitudes.
Many people call that a community, but I call it a collaboration of fools. Where are the firestarters? Why are we reading directionless ships like Cognition? Does Andy Clarke really come up with compelling speeches 175 times a year? When was the last time you stopped and thought, “Wow. Jason Santa Maria really knocked my pants off”? Jeff Croft used to piss everyone off. Now his Twitter account has gone private. Don’t you ever sit and wonder who are these people and why do we know them? Zeldman used to fight for standards, now he posts gym pics on Twitter – nice glutes, Z-Money.
Why is every design “hero image” or “big text”? “Hi, my name is Yanev and I’m a Web Developer from Brisbane. I love tea gardens, Jesus, Pol Pot and the southeastern part of Ghana” in 37 pt. font. Why did you guys buy a book that doesn’t even have a chapter outline? Slider. Slider. We need a slider. WHITE SPACE. Where’s the design book that says stop doing this, please?
What qualities do we seek in leadership these days? That they have an anus/blog that’s relatively popular? That they did something seven years ago [you mean 17] that was really great? That they speak at the same conferences? What qualities do we find great in these people? Where do we go to find new, interesting producers? Inquiring minds want to know.