blogs

Brazen Careerist author Penelope Trunk is known for all sorts of well, lively remarks on her blogs. Some of them seem a little too personal. Her divorce. Her love life. Her battle with bulimia. Somehow it makes all of career advice make sense. This writer isn't sure why. So today she lectures the artists out there, who probably are already taking her advice without reading her online. She says keep your day job. Check. You don't need to starve to make art. Double-check. "Art emanating from a hole is a choice," she says. "There's a reason that Jean-Michel Basquiat's paintings look like horror films: Because his life was a crack-house horror film." We know. Another check on the list. Finally, real artists work no matter what. We knew that already, but it's good to match with reality. She didn't mention that it might be worthwhile reading her book, but it repeats a lot of the advice already on her site.

Apparently there's no dearth of craft-related blogs, and this new one is basically a re-invention of the late and great Besewstylish.com blog, which was essentially all about sewing. Craftstylish still has a lot about that with input and posts from Ann Stevens, a Threads Magazine contributor. If stitching on a sewing machine isn't enough for you, Jennifer Stern can tell you about the joys of embroidery; Tina Holton, knitting; Mary Ray, quilting; Linda Permann, crocheting and finally, Susan Beal, jewelry-making. We're certain we've left somebody out, but it's not intentional. In any event, this is a great round-up site that's easy to navigate and updated frequently. So go ahead, find yourself a new hobby.

Four out of five people in our official UnBeige survey didn't get worked up when shown Target's now-famous spread eagle ad in Times Square. "It's obvious to me she's doing a snow angel," one astute reader told us. Although AdRants noted some compositional synergy a few weeks ago, we didn't think much of it at all since we've seen, oh, we don't know, bare asses in Times Square before.

But when the blog ShapingYouth called the model's placement on the bullseye "sexualized ad slop" and demanded an explanation from Target, the focus quickly turned from crotch-placement to the blogosphere. We'll let the NY Times explain:

Early this month, the blog's founder, Amy Jussel, called Target, complaining about a new advertising campaign that depicted a woman splayed across a big target pattern--the retailer's emblem--with the bull's-eye at her crotch.

"Targeting crotches with a bull's-eye is not the message we should be putting out there," she said in an e-mail interview.

Target offered an e-mail response:

"Unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets," a public relations person wrote to ShapingYouth.

"This practice," the public relations person added, "is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest," as Target refers to its shoppers.

The notion that Target doesn't work with "non-traditional media outlets" is pure bullseye bullcrap, since we're pretty sure if we posted something like "Target powers their Design for All website with the blood of 300 freshly-slaughtered adorable baby kittens a day," they'd be all over us like Deborah Adler's ClearRx design.

Of course, we, being the naive non-traditional media outlet we are, just assumed that Target, being ahead-of-the-curve Target, was a pioneer of the new vajayjay trend that is currently sweeping the nation (haven't you noticed our header?). But at least one person we surveyed even saw Target's V-sign as empowering. "I don't get how that could convey women as inferior. You could interpret that it's the opposite," says one liberated female. "That vaginas are the center of the universe."

As soon as we trained ourselves not to look at the header (why, why do they want to make us cry?), Gawker's new sci-fi blog io9 lured us in with what is pretty much all design-related content. The blog, which debuted yesterday, is edited by Annalee Newitz, who used to work at Wired and also wrote a lovely children's book.

Just a little further down on the masthead you'll see BLDGBLOGger Geoff Manaugh, who gets to flex the icky creature and time travel writing muscles that are probably not so welcome at Dwell. He writes the longer think pieces like this tome on artificial skin. Let the nightmares begin anew.

Once an underpaid web designer, now resigned to her role as an ace Layer Tennis commentator, Heather Armstrong also sometimes manages to crank out a sentence or two on Dooce, a blog you've probably never heard of.

Dooce recently underwent a redesign, which Armstrong has explained in much detail. But our ears perked up at this part:

I wanted to start a Daily Style section, some place to store my thoughts and photographs on the design of things in everyday life. When brainstorming ways to incorporate that into the site it made sense to make it a feature like the Daily Photo and Daily Chuck, mainly because I wanted it to include a photograph I'd taken of the object myself to emphasize the fact that these are things I use, these are things in my home.

Dooce Style has all the ingredients for a wildly popular design blog: luscious, unapologetic photography, links to buy things, and Armstrong's hearty endorsement (endoocement?)---which might actually be the only thing that this design blog really needs.

Over the weekend, blogging empress Grace Bonney premiered a revamped URL (www.designspongeonline.com) that includes an incredible site redesign with yummy little textural details that truly delight the crafty corners of our brain.

To sweeten the deal, Bonney streamlined navigational features and is adding more guest bloggers, an event calendar, and a job board. And to placate the hordes of fans who keep asking what her place looks like, Bonney also posted a long-awaited sneak peek inside the d*s home. Predictably, it's a beauty.

After a decade existing as potentially marked-for-death printed matter, Mimi Zeiger's zine loud paper has finally succumbed to its more natural blog form. But bringing the potent blend of architecture, pop culture, design, art, and music to the world wide web wasn't an easy call, sayz Miz Z:

Since the zine is a proto-blog of sorts, it seems inevitable that loud paper would end up in this format. I tried to resist, I had my excuses, but the call of the keyboard was too great.

In this new incarnation loud paper is part per-zine, travelogue, marketing machine, and wunderkammer, but it will also remain true to the original mission to provide a forum for multiple voices. This summer I resurrected the nearly-forgotten Boring Issue from obscurity, posting several essays and updates from a few contributors. More installments to come. Also, get ready for a new call for submissions later this fall.

An archive has interviews with people like Doug Aitken, Jorge Pardo and Shepard Fairey, but you'd do well to stick closely to the new stuff: Zeiger definitely knows how to make herself heard.

Well, well, well, would you looky here. It seems there's a new blog in town. A Brief Message is design criticism that you're able to bite off, chew up, swallow and digest before you finish plowing through the intro paragraph of some other sites. It's shorter, it's faster, and it's published by two very good friends of the Un, Khoi Vinh and Liz Danzico.

Vinh and Danzico both explain the concept and strategy in-depth on their own blogs, but boiled down (appropriately), here's the deal:

A Brief Message features design opinions expressed in short form. Somewhere between critiques and manifestos, between wordy and skimpy, Brief Messages are viewpoints on design in the real world. They're pithy, provocative and short--200 words or less.

The pieces will also be illustrated, a nice touch for looping in some new and established designers and illustrators. Plus we'll venture to give some advice to anyone wanting to launch a design blog: Leading with Steven Heller is a pretty darn good way to get started.

Being called upon, as we are from time to time, to mediate various design-related color debates, we try to remain netural when it comes to matters of blogs. But neutrality, in fact, is the very reason we feel we must address this most current issue. Be A Design Group has just redesigned its site, using a palette that could best be described as PMS Beige. Why so pale? Are they trying to tell us something? Or does this make them our nemesis?

We've been watching from our front row seats as the Print/print vs. Speak Up/blogs design writing battle of the century unfolded, wondering if/when Rick Poynor would return to his bloggy ways to defend himself: Would he comment on Speak Up? Post an editor-emeritus response on Design Observer?

Instead, Poynor posts a second essay on Print's website in which he simply wants to clarify that he's not attacking blogs, or community, or the online world, simply the quality of writing they produce. In fact, he links to an article he wrote in a 2003 issue of Eye where he praises Speak Up: "Speak Up provides a vital sense of belonging to a community and that's no small service. Something genuinely new is emerging here."

However, that doesn't solve the problem that on the whole design blog writing online is not as good as design print writing. The final word for aspiring design bloggers? Just try harder, he says:

"Designer writers should aim higher and, if they really can't, they should stop pretending to know it all about areas of activity--writing and editing--in which they admit they are amateurs."