Bob Wertz

Our clothes dryer died on Thursday when my wife Liz was home sick trying to get some rest. She searched the web and diagnosed the problem right away — a broken belt. After finding a YouTube video showing how to fix it, she decided that we could fix it on our own.

This dryer is old by modern standards — 14 years old. We bought it before our youngest child was born. The store we purchased it from, H.H. Gregg, has long since closed.¹ The washing machine that we bought to go with it died years ago. I wondered if it was even worth repairing, but I watched the video and agreed that it looked pretty straightforward. Our local Lowe’s had a compatible belt in stock and it was only $16.99. I figured if we couldn’t make it work, we’d invested less than $20 in the repair.

This afternoon, we watched the video together on the Apple TV and got to work.

The disassembly process wasn’t too hard, but was made more complicated by the limited space to work in the laundry room. We got the dryer disassembled and Liz kept track of all the parts and screws and where they went. This was critical, because some of the screws in each step were different.

The amount of lint and dust inside the dryer was a little insane. We took the time to vacuum in the inside and wipe down all of the surfaces. And in the process, we found 94 cents and a couple of small Legos.

We reassembled the dryer, remembering to reconnect all of the electrical connections and slid it back into position. It started right up. Total elapsed time was less than an hour.

Liz and I couldn’t have done it without working together. When we were first married, I was trying to fix some blinds in the apartment. It wasn’t going well until Liz started working with me. And from that point forward, we decided that we needed to work together on things like this. Better together. This repair was definitely a two-person job, especially getting the belt around the drum. We could have called an appliance repair person, but chose not to. I haven’t had great luck getting appliances fixed. The cost to repair is usually as expensive as purchasing a replacement.

We tend to live in an era where appliances like these are simply disposable. So I’m glad we were able to do a DIY repair. We couldn’t have done it without YouTube. It really does help to be able to see the process. I need to remember to think repair first, instead of mindlessly replacing something that still has life left in it.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

Back in 2016, I had a blog about retail developments in the Columbia, South Carolina area. And one of the most popular topics was why there wasn’t an Apple Store in Columbia.

Yesterday I was at Columbiana Mall and realized that the large Forever 21 is closing.¹ I’m always interested in Apple Store-sized vacancies in Columbia and I thought back to an analysis that I did almost 10 years ago² and wanted to see if anything has changed. Is it odd that Columbia doesn’t have an Apple Store?

Comparing MSAs

I needed to look at some population data and decided to start by looking at Metropolitan Statistic Area (MSA). An MSA is a way of classifying an urban core and its surrounding population. It’s better than using city population because it includes suburbs and outlying areas that are closely connected to the urban core.

For 2025, Columbia is the 70th largest MSA in the country. For context: Greenville-Anderson-Greer ranks 57; Charleston-North Charleston is 71; Augusta is 92. You can see the full list at Wikipedia.

I cross referenced all of the MSAs with the Apple Store list. In the top 75 MSAs in the country, only two do not have an Apple Store: Columbia (70) and McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas (65).

McAllen-Edinburg-Mission is a geographically large area in South Texas that has a slightly larger population than Columbia but is spread out over a wider area.

Many MSAs that are smaller than Columbia have Apple Stores: Boise, ID (74); Greensboro, NC (78); Colorado Springs, CO (79); Little Rock, AR (80); Akron, OH (85); Madison, WI (87); Toledo, OH (97); Lexington, KY (109); and many more.

I looked at Combined Statistical Areas (CSA), too. CSA is similar to MSA, but includes a wider geographic area. Columbia-Sumter-Orangeburg CSA ranks 58th and is the largest CSA without an Apple Store.

So what does this mean?

Yes, it’s strange that Columbia doesn’t have an Apple Store. Most cities similar in size to Columbia have Apple Stores. Lots of cities smaller than Columbia have Apple Stores.

But why?

I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s a combination of three factors:

1. There isn’t an ideal location for an Apple Store in Columbia. In most markets, Apple locates in established shopping malls. That leaves Columbiana Mall as the only option right now, but Apple’s had plenty of opportunities to locate there and they haven’t. I assume that it’s just not centrally located enough… Maybe someday, Bull Street or whatever is taking the place of Richland Mall will be an option, but it isn’t today.

2. Greenville, Charlotte, Augusta and Charleston all have stores. These stores are a drivable distance from Columbia. Apple may assume that Columbia customers are covered by these stores.

3. Apple isn’t adding new markets any more. Apple will occasionally put an additional store in a market they are already in. Or remodel an existing store. They will build large flagship stores in international metropolitan areas. But they aren’t really adding new stores in the U.S. markets they aren’t already in. Columbia simply missed the initial expansion rush and is now just out of luck.

Columbia is big enough to support an Apple Store. We’ll see if it ever happens. I think a future location near downtown — Bull Street or Forest Acres — makes the most sense.³

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

We’ve been visiting a new Lutheran Church since Christmas. Today during the children’s sermon, Pastor Emily was discussing the changing of the paraments to purple for the Lenten season. She then mentioned that the cross on the altar had changed, too. I noticed the paraments, but hadn’t noticed the different cross. It was black and very slightly warped on the right side. Turns out that the church had burned down in the 1940s, and this altar cross survived. During Lent, the blackened, slightly melted cross replaces the shiny cross that’s on the altar the rest of the year.

I love this. I love that they didn’t throw it out, or try to “fix” it. The cross was changed, and they found a new, appropriate use for it. I love how our worship space changes with the liturgical season, but this felt especially poignant.

We’ve been through a lot over the last decade or so. And I feel often like I’m changed. Different than I was. Slightly melted? And I’m not always sure where or how I fit in. This cross is a reminder that sometimes, after the drama and trauma, we are changed. Maybe we have a different purpose and place. Still valuable, but no longer the same. And that’s something to celebrate.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

I mentioned earlier this week that the Edward Tufte workshop in Atlanta eight years ago was a driving factor in returning to graduate school, but that’s actually a partial truth. There were actually five lectures that sparked an interest in design research and grad school. All of them held in vast hotel meeting rooms with hundreds of attendees, but each of them connecting with me on a deeper level.

Jonah Lehrer, AIGA Gain Conference, October 2008, New York City

Gain was AIGA’s “Business of Design” conference¹ and there was a roster of big wig, influential speakers. Jonah Lehrer was there to talk about his best-selling book, Proust was a Neuroscientist. Lehrer connected creativity with neuroscience advancements, arguing that artists often figured out how the brain worked before scientists did. This concept that neuroscience and creativity could be linked was fascinating to me. A few years after this talk, Lehrer was found to have plagiarized and fabricated quotes in his later works, making this a strange choice to start my list, but after his talk, I started to think about design work a little differently. There is a recording of the talk, but sadly, no audio for some reason.

Malcolm Gladwell, AIGA Gain Conference, October 2008, New York City

Same conference as Jonah Lehrer, but one day later. Malcolm Gladwell spoke about his forthcoming book, Outliers. People often criticize Gladwell for oversimplifying the research he builds on, but in that moment — combined with the Lehrer speech the day before — I could see connections between social sciences and design. I read Outliers afterwards and really enjoyed it, but could honestly never really get into Gladwell’s other work. Hidden somewhere on the AIGA servers is a complete recording of the lecture.

Kevin Larson, Typecon, July 2009, Atlanta

I loved Typecon Atlanta. Looking back at my notes and blog posts, I wrote about the inspiring speakers, the networking and the creative exploration of letterpress and hand lettering. I did not specifically note a lecture by Kevin Larson, which is really funny, because that’s the one that ended up being most influential for me. Larson is research scientist working for Microsoft and I remember his talk about the science of readability. How does the human brain process letterforms? And then form words and meaning? His general idea was that designers think they understand how readability works, but research shows that other factors are involved and room for improvement. There isn’t a recording around that I’m aware of, but I did find a 2013 talk with Larson and legendary designer Matthew Carter discussing collaborating on the design of a typeface using letter recognition testing. Like the Lehrer and Gladwell talks, the idea of using science to better understand type design was exciting to me.

Edward Tufte, Presenting Data and Information, February 2017, Atlanta

In 2017², I was becoming interested in how information is structured and I’d read a little bit about Edward Tufte’s work. I drove down to Atlanta for a one-day workshop, expecting to learn how to design better presentations. In actuality, I left pondering the difference between designing to persuade and designing to inform. Too often, we don’t try to communicate information and let viewers come to their own conclusions. Instead, when we make presentations, we’ve already drawn conclusions and are trying to persuade people that those conclusions are correct. After the lecture wrapped up, I hopped on I-20 for the normally a 3.5 hour drive. That night, however, it was a 6 hour drive because of an accident on a bridge on the interstate. I had plenty of time to think about what I wanted out of my career.

Khoi Vinh, AIGA Leadership Retreat, June 2017, Dallas

The AIGA Leadership Retreat is a strange event. Part conference, part pep-rally, part-training… chapter board members from all over the United States converge on a conference hotel in a random AIGA city. The 2017 confab was in Dallas and seemed almost entirely focused on IBM’s push into design thinking.³ So I was really surprised when Khoi Vinh showed up to talk about the importance of criticism in the design industry. I’d been a fan of Khoi Vinh for a long time since his days at The NY Times and I’d even used his short-lived app, Mixel. For me, this brief talk contrasted with the heavy design thinking push and made me question many of the assumptions I’d made about the design industry on a macro scale. I found a longer 2018 talk that covers many of the same themes.

At the end of that summer, I started to talk to people around campus trying to figure out which Master’s program I wanted to apply to. As an employee benefit, the University of South Carolina allows staff to take up to four classes a year. In January 2018, I connected with Camea, the graduate school coordinator in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications and learned about their research-focused MA program. I crammed for the math section of the GRE, applied and was accepted. I started the program in Fall 2018 and I fell in love with process of research. When I finished my MA in 2021, I rolled right into the Ph.D. program (which I’m still trying working on).

I’ve been to a bunch of talks, lectures and conferences over the years. Years later, I still think about these five and credit them with laying the groundwork for interest in MA and Ph.D. level research.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

I realized the other day that our family tends to give places nicknames and that to an outside observer, our place names would be undecodable. Here are a few of my favorites.

• St. Mary Ashley. In reality, this church is St. Mary Episcopal Church, but our former babysitter, Mary Ashley got married here. It’s on my drive home and when my wife would ask where I was, I’d say “I’m by St. Mary, you know, where Mary Ashley got married.” Eventually, I shortened it to St. Mary Ashley.
• The Honeybaked Ham Plant. Not far past St. Mary Ashley is sprawling industrial facility. Once owned by Honeywell, it’s now operated by Shaw Industries and makes carpet fibers.¹ It obviously does not “make” hams, but I guess at some point, Honeywell became Honeybaked. If I told my wife I was near the Shaw Industries plant, she’d have no idea where I was.
• The Ballerina Gas Station. It’s in Ballentine, South Carolina and when Norah was very little, she misunderstood where we were stopping to fill up. It stuck.(I found out recently that at least one of my kids thought it was really called the Ballerina Gas Station.)
• All the Starbucks. We have nicknames for all of our frequent Starbucks stops. “Neighborhood Starbucks” is by our house and is a typical new Starbucks. “Grad School Starbucks” is where I did all my grad school studying when I first went back to school. It was the closest to our house until Neighborhood Starbucks was built. It is also an icebox so it’s important to let the kids know if we are going to Grad School Starbucks because they will need a sweatshirt. “Ballerina Starbucks” is in Ballentine, obviously. (See above.) A Starbucks without a nickname is a Starbucks that we don’t visit.²

There are others. Are we the only family that does this? Or does your family have informal names for places that you visit?

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.