Early to rise

9/23/16 • 4 min read

This post was originally posted on September 24, 2016 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

Maybe the most effective way to get work done at night is to go to bed early.

The other night, I had a bunch of projects I needed to work on after I got home. This is always challenging for me, because I need — and want — to spend quality time with the kids and my wife.

The college version of me would just stay up all night.* The 40+ year old version of me isn’t as good at that anymore.

So when I have a bunch of work to do, I go to sleep early.

The sun isn’t up yet.

When our first child, Norah, was born over a decade ago, I would often wake up when my wife woke up to feed her. Our oldest did not sleep very well. It was helpful for me to be awake to get my wife a glass of water or, honestly, just provide emotional support. It was seriously a rough couple of months.**

For several months, in the wee hours of the morning, I would work in my office, next door to the nursery while my wife fed our infant daughter. Surprisingly, I got a lot of work done in the middle of the night and early morning.

Thankfully, after six months or so, Norah started to sleep through the night and we went back to our normal sleeping habits. But I never forgot that I could be really productive in the early morning.

So I developed a new procedure for working on significant projects at home. When I really need to dedicate a couple of hours to a project, I go to sleep right after the kids do. I’m in bed by 9 p.m.

Then, I wake up at 3 a.m.*** After 6 hours of sleep, I’m not mentally exhausted from the day I just had. And I find that the two and a half hours before the family wakes up is some of the most creative time I have during a day.

I’m more productive, too. If I stay up late, I often stay up until 1 a.m. working, but then often can’t go to sleep right away. My brain is in overdrive and I stare at the ceiling for a couple of hours. I end up getting less done and only get 3-4 hours of sleep.

I blame the industrial revolution

As a quick aside, research suggests that this early morning creative period is something that humans developed with the advent of electric powered lights and that the continuous 8-hour night of sleep is a modern invention. So maybe there is a scientific reason for my insanely early morning productivity. Or maybe not…

Set your alarm

I don’t do this every night. But when I’ve got personal projects that I really want to work on, it’s better for me than staying up all night.

There are drawbacks to my early morning approach. Sometimes, the alarm doesn’t go off. Or you need a larger chunk of time than you planned for. Sometimes you finish quickly and try to go back to sleep, which doesn’t always work so well. And trust me, if you send a bunch of emails at 3 a.m., people will think you are crazy.

But next time you’ve got a chunk of design work to do and you need uninterrupted time, go to bed and give waking up early a shot.

* In college, I didn’t sleep that much.
** Thankfully, our other two were much more consistent in their sleep patterns.
*** And as an FYI, television at 3 am is really bad. Procrastination is that much harder…

Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. In his spare time, he writes wakes up at weird hours of the morning and works on personal projects.

Why I was forced to abandon my Gmail account

8/29/16 • 4 min read

This post was originally posted on August 30, 2016 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

An extra period in an email address apparently doesn’t matter to Google.

A number of years ago I randomly started getting emails from a Republican Women’s Group in Virginia. I unsubscribed, but the emails kept coming. I unsubscribed again. Nothing changed. I finally responded with a nasty email explaining that I had repeatedly tried to unsubscribe, unsuccessfully.

All of the images in this post are from emails I have ACCIDENTALLY RECEIVED. I don’t think I’ll be headed to Boone, Iowa for the Farm Progress Show.

An employee with a political consulting group reached out to explain that they could not find my email address — bobwertz@gmail.com — in their records and they had no idea why I was getting their email. They finally figured out that the address in their database was actually bob.wertz@gmail.com. Somehow the mailing system was dropping out the period and sending the email to the wrong person. They removed bob.wertz@gmail.com from the mailing list and the emails stopped.

But new ones appeared.

Over the years, I received emails from a number of mostly conservative organizations. I would unsubscribe and move on. Then, my dot-pleganger — as I began to call him — became a member of the NRA and I was inundated with email. Lots of it, all addressed to bob.wertz@gmail.com, but delivered to my address. At one point, I started getting emails from Match.com. I got sick of unsubscribing to the emails and pretty much abandoned my Gmail account.

I’m sure that National Hog Farmer is a lovely publicatioN, but I didn’t sign up for your email.

But I still needed my Google account for other reasons so I checked in occasionally. I had a few new subscriptions — Corn & Soybean Digest, Penton Agriculture, Sam’s Club, Farm Progress Show and National Hog Farmer. I had an email from Indiana Representative Todd Rokita from Indiana’s 4th District inviting me to his Women’s Summit on Safety. All addressed to my dot-pleganger.

I’ve avoided writing about this for a couple reasons:

1. I didn’t really want to put my email out there. I can’t even imagine the spam I’m going to get now.
2. It was annoying, but harmless. Basically, a bunch of annoying subscriptions and I could easily move on to a different, non-Gmail email account.

This week, I noticed that I missed an email from a friend to my Gmail account. I decided it was finally time to figure out what was going on and post about it in case others were experiencing the same issue.

I don’t live in your district, Todd. I don’t even Live in your state.

I started by trying to figure out if they were all using the same mailing service. They weren’t.

As I continued to research, I stumbled across a Gmail help document that explained that Google ignores periods in the first section of the email. So bobwertz@gmail.com and bob.wertz@gmail.com are delivered to the same email account… on purpose.

Wait. What?

GOOGLE DISREGARDS THE PERIODS IN THE ACCOUNT NAME FOR GMAIL ACCOUNTS!

So now, I’m really confused. This means that there is no way that there can even be a bob.wertz@gmail.com account. My dot-pleganger doesn’t exist. But even though the email address doesn’t exist, emails addressed to my dot-pleganger are still sent to my address because it’s… close? What kind of twisted logic is this? Why it the world would anyone set up an email system this way?

As for why I am repeatedly getting email that I don’t want, this leaves only two scenarios:

1. Someone out there is mistyping their own email address repeatedly over a period of years.
2. Someone mistyped my address once and then it was sold to a variety of entities that now spam me.

Either way, I’m irritated. I’m betting on the “my name is on a master list that keeps getting sold and recycled” scenario. (The fact that my dot-pleganger’s address seems to circulate among mostly conservative causes seems to reinforce this theory.) I can unsubscribe from the emails I get, but I can never get that address off the master list.

“Navigate the complexities” of unsubscribing from email.

I’m also completely perplexed. Why would Google set up an email system that delivers emails to the wrong address on purpose? And who is the random person that apparently doesn’t know their own email address?

I had hoped that I would be able to reclaim my Gmail account. Alas, it doesn’t seem possible.

Bob Wertz is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. In his spare time, he tries to unsubscribe from emails.

What I want in a newspaper

8/21/16 • 5 min read

This post was originally posted on August 22, 2016 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

How do we make the printed newspaper relevant again?

As a kid, I loved the newspaper. Growing up in suburban Chicago, we had the Chicago Tribune and the Aurora Beacon News delivered to my house daily. And there was a local weekly called the Windmill News. I was a paper boy for the Aurora Beacon News and one of my original majors in college was journalism. Newspapers were a major part of my life growing up.

I’m still a news junkie, but it’s been years since I subscribed to the newspaper. As much as I love the daily newspaper, that’s not how I get the news anymore. I don’t have time to sit and read it every morning and all the breaking news I want is delivered through Twitter or the web.

I’ve been thinking lately about what I want from a modern local paper. What would make me subscribe again? In my perfect scenario, this is what I would love to see:

Fiercely local.

I get my breaking national news from the internet. My newspaper will give me news I don’t get from Twitter. Newspapers now are half filled with wire stories and in today’s world, that doesn’t make sense. I get that news online the instant it breaks — not the next morning.

I want a newspaper filled with local stories and local perspective on national stories.

National newspaper conglomerates are mostly interested in efficiency and streamlining operations. The emphasis on local would mean investing in local reporting and probably impact their balance sheets. And so for my modern newspaper to be fiercely local, I assume that it also needs to be fiercely locally-owned.

Once a week.

My local paper — The State — often sets up a booth in the local grocery store trying to sell subscriptions. Their sales pitch is that you can get the entire week of papers for the same price as just the Sunday paper. People perceive value in the Sunday paper.

I never have time to sit and read the paper. But for me, Sunday is the best option for spending a significant amount of time reading and I think that most papers will be better off with just one paper a week, delivered to your doorstep.

There are all sorts of problems with the economics of producing and delivering the paper just once a week. What are the presses doing the rest of the week? How do you hire a delivery team that only works one day a week? Sunday delivery keeps the lucrative retail insert profit alive, but will your subscriber base be large enough to entice advertisers to continue to print and place inserts.

So my modern newspaper — assuming you can work out the financial model — would be delivered to your doorstep once a week on Sunday.

Smart mix of online and print

Just because you only print a paper once a week doesn’t mean you do nothing the rest of the week. My perfect paper would have a smart mix of online content to supplement the printed version. Blogs, podcasts and exclusive online content would keep you connected to the writers and editors. Relevant social media engages readers. Your reporters become trusted sources and well-known voices. With today’s consumer, I think the success of a modern newspaper depends on this deep connection with the readership.

The Perfect Size.

I miss the old broadsheet papers, but the logistics of printing a newspaper in smaller quantities and reduced runs means that the size of the newspaper needs to be a strictly business decision. I guess a tabloid size is the most logical, but I’m open to whatever size makes sense.

Comics

On Sundays after church, I used to sit with my dad and read the comics. I looked forward to that every week. How can we bring back that magic? The daily grind of comics burned out countless cartoonists. Would we still have Calvin and Hobbes if the schedule wasn’t as relentless? A modern newspaper should work with cartoonists to recapture the magic. Partner with them to develop new models and formats.

Respectful online experience

Ads are part of the financial model that makes content possible.  I understand that, but for online ads, be respectful. Today’s ads are obnoxious. Terrible. They slide in and pop up and create an awful experience. I am not opposed to advertising at all, but a modern newspaper needs to respect its readers and provide a first rate experience.

Well designed and high quality

Newspapers typically aren’t held up as examples of great design. The breakneck daily schedule doesn’t leave much time for refinement and reimagining. A modern newspaper has to take a step toward better design quality. Most newspaper websites aren’t much better than their printed counterparts. Make content easy to find and search.

Modern consumers value design quality and high quality photography. A modern newspaper must meet those expectations.

Can this happen?

I’m not sure if anyone could pull this off. Current newspaper conglomerates have shown they don’t have the foresight to pull off a massive shift like this. An entrepreneur would have to find funding, but good luck finding an investor that thinks starting a newspaper in 2016 is a good idea.

But I still think there is value in a printed news vehicle, and not just because of the ads that are in the Sunday paper. I hope someone figures out a model before all of the local papers are gone.

Back to School: The History of American Modern Architecture

7/27/16 • 2 min read

This post was originally posted on July 28, 2016 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

The south side of the University of South Carolina’s campus under construction in the early 1970s.

I spent the spring semester taking a class on modern American architecture, specifically looking at the buildings on the south side of the University of South Carolina’s campus. That section of campus is going to be redeveloped soon and this was our chance to document what’s there before it changes completely.

Taking a class again was a fun experience. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even if I was the old guy in the class. Thanks to Dr. Brandt for the thought provoking discussion. I don’t think I’ll look at modern buildings in the same way again.

The class produced a book that includes the histories and architectural surveys we researched over the course of the semester. I designed the final book and am hosting a PDF copy of it here. My project involved the pedestrian bridge that connects the south side of campus with main campus. Despite having spent have my life around campus, I realized just how little I knew about that side of campus.

I’m looking forward to taking some more classes. I’m teaching in the fall semester, but look to take another class in the spring.