Bob Wertz

Detailed, up-to-date and authoritative

This post was originally posted on July 4, 2019 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

I grew up loving magazines. Any time I’d be interested in something, I’d head to the magazine aisle in the bookstore or grocery store and look for magazines on the topic. Computers, cars, boats, science, model railroads, photography, sports, baseball cards, comics, design and more. It didn’t matter what I was interested in, there was at least one magazine on the topic.

Growing up in the pre-internet days, these magazines provided the info I was looking for. Detailed, up-to-date, authoritative info about whatever geeky habits I was interested in. Even the ads were informative and useful. I subscribed to some of them. Others, I’d buy if the main topics that month interested me.

The internet destroyed these publications. The first blow came from blogs. Authoritative people writing about the things they loved that people could read for free. The second blow was Google, which could route you to exactly what you were looking for. For various reasons — mostly related to monetization — the blog revolution failed to really take hold. Google’s search engine algorithm seemed to reward people with better SEO tactics over more authoritative sources. When I search Google for resources today, it’s hard to tell if what I’ve found is up-to-date or reputable. More often than not, I’m led to dated post of questionable origin that barely answers my question.¹

I was excited about the introduction of Apple News+. Access to hundreds of magazines for $10 a month. The service is nothing world-changing. I’ve absolutely gotten my money’s worth and will continue to subscribe. Surprisingly, though, I discovered I’d already filled the need for a detailed, up-to-date, authoritative source for my geeky habits: podcasting.

I use podcasts the same way I used special interest magazines as a kid.

If I’m interested in a topic, I find a podcast. Computers, design, photography, business, pens, science fiction, pop culture, sports, meditation and more. I subscribe to many of these podcasts in Overcast², while others I only listen to a few episodes. Even the ads are informative and relevant. Podcasts are how I learn about and explore new topics.

Some people think of podcasting as an evolution of talk radio. Others feel it’s more an audio form of blogging. I suppose I don’t have an issue with either of those opinions, but for me, podcasts serve a vital role as a replacement for the special interest magazine.

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

Language matters.

This post was originally posted on January 13, 2019 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the language we use to talk about social media and content creation on the web. And as I’m writing about social media — especially microblogging and the indie web movement — I feel like we need a phrase to refer to platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others that try to lock in users and leverage their private data to sell more ads, compared to the other newer services with revenue models that are less interested in ad sales or lock in.

I know that we already use “indie” and “indie web” as a way to differentiate between the two approaches, but I’m not sure that meaning is clear to a broader audience.

I’m going to go with “captive social” and “open social.”

Captive Social. Social media networks and services that make money through advertising, leveraging their user’s private data. Captive social networks benefit from gathering as much data on their users as possible and using that data to sell more relevant ads to users. To be profitable, that also means that they benefit from having users spend as much time as possible engaged with their platform. Examples of captive social networks: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linked In, Snapchat.

I think my time in the insurance industry has partially inspired this terminology. Captive insurance agents are contractually obligated to only sell products from a single vendor. But I think the term is appropriate for the relationships we have with social media platforms. We are locked into each service silo with very little interoperability between competing platforms.

Open Social. Newer social media networks that are aren’t interested in trapping your data. They benefit from interoperability and the sharing of data between services. Their profitability isn’t based on leveraging personal user data, but on the value you derive from the service.

The inspiration for the terminology isn’t open source, it’s open web standards. I was a Mac user during the years of Internet Explorer dominance — when you sometimes couldn’t access a web site if you didn’t have the right browser. The open web standards push in the early 2000’s freed us from that nightmare and led to expanded browser choice. I hope that open social can have a similar effect on social media that open web standards had on the web.

Open social does have a distinct meaning from indie web. Indie web aims to separate itself from the corporate web, but open social is not necessarily limited to only small companies and decentralized platforms. A large corporation could build an open social platform, as long as they weren’t profiting from trapping your data and locking you into their service.¹ The difference isn’t the size of the provider, but instead, their goals, objectives and business models.

So here are a couple of examples of captive social and open social in context:

• I don’t know why you spend so much time on those captive social sites.

• I’m going to focus on open social platforms like Micro.Blog and limit the time I spend on captive social sites like Facebook and Twitter.

• Hopefully, open social platforms will have the same impact on the web that the open web standards movement did.

It’s a subtle change — a language shift that I think will help when we are having discussions with people who are concerned about privacy and the power of social media, but who aren’t comfortable hosting their sites or maintaining a server.

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

Designers don’t want to admit it, but math is important to the profession.

This post was originally posted on September 29, 2015 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

My first class in graduate school was a quantitive research class and I really enjoyed the statistics side of things. As I’ve told my designer friends this, they typically respond with something along the lines of “Ugh. I became a designer so I wouldn’t have to do math.” I’m not surprised. I’ve heard the same from designers and students over the years, but I’m increasingly irritated by it for a few reasons:

Designers use math every day. I’m not sure where the myth that designers don’t need to understand math comes from, but it’s not true. I use math pretty much every day in my work. Especially geometry and algebra. Understanding foundational mathematical concepts makes you a better designer.

It steers talent away from the field. Let’s say you’ve got a talented high school kid, who also happens to be good at — or maybe even like — math. Tell them enough times that math isn’t important for designers and they’ll find a different career path. As an honors student, I was told repeatedly through school by well-meaning adults that I didn’t want to take art classes because they weren’t rigorous enough. As a result, I initially looked at options like architecture and engineering. It took me a while to circle around to design.

It undermines the profession. The reality is that designers struggle to be taken seriously by big business. We’ve fought to get a “seat at the table” and prove our value beyond just crafting the look and feel of something. As much as we don’t like it, the “language” of business is often based in math. Ignoring the importance of math simply makes it harder to communicate with business decision makers.

I think the challenge is separating our feelings about “math class” from our feelings about “math.” I didn’t enjoy most of my high school math classes. My algebra and geometry teachers weren’t my favorites. Because I scored a high enough score on my AP Calculus test, I was able to exempt all of my college math requirements, so I haven’t taken a math class in almost 25 years. What I’ve come to realize is that while I disliked the way I was taught math, math itself is pretty amazing. And useful.

Don’t misunderstand me… I’m not expecting designers to line up and take refresher math classes. AIGA chapters aren’t going to start holding day-long math workshops. All I’m saying is that embracing the idea that math is an integral part of design only helps the profession as a whole.

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

It never runs out of soap…

This post was originally posted on August 9, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

The bathroom at my office has four sinks and three soap dispensers. Each soap dispenser has a clear plastic front so the cleaning crew can see how much liquid pink soap is left and refill it if necessary.

Sometimes, the first two soap dispensers are low on soap, but the last one, furthest from the door never seems to be low on soap.

You could draw conclusions from this single data point that no one uses the dispenser. And you would be right.

But why? Maybe people prefer the sinks closer to the door? Maybe it’s not in the most convenient location? Maybe there are too many soap dispensers?

The soap dispenser is broken. It hasn’t worked in at least 8 months.

But I imagine the cleaning crew has no idea. They are only looking at that one indicator: Is there soap in the dispenser?

Just a reminder that often, our data tells us what’s happening, but not necessarily why.

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

This post was originally posted on January 7, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

I made a red velvet cake last week.

From scratch. It was a recipe that my mom made when I was growing up, but it was originally my Grandmother Wertz’s recipe. My grandmother died when I was very young, so to me, red velvet always makes me think of my mom.

My mom passed away almost 17 years ago. She taught me to cook many things, but this red velvet cake was not one of them. All I knew was that it was difficult, and that she messed up the icing the first time she tried to make it. I can make pretty much anything that she made, but I had never tried to make the red velvet cake. I’ll be honest – I was scared. Scared to fail. Afraid that if I messed it up, I wouldn’t have someone to call for advice. I was on my own. So I never attempted it.

A few weeks ago, I started thinking about making her red velvet cake. I don’t know what triggered my urge to bake the unbakeable, but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I got the recipe from my sister and decided to bake the cake Christmas Eve. (Because obviously, we had nothing else to do that night…) I ran to the grocery store and got the ingredients. I found our fanciest cake stand. And I pulled out the Kitchen Aid mixer that my parents gave us as a wedding gift.

The recipe wasn’t that hard, but like most older recipes, it was procedural. Lots of steps and precise measurements. The cake batter came together okay, but the icing was another story. This recipe doesn’t use a cream cheese icing like a lot of modern red velvet cakes do. It’s more like a butter cream. I ruined the first batch of icing and had to make a second batch. About 1:00 Christmas morning, I finished icing the cake. It looked exactly like I remembered.

Christmas evening, after dinner, we cut into the red velvet cake – giant pie-sized wedges like my mom used to cut. It tasted like I remembered. Not too sweet, perfect texture. Even the kids loved it. I will freely admit that I teared up a little upon realizing that I had successfully pulled it off.

As I think about the year ahead, I realize that many of the things I’ve been scared of… many of the things I’ve put off attempting… the fear is all in my head. In 2018, I’m going to put those fears aside, branch out and try new things.

(And now that I can make the red velvet cake, I’m definitely going to bake it again.)

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

I’ve used this phrase for years to describe changing jobs. Maybe I was wrong…

This post was originally posted on May 8, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

Every place we work has its own dysfunctional elements. And when you change jobs, you move from one group of challenges to another. Every job has challenges. You choose which challenges you’ll face.

I had coffee a couple of months ago with some friends and one of them was in the midst of a job search. I relayed my standard “choose your dysfunction” advice. One of our friends piped up:

“I don’t know. I think that sometimes, we bring our dysfunction with us."

I still haven’t been able to get that thought out of my head.

Yes, it’s true that each job brings unique challenges. But it’s equally true the we cause many of our own issues. Too often, we blame the environment around us for something that we, ourselves, are causing.

The key to addressing those issues – to finding happiness or fulfillment or whatever you are looking for – is being able to tell the difference between the dysfunction you find and dysfunction you carry with you.

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