Thirty years ago, Liz and I went on our first date. Crazy to think that we’ve been together for 3/5 of my life…

Watching Gamecocks Women’s Basketball. So much talent on this roster. I think they are going to be fun to watch this year.

One app, three modes: The most interesting thing about the new version of Affinity isn’t the price.

When I became a designer 30 years ago, you needed three types of apps: a page layout app, a photo editing app and a vector app. You purchased those apps from whoever had the features you needed. Quark Xpress and Adobe Pagemaker1 were your options for page layout. Macromedia Freehand2 and Adobe Illustrator were your vector options. And while there were other photo apps, Adobe Photoshop was the dominant professional photo editor.

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Watched: Star Wars Rebels S3E5, The Last Battle 🍿

“Battles leave scars, some you can’t see.”

I’m conflicted about Canva making Affinity free. On one hand, Affinity will continue to provide a high-quality option to an Adobe subscription that won’t break the bank. But I don’t trust free software to be there for the long haul…

My peer-reviewed journal article, Logo Love? An Exploration of American Consumers’ Critical Attitudes toward Logos, is finally live on Visual Communications Quarterly. Excited to finally get this released.

When you start your day discovering a plumbing issue… it’s not a crisis, but it is something I’m going to have to deal with when I get home tonight. Hopefully, it is something I can just handle…

Finally made it to City Limits Barbeque. Even with all the hype, it exceeded my expectations. Outstanding.

Impressed with the new Methodical Coffee in The Bull Street District in Columbia. Really awesome to see this area finally coming together.

Methodical Coffee Columbia. A modern café interior features a central coffee bar with baristas serving customers and an upper level with additional seating.

I’m taking the day off from work to just be a Ph.D. student today. I’ve got a paper to work on, I’m attending a research symposium and I’ve scheduled a meeting with our grad school coordinator about my dissertation process and comps.

Rian Hughes is one of my favorite type designers. This brief interview covering his 30 years of type design and promoting his Kickstarter was wonderful. (Also, I completely backed the Kickstarter!)

So if I’m reading the Apple/F1 announcement correctly, my F1 TV subscription will be rolled into Apple TV, which I already pay for as part of the Apple One bundle… so… once less subscription, I guess.

Interesting that Microsoft released some process images on Instagram to explain the thinking behind their new icons. They are correctly treating this icon refresh as a type of logo rollout and people who care about the icons will appreciate the glimpse into the redesign process.

Hate to see that South Carolina basketball’s Chloe Kitts tore her ACL and will miss the season. She’s one of my favorite Gamecocks, and hopefully, she’ll come back strong.

Picking an NFL team

I typically watch one or two NFL games a week, and yet, I don’t really have an NFL team. (I’m currently watching the Detroit Lions and Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday Night Football as I write this.) When I was little, I was a Cowboys fan. We’re taking about the Tom Landry, Danny White, Tony Dorsett era Cowboys. When Jerry Jones bought the team and got rid of all my favorite players and their legendary coach, I decided I was no longer a Cowboys fan.

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I never thought I needed to install a clipboard manager on my Mac. I was wrong. I absolutely love the clipboard history integrated into Spotlight on macOS Tahoe.

Symbolism is strange

It’s always funny to me what pop culture symbols acquire added cultural meaning.

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This statement from the ELCA bishops is strong:

Love insists on the dignity of every human being. Love insists on justice for the marginalized and oppressed. Love insists that the church must reflect God’s diverse, life-giving community. Love insists that we listen, speak, and act with respect, even in disagreement.

This article is about software development, but I think this passage relates to leadership, too:

When you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don’t know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don’t actually mean anything at all.

An interesting post from Simon Sinek on leadership.

Most of us want to be noticed. We want our efforts to matter, to be acknowledged. But the best leaders I’ve ever met are the ones who don’t need the spotlight. They’re the ones who understand that leadership is the awesome responsibility to see those around us rise. It’s not about rank or authority. It’s about caring for the person to your left and the person to your right. It’s about making the choice, every day, to help others succeed, even if no one is watching.